[Rodo]

Enjoy it while the site still lives.

aha ahahahaaa!!

please wait 8hs more 

[High Max]

I just looked at the mission folder and it is not that long. It was an exaggeration. If this is long then Derelect is very long. This is only 26 missions. I think BP is about the same.

[Scotty]

That's pretty long.  The main FS2 campaign is a grand total of 30 (not counting SOC loops).

[-Norbert-]

I just looked at the mission folder and it is not that long. It was an exaggeration. If this is long then Derelect is very long. This is only 26 missions. I think BP is about the same.

You forget that BP has the hunt for the Duke, which is pretty much a single mission spread over several systems (and thus mission files). Off the top of my head I'd say it's five mission files for that chase.
Then there are those two "missions" that are really ingame cutscenes as well.

[The E]

Blue Planet has 22 missions, several of which can not be considered "full" missions (Journey Of A Thousand Miles and Frankensteins' Monster, for example is basically one mission split up into 4 parts).

[High Max]

I am not sure how short these missions are though. Some could be very short.

I just tried to load the first mission after downloading E's fixes and it gave me an error saying that at least 1 ship class could not be loaded. This can happen if the campaign you are playing is incompatible with the current mod. It then goes on to say that the campaign is Relentless and the mod is Relentless mediavps, etc etc. This is silliness, and like NGTM-1R said, not acceptable.

Is this because I'm using .12? Nemesis said he had no problems with running .12, so I think it is ok. Also, is there a difference between Jeff Vader's file and The E's file? I just downloaded The E's file only because it had fixes after Jeff posted his link and it is larger, making me think it has Jeff Vader's file with additional fixes. Must I use .10? I won't if not absolutely vital.

[The E]

Thanks for the report. I'll fix it ASAP.

This may take some time, as it will probably take some messing around in PCS2 to fix the models.

Note, for future reference: Wherever these models were found? Don't use that source.

[High Max]

You mean this file?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[The E]

Right. Fixed the Scylla model and a few other crash issues.

http://www.mediafire.com/?cqkwtmxgmyw

Note: This will be the last patch I will provide for this. If ANY OTHER ISSUES ARE FOUND, it's Deka's job to fix them. If there are questions on how to do them, feel free to contact me, but I will NOT do any more work on this.

This mod, in my estimation, still needs A LOT of work, mainly in terms of balancing and assets. There are still missing assets that I do not have, and at this point cannot be arsed to track down.

[Deka1184]

Thanks again, The E, first post edited, again.

Enjoy it while the site still lives.

aha ahahahaaa!!

please wait 8hs more 

First post was updated by then dude. check the first post!

I think its balanced well, personally, and quite a few others did too, up till mission 10-15 or so.

And yes its a longish campaign. The last few missions are a quick string but many of the early to mid campaign missions are very long and segmented.

[General Battuta]

I'd suggest either taking the mod down until you can get it into consistently playable shape, or editing your first post to suggest that this is a public beta, because other people are fixing your mod for you pro bono.

If these criteria aren't met I'd suggest a moderator leave a note in the first post that this campaign will not be supported and should be considered unfinished.

[Deka1184]

I'd suggest either taking the mod down until you can get it into consistently playable shape, or editing your first post to suggest that this is a public beta, because other people are fixing your mod for you pro bono.

If these criteria aren't met I'd suggest a moderator leave a note in the first post that this campaign will not be supported and should be considered unfinished.

Perhaps you should have checked the first post before you wrote this. I credited the two generous individuals who patched up my mod a bit. This is not a public beta. This is a release. I'm not asking for "support", I never felt that I implied SCP coders should somehow support my mod in their future releases. That would be ridiculous.

There has not been a godamn crash in 3.6.10 and I trust that The E and Norbert have maintained this attribute while making it compatible for other builds too.

I am so done with this campaign, honestly. Take it or leave it. I really don't care anymore. It already looks like I'm not getting a highlight so I don't see why you need to bash my campaign further when it hasn't even ****ing crashed yet. Here is four ****ing pages and not a single post about the mod itself, just a bunch of technical bull****. I dont want to see another ****ing comment related to technical ANYTHING, if I do, I'm out of here. I'm done dealing with this ****, so you're just going to have to blow it out your ass.

COULD WE CHANGE TOPIC TO THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE MOD NOW PLEASE.

[High Max]

Over reaction and extreme lack of emotional control? I know how that feels when it comes to certain things and I do it too from time to time, though not often to your extent, but I would hold back a lot if people helped me. I would feel guilt to blow up at them. So many people are not thankful. Of course in this situation that can go both ways, both from you or from others.

Fame and highlights shouldn't matter. I surely would feel too humble to want that kind of attention most of the time. Why give up so easily when you came this far? Also, technical details are necessary for anyone who makes a campaign, and fixing bugs makes a campaign more enjoyable since it is stable and can be played with less worry of problems and less interruptions and frustrating show stoppers. Maybe your computer, software and hardware was somehow just the right type and set up in such an unlikely way with a certain configuration to where you were the only one who got no problems and you just got lucky as a result. Perhaps it was made to work when installed the wrong way in FSO and you didn't know it was the wrong way, but if set up the correct way for FSO, it can't work properly.

You say you are done with this campaign and you don't care anymore, but then you say 'could we change the topic to the actual content of the mod itself' and that comment means you care and are not done with this campaign.

[Deka1184]

Over reaction and extreme lack of emotional control? I know how that feels when it comes to certain things and I do it too from time to time, though not often to your extent, but I would hold back a lot if people helped me. I would feel guilt to blow up at them. So many people are not thankful. Of course in this situation that can go both ways, both from you or from others.

Fame and highlights shouldn't matter. I surely would feel too humble to want that kind of attention most of the time. Why give up so easily when you came this far? Also, technical details are necessary for anyone who makes a campaign, and fixing bugs makes a campaign more enjoyable since it is stable and can be played with less worry of problems and less interruptions and frustrating show stoppers. Maybe your computer, software and hardware was somehow just the right type and set up in such an unlikely way with a certain configuration to where you were the only one who got no problems and you just got lucky as a result.

You say you are done with this campaign and you don't care anymore, but then you say 'could we change the topic to the actual content of the mod itself' and that comment means you care and are not done with this campaign.

So your argument is that its not a prick move to come into someones mod thread and say that its so terrible it should be reduced to unfinished beta status and a mod should flag it as such in the first post, so no one plays it. I am under complete emotional control thank you, but I do not take kindly to assholes.

The bottom line is that no one whose played on 3.6.10 has had any problems, so as far as I'm concerned, what bugs are there are negligible. The same people who criticize my campaign based on its theoretical performance and not its actual performance are the same people who said that including a few stray files was a bug. The VP was a few kilobytes bigger because of some extra .bak mission files. Who the **** cares. So some people are fixing my mod "pro bono", well guess what, I've credited those people in the first mod edit: post, but more importantly i made this entire ****ing mod "pro bono".

And the software and hardware of 10 beta testers had no problems so thats at least a 90% playability rate at the least, and its probably much higher than that. the fact that the first four pages of this thread has to do with the extra 10% that may not even exist is disgusting, and with each passing post i regret more and more releasing this mod.

I don't care about "improving" or "fixing" the campaign at this point, because its clear that some anal-retentive prick will always find something and in a fit of self-deemed authority declare the ****ing mod a beta because of it. Its done as far as im concerned. If someone else wants to redo the whole thing, as they've done for "Derelict" they are welcome to, but of course this mod isnt as good as Derelict so I sure as hell don't expect it. It is more than adequately playable as is. I will discuss the content of the mod, issues relating to plot, storyline, strategies for missions, etc. no more technical aspects relating to it. have i made myself crystal clear?

[High Max]

I'll read the rest of what you said later, but for starters, you said:

So your argument is that its not a prick move to come into someones mod thread and say that its so terrible it should be reduced to unfinished beta status and a mod should flag it as such in the first post, so no one plays it. I am under complete emotional control thank you, but I do not take kindly to assholes

and I said:

So many people are not thankful. Of course in this situation that can go both ways, both from you or from others.

And for the record, you are not in emotional control because if cursing people out is not emotionally out of control, then nothing is. Holding back is showing control, and really does take true emotional strength to do. You can't deny that. You don't need to use offensive language to let people know how you feel. It just isn't mature for one, and also displays lack of emotonal control, politeness and education.

Bottom line is, you should have bug fixed it before release, if you knew there were bugs. Did you playtest it? I will try it again tomorrow because I want to play it.

[Fury]

I'm locking this topic for now.

Deka1184, nobody here is trying to be impolite or an asshole. However, everyone who release mods should use either 3.6.10 debug or 3.6.12 debug builds to ensure that the mod has as few bugs as possible. Normal (aka retail) builds ignore most errors by design, they're meant for normal gaming, not developing a mod. Debug builds are essential tool for developers, as it will caught countless of errors. Many of those have now been fixed by The E, and it didn't even take that long.

It's great if your mod doesn't crash or cause problems when played with normal builds, but that is nothing but an illusion of a working mod if debug builds bombard you with errors. Debugging is part of a process developing a mod and should not be underestimated or ignored. End-user experience will be that much better when you know that the modpack itself doesn't cause errors and most errors that occur, are due to mission design. Worst mission design errors are caught by a debug build too by the way.

These are simple facts of live in any product you develop, whether it is a mod for fun or even a commercial product. Even so do not be disheartened by this feedback. You're not the first and surely not the last to release a buggy mod or campaign. Even community veterans have made mistakes (and still do) of not properly debugging their stuff. These things happen.

I'll open this topic later when I've decided what to do with it, if anything. At least it'll give everyone some time to cool down.

[Fury]

Right, I'm re-opening this topic. After reviewing the posts here, I decided not to split them as most of them are quite valid as part of mod discussion.

Deka1184, I really would like to emphasize on the fact that there have been plenty of mods and campaigns released thus far with poor debugging. Each one of them have gotten more or less serious flak for it, regardless of whether mod developers are community veterans or not. Perhaps they've received more flak if they were, because they should've known better as active community members. As a developer you need to be mentally prepared to receive harsh criticism not only for mission quality, but also modpack quality. Together these two form a product end-users play. Lack of quality in one or the other means overall end-user experience is reduced.

What I try to say, the critique you've received is nothing personal. Some people like The E have actually gone through the trouble of debugging your mod for you. There is absolutely no reason to get angry at people when they point out bugs that can be fixed, as proven by The E.

As for other people participating in this topic, I believe we've told Deka1184 about the problems and importance of debugging enough times by now. There's no reason to keep rubbing it on his face. We're hardly perfect ourselves as many other recent releases have proven. And it would seem that this mod was done by Deka1184 mostly by himself, so we shouldn't really expect miraculous quality. The very first release of Blue Planet ages ago, which was done by Darius alone was hardly a prime example of proper debugging. In fact, it got emergency update in less than an hour, which still left many other bugs unfixed.

So now, if people would continue to keep reporting further issues in a civil manner. Perhaps Deka1184 would be willing to continue supporting this mod. This is all a learning process. What you don't know how to do, ask for help and someone will instruct.

That said, if someone can't keep things civil (that goes for Deka1184 as well), he will be promptly monkeyed for a week.

[General Battuta]

To avoid this kind of situation in the future, I think we should put together a sticky topic (Before You Release Your Campaign...) with a checklist of things to do before release: debug build, table checks, types of mission testing, so on.

All that said: Deka1184, you've already received a couple reports of broken missions, your campaign has no directives, and you can apparently proceed along the campaign even when you fail. Both Spoon and Norbert have reported issues unrelated to technical bugs. So even under 3.6.10 your campaign is a bit screwy.

Your campaign isn't playable as is.

That would've been unacceptable even in a retail campaign release. Now, as you've seen, the community is happy to help you get things into shape. Instead of ragequitting, why not take this as a learning experience? You could probably have Relentless in good shape in fairly little time.

I'm still interested in experiencing your story, since you made it sound quite interesting, but you need to take the time to get it in good shape first.

Of course, you felt it necessary to call me an 'anal-retentive prick' when I tried to help out. That was more than a bit hurtful. Do you want honest responses to your mod or not? My remarks weren't anything personal. Why did you feel the need to attack me?

[-Norbert-]

As far as not commenting on the story goes: I can't speak for other players, but I don't like to comment on the story untill I finished a campaign.
Things that initially make no sense at all might make sense, once put into the right context later in the campaign, or things you thought make sense might be screwed up in later missions.

A little spoilerish example:

Spoiler:

Intitially it made absolutely no sense at all to have Lennes up for execution, just because he ordered to board the cruiser right away instead of scanning it first. And it made even less sense to leave him in command even after telling him he was going to be executed.
But with the information of later missions, it becomes obvious that command was suspecting him of being a traiter and putting together a rebellion and they tested him that way. So while it initially made no sense, getting the additional information and context made is make sense (okay, that sentence sounds weird....)

As I said because of such situations, I'd rather comment on a storyline only once I'm completely through it once.

you can apparently proceed along the campaign even when you fail

A little misunderstanding, if you are refering to mission 15. I didn't fail the mission and proceeded, I just got the wrong debriefing message after succeding in the mission.

[Kosh]

After being KappaWing for 5 years, I have a new callsign now, but I don't mind if you still call me Kappa. =)

Why change your name? I can't say "KappaWing, this is Allied Command, please respond" on messanger anymore.

Anyway, anyone got any mirrors for this?