[Snail]

Well for us who are still leeching off society, school just started.

[Shivan Hunter]

Honestly, I can't really get past a lot of the dialogue. See the post by Spoon above.

[0rph3u5]

What's up, people? Is everyone still playing it?

I'm stuck in "Wounded Knee" ... right now I'm riping campaign and mission file apart to see what I've missed

Spoiler:

cant be able to destory that alien cruiser in time

I must admit that even given the universe's exposition, some of the dialogue really strikes me as strange... I guess I will have to ask you for a comment on one or the other thing once I'm done...

[TopAce]

Orpheus:

Spoiler:

Use your secondaries like mad. That's all you need to do in that mission.

In response to the dialogs: I've written varied characters with their own styles. You must be referring to Admiral Mecken who

Spoiler:

isn't up to her task, makes rushed decisions, and takes no responsibility for anything.

Remember: This isn't like FreeSpace. I could have stuck to the ordinary recipe and ended up with something known. I chose not to do that. Apparently, I overdid it at places. I took some risks, and I've been aware of it all along.

And what about the missions themselves? Any technical problems?

[ssmit132]

Certainly a breath of fresh air. The last mission I was on was the one where

Spoiler:

you have to prevent the Vasudans from recapturing... whatever the Typhon was called

and it seems a bit tricky. I'm determined to crack it though. I must also say that:

Spoiler:

I'm very eager to find out what happened to the player character in those two months inside the subspace tunnel.

[NGTM-1R]

The dialogue is simply bad. Really, really bad. Take the sample Spoon posted earlier. Nobody's going to actually talk like that, hell, they probably won't talk half as much because of comms discipline. No one will insult a superior, much less a flag-rank officer, to their face like that. That's personal and professional suicide, regardless of whether you're right. Good officers can end their careers simply by questioning a superior indirectly or warning their superior's superiors of their incompetence. To their face, on an open channel? No organization can allow that behavior. Your life is over. Enjoy the cell assuming they don't shoot you; conduct unbecoming, failure to obey direct orders, cowardice in the face of the enemy, and probably a half-dozen other charges.

But that's really the tip of the iceburg. People don't talk like this. I'm having extremely difficult time taking the campaign seriously on a number of concepts like a planetary blockade too, but it's the dialogue that really kills it because it doesn't sound like something anyone would actually say.

[Axem]

This is sort of hard for me to post. I don't mean any ill will toward you or trying to tell you how to make a campaign, but this campaign is not at all what I was expecting.

I have played it from start to finish. Both branches, though I took the Character Branch first through the campaign, then did the Military Branch through the tech room.

I want to start off by saying this was quite the undertaking. A lot of effort went into this campaign, building a universe mostly from scratch. Everything was reworked. New weapons, new tech room entries, all the fluff that you'd expect with a large campaign like this.

I am afraid this is where its going to get nasty. I have total respect for you and what you've created, but here is my honest opinion.

The missions were a mixed bunch. A lot of them were simplistic, and there's nothing wrong with that. I enjoy blowing stuff up. But others were minutes and minutes of talking and talking and the player doing one action to justify him being there. There are missions that go up to 8 or 9 minutes in length where the player does nothing. All he does listen to people talk. I could go mission by mission, describing all the things that annoyed me, but at the risk of sounding mean and uncultured, that would fill up quite a bit.I'll just go through stuff that really stood out. Spoilers abound!

Spoiler:

I think my fears started to come up in the opening cutscene. I am treated to a picture of a planet as subtitles describe the situation. I was a little annoyed at how that's all the camera movement there was, but the thing that hit me was the line "It's propaganda." That started DoS's way of telling me how to feel.

All throughout the campaign I get messages in second person telling me that "You like the sound of these guys" or "The Admiral's words do not affect you." To quote Futurama (of all things), "You just cant have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel ANGRY!" Why am I being told this? Why can't I come to the conclusion that these guys are giant assholes or if they're sent by God. "Show, don't tell", is a big rule in writing.

Speaking of writing... When I was testing WoD for Spoon, I complained to him that his chatter wasn't strict or military at all. But as I played through, the entire mood of the universe felt right for that level of "light" chatter. But here the writing... it's as if everyone is a complete and total jerk. The dialogue is so unprofessional and at times, painful to read. I didn't feel as if I was in the military at all, more like a part of a mob led by the scum of humanity. If that's the sort of thing you were going for, bravo. I couldn't identify with anyone, not even the player character (especially during the character branch).

I don't see how humanity got as far as it did with this level of hostility amongst itself. You've got pilots saying things that would get them thrown out of the military, you've got Admirals who casually dismiss the value and importance of anyone under their command. How has the military not devolved into a total state of anarchy? Judging from the "protestors" it looks like its almost at that stage.

Anyway, here comes my critique of the story as a whole.

It started off alright. Rebels from the virus-ridden planet are waging war against the iron fisted military. Soon we meet the Vasudans and first contact doesn't go too bad (we're not killing each other YET). But then we start fighting and it starts going down hill.

I think what sealed my opinion on the campaign came at The Return. So we're finally able to target Vasudan fighters. We kill a wing of 8 fighters. I was sort of pumped! The story wasn't doing it for me, so I was hoping for some mindless action would get me going. Then a Vasudan corvette jumps in 10km away and Command says "I want this to be a fair fight." and sends in his own corvette. So I get 5 minutes of watching two corvettes blob spam each other. If that wasn't annoying enough, I got a training message saying "Use of time compression can screw up the mission balance."

I thought it was cute the first time I saw a message telling me to use time compression because the rest of the mission will take awhile. But really now, you're making me do nothing for 5 minutes! There's barely any chatter, there's no beams, no missiles, nothing exciting happening and you're suggesting that I spend my time doing nothing. WHY?

When I hit Dealing in Extremes, I was sure this was going to be the payoff. From the briefing, this looked like the archetypical moral dilemma. I am ordered to murder refugees infected with the virus. This is where I am allowed to exercise my own choice and decide if I really want to be part of this tyrannical force, right? No, the very first line of the mission comes from the player character saying that we should split up to finish them off faster. The PC then goes on to say remember to use your secondaries. Since it's clear I have no choice in the matter, I partake in the slaughter of innocents. The last transport attempts to surrender, but command says "Orders are Orders." So we're ordered to stick around in case more refugees dare arrive, and half my wingmen start protesting these orders (Nice job protesting AFTER you've become an accessory to murder, but to their merit at least THEY come around to it at all). They are then declared traitors, and I have to kill them! And then when I return to base I get a medal, Unpitying Killer! Are you serious? Could I be told that this military is worse than Hitler any more heavy handedly?

Well from the training message telling me that I couldn't believe what just happened, I... couldn't believe what just happened. The private log made it clear that maybe I shouldn't have done that. My hopes were starting to get up a little higher. And in the next mission, I saw it was time to choose the branch. Character or military. I went for character first. I thought "ok, this is where my character realizes that serving an evil and corrupt organization is wrong, and I will atone myself by aiding the people I murdered."

But no, the character branch is about going deep into Vasudan territory along side a very elite squadron, and orchestrating the death of one of the elite squadron's members so that I can take his place. You weren't kidding when you said THAT was the darker path. And then when I did "kill" him, and I joined this squad, the campaign ends. Zero resolution to the war. Zero resolution to the virus. Zero resolution to everything. Well at least I got a campaign completion medal anyway.

Ok, maybe the Military Branch will give me some more closure. I'll warn you I didn't play this in sequence. It was hard to keep track of which missions I played before without any mission numbers in the file names. But I did get through it! So the first mission throws me into a completely new character, Overlord Lahma. At first I thought he was a Vasudan, since so far we had just seen two races. Now there was that mystery ship in the subspace tunnel, but since this ship didn't look like it at all. I thought it was some elite Vasudan fighter. So after single handedly killing 3 wings, a cruiser and a science ship, it becomes apparent that I am some very powerful third race bent on ensuring that the Terrans and Vasudans die horrible deaths (I started calling this race Shivan-Overlords at this point).

Then we get a mission chasing after refugees into a nebula only to find everything is derelict and I keep feeling weak and then normal. Then we get some passing mention an antidote has been found for this virus (those refugees could've waited! but, NO, they were too early!). Then we get battle of the moon part 1 and part 2. Then we get a "kill the protestors" mission again, only for the Vasudans to show up and then the military and the protestors join forces to conquer the alien threat. Then right after, we go back to killing each other. Sigh... There's also this prophet guy who gets a quote attributed to him later.

Then we head into the home stretch of the campaign! We make peace with the Vasudans by attacking suspected Anti-Human Vasudans and show gestures of good will! Then the Vasudans take us to a cargo depot, where Shivan-Overlords (where I am told they are called the Manipulators) suddenly come out of nowhere and kill everyone. Then I watch as my command ship is destroyed by the Manipulators! Then I watch as the last remnants of Terrans and Vasudans make it to some large complex with other alien ships (including Shivan Ships). And then we pan to a Knossos and... end campaign I assume. I didn't play this in the campaign room, so maybe I'm missing something. But that IS the last mission and there is no debrief.

I guess it's a cliffhanger...?

Sorry if that comes off as rant-ish, but I couldn't take the campaign seriously after Dealing in Extremes... Everything felt just so empty. My actions did nothing at all. That's fine for a cog in the machine sort of thing, but it left me without any sense of accomplishment, which I think it important to the player to feel.

I think the worst part of it was, this was not the campaign I was expecting. Maybe that's why I am not a fan of it. When I first heard of it, I thought it would be like Deus Ex in SPAAAACE. Iron fisted government with a virus-ridden population on the verge of rioting. All I got was

Spoiler:

FS1 remade with Nightmares instead of Shivans.

I thought the branches would be based on the morality of the player. Either the player must choose to enforce the law that he swore to uphold or join the people being oppressed. All I got was being a cold blooded killer with zero choice in the matter.

If you're looking for suggestions on how to improve this... I don't know how you could improve it. I don't know how you wrote the story, but I think you need to find someone who can go "This stinks" to your face and pitch them ideas. Then when they say "that's awful" you rework it until they go "that's better!" Don't underestimate that power. BP2 had high expectations, but the WiH alpha that Darius made... well. It was reported to be pretty bad. The story was very different from what it is today. The BP team saw how bad it was and told Darius how bad it was. He took it well and they refined the whole thing into the great experience that it is today.

So don't give up on making campaigns! Find a way to get feedback quickly and effectively. Get some outspoken, active beta testers who haven't participated in the developement and can have a fresh view on the missions and storyline. You've got the technical talent, you just need to practice the literary talent!

[SpardaSon21]

So, let me ask you how you really feel about this campaign.

Is it worse than SGWP2?

[Woolie Wool]

I'm only a few missions in, but this is not shaping up to be a particularly good mod so far.

First of all, you call it an original universe, but in every other respect aside from dialogue and fluff, this is just more FS. It's not like FS, it doesn't resemble FS, it is FS. You could change the date to 2340 and the Solarian Alliance to some regional Terran faction of the Reconstruction Era and very little would change. You've got the same ships, with the same models, and the same names, which handle in pretty much the same manner and are balanced in the same way. An original universe is a chance to be really adventurous, to break the mold of FreeSpace gameplay and make a game that plays in an entirely different manner. You've squandered this opportunity and essentially dolled up a rather bland post-FS1 campaign up with some new fluff and dialogue. You didn't even change FS's ridiculous way of designating capital ship types.

Second of all, your "grammar checkers" were sleeping on the job. I can deal with the occasional misspelling. I've put typos into mods before, although I was embarrassed when people pointed them out. But I cannot deal with completely nonexistent words like "resultative" and "boomy" (to describe an explosive and not bad bass from a speaker system).

Grammar aside, the dialogue in general is annoying. Everyone is a huge dick for absolutely no reason at all, in such a manner that they could not believably work together as a military acting in such an unprofessional manner. I know you're going for a "dystopian" angle, but military people don't act like that. If they do act like that, they get what soldiers call a "big chicken dinner", which actually has nothing to do with chicken and everything to do with going to military prison for a while and getting thrown out. A certain degree of professionalism, cooperation, and not being what servicemen call a "****bird" is required for a military to even exist, because it's a hierarchical organization that requires hundreds of thousands of people to work together in a very coordinated manner. None of it is believable at all; I can almost see the script laid out in front of me on my desk while playing.

Many of the effects look like they came from a retail mod and would have been ugly even then. There's hideous PCX banding, huge blobby fuzzy shots with no shape, and horrifying mission backgrounds.

I'll agree with Axem on the mission design, especially in regards to talky missions. You want to introduce people with cool stuff going on, drop them in medias res, and make a good first impression. You can do all the deep storytelling business later. Blue Planet 2 did it right--it started with a simple and very effective sequence where you saw the handful of UEF ships desperately charge into the teeth of the much larger GTVA force. There wasn't a whole lot of dialogue, because not much was needed. The visuals themselves showed how large and powerful the GTVA was and how small and outclassed the UEF was. Descendants of Sol makes the worst possible first impression by starting off with a static screen overlaid with blandly written exposition, and then a few fighters shooting each other in an empty region of space, and then eight solid minutes of making me follow a fighter much faster than mine around (mashing the burners every few seconds while trying to read all the huge infodumps got tedious fast) while people are talking very fast, so fast you could barely keep up with it if it had voice acting (and it doesn't) and wallowing in the cheesiest, most ridiculous gloomy degenerate grimdark "cynical" nonsense I have ever seen. It's not just boring, it outright pissed me off, and I was relieved when a few bandits warped in so everyone would shut the hell up.

"George [Lucas], you can type this ****, but you sure as hell can't say it."
--Harrison Ford

[TopAce]

I don't have time to respond to all this, so it's one question for now.

Woolie: What misspellings?

I'll respond to many of these when I come back from school.

[TopAce]

Okay, all the comments have to do with the campaign's basic setup. Since you could not see the world through the eyes of the characters, you found their motives out of place and what they say absurd. It doesn't matter where the story went, if the basic is so alien to your liking, you wouldn't have liked it anyway, so it all collapsed before you finished mission 1. It all collapsed in the earliest planning stage.

Had I chosen a different premise, it all would have been different. The story would have been much different and the characters would have been different - possibly it would have been much more likable had I chosen a more usual, worn-out premise. I took a risk which I knew was there. I'm not a doctor to cure a patient or an engineer to build a bridge that must be done to the letter. I tried it, I didn't work. Such is life.

Next time I'll remember not to do anything too unusual. That's the conclusion I can take from all this. (Or if I do try anything radically different than what people are used to, it won't be a 37-mission-long campaign).

I will request that this thread be locked, and I'll delete all the mirrors. Feedback won't be better than this.

[General Battuta]

Locked by request.

TopAce handled the criticism well. A dialogue rewrite might save it, though, are you sure you want to delete everything?

[The E]

Okay, all the comments have to do with the campaign's basic setup. Since you could not see the world through the eyes of the characters, you found their motives out of place and what they say absurd. It doesn't matter where the story went, if the basic is so alien to your liking, you wouldn't have liked it anyway, so it all collapsed before you finished mission 1. It all collapsed in the earliest planning stage.

I would have to disagree. It's not the basic concept that I have trouble with, it's solely the execution that has flaws, as pointed out by NGTM-1R, Axem and Woolie.

Locked by request.

TopAce handled the criticism well. A dialogue rewrite might save it, though, are you sure you want to delete everything?

I am not certain that "deleting everything" is really "handling it well". Sure, this campaign was flawed, but it wasn't so bad as to deserve a summary deletion in my opinion.

Unlocked, because I think that people deserve a right to discuss this further. Be warned, however, that flaming will lead to lockage.

[Axem]

Okay, all the comments have to do with the campaign's basic setup. Since you could not see the world through the eyes of the characters, you found their motives out of place and what they say absurd. It doesn't matter where the story went, if the basic is so alien to your liking, you wouldn't have liked it anyway, so it all collapsed before you finished mission 1. It all collapsed in the earliest planning stage.

Well I didn't reject the campaign in the first mission. Everyone has their own style and everyone is not some literary genius. I could accept the concept. I can see the foreshadowing for the third race. Even if the endings were bad, in my opinion, there were many chance the campaign could have redeemed itself. It just felt like there was wasted potential.

Had I chosen a different premise, it all would have been different. The story would have been much different and the characters would have been different - possibly it would have been much more likable had I chosen a more usual, worn-out premise. I took a risk which I knew was there. I'm not a doctor to cure a patient or an engineer to build a bridge that must be done to the letter. I tried it, I didn't work. Such is life.

Next time I'll remember not to do anything too unusual. That's the conclusion I can take from all this. (Or if I do try anything radically different than what people are used to, it won't be a 37-mission-long campaign).

No, that's completely missing the point! We don't want the same old same old. Wings of Dawn is just about as far removed from FreeSpace as you can get, and everyone enjoyed it! It's even got its own board on HLP. Even looking at "traditional" FreeSpace campaigns, Ransom's works doesn't have "a more usual, worn-out premise." I think the community has gotten a little jaded to worn out premises, they want something new and original.

[NGTM-1R]

As I observed over PM, it's not the setting. From the bat**** insanity of the GRIMDARK grim darkness of 40k to more realistic dystopias in cyberpunk or Rifts, I'm down with the dystopian oppressive state. But, as I also observed, a dystopia isn't going to take what happened well.

The dialogue is, furthermore, just clunky. There's some weirdnesses of grammar and spelling, but there's also an incredible degree of slavish adherence to the rules of sentence construction and the like that results in a lack of flow; people would not naturally speak this way, certainly not under pressure.

There's nothing wrong with the story ideas, but there's a lot that misfired in execution.

[Sushi]

Haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I'll withhold judgment on the campaign, as well as its critics, until after I do.

[Mongoose]

The dialogue is, furthermore, just clunky. There's some weirdnesses of grammar and spelling, but there's also an incredible degree of slavish adherence to the rules of sentence construction and the like that results in a lack of flow; people would not naturally speak this way, certainly not under pressure.

I didn't get a chance to download the campaign before the sources were nixed, but from the screenshot Spoon posted, I think that's a good assessment.  Putting the strange grammar aside, the overall language being used was very stilted: it felt an awful like a non-native speaker performing a very rigid and literal translation, creating something that was technically comprehensible yet lacked all of the idioms and mannerisms you'd hear in normal speech.  TopAce, I feel like getting a native English speaker to look over things and tweak the flow of the dialog would go a long way toward alleviating that area of concern.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The dialogue is, furthermore, just clunky. There's some weirdnesses of grammar and spelling, but there's also an incredible degree of slavish adherence to the rules of sentence construction and the like that results in a lack of flow; people would not naturally speak this way, certainly not under pressure.

I didn't get a chance to download the campaign before the sources were nixed, but from the screenshot Spoon posted, I think that's a good assessment.  Putting the strange grammar aside, the overall language being used was very stilted: it felt an awful like a non-native speaker performing a very rigid and literal translation, creating something that was technically comprehensible yet lacked all of the idioms and mannerisms you'd hear in normal speech.  TopAce, I feel like getting a native English speaker to look over things and tweak the flow of the dialog would go a long way toward alleviating that area of concern.

Uh he did get people to look over the dialogue, three people in fact:

Grammar Checkers: bigchunk1, Klaustrophobia, starwolf1991

[bigchunk1]

I remember playing the campaign Transcend. I remember thinking to myself how silly it was that I could only select one load out.  How menial the affairs of Kappa wing were. I remember laughing to myself saying, "Are they just going to throw pirate fighters at me for the entire campaign?! This is fricken dumb. I am sick of scanning cargo, following Omikron wing, and doing nothing. I can't believe someone made this... "

I left the campaign alone for a week. Finally, during the weekend when I had the free time, I humored myself and fired up Transcend again. I didn't leave that chair until the day subsided and the entire universe was collapsing around me. "Make for the node, we must reach Vega!" I remember the Generation, the corvette that would never go away. The betrayal and infighting caused by the Vasudans, pirates and GTVA. Near the end it was like one big free for all of chaos, and the best thing you could hope for was to make it out alive. Transcend blew me away. It was the first FSO campaign I completed with many more to come.
     
I'm going to say this just to be the first guy to say it. I really don't think DOS was that bad. I'm not saying you all aren't nice or anything like that. I'm saying you all missed out on a great campaign. I remember when Ace gave me the raw unedited work with no grammatical improvements whatsoever I played through the character branch straight. I remember reading the last few missions and thinking about how twisted the ending was; It gave me chills. The story is certainly not standard, and that's what I like about it. Like an old unturned piano, it's not perfect but it has character, and I truly believe TopAce put some personality into this work.
   
I remember giving another innovative campaign praise by saying that it makes you feel like anything is possible. Ace, like Ransom or BP or heck I'm going to say it FelixJim's campaign, tapped into one of my primary sources of intrigue in a campaign story. That slow withering away of reality until you get to something raw and human. By the end of the campaign the world behaves as something so distorted and strange it must be happening light-years away on the planet Yartis, far off into the reaches of space. It is quite entertaining to 'tumble down the rabbit hole'.

I think the issue surrounding this campaign is its anticipation. From the posts I have read, many of you expected fire to burst from the hands of this one man show. Some even declared as criticism that it was not what they expected. I think surprise in its purest form is a positive thing to experience in a campaign. I don't think I would have predicted the ending if I were challenged.

When I began to actually play DOS. I barely knew who TopAce was and the only thing I knew about the campaign was the file size. I had no expectations. To paint this thread with a little more grey, I am going to share some of my positive experiences with DOS.

Spoiler:

I immediately grew to like the weapons mechanics. TopAce completely reworked the way weapons behaved from the ground up to produce new strategies for primary weapon combinations as well as secondary weapon strategies such as the long range 'patriot' anti-hull warhead. Something you are better off using against cruisers.

TopAce went to a music site titled www.freeplaymusic.com to grab the gems he used for the campaign. I thought they were well chosen to fit the mood for the particular missions. I recommend checking the site out yourself. I like the taste in music chosen for DOS.

The backgrounds I thought looked interesting, especially the areas with the eerie red sun. I thought it fit the mood of a plagued sector wrought with desperation and strife. Maybe I'm reading into it, but different things effect different people in different ways.

Each capitol ship class had its own carefully engineered system of defense. For instance, the Blade class cruiser is a narrow ship with wide broadsides chalk full of anti-fighter laser turrets. Such a design encourages the player to dodge and weave through the projectiles while completing mission objectives. The ship, without the assistance of long range weaponry, is a puzzle in itself to bring down. Ace paid special care to many small details such as these.

Some of the missions I found particularly interesting from a gameplay perspective. One such mission, involved Vasudan wings of bombers which had fighters warp later just behind them, or should I say just behind the player as he is shooting up the bombers. I found these little tactical dilemmas pretty amusing.

You might not be aware of this, but when I told Ace that I preferred to roll in a Rhea bomber with a Gatling cannon and bombs he sent me a reply and told me that the mission changes difficulty based on what ship you pick. For example: choosing a bomber will make cruisers and capital ships a greater threat. While choosing a fighter will make enemy pilots more skilled. I thought that was a nice touch to have the game adapt to the player's preferred play style.
 

       

And of course, I took a liking to all those philosophical dilemmas presented throughout the campaign. The indecision of the characters is used a tool to amplify the  profoundness of these dilemmas. I get the impression that this campaign is not meant as a simulated continuation of human society. Well that's how it starts anyways, but it ends as a human drama. Power plays between characters and events that continually shape the player's world are all pieced together to give you that edge of your seat feel. If the characters are not realistic, they are surrealistic: playing up to the drama of the campaign.


So bottom line, yes it is a bit cryptic because of the rough dialogue. There are many pages of text that could use another grammatical comb over. As it stands now, it's more like a book than a manuscript. You as the player must make a greater than average investment to understand the dialogue, understand the characters, understand the situations and the forces that pull on them in all directions. If you take that care I guarantee there is something interesting here to mull over. I noticed in Axem's post that there were aspects to the story that he enjoyed, and I claim his criticism was generated by his sheer interest in the story itself.


If you can get over the small gripes of imperfection and give DOS your naive attention, you will surely find there is something to be had in this campaign.   

[Mongoose]

Uh he did get people to look over the dialogue, three people in fact:

Grammar Checkers: bigchunk1, Klaustrophobia, starwolf1991

No offense to said individuals, but I would then presume that they may have snoozed a bit on the job.

And I'm sure several of us would love to get our own take on the campaign, bigchunk, but unfortunately TopAce seems to have cut off access to it at the moment.