[Nyctaeus]

Man, this is cool! I love skyboxes from BtA, and this interface is just glorious . Can't wait for full release!

[EternalRuin]

The demo is quite fun, and I look forward to playing the full campaign!

Spoiler:

Darn you for emp-ing my sensors every time I tried to scan that box! I want to know what's inside >.>

[Rodo]

Just finished, here's the review:

Spoiler:

The good:

Background, assets and music is a big
Mission outline and storywise developments ok on both missions, they seemed relevant and not just a "filler mission", kudos for that cause it's really hard to achieve.
Checkpoint system: win. THANK YOU!

The bad:
I found the missions quite a bit fast-paced.
The dialogue (along with the mission progress) was just way fast for me to keep on it, half of the time I didn't know what to do!, IMO only a handfull of missions in a campaign should be as fast as these two were.
The directives list was not helping, press f6? for what??, press f7?? for what?, It diverted my attention from the battlefield, I pressed those in the hopes it would help me do something only to realize they were there to help me target the objectives
Note that this is not a bad idea, actually I use the same system but I found it better to just put a line saying: "destroy x wing (F6)", that way the player knows he's got to destroy wing x and to target he must use that key.
For the sake of keeping the player sane, and yourself while fredding and testing, try to keep your missions under the 10 minutes mark, if it goes up you can either go for the checkpoint system, maybe even consider splitting the mission in two or removing something from the mission objectives as well.

Of course these are all things I think are important, I hope you don't mind me pointing them up.

Anyways, nice job so far... that last mission got me really into the story so I'd say the demo fullfilled it's purpose.

[MatthTheGeek]

Spoiler:

The directives list was not helping, press f6? for what??, press f7?? for what?, It diverted my attention from the battlefield, I pressed those in the hopes it would help me do something only to realize they were there to help me target the objectives

Wait wut.

The directive list is pretty explicit about what the keypresses do. Do you have HUD issues or something ?

Spoiler:

For the sake of keeping the player sane, and yourself while fredding and testing, try to keep your missions under the 10 minutes mark, if it goes up you can either go for the checkpoint system, maybe even consider splitting the mission in two or removing something from the mission objectives as well.

Ahem. Did you miss the big "checkpoint reached" in the middle of your screen halfway through mission 2 ?

EDIT: especially since you mentionned the checkpoint in the "the good" part. What the hell ? Did you suffer amnesia halfway through your post or something ?

[Rodo]

The directive list is pretty explicit about what the keypresses do. Do you have HUD issues or something ?

No it's not, I might have some HUD issues, I don't know really...

I get :
Intercept XXXX wing
press F6
Protect XXXXX
press F7

Ahem. Did you miss the big "checkpoint reached" in the middle of your screen halfway through mission 2 ?

EDIT: especially since you mentioned the checkpoint in the "the good" part. What the hell ? Did you suffer amnesia halfway through your post or something ?

Spoiler:

No, the checkpoint saved my life, so it's a good thing to add... but it doesn't take back the fact that a long mission is still long, and that playing long missions and loosing them at the end EVEN with checkpoints is kinda "meh".
I lost the transport right at the end of the second mission (which is long) because I didn't know what to do with the "press f9 to detonate" or something like that.. I pressed the button and all the fighters were 2 million miles away from the debris so.. I don't even remember there being a part in the dialogue that says I should detonate whatever it is that detonates when the enemy fighters are close to the cargo.

[mjn.mixael]

Thanks for the feedback Rodo. Glad you mostly enjoyed the demo. It is my hope that none of our missions fall to 'filler mission' status, so I'm glad these two missions didn't feel that way!

I feel I should address the discussion on Directives and Mission length.

The green text under the blue directive is the Directive keypress text. It's even labelled this in FRED. This is ideal for placing "helper" text for the directive it's related to, usually what keypress will help you complete the Directive. So you are told to Intercept XXXX Wing and the green text below tells you what hotkey will target them. When the directive is completed or failed, the green "helper" text will be removed from the directives list. This is what it was designed for and I think it's a very useful way to place even more relevant information on our Directives list in an efficient manner.

As for mission length. I realize there are varying opinions on mission length. However, as with most "mission design rules", it's up for discussion. Checkpoints in missions allow us to make our missions the length that we need, while still not forcing players to play then entire mission over again if they fail.  So while we aren't striving for every mission to be 10+ minutes just because we can do checkpoints, we won't be adopting a 10 minute limit for our missions. We are quite comfortable with the balance we've struck so far.

Spoiler:

Your confusion with how the directives list can/should be used is likely a reason why you were confused on what to do with the 'Detonate Charges' segment. The directive says to  'Detonate Explosives' with keypress text telling you that you can do this by pressing '1'. Additionally, assuming you weren't having HUD issues, you should have gotten some text displayed prominently on your HUD showing you how many fighters were in the blast zone and whether or not your own ship was in the blast zone. Pay attention to this because it will help you detonate at the right time so as to destroy the most amount of hostile fighters that are chasing you. If you aren't seeing this, then there's an issue that we need to debug! Let me know and I'd be glad to help.

[Rodo]

*sip

No problem with the hud display, everything seems to be showing up alright.. I probably missed the message.

Glad the feedback was usefull in some degree, keep on it guys

[Alan Bolte]

Cool demo.

Spoiler:

Way too lazy to try to figure out what putting an empty file named REDACTED into my scripts folder is supposed to do.

[bigchunk1]

The atmosphere of the demo is top notch. Mjn and the BTA team has an eye for visual enviornments. I anticipate an immersive visual treat when the whole thing is completed.
 

[mjn.mixael]

Cool demo.

Spoiler:

Way too lazy to try to figure out what putting an empty file named REDACTED into my scripts folder is supposed to do.

Spoiler:

But it might be worth it!

[Veers]

FANTASTIC!

Spoiler:

I was rather disappointed, but impressed. With what the cargo-container displayed if you could scan it through the emp bursts. 

All in all, a very well presented demo. From design to visuals. I can't wait for the full release. 

[T-Man]

Just finished this myself. Was really impressed with the quality of the missions; you set a really nice atmosphere for them, and both missions had events quite unlike the usual 'just go and shoot stuff' feel of FS2. Excellent work, looking forward to seeing the rest.

Spoiler:

Fav bits:
- Watching over the three ships in the first mission (how on earth did you manage to get it to read weapon bursts?)
- explosives bit (waited for it to say 10 and for them to be close to the platforms then MWA HA HA HA  )
- emp when you tried to scan the container (that was a nice touch ).

[Alex Heartnet]

Spoiler:

Okay, the use of Flail Guns against the player near the end of Mission 2, if you fail to blow up enough fighters with the explosives, is just downright eeevvillll.  Seriously.  I get knocked backwards at 300+ km/s, and without access to Interceptors or similar I can't even fight back.

[Rga_Noris]

I'm slightly surprised that no one has wondered about my rather odd credit.

[MatthTheGeek]

Spoiler:

Okay, the use of Flail Guns against the player near the end of Mission 2, if you fail to blow up enough fighters with the explosives, is just downright eeevvillll.  Seriously.  I get knocked backwards at 300+ km/s, and without access to Interceptors or similar I can't even fight back.

deal with it

[Alex Heartnet]

I ran into a few ships that don't show up as having cargo when they should.

Spoiler:

In the first mission, the Zabiela and Liquilade both start out as having Cargo: Nothing throughout the entire mission.  They should instead show up as carrying passengers or privateers or something until they manage to dock with the station, and Vasudan Artifacts once they undock.

Those fuel containers that you remotely detonate near the end of mission 2?  Those show up as empty as well, which can create a bit of confusion when you first come out of jump.

On an unrelated note:

Spoiler:

I figured out that those Zeus Bombers always seem to be carrying a specialty weapon in their secondary bank.  If it's not the aforementioned Flail Gun, then it's a Shield Breaker.  We will probably see Leech Cannons and Disruptors employed against the player in the full campaign.  Or maybe Railguns or something, I dunno

[MatthTheGeek]

Spoiler:

Oh believe me, one of the Zeus wings in the demo does have Leech Cannons. Pretty deadly given the energy rate of the mustangs

[mjn.mixael]

Updated BTA_DEMO_Rood to V1.1, which fixes a few bugs that can stall mission 2.

[Black Wolf]

OK, finished it. Liked it. Will probably play again to see what happens if I take the other path in mission 2. For what it's worth, I chose the needlessly aggressive, destructive path - much more fun, but I feel like I probably skipped right over a big chunk of the FREDding work for the first part of the mission - hence the replay.

A few quick specifics. First off, as everyone else has mentioned, the modpack was well chosen and generally awesome (I would say that though, I guess, given how much of my stuff is in there ). The FREDding was also really good - I didn't encounter any bugs, and it felt incredibly polished. There were a few things I would have done differently, but nothing major (and there's nothing saying my stylistic choices would have been better, just different).

If I had a complaint (other than it being too short) it would be that both missions felt very busy - I had a lot to do, and didn't always know what was important and what wasn't. But the missions still played out OK, and I'm really excited for the full release, because this was (as is to be expected in a demo) only about 20, thirty minutes of playtime, tops.

[Axem]

Hey I didn't review this yet. I already told mjn the cool stuff about it, but I'm gonna preach to the choir and go "its cool stuff."

You sure packed a lot into the 2 missions and it all works out wonderfully. Mortal men would split it up and drag it out to 3 or 4 missions. Awesome use of new features (yay new hud gauges!) and mission styles. It's no longer about just doing one thing per mission, its now an entire range of actions the player has to follow from start to finish. It's not blow everything up, its more restrained which is nice to see with working as a private group. It all feels satisfying in this world you're creating.

I just want to point on one thing that I will never forgive you for.

Your lighting. My GOD the lighting. The slightly desaturated look, the ambient lighting, the perfect highlights off of the ships. It's all to die for and it sets the mood for the gritty atmosphere inside the missions. I'd totally want to steal it and use it for all my mods*, except its particularly defining for BtA and I don't think I could use it and feel right.

(*cept JAD, I'd gorge out on the saturation settings there)

So keep on doing what you guys are doing, I can't wait to see more from the amazing brains of mjn and his stalwart crew!