[General Battuta]

And no, don't tell me to play Sync, Transcend, VD, and Windmills.  Those don't interest me.  Yes, I am a horrible person for that.

These campaigns don't share any common elements so I can't see why you'd be disinterested in all of them.

[headdie]

And no, don't tell me to play Sync, Transcend, VD, and Windmills.  Those don't interest me.  Yes, I am a horrible person for that.

These campaigns don't share any common elements so I can't see why you'd be disinterested in all of them.

I dont know.  I am going back a couple of years here and might be getting stuff muddled up but iirc Sync and Transcend had some pretty trippy surrealism aspects to the plots

[General Battuta]

Yeah, but VD and Windmills are both pretty distinct.

[swashmebuckle]

It might be nice to have a "HLP Community Playthrough" type of thing where every month or so a campaign would be selected and players would be encouraged to try or revisit it and post about their experience in the thread, just discussing whatever they find noteworthy about it and letting the discussion go wherever (within reason).  Veterans could chime in with insight about the context of the time it was created in, and new players would be encouraged to join in without having to feel like they were all on their own, exhuming a corpse buried in 2003 or whatever.  I guess this is sort of similar to the wiki's featured campaigns, but:

1. It requires less executive effort than writing up a wiki page
2. The forum is where the bulk of HLP's activity is
3. We wouldn't be limited to only the best campaigns, as there is a lot to be learned from (and enjoyed) in the not-so-hot campaigns as well

Anyway, it could be a fun way to make it easy for new or returning FS'ers to get playing.  Sometime you just need an excuse.

[General Battuta]

I have a half-completed thread in Gen FS intended to provide historical and artistic context for every major campaign.

[JCDNWarrior]

Actually, I see a positive effect coming, something we of HLP could encourage - the announcement of Space Citizen has generated a lot of interest from Freelancer and Wing Commander fans for good space games like Freespace 2 has to offer. This means a lot of mods here can see a lot more interest and many more new and old people could come here looking for the work done. That's why it might be smart to hang around the Star Citizen forums and the Kickstarter page to pitch Freespace 2 SCP a little.

Myself, I still play Retail and WiH1 a little here and there, on and off, mostly to take ideas and lend elements to make my campaign and missions better and more interesting, though I regret to say I haven't had the time to play all of the recent mods yet. For me HLP is still quite a potential treasure trove and I hope to contribute a little to that when the time comes that I can present such project openly.

So, for anyone feeling down, I say, the best is yet to come, with all the new technical additions, WiH2 and other projects and mods that will present themselves, as well as more potential audience to witness these.

[Droid803]

I have a half-completed thread in Gen FS intended to provide historical and artistic context for every major campaign.

If only it wasn't just half-complete

[fightermedic]

this thread is interesting and very odd at the same time
other than diaspora, i haven't really played since i started working on the voice acting of fall of epsilon pegasi - all the mission testing for the various campaigns i helped restoring can hardly be called playing, replaying a mission 30 times is definitely no fun

It might be nice to have a "HLP Community Playthrough" type of thing where every month or so a campaign would be selected and players would be encouraged to try or revisit it and post about their experience in the thread, just discussing whatever they find noteworthy about it and letting the discussion go wherever (within reason).  Veterans could chime in with insight about the context of the time it was created in, and new players would be encouraged to join in without having to feel like they were all on their own, exhuming a corpse buried in 2003 or whatever.  I guess this is sort of similar to the wiki's featured campaigns, but:

1. It requires less executive effort than writing up a wiki page
2. The forum is where the bulk of HLP's activity is
3. We wouldn't be limited to only the best campaigns, as there is a lot to be learned from (and enjoyed) in the not-so-hot campaigns as well

Anyway, it could be a fun way to make it easy for new or returning FS'ers to get playing.  Sometime you just need an excuse.

i think that's a wonderful idea you could argue though, that the campaign restoration project is more or less just this and i can't see too much interest in that part of the forum over the last year (despite the fact that at least in my humble opinion some of the best campaigns freespace has to offer are gathered there)

[General Battuta]

I have a half-completed thread in Gen FS intended to provide historical and artistic context for every major campaign.

If only it wasn't just half-complete

I'm working on it, but like you, RL is kicking my ass. 

[Mongoose]

I do find it interesting (and somewhat of a relief) that I'm not the only one who finds it hard to just play after having gotten into modding. It's really hard for me to just enjoy FS2 (or any variants) when I know how (relatively) easy it is for me to go and "fix" the things I don't like.

It's a strange position to be in where the power to change the game makes it hard for me to enjoy it as it is.

I think this falls under the "TVTropes will ruin your life" category on the aforementioned site; the gist of it is that the more you learn about literary devices and genre tropes, the more you start to see them in the media you consume, to the point where it can interfere with the experience.  I could definitely see the same thing happening to an experienced campaign creator while playing through someone else's work.  By the same token, though, there's also the possibility that you could come across some little trick that makes you stop and think, "Holy crap, how did they pull that off?", and then fire up FRED to take a look.

[General Battuta]

I think this falls under the "TVTropes will ruin your life" category on the aforementioned site; the gist of it is that the more you learn about literary devices and genre tropes, the more you start to see them in the media you consume, to the point where it can interfere with the experience.  I could definitely see the same thing happening to an experienced campaign creator while playing through someone else's work.  By the same token, though, there's also the possibility that you could come across some little trick that makes you stop and think, "Holy crap, how did they pull that off?", and then fire up FRED to take a look.

I've gotten as deep into the guts of FS design as almost anyone (probably not as deep as Sushi, though, who's had to gaze into the AI code for so long), and the campaigns that have really blown me away the last few years have been campaigns where I kenned almost immediately how they were doing it, but I was still gripped by what they were doing. The Antagonist in particular (which I'm betting most of the people in this thread haven't played) was stunning for how closely it approached the design qualities of a real modern indie like Bastion. I haven't played Dimensional Eclipse yet but knowing Droid it's probably got some of the same going on.

I think about 90% of the players and probably 70% of the designers have no idea how much power they're sitting on. FRED is an absurdly capable editor and we've only scratched the surface.

[SypheDMar]

... i haven't really played since i started working on the voice acting of fall of epsilon pegasi...

By the way, if you're in need of a human instead of a TTS, let me know. I try to imagine that I sound better than a computer.

[CommanderDJ]

I haven't played FS in at least a year, with the exception of two missions of Diaspora before it crashed and it didn't hook me in enough for me to try again (probably because I've never seen BSG). The problem is that to me the gameplay is all the same, no matter the mod or alterations. I stopped playing the Antagonist after a few missions because I got bored - people kept telling me that the gameplay was nothing like FS, but I couldn't see it - it all felt the same to me just with different weapons, models and table values. I do think that doing some modding and coding a long while back did speed this up - knowing how it all works, unfortunately, ruins the immersion for me since I start thinking about FRED events and SEXPs when I should be thinking "I'm in a spaceship!"

Not sure if posting this was wise, but there you go.

[Nuke]

i know ive occasionally diverged off and tried modding other games, freespace wasnt exactly my first experience with modding. id done some stuff for quake and descent 2 prior to fs1. nothing release worthy i just did it because i wanted to know how games worked. ive modded some games since. like freelancer (which i hated modding). more recently ksp, i just released a small number of parts not to long ago (ok so it was a beta and i havent gotten around to smashing all the bugs yet). in a way the simplicity of it reminded me of the golden days of freespace modding (and they arent so recent for me). the problem with my freespace mods, was that i had established a massive backlog of old models prior to the scp turning out awesome new features. there was just so much backtracking and re working of old assets it became more of a chore than a hobby. and thanks to endless corner cutting and asset reuse to save time, my mods are a mess. even my htl stuff is somewhat ugly. i dont really know what to do about it anymore.

[ssmit132]

Though I by all means still like FreeSpace, I haven't really played it that often in... well, the last year at least. Partly because I've just felt like doing other things, and partly because I don't feel like playing it when I have things for uni I have to do (not that I don't procrastinate anyway). Once I have less I need to do, I might give Diaspora and Darkest Dawn a whirl, not to mention the other things I have to get to (such as finishing Dimensional Eclipse and putting some decent time into FFI on Virtual Console). I actually haven't been playing that much at all, recently, except on the DS/3DS since that's a good time filler for the train, so it's not limited to FreeSpace.

I've also been having some mod ideas I'd like to try, or at least put something together for fun, but the same problem occurs there, also I don't know whether I can think of a interesting story.

[Gortef]

It sure has been a while since the last time I played FS2... well, Diaspora is on my list of "play soon" so maybe that will fix things up.

[General Battuta]

I haven't played FS in at least a year, with the exception of two missions of Diaspora before it crashed and it didn't hook me in enough for me to try again (probably because I've never seen BSG). The problem is that to me the gameplay is all the same, no matter the mod or alterations. I stopped playing the Antagonist after a few missions because I got bored - people kept telling me that the gameplay was nothing like FS, but I couldn't see it - it all felt the same to me just with different weapons, models and table values.

I doubt you got far enough in to judge that.

Spoiler:

If you've played a campaign before in which you flip in and out of subspace whenever you want in order to battle enemies that can 'submerge' and 'surface' I'd be very shocked.

The worst thing about this thread is the effect it has on creatives. This community exists because people are willing to put in time. If nobody cares about that time, or takes advantage of its results, well...

[JCDNWarrior]

The worst thing about this thread is the effect it has on creatives. This community exists because people are willing to put in time. If nobody cares about that time, or takes advantage of its results, well...

Well, that's why I suggest, again, to ride the wave that's being generated by Space Citizen - If there's one way to attract the audience we want, there it is. Having kept track a little of the Space Citizen forums where people asked for what similar games to Space Citizen they could play to tide them over, many weren't aware of Freespace 2. I really think it'll help a lot if we can tap that audience.

[Luis Dias]

Oh don't get depressed too much. I do enjoy everything you create, and if I can't play it myself, I try to watch it on youtube and so on. Also, there's a whole multitude of people who do play it and just aren't interested in chit chats

[General Battuta]

Oh don't get depressed too much. I do enjoy everything you create, and if I can't play it myself, I try to watch it on youtube and so on. Also, there's a whole multitude of people who do play it and just aren't interested in chit chats

I'm not worried about myself! But there's plenty of people on HLP who don't have the benefit of an awesome subforum full of thoughtful people.