Why, hello everyone. Welcome to March! Spring is about to arrive... right? (
Well, not here anyway.)
You may notice something a little different about me this month. There's a goofy picture under my name, as well as a new goofy title, "Just Another Administraitor". And- wait. That's not so goofy. Pyros are awesome...
Anyway, on to more important news,
there is a large discussion taking place about forum guidelines. Be sure to read it and give your input. As well, anyone who's considering releasing content on HLP should read and give feedback on this
licensing thread. The more clear these things are, the smoother modders and mod teams can function!
And! Not. Only. That. But if you've got news thats fit to be announced but if its not earth shattering as an announcement or a highlight, please post it in this
news ticker thread and hopefully someone will be along quick enough to add it to the news roll above the forum. (Note: This method may change in the near future if we can get something better cooking.)
Thats a long intro, lets get to the fun stuff!
Did you enjoy the single mission campaign The Blade Itself with War in Heaven? Sure you did! Now
Lepanto's started a series of missions that follow the great captains of BP as they command their giant starships.
Want to make your own? Lepanto's still got you covered with
this tutorial on how to get all set up!
Other than that its kind of quiet on the campaign front. There's lots of small rumblings here and there with
Shetland and
Frontlines but lets be super patient and not rush greatness.
The Hound's got some
first missions he has put up for people to review and give critique. I haven't had a chance to see them yet, but from what other people are writing, they seem pretty cool!
gin's also got his
first mission out for people to try for Diaspora. Go slag some toasters!
Oh hey, I also forgot to mention last month, with the release of the 2014 Mediavps, I also re-released
Vassago's Dirge to take advantage of the new content and new features added since its original release. If you liked Blue Planet or Transcend, you'll probably like this trip too!
by niffiwanAnother month, more coding and scripting goodness is flowing FSO's way. Hopefully there will be a new stable release soon as it would be grand for both the mediavps_2014 and JAD:XA to be supported by official releases...
And now for a little copy-pasta; here's a list the new features which have been committed to trunk in the last month. These will all be in the latest
Nightly Build which are posted (for Windows at least) each day that there is a change to the trunk code. Check it out if you're feeling brave or are developing mods, or if you just want to help with testing. Just remember that the nightlies also have the latest bugs as well as the latest features (but hey, it's better to find bugs in a nightly build than in the next release!)
New features!
- Allowed the $Weapon class hook condition to work on $Weapon Collision hooks - zookeeper
- Adds set-motion-debris-override sexp. This can be used to control the presence of motion debris, and overrides any user choice made through the -nomotiondebris commandline flag - The_E
- Add lua function to get a handle of the current player - m!m
- Add -no_unfocused_pause option - m!m
- Add a SEXP for checking the current state of ship flags - karajorma
- Make the Mission Objectives editor a little larger. Cause why not? - karajorma
- Bigger (and better?) Briefing and Debriefing editors - Axem
And for something a little different, here's a bugs scoreboard:
| | fixed | new | delta | outstanding |
| Coverity (this month) | 23 | 5 | -18 | 433 |
| Mantis (last 30 days) | 7 | 9 | +2 | 187 |
And while the subject is on bugs, Battuta has written another
bug hunt post - read it at your own peril!
RgaNoris has
started a discussion about the subobject vertices limit in FSO. It seems that all subobjects (including the main detail0 object) are limited to 64k verts due to the use of an unsigned short (16 bit) as an index. The_E has whipped up some code for FSO, it's now just PCS2 that'll need some love to add support there as well.
After 2.5 years of no updates in the thread, m!m has released some
test builds with compressed VP support! This is pretty exciting as modder should be able to package up their mods using ubiquitous compression utilities rather than our collection of custom VP editors. And there's benefits in reduced assets size and better error detection. Head over and give that build a spin!
APNGASM. It's not forgotten, there was a
recent update from the kickstarter. While it has been slower than expected, progress had been made with a stable v3.0.0 release. Command line tools are available, but the GUI isn't quite ready yet.
z64555 has finished
a revamp of the FSO debug console. It's a feature that's practically been forgotten since retail, it provides tools to tweak the behaviour of FSO as it's running. Sounds very interesting, and I want to dig into it to find out what it can do.
ngld has taken Hellzeds bash script and
ported it to python. The result is a nice looking cross platform installer! Windows users can grab a stand-alone exec to run
here. OSX & Linux users will need to install dependencies and run the python script for now.
And Goober5000s installer has
released a new version as well, squashing bugs and adding new features. It should update Freespace2 to v1.20 and install OpenAL, with the ability to extract VPs from the GOG installer looking like the last feature needed before version 2.1 is released.
Annnnd... maybe I should let Axem talk about his
new Journal script I'll just say that it looks really cool, it provides a way for modders to better integrate background information (the technical term is "fluff") into the natural flow of a campaign. And for an idea which would have a neat synergy with the new script, coders, take a look
here...
And to close out, a mysterious magic|man has been
integrating Chromium with FSO... what's next?
Twitter feeds in your techroom? P3D in your briefing? Javascript in your HUD gauges?
BW's back with Head Anis of our favorite fish eating, head loving aliens, the
Vasudans. Look! They even have scarves! Upgrade your Vasudan fashion today!
Steve-O's got some really great pics of the latest version of the
Hyperion (also called the Karuna in BP). No tiles on this baby, just sweet sexy uvmaps.
whitearrow's begun texturing his
awesomesauce frigate. What more can you say! (Besides awesomesauce)
ShivanHunter's released a
landscape model and a mini-tutorial for making one! Just check that pic below to see how beautiful the scenes can get! Now if only we could get the AI to... not fly into the ground...
Col. hornet is still around, slowly refining his giant
Hera Carrier. I'm sure the hangar bays will be awesome to fly through.
fightermedic's back with another Lego-inspired ship.
The Venom bomber, which looks to be a fast piece of work.
DahBlount's started to release some
information on his own personal mod, and he's also got a WIP of a Heavy Assault Frigate named the Agasaya. And ship certainly looks heavy assault. There's no kill like overkill, right?
cahdoge has begun to take his first steps into 3d modelling with a
space galleon in space. He's looking for tips and advice, so if you've got some you can spare him, I'm sure he would enjoy it very much.
Rga's back with a very
promising start to the Moloch! There's nothing fishy about this galactic horror.
Whoa, hold on here. Where's the Oddgrim ship? And the Scooby update?! Please excuse me, I must inform the authorities about two missing people. Everyone, remain calm, don't panic!
This month's modding article is about cutscene sexps. They are a wonderful set of sexps that allow you to have real fun with displaying your campaign. The only problem is that they can be a little tricky to use. So I wrote some stuff on the wiki about the quirks.
Check it out!Next month will be about kitbashing models with PCS2. For when that ship you want is just needs a few small tweaks to make it perfect...
by mjn.mixaelLast month's theme was Love, and I absolutely applaud the creativity displayed!
Seriously. A
beam drawing a heart on a Sath?. Win. A
dynamic shot of Freespace's most famous lovebirds?. Awesome. Showcasing JAD's
ridiculous weapons. <3! And of course a
love story between HLP members, Axem and Mpez. You
know there's going to be a campaign featuring them someday!
All in all, though I just had to go with Mpez's attempt to court Axem. Not only that, but I'm Batman.
Screencap Scoreboard:
Ckid - 1
Mpez - 1 As a reminder, we're going to do things slightly differently this year. Our many campaigns are filled with emotional ups, downs, and/or lackthereof. So we'll highlight that with a whole year's worth of emotional themes. I don't care what's in the image as long as it portrays the particular feeling for the month.
So for March, let's explore
Loneliness.
Watch those HUD gauges (especially that sneaky FPS gauge) and check out the
Screencam Script to help you win a badge and bragging rights. You can see the rules and the previous winners here on the
Wiki.
I'm going to be slightly changing when the newsletter is posted. Instead of (roughly) on the 1st of each month, I'm going to go for (roughly) the first weekend of each month. This will give me a little breathing room if I fall behind for whatever reason. Until then!
