[CT27]

Also, unless Herkie decides to add more missions...The Aftermath II:  The Blue Guardian will have 30 missions.

[herkie423]

Uhhh... That's like two to three months from now. I find it hard to believe that two FREDders are able to make a good campaign with about 30 missions (Is it going to be that many?) even if working full time on it. And then you need to have some more time for beta tests.
And I don't want to force my ideas and/or opinions onto your work, but I've got a slight suggestion. The Aftermath Reboot suffered immensely from some issues, mainly very uninteresting escort/defence missions with most of the action being slapping enemy fighter wings and some other ones where you threw hundred after hundred of fighters at the player without any actual reason to... Among other things (have I told you already that the United Pirate Coalition is dumb?).
I just want to suggest to avoid these problematic solutions, even if your campaign developement is slowed down by this.

I have finished Act 1 (fully tested missions) and honestly, I overestimated myself. It will take more time than what I previously declared. Sorry guys. One reason is that I noticed my designs are more complicated now than what I did in the Reboot. The design accounts possible player actions like if the player does this or target that first, the mission will react to counter the player; if the player decides to use a bomber, the mission will deploy hostile interceptors, if the player delays, an event will happen--- something like that. Plus random events. I don't want to design a "tight" mission, forcing players to do the plot line so I build my missions with an "open" feel (but don't be too comfortable). Because of these design elements, my mission coding is indeed much more complicated.

Therefore, MitoPL is right. It will take more time.... Oh, I have not abandoned my tradition... You will still face a lot of fighters. 

[Nightmare]

The mission design thing sounds pretty interesting. Just take as much time as you need to implement that as long as you don't loose motivation in the meantime. BTW how long is Act 1?

[MitoPL]

Seems like a good decision to me. Better release a working and tested mod than whatever you could cobble up together before the first official release date.

And while I don't really have anything against lots of fighters, please make it... sensible. Large fighter battles, with lots of projectiles and particle effects, tank performance very much. And while many people question the amounts of Shivan fighters they face in The Aftermath: Reboot, I find it quite understandable. After all, it's Shivans we're fighting against. Plus it made missions a bit diverse from the Freespace standard, even if these were only escort missions.

[herkie423]

The mission design thing sounds pretty interesting. Just take as much time as you need to implement that as long as you don't loose motivation in the meantime. BTW how long is Act 1?

Very short. Just five missions. It is an introductory chapter to link The Aftermath to this sequel, The Blue Guardian which takes place around two years after Part 1's end credits. Act 2 will be my standard 10 mission length. This is where the real meat of the story will start.

[herkie423]

A Vasudan installation I modified, the image here with an Erebus destroyer for comparison. I made it bigger and added some structures. It was originally the Karnak. I altered it to suit the needs of the story plot.

[herkie423]

Seems like a good decision to me. Better release a working and tested mod than whatever you could cobble up together before the first official release date.

And while I don't really have anything against lots of fighters, please make it... sensible. Large fighter battles, with lots of projectiles and particle effects, tank performance very much. And while many people question the amounts of Shivan fighters they face in The Aftermath: Reboot, I find it quite understandable. After all, it's Shivans we're fighting against. Plus it made missions a bit diverse from the Freespace standard, even if these were only escort missions.

The hundreds of enemy fighters involve were just to present the feel of the situation, I call them "filler actors" and I design them in such a way that they don't impede the real mission or the player. Sure, you can engage them and they will fight back but you might  divert your attention from the actual mission and fail. I have implemented this in most of my missions. There hundreds of fighters and many capital ships in the Reboot like I had a "BOE" fever which I admit of having it. I like chaos. The BOE's were rampant in the Reboot because it should be. It was the Third Shivan War where the GTVA with all it's incredible might was tested against the entire Shivan armada. Now, the sequel is about the main character's personal struggle and a major political shakedown. So the BOE's will just be key missions. Later, the story will be centered around a single fleet facing a terrifying mysterious force that can bring an end to the GTVA.

Take note that having around a dozen corvettes or cruisers slugging each other with several squadrons is not a BOE by my standards. Oh, don't worry, computer performance is foremost in my mind. I am running an avarage PC so I will base the design on this specs. I will do my best to keep the missions running at least 35 FPS (the standard for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3).

[herkie423]

PROJECT UPDATE

I am back again after a long absence but like I said five years ago, I may be lost but I am never gone. The thing is I am not as young as I wish to be. In two years time, I will be sixty. However, age will not stop me doing my only hobby - FS2 Modding. I may not be as fast as before but I still get things done during my offline time. This is what I did...


Originally, The Blue Guardian was intended only as a second campaign, a tiny additional VP file, TBG-Missions.vp with a file size of approximately 2mb. But as I did the actual Fredding and mission editing, the mod evolved and it needed more assets. So I have to build them. Downloaded some models and modified them to suit the missions. At present, I added 2 Destroyers, 2 transports, 2 space stations, 1 bad-ass Shivan sentry beam cannon, 4 miscellaneous objects and 17 weapon classes. Plus 4 completed mission of Act 2 ready for testing. All that in the month of February. The resources have grown to the size of 700mb. Because of this, the sequel will now be in a separate folder. A separate mod that is dependent on the Reboot Mod and MediaVP 2014. It is safe to say that this is a major project.

This march was dedicated for Alpha Testing (bug hunting) and Beta testing (feedback, balancing and improvements). I have a team of testers, my neighbors who are computer games addicts. Most of them had tested the Reboot. I monitor them closely during the testing sessions.

I also added some gameplay features in the missions like random behaviors. Example if you attempt to disable an enemy cruiser, it will direct more fighters to defend it or it will try to evade or even escape. And there is more than one way to prevent them from jumping out. These enemy warships will also react on what subsystem you try to destroy. There is also a quicker way to neutralize (destroying or disarming) bigger ships.




Here are some pictures...

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The space station, GTI Messina. This model is perfect. I modified the textures and edited the POF model. I needed a communication station that connects the known systems into a unified network through subspace. Even in Gamma Draconis, the comm station can link up with Delta Serpentis. While ship travel needed a node tunnel between systems, communication signals do not need this. the tachyon waves will radiate in the subspace dimension and will be picked up by these comm stations.




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The GVT Petra, an armed transport. This model is the cruiser Imhotep which is bristling with weapon turrets. So I have edit it and removed the excess weapons. I needed transports that are bigger than the ones in MediaAVP and in the Reboot. There may be some additions in the future.



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GTT Nautilus is actually a model with a length of 1,900 meters, intended as a corvette in the mod Exile. I reduced it to a 500-meter size as a heavily armed transport.



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The Rigelian Ships. It took me more than a year to find them. I edited the models, added more turrets, and fixed the game-crashing issue of the D'Deridex---the parent model has nothing in it. By the way, I renamed them from being Arcturians. Why? In my research, I found out that Arcturus (Alpha Bootis) is pretty close to our solar system, closer than Altair and Vega and fairly close to Gamma Draconis. In the story, these enigmatic aliens should be a thousand light-years away. The super giant Rigel (constellation Orion) is just as far. Hence, the change.






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The 4th mission in Act 1. This takes place in the Nebula. As you can see, I can not kick the habit of placing squadrons of hostile fighters. Although, I did tone it down in the first few missions of Act 2. You will notice in this image or if you edit my missions, that I actually organized the mission events because I tend to lose my focus and forget things. And it is an advantage for anyone who wants to modify them or improve them even.




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...And I still have my crazy, over-compulsive tendencies in mission editing. I had reached the 400 ship/object limit in this one. Well, it should because this is the finale of Act 1. Mind you, I still balance things and considering PC performance. The performance in this one is 35 to 65 FPS with medium-end PC, the specs of my computer. This is also the reason why I don't use Hi-poly models, save for a few.




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Before starting to build a mission. I make a summary of it. Incorporating the written material made by CT27, making notes for the mission events, the many possibilities that can happen taking into account the player actions (this aspect makes it really complicated). Practically, before I do anything at all, I lay in my bed, close my eyes and run a little private space battle movie in my head---including the voice-acting. I am totally immersed.




Here is a couple of videos...

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This is the 3rd mission in Act 2, just a rough draft. The first contact with the Rigelians. This video showcase the weapons, speeds, and their arrival/departure method which is "warping in" using FTL and not "jumping in" from subspace. This encounter confirmed the rumors in the Reboot about the GTCv Avenger. If you read the tech entry, it said about a rumor that the Avengers and Boreas are not of Terran or Vasudan origin.

I know you guys will say that this is a Startrek knock-off. Well, I will not deny that. What can I say? I am a die-hard "trekkie" from the 70's until now. And... I made a dumb move by using the Romulan Valdore model for the GTCv Avenger in the Reboot. I wonder why I did that? Oh well, it's too late now so why not go all the way.

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This is a test mission when I was creating the weapons for the Rigelians which is base on "tracking energy projectile" weapons --- again, the similarity to Photon torpedoes of Startrek. I was also testing and tweaking the "proper" movements of these ships making their waypoints without deccelerating between points in a path. It is pretty messy in mission coding but I finally got the proper effect---Well, close to what I really have in mind.

[MitoPL]

Hmm, that looks interesting. But the question is about these new ships - with their sheer speed there are some real issues with beams targeting them, especially the direct-fire ones. Also, I'd say that the green blob cannon (shoots 3 shots in a sequence) is kind of... really underpowered, and now that these ships have got these homing "photon torpedoes" it's much more apparent.

[Nightmare]

Looks good! I particular like it when people put in some new warpin-types into FS.

[5thAce]

Do the Rigelians have any fighter craft?

[herkie423]

Hmm, that looks interesting. But the question is about these new ships - with their sheer speed there are some real issues with beams targeting them, especially the direct-fire ones. Also, I'd say that the green blob cannon (shoots 3 shots in a sequence) is kind of... really underpowered, and now that these ships have got these homing "photon torpedoes" it's much more apparent.

Actually, that's just it. Beams are useless with these guys. The Anti-matter cannons, the GTVA's green projectiles that fire in bursts of three's, though very damaging themselves, are ineffective against these aliens. The Terrans cannot win but there's a plot twist. Like I said, it is no longer about might and power.

[herkie423]

Do the Rigelians have any fighter craft?

No, they don't. And GTVA fighters cannot do any good either considering the speed of these guys. The battle must be fought (not won) in a non-conventional way. Some gameplay mechanics are added.

[5thAce]

Do the Rigelians have any fighter craft?

No, they don't. And GTVA fighters cannot do any good either considering the speed of these guys. The battle must be fought (not won) in a non-conventional way. Some gameplay mechanics are added.

Interesting, can't wait to see more! Also if it isn't too big of a spoiler, are the rigelians hostile to the shivans as well?