Author Topic: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)  (Read 83816 times)

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Offline Darius

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Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)


"It is the 23rd Century. Humankind has colonies throughout the Orion Arm of the galaxy.
The three great powers - Federation, Commonwealth and Combine - exist in a state of cold war.
The galaxy has become a dangerous place, and war is but a single spark away."



It is 2276 and Lieutenant Stuart Ross, a young Commonwealth pilot, volunteers for a pilot exchange aboard a Federation warship. As a war of bestial savagery looms over the horizon, Ross is eager to trade a quiet backwater station post for front-line duty. However, he soon finds himself at the centre of events which threaten the entire international order...and the survival of human civilisation.

Set in an original universe where the discovery of hyperspace has led to a Golden Age of human colonisation and technology, Solaris takes place during a time of great changes. However, this is also an age of extremes - the Great War left several planets ecologically devastated, including the cradle of humanity, Earth. Like the Cold War of the 20th Century, humanity is faced with terrifying new doomsday technologies that have the potential to bring about Armageddon.



Features:

  • Standalone total conversion
  • Fast-paced combat in the vein of Diaspora or Dimensional Eclipse
  • Uses an overhauled AI to create dynamic, intelligent enemies
  • Cinematic battles
  • Epic soundtrack
  • 10-mission first episode of planned wide-ranging story





Gameplay tips:

  • Unlearn everything you know about dogfighting in FreeSpace! Solaris combat is fast, the AI is deadly and movement abilties such as strafe and glide are critically important to dogfight effectively.
  • Momentum is critical! Make extensive use of strafe, glide and velocity changes to stay alive. Make yourself as unpredictable as possible. Fly in a straight line, you get hit.
  • Your cannons autoaim in a cone that depends on difficulty level. If you're having trouble landing shots, try decreasing the difficulty.
  • It's dangerous to go out alone! Fly with support wherever you can. Your capital ships' point defenses are a resource available to you in combat, utilise them at every opportunity.
  • There are no shields, but your repair drone is a fast and nimble support ship that allows swift hull repair.



This project would not be possible without the generous contributions of the Hard-Light community.
Solaris makes use of assets donated by a multitude of artists and contributors over the years, as well as utilising in-engine features from the Source Code Project.

Solaris is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This means that you can use anything you want from Solaris (models, missions, backgrounds) in any way you wish, as long as you don't try to sell it.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2020, 02:47:29 am by Darius »

 

Offline Darius

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Known Issues:

MacOS platforms may run into several scripting errors which have something to do with the order in which the lua scripts are parsed.
This is usually not an issue if a mod is VP packed, however because I was running into Knossos upload issues, Solaris files are not packed into VPs for now.

Issues with uploading VPs should hopefully be resolved soon.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
DLing. Which build is recommended? Do we need a mod.ini? If yes, how should it look like?

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Congrats to the release!!!! :)

DLing. Which build is recommended? Do we need a mod.ini? If yes, how should it look like?

I'm using latest nightlies, w/o mod.ini, so no dependencies aside FS2.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
DLing. Which build is recommended? Do we need a mod.ini? If yes, how should it look like?

Just let Knossos handle this for you.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
oh my god. It's a darius release.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
DLing. Which build is recommended? Do we need a mod.ini? If yes, how should it look like?

Just let Knossos handle this for you.

Using Ubuntu 16.04 64bit, Knossos is not working. I work with the Linux builds here and wxlauncher

 

Offline deathspeed

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
List of things to do today:
 Mow
 Water & weed garden
 Replace front brakes
 Change oil


EDIT:  Play Solaris!
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline Darius

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Using Ubuntu 16.04 64bit, Knossos is not working. I work with the Linux builds here and wxlauncher

Any recent build within the past couple months should be fine. I've been using m!m's Enhanced SMAA build. It's a total conversion so you should be able to just run it in its own folder with your build of choice in the root directory without a mod.ini.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Is it standalone? Because that would make promoting this elsewhere easier. ;7

 

Offline Darius

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Yes actually, for that exact reason  :yes:

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Code: [Select]
LUA ERROR: [string "axui-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:18: attempt to index global 'axemParse' (a nil value)

------------------------------------------------------------------
ADE Debug:
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------------------------------------------------

stack traceback:
[C]: ?
[string "axui-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:18: in function 'Init'
[string "axui-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:1355: in main chunk
------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, tried it in a new folder with  the latest nightly. This is what I get

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
There was someone on Discord who a similar issue, I'm using the Nightly from 14th May and it works on my end.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
It is that one. I am trying the one from May 12 and report back

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Finished. This thing is super awesome. A cold, dark, war story built on stunning quality ships. I will write more detailed review later.

I encountered an issue with last mission in 1.0.0. Two patches were released so I dunno if this is already fixed. When I use checkpoint in the last mission, the mission just ends and campaign is finished. I had to replay it from techroom to get it to finale.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Also not working with the build from May 12. Ideas?

Edit: Log attached

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
« Last Edit: June 09, 2019, 12:35:38 pm by praseodym »

 

Offline ngld

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Try packing the LUA scripts in a VP. The problem is that they're not loaded in the alphabetic order. Apparently FSO relies on the OS for sorting the file names (which macOS and Linux don't do). If you're using VP files, that obviously is no longer an issue since FSO then handles the file listing.

Seems like an FSO bug to me which we should probably fix.

 
Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Initial impressions are me really liking the concept, but I've had some frustrations in the gameplay department

I like mods that go down the Diaspora route. Cockpits, ballistics, high velocity, high manoeuvrability. Love it.

I'd recommend setting a glide cap to something below afterburner velocity, it's perhaps a bit too easy to give yourself indefinite afterburners by just burning a little bit and then pressing w.

The high lethality is not all that engaging to me. Either you're fragging all you have targetted really quickly, or, in the slim chance that a fighter gets the drop on you before you get the drop on it, are fragged really quickly. This makes a lot of the combat either feel trivial or painfully hard. As such I am gravitating entirely towards heavy fighters and heavy weaponry. Wasting them before they start orientating on you is essential.

I was able to breeze through the combat on the highest difficulty untill fall of angels, where a single fighter spawn wasted me several times simply because the AI fighter's superiour aim bested me in a second without giving me chance to evade. Said is made harder by the wingman being more eager to shoot debris then actual enemies on said mission 0_o. The guard command in debris fields in the Open engine doesn't always work rather neatly, if raptor is given an engage command the player's chances to survive improve considerably. If both fighters decide to engage the player instantly they have no chance of surviving. Spawning stealth fighters in firing range of players is cruel and causes massive difficulty spikes.

Like, seriously, I can handle all the games engagements on the highest difficulty, except those darned stealth fighters which all target me instantly and waste me in the second they appear on sensors. I dropped down the difficulty to easy which makes them survivable, but makes the rest of the engagements even more trivial.

The crosshair is hard to see and often obscured by targeting HUD elements, which makes precision sniping of turrets significantly harder then it needs to be on the non-autoaiming difficulties.

The visual novel news broadcast segments really need portraits or some other way to differentiate between the news broadcaster talking and other people talking. This transition is not very clear. Otherwise put: The visual novel segments are not very visual, and I don't really see the advantage of using them here over the regular command briefings, briefings and extra stuff that Blue Planet and Between the Ashes use. It's also nice to hear Freelancer's New York music again, but using it for every single briefing is perhaps a bit much.

Are those X3 UI sounds?

The cloak bound to alt+Z often doesn't seem to engage properly.

 

Offline Colt

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
Hit a bit of a problem. Currently on mission 8, and after several checkpoint restarts, I can no longer move my fighter with the mouse. I went back to the previous mission and found that it would not work there either. Checkpoint or starting from the beginning made no difference. I changed to a different mod and it works fine, but the problem persisted when I started Solaris again. Mouse buttons work fine, but it's just the maneuvering that's bugged.

Beyond that, I've enjoyed the campaign so far. Awesome work! :yes:

 

Offline wookieejedi

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Re: Solaris (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)
I've had a bug like that happen when I use LUA controls to affect mouse controls, so my guess it is script related...Does this mod use a script mouse joystick?