[Iain Baker]

I’m hoping to do some fixing and polishing of Reunion later in the year now I have learned how to do the things Herkie was going to.

[redmagejoe]

I’m hoping to do some fixing and polishing of Reunion later in the year now I have learned how to do the things Herkie was going to.

Do you want me to push Reunion off for a bit, then? I can move it further down the list.

[Shivan Hunter]

Ahh, I forgot it was getting an update! I also recommend putting Reunion off until the patch.

[Shivan Hunter]

The terrible Ancient-Rock-Raynor and horribly textured station from last stream reminded me of some of the best FS2 models ever made - thought Joe might get some laughs out of these:

The superdestroyer GTSD Hesperia, from System Madness 2, a 20-mission campaign of Surprise-level writing:



And this... thing... from Unholy Alliance, a campaign where you team up with the good Shivans to fight the evil Shivans (there's a civil war going on in the Shivan Empire):



We've... come a long way as a modding community

[Colonol Dekker]

Yeah but I loved the variety of the 2008's output.

[Renegade Paladin]

For reference, this is how Lost in the Mist is supposed to go. 

[Shivan Hunter]

This week on "ShivanHunter plays random campaigns to see if they'd be good stream material": I just played something called "Ghosts of Valor" on Knossos and my brain exploded. I ABSOLUTELY recommend playing like 3 missions of it and never touching it again. I cannot possibly explain why; Ghosts of Valor must be seen to be believed. Also all the mission filenames start with "FS3" lmao

[redmagejoe]

This week on "ShivanHunter plays random campaigns to see if they'd be good stream material": I just played something called "Ghosts of Valor" on Knossos and my brain exploded. I ABSOLUTELY recommend playing like 3 missions of it and never touching it again. I cannot possibly explain why; Ghosts of Valor must be seen to be believed. Also all the mission filenames start with "FS3" lmao

[Shivan Hunter]

 


Also, my list of "Stuff you might want to play maybe I dunno" is up to:

Unironically recommended

• Cataclysm - A Post-FS2 campaign in a very unique setting. Definitely good fun from what I remember. (Actually, whoa, it was 8 missions when I played but there's been a HUGE update since then! 22 missions, looks like the story is complete?, probably a few streams long.)
• The Antagonist - Original universe, non-Freespace. Definitely unique, but very enjoyable IIRC. 8 missions with some branching, maybe 1 or 2 streams long.
• Desperation - Some ships get trapped on the wrong side of Capella. Writing/story was odd at times IIRC but it was definitely enjoyable. About a dozen missions, maybe 2 streams long.
• Friends and Foes: Retribution - A rag-tag group of people trying to survive in the midst of BP:WiH's war. Has some of the WiH-style narration and I liked it, but then I liked WiH as well. 13 missions, maybe 2 streams long.
• The Apocalypse: Vega - Short and kinda weird. Strange premise (tons of Shivans, including multiple destroyers, spilled over into Vega from Capella before FS2 ended? Huh?) and frustrating loadouts (GTVA in disarray sending you out in FS1-era crap lmao) and some odd spelling. But it's not a bad campaign. 6 missions, one stream long.

Ironically recommended

• System Madness 1 and 2 - Definitely quit as soon as you get bored. Maybe cram it in sometime if you have half a stream left. Surprise-level writing is hilarious for one mission but gets old long before you finish 50 of them.
• Ghosts of Valor - My brain! My brain! Brain? Braaaaain? MY BRAAAAAAAAAIN (definitely quit as soon as you get frustrated, on top of everything else the balance is atrocious)
• Tides of Darkness - I literally haven't even downloaded this one but I know you play as a member of the Shivan Empire after the NTF joined up with them so LETS ****ING GOOOO

[Mongoose]

Man I kinda miss when the default new campaign was, "It has been X years after Capella. Go!"

[Shivan Hunter]

Man I kinda miss when the default new campaign was, "It has been X years after Capella. Go!"

"Somehow, the Shivans/NTF/HOL have returned!"

[CT27]

I'm looking forward to you doing "Exile"; that's one of my favorite campaigns.

[Colonol Dekker]

Man I kinda miss when the default new campaign was, "It has been X years after Capella. Go!"

"Somehow, the Shivans/NTF/HOL have returned!"

Back then we were limited to the ships that came with the game.  Unless we wanted to suffer boxy madness.

[ShivanSpS]

Joe, today i enabled cheats for the first time, EVER, and when writting "www.freespace2.com" i noticed the exact same freeze you usuably have, this can only happen once per mission load, meaning if you hit replay it can happen again. Maybe you have a macro somewere that inputs "www.freespace2.com" that you forgotten about?

[Shivan Hunter]

I don't think it's the same. If you play on a debug build you'll notice that when enabling cheats, the game pauses to load all the effects and stuff for all the weapons it previously thought weren't part of the mission (but which you can now switch to) - this freeze happens for Joe and everyone else.

The random freezing that only Joe seems to get has happened multiple times in a mission. (And takes longer than the cheats freeze, IIRC - the cheats freeze is only a couple seconds.)

[CT27]

Since you're starting Scroll soon, just a little advice:

There's a fork in the campaign after a while...you will be given a choice between taking a GTVA path or ISF (Imperial Special Forces) path.  IMO, the ISF path is noticeably more difficult; so just a suggestion but for your first playthrough I'd advise taking the GTVA path and you could play the ISF path missions in the stream through the techroom when you finished the campaign.

[redmagejoe]

I would be tempted to offer a cash reward to anyone who can successfully deduce the cause of my intermittent freezes.  I'm fairly certain that it's an issue on the hardware level, specifically CPU related, since debug reveals nothing.  Even so, nothing changed at the time these issues started to happen.  I'm almost certain it was on the exact same FSO build as well.

[Goober5000]

Can you turn off shadows and see if it still happens?

[redmagejoe]

Can you turn off shadows and see if it still happens?

I have shadows on high instead of ultra, and I've been doing some (not-so-comprehensive) testing with different graphics settings.  It may, in fact, be a GPU issue rather than a CPU issue, and I hadn't even considered that, since the entire engine seems to freeze save for music.

The default Anti-Aliasing in Knossos.NET is actually SMAA Low, and I decided to try FXAA instead.  With only an 8 minute mission, I encountered no freezes with FXAA and Shadows High, which I realize is anything but thorough...  Still, I'm going to see how it goes next week.

[redmagejoe]

No luck.  Still get the random freezes even with shadows turned off, even back on default graphics settings in Knossos.