Hi everyone. Your friendly neighbourhood Sessile_Nomad here with some updates on FreeSpace PortReCharged.
Name Change
What began as a simple (if radical) gameplay rebalance of the classic FS1 campaign has blossomed into something more - a ‘reimagining’ of it for the 21st century.
Because so much has changed, and because it links directly with ‘Causality’ - the multi-act post Capella campaign I will start work on in a year or two, I have decided to rename it. It will now be called ‘Causality: The Great War’ (CTGW)
Darker in tone, with a greater focus on lore crafting, characterisation and dialogue, more complex missions, and battles that are more cinematic and intense, ‘Causality: The Great War’ should give both new and returning players a FreeSpace experience like no other.
Dev Progress Update
Work on FreeSpace Port ReCharged / ‘Causality The Great War’ is coming along nicely, and I’m happy to say there isn’t much left to do before it’s ready for prime time. I’m confident I’ll have it ready by Christmas, hopefully far sooner. (What I had planned for FSPR has been done already but, you know, feature creep 😜. It will be worth the wait, I promise. 😁)
What remains of the to-do list is:
Writing the fiction viewer entries – about 90% done now
Re-writing the tech room entries
Creating a wiki
Create a ‘best of breed’ version of the first mission ‘Eve of Destruction’. This will incorporate the improvements made in the REDUX bonus mission, the Co-op version and the existing FSPR version, plus a few more tweaks and additions too.
Tweaking and expanding a few more of the late-game missions. (From ‘Aftermath’ onwards). These will be using the ‘bigger and badder’ Co-op missions as a base, rebalancing them for single player then adding more events, more surprises, more dialogue and foreshadowing for the main Causality campaign.
Creating four optional GTI loop missions.
Creating a BoE style TSM mission to show off all the cool stuff CTGW does now.
Creating TSM missions to teach players all the new features CTGW brings to the table.
Adding the mark box script – needed since CTGW introduces lethal anti-capital ship weaponry that the player will need to de-fang quickly, so this will help identify these. (I may need help from a more experienced fredder for this)
Add checkpoints to the longer missions, such as First Strike, Evangelist and Clash of the Titans. (I will definitely need help from more experienced Fredders for this, though.)
Importing new music
General ‘prettyfication’ and a few eye candy fixes and upgrades. (The upcoming FSPort MVPs upgrades may take care of this anyway, so I’m holding fire on those for now.)
Creating a YouTube promo video to go with its release
New thumbnail for Knossos
Playtesting, lots and lots of playstesting to make sure my mad ideas haven’t made the missions too difficult.
Voice acting! Yup, CTGW has new dialogue, both in the new missions (obvs 🤪) and in some of the existing expanded missions. Ideally, I would like this to be voice-acted where possible. I’ll post a ‘casting call’ soon. (Eleven labs can take care of the rest.)
If anyone would like to join the ReCharged Causality ‘team’ (which currently consists of… er… me) please let me know and I’ll grant you access to the private development version, private discord etc etc. I would greatly appreciate the help.
That’s all for now, folks. Happy hunting, and if you have any queries, please PM me here or on Discord 🙂
