[Akalabeth Angel]

Meditations on the Abyss - Chapter 01 Version 1.1
For FS2 Retail

    Yes, that's right an FS2 Retail Campaign. What the hell? This is Chapter 1 of some over-ambitious campaign I started some years ago, I completed quite a few missions and then got very busy. Well, since I'm not busy at the moment I thought I'd at least finish the first chapter and release it. All Fredding, playtesting and playing was done using FS2 Retail, however I _assume_ that it'll work just fine with FSOpen. I would run FSOpen but without a real graphics card, the program crashes whenever I see a shockwave from a bomb or large ship exploding. It's unlikely that I'll ever finish the campaign, when first detailed out it was some 60 missions or so. But you never know, stranger things have happened. Any FREDing I do would probably be better served helping out another campaign, though with everyone doing FSOpen it would be a little hard to contribute at the moment.

Introduction:

You play the role of Miranda Doué, the only daughter in a family of long-standing military tradition. Unlike most pilots, you yearn for assignments with low prestige. You'd rather spend your career behind the scenes, contributing to the well being of the GTVA rather than in the limelight of the frontlines. However, fate has something else in store for you.

Features:
-About a half dozen new single player missions
-Two types of missions: Very Boring and Very Hard
-Several 3rd Party ships from various authors (credited in readme), and from FSPort. Plus a couple table mods by me.
-Lots and lots of dialogue, much of it rather poorly written
-Note that this is designed as the intro to a larger campaign, so the first few missions are kinda slow. Similar to how Derelict and Homesick are both slow in the beginning. Most of the fun missions are near the end (well, one of them is fun anyway).

Disclaimer:
1. The campaign does make some references to the events and ships of both Derelict and Warzone. However, I the sole author, have no association with those campaigns nor do I know who even made them, except of course that some of them are now involved with BWO. The references to Derelict/Warzone were made more for the sake of building upon past work, and most importantly because I wanted to use the GTFf Saphah. haha
2. Note that I have playtested each and every one of these missions quite extensively, however as the author, there still may be some large mission killing bugs that I'm unaware of simply because I'm unable to do the unexpected. Typically in those situations I do try to give some help in the messages so that the player can avoid breaking it the next time.
3. Some of the missions have a lot of dialogue, followed by combat. In extreme cases I have tried to make the combat fairly easy so the player doesn't have to go through all the damn dialogue again, but my definition of easy may differ from yours.
4. I have in many cases tried to create some unique missions, which are different from what I've seen before. However there are so many campaigns already, most of which I haven't played so that may not be the case. Also, if you feel that I've somehow ripped off a mission from an FSOpen campaign know that it's complete coincidence since I can't even play those darn missions! GRrrrrr 
5. I hope it works in FSOpen but I honestly don't have a clue. Some of the 3rd party ships may look like crap due to them not having all the fancy glow textures and whatnot that have been added to the other FS2 ships. EDIT: One thing that doesn't seem to work is that the generic.wav isn't registering for the messages when I started the first mission, dunno what the problem is.
6. Apologies in advance to all Russians. 

Where to Get it:
Site 1: http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/mota_chapter1.zip
Site 2: http://members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/fs2/mota_chapter1.zip

For FSOpen Users:
Many people (if not all, except me . . . )are experiencing a problem in what is a relatively simple mission. But the problem basically halts any progress in the campaign. Mad Bomber has devised a quick fix which effectively corrects the problem. You can find the zip below. Note that it uses some features that are only available in FS2Open. If anyone has a problem with Mission 7 in retail, let me know.
http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/mota_chapter1FSO.zip
members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/fs2/mota_chapter1FSO.zip


Size: 1.6 MB
These are both my webpages so delay should be minimal barring some unforseen bandwidth restrictions I don't know about.

Other Mirrors:
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.53 (courtesy Swantz) -Updated

How to Install:
FS2 Retail: Place VP in main Freespace2 folder
FS2 Open: Place VP in FS2Open\foldernameofchoice\ then choose said folder as the MOD in the launcher (ie c:\FS2Open\mota\ )

Audio Files: (2kb)
http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/mota_audio.zip
http://members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/fs2/mota_audio.zip

     I don't know why, but VPConstructor Suite doesn't like me doing subdirectories, so when I added a generic sound.wav for the messages, it doesnt appear in data/voice/special but rather just voice/special. I highly recommend you either extract the .wav from the VP or download this small zip file and put generic.wave in data/voice/special (or modname/data/voice/special for FSOpen) because there are a lot of messages.

Known Bugs:
Version 1.1 - bug in Mission file#7 where support ship fails to dock with Alpha 1. For FSOpen users, refer to knew FSOpen zip downloads above. For retail users, please me let me know.
Version 1.0 - had a bug in Mission File #5, where the victory conditions could NOT be fulfilled on Very Easy or Easy. This has been fixed. If you've played this mission to the end and encountered that bug (or just plain failed the mission), instead of replaying the whole mission I'm providing a new VP which cuts out the tedious section. You can find it here:

Site1: http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/mota_chp1nopain.zip
Site2: http://members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/fs2/mota_chp1nopain.zip

Credits:
FREDding, Writing, Playtesting, Playtesting more, Playtesing even more: Me (Akalabeth Angel aka Paul Brown)
   Btw, if you think a mission is boring, try playtesting it 20 times over! Holy smokes!
Table Edits: Me as well
3rd Party ships: See Readme (for the sake of surprises)
Asteroid BG: I don't know who did this, I don't have the name anymore.

   Feel free to voice any complaints, bug reports, flames, etcetera here.  I don't mind criticism, I'm a big boy, I won't cry.
   Most of all, I hope you have fun playing the missions! Or at least _some_ of them. 
   Btw, if people want/need .RAR files I can provide those as well. Most people should be able to handle .zip files and the download is very small by today's standards. But let me know.

EDITed - for various reasons.

[achtung]

http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.53

Mirror.

[Akalabeth Angel]

http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.47

Mirror.

     Ah thanks dude, I also added your link to the main post above. (if that's cool?)
     Btw the game seems to run fine on FSOpen, except that the .wav file doesn't work. I seem unable to set up the proper directory structure within the VP, VPCS doesnt like subdirectories for some reason. I highly recommend that people put generic.wav (downloadable from the main post, or extractable from the VP) into data\voice\special (or ie for FSOpen mota\data\voice\special). Because there are lots of messages. LOTS (I reached the limit on one mission I know).

[Mad Bomber]

One problem:

Mission 3 5 is uncompletable in Easy or VE difficulty, since

Spoiler:

the "Victory" event is only flagged when all 3 pirate wings are destroyed, and one of them never shows up in low difficulties.

Bloody irritating to run into a bug like that after a long, long patrol mission.

[Akalabeth Angel]

One problem:

Mission 3 is uncompletable in Easy or VE difficulty, since

     

Spoiler:

Ah bugger, did you actually destroy all the fighters? Or no.  Typically some of them will get away in my experience. Actually is this, mission three with the missing freighters in the asteroid belt? Just looking at the .fs2 file and none of the fighters have difficultly levels on 'em.

     I'll look into it though, that's one reason why I didn't bother with difficultly levels for most everything. Seems like you always need to FRED all types of exceptions for different difficulty levels, rather annoying (Though even more annoying to play a mission and not have it work, as the designer or first time player).

    Some of the earlier missions are sort of poorly designed in comparison to the later ones (by virtue of experience or lack thereof).
   

[Akalabeth Angel]

     Oh wait, I know which mission you're talking about. Actually it's mission 4 I believe . . and yeah, that WOULD be annoying. Damnit!

[Mad Bomber]

5, actually. My bad. Previous post edited.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    Okay, sorry man. Believe me when I say I FEEL YOUR PAIN. Imagine playtesting that mission? Damn . . .
    Regardless, both of the original zip files have now been updated with a mission to fix that. In addition, anyone who encountered that bug, or played that mission and failed but hasn't done a cheat to get by it yet I give you this new VP file:

Site1: http://members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/fs2/mota_chp1nopain.zip
Site2: http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/mota_chp1nopain.zip

    Basically its the same campaign, except mission 5 has been edited to cut out the ENTIRE patrol. You start the mission just after you've finished the patrol, so from there it's just a bit of combat. I think you should be able to overwrite the VP with no problems. The campaign file or VP contents were not changed except for the one was replaced.
 
   And I do assure you, that's the least fun mission of the campaign. The one after that is my favourite . . . though, potentially the most buggy as well depending on what the player does at the start. You'll see at the end of the campaign that I learned my lesson from this damn patrol mission.

[Ransom]

Got to mission seven and I can't progress at all.

Spoiler:

Ship's hopelessly busted from that Sathanas beam. No comms, engine, sensors, or anything, and nothing happens to fix that even after several minutes.

That 'dream' that came before it, though. That was pretty cool.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Got to mission seven and I can't progress at all.

Spoiler:

Ship's hopelessly busted from that Sathanas beam. No comms, engine, sensors, or anything, and nothing happens to fix that even after several minutes.

That 'dream' that came before it, though. That was pretty cool.

     Is this the mission 7, with Nedu station? If so . .

Spoiler:

Follow the uh, inflight chatter. They mention that there's a support ship nearby, simply call it rearm + more importantly repair you. You should not have lost your Comm system  . . . btw. There wasnt any such thing for that. Unless you actually got hit by the beam itself??? Hmmn, you should only lose Engine, Weapons and Sensors in mission 5. Then sit through mission 6 and basically see stuff but not have anything happen . . . and then mission 7 you can call the support ship to repair you. If you managed to get hit somehow in mission 6 you might just want to run through it again so you're not hit (on like x4 speed or something). Sometimes i'd get hit when the Vasudan is getting wasted, but I wouldn't really live to tell about.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Also . . .

Spoiler:

Just incase anyone else has the same problem, I uploaded an updated VP which has a little event at the start of mission 7 getting the comm system repaired. If it's easier to download that and throw it in your directory that might be easier.

[Ransom]

Spoiler:

Follow the uh, inflight chatter. They mention that there's a support ship nearby, simply call it rearm + more importantly repair you. You should not have lost your Comm system  . . . btw. There wasnt any such thing for that. Unless you actually got hit by the beam itself??? Hmmn, you should only lose Engine, Weapons and Sensors in mission 5. Then sit through mission 6 and basically see stuff but not have anything happen . . . and then mission 7 you can call the support ship to repair you. If you managed to get hit somehow in mission 6 you might just want to run through it again so you're not hit (on like x4 speed or something). Sometimes i'd get hit when the Vasudan is getting wasted, but I wouldn't really live to tell about.

Spoiler:

Yeah, I got hit by the beams right at the end. Brought my hull down to 1% and wrecked all my subsystems - I thought I'd been ship-guardianed and that it was meant to happen like that. An easy way to solve this problem would be to make the player invulnerable for the duration of mission six.

I got shot by the beam again when I tried to run through mission six a second time. What's supposed to happen? Is it meant to miss?

In the end I had to add that comms-repairing event myself to complete that mission.

In any case, I finished the rest of the campaign. It's quite good, all things considered.

Spoiler:

A few things that bothered me: Your Vasudans, particularly in the first few missions, use 'yet' far too much. It's not big, but it started to grate on me after a while.

I got no debriefing for mission eight.

I wasn't at all convinced by the descent into violence between the Regulus Syndicate and the Vasudans in mission nine. It just seemed silly. Between grumpy pilots, okay, but the cruiser getting into it was a bit much.

And in the correspondence with Miranda's brother in the fourth mission, he says 'Did you here the news?' It's minor, but I actually laughed at that misspelling. It wasn't much of a first impression. There's a bunch of mistakes like that throughout the campaign - the 'Twighlight Seven' transport in the last mission, for instance - I'd recommend doing a more thorough proofreading, or getting someone else to run through it for you. Simple polish like that does a lot for immersion.

Speaking of the correspondences with Miranda's brother, though, I really liked them. The second one was particularly excellent; he came off very convincing as a worried older brother. But that's almost a problem - in the end he seemed more human than Miranda did. Her motives are very poorly explained, and that combined with her cheesy action-hero dialogue at the end meant I never really sympathised with her.

I did enjoy this, though. It's always nice to play a more character-driven campaign, and this had some great moments. The 'dream' in subspace and the final missions especially. I hope you get around to making the follow-up chapters.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Spoiler:

I got shot by the beam again when I tried to run through mission six a second time. What's supposed to happen? Is it meant to miss?

In reply:

Spoiler:

Yeah it's supposed to intersect right in front of the fighter. Like fill the screen but not actually do anything. I dunno why you keep getting hit, it doesnt uh . . . hit me when I play. Wierd.

Spoiler:

I wasn't at all convinced by the descent into violence between the Regulus Syndicate and the Vasudans in mission nine. It just seemed silly. Between grumpy pilots, okay, but the cruiser getting into it was a bit much.

Speaking of the correspondences with Miranda's brother, though, I really liked them. The second one was particularly excellent; he came off very convincing as a worried older brother. But that's almost a problem - in the end he seemed more human than Miranda did. Her motives are very poorly explained, and that combined with her cheesy action-hero dialogue at the end meant I never really sympathised with her.

I did enjoy this, though. It's always nice to play a more character-driven campaign, and this had some great moments. The 'dream' in subspace and the final missions especially. I hope you get around to making the follow-up chapters.

   Hey thanks for all the kind words, all things considered. I'm glad that someone other myself got some enjoyment out of it.
   Yeah I think I need to like, develop more . . . concrete characters. Writing a woman's part is I think a set up for disaster from the get-go. Lessons learned perhaps . . .

Spoiler:

As I said some of the dialogue was pretty bad,I thought the dream sequence dialogue (obvious inspired by Derelict) was kinda crappy too but you seemed to like it so that's cool. And yeah I know, all those little typos get past me, no matter how many times I play it. And the first few mission are kinda slow . . . I think if I did chapter 2 it would be a lot more fun (theoretically), though I need to sort of look into a few things. The end story is kinda sketchy right now. . . . I'll look into that lack of debrief though . . .that shouldn't happen.

   I think I might need to invest in a video card once I get a job so I can use FSOpen, I'd like to take advantage of the cutscenes. There is one cut-scene type thing in this mission, but obviously . . . it's a pain in the behind to setup. Oh and with regards to the Vasudans, I dunno . . .I tried to make the translator turn their speech into formal english without contractions and all that, but I know by the last mission I thought "this sounds dumb, screw this. I'm gonna write normal". I can write extremely verbose if I let myself do so . . . not always a good thing. I don't remember how they did it in FS2 main campaign.

[Mad Bomber]

Spoiler:

I liked the character of Viktor. I'm surprised you didn't do a "nuclear wessels" joke, frankly, but I was saddened at his death.

I had trouble with mission 7, too. I *could*not* get the damn thing to dock with me, and ordering it around had no effect (it kept saying Support Aborted). Finally I gave up and went into FRED and manually scripted the docking and repair.

[Ransom]

That happened to me too. I wonder if it's not something to do with FS Open.

Spoiler:

I found Viktor grating at first, but I admit he grew on me. Not enough to make me care about his death, though - he was very two-dimensional. I guess life's tough when you're a stereotype.

Writing a woman's part is I think a set up for disaster from the get-go. Lessons learned perhaps . . .

I don't think the problem had anything to do with the player-character being a woman - I just didn't 'get' her by the end of the campaign.

Spoiler:

She gets angry with her brother for wanting to pull her out of the backwater - why? All I have to go on is the vague notion she has that her job's important too. I don't know why she thinks that, and her inconsistent personality doesn't provide any clues. With Viktor you've got a stereotype, so that's easy characterisation. Reginbald also had a clear personality; arrogant, professional, slightly hypocritical. I understood her more than I did Miranda, which I'm pretty sure wasn't what you were going for.

All she needed was a consistent personality and, probably a bit more importantly, motivation. Miranda had an easy out from the dump she was in, and at least in this chapter you never really explored why she refused to take it.

[woutersmits]

I HAVE A PROBLEM
THATS MY PROBLEM CAN SOMEONE FIX IT
IT HAPPENING BY MISSION 4

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[achtung]

http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.52

Updated Mirror Link.

[woutersmits]

still not working

[Akalabeth Angel]

        The game crashes completely? (I assume that's German windows complain), yikes I dunno what's going on there. Maybe something wrong with the new ships I put in there? Though the only new models are from Aldo and Derelict, think they should work . . .

[Akalabeth Angel]

Spoiler:

All she needed was a consistent personality and, probably a bit more importantly, motivation. Miranda had an easy out from the dump she was in, and at least in this chapter you never really explored why she refused to take it.

     Yeah I think the main problem is I didn't really work out what her motivation is, something to think of for Chapter 2 if I get around to doing one.   
     I'll have to test out mission 7 in FSOpen here . . . something's screwy and obviously if the both of you had problems, anyone else playing is likely to have the same problem. I know I gave it some wierd order that Fred complains about but I cant remember what it was all about right now. I'll check it out when I get home.