[Knight Templar]

I did supposedly... I think it dropped the container or something though. It was kinda hard to tell in all the commotion and the Bes's going 40 m/s and my squad 10 km away fighting the vasudans...

[ShadowWolf_IH]

hmmmm, i'll look into it, but it always worked fine for me.

[CP5670]

I just played through a couple of the missions; my overall impression so far has been somewhat mixed. The mods are very good - excellent renders in particular, both in the mission and the menu backgrounds - but the missions need some work. The gameplay balance is pretty good for the most part, but there are a lot of consistency issues and mission bugs. At the moment it is looking more like an alpha-type version due to the bugs and stuff, but it definitely has potential. Here is my usual bug report listing for new campaigns: (this is mostly just stuff intended for bugfixing)

general:
• there are a considerable number of spelling/grammar errors in various places, the only major one being that the Daedalus fighter is spelled Deadelus, so if you change that you will need to change all instances of it in the missions too. If you double-check all the text (command briefs, briefings, messages, tech descriptions, etc.), you will probably catch most of them; just watch the comma usage and run-on sentences.
• a few of the tech room animations have some letters that are much darker than the rest and difficult to make out; this might be due to their having the 0-255-0 color and thus the black background showing through.
• the message "head" animations only appear for a split second due to the length of the sound file; put in some extra delay at the end of the file to correct this.
• the Daedalus and Aurora look great but there is some weird effect in the back of both ships where a couple of lensflare-like circles flicker at all times; I'm not sure if this was intentional or not.
• what exactly is Icarus? I thought it was the code-name for that person, but then they talk about "destroying all related materials" or something.

mission 1:
• beginning is very confusing; who are you fighting and where/when does this mission take place?
• many of the messages come out garbled due to nebula interference, so you might want to have the pilots repeat a few of them.
• I think this takes place after the main FS2 campaign, so you need to have some reason why most of the weapons are not available.
• one of the objectives has the default "mission goal text" for its name.
• I blew up all the enemy fighters and waited for several minutes, but no further messages came and after jumping out I got a "no debriefing for mission" message; I think I failed the mission, but it let me pass to the next one anyway.

mission 2:
• the briefing was again confusing, but this time it must have been due to my not knowing what happened in the last mission.
• how did a person survive in a cargo container? I doubt those things have any life support at all...or is it just the dead body?
• player secondary loadout is screwy; I started off with 343 "MegaBeam"s and 32 Hornet D's, and judging from the power of the
former weapon I don't think you are supposed to get that.
• some of the freighters start off too close to each other and bump into each other a lot while moving.
• the Bes looks weird carrying the TAC1 container since it is too big and overlaps the engines; try putting in the VAC4 or VAC5 instead.
• the freighters tend to accidentally blow up the cargo when attacking you just after you scan it; make it invulnerable for a few seconds.
• the freighters run away from you too fast; try setting their speed to 15m/s or so instead.
• the background planet is spectacular, but the sun is too close to it and you can see its glow graphic shine through the planet; try moving them apart slightly.
• explain to the player what the tractor beam is/does somewhere, since it is new technology.
• the message "He is travelling through subspace..." is sent out twice.
• several messages get sent in succession very fast when the Triton jumps out; put some delay between them.
• put in a return to base directive.
• the debriefing talks of Ma'at freighters which I think should be changed to Bes.

mission 3:
• the cyclops#short is available in the loadout screen, which results in the player seeing two cyclops there.
• the AI wingmen have no primary weapons by default.
• briefing has a weird sentence in the last screen: "...there is a need to know for business but we don't have the need to know."
• make the minimum distance of 1000 smaller (maybe 750 or so), since the transport tends to wander near you accidentally at times, which can be frustrating after following it for a while.
• you can hear the friendly arrival music when the nav buoys "arrive."
• make it so that once you have the Queb position, it becomes okay to get near the transport (by that time they know you are around anyway); at the moment, you cannot dodge any incoming shots from the enemy ships since you might risk going too close to the transport.
• the debriefing recommendations seem to be incorrectly placed, since I was given tips to tag the Queb after it had already been done.

Anyway, I need to do some other stuff at the moment but I will probably play the rest of them tomorrow night.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by CP5670
I just played through a couple of the missions; my overall impression so far has been somewhat mixed. The mods are very good - excellent renders in particular, both in the mission and the menu backgrounds - but the missions need some work. The gameplay balance is pretty good for the most part, but there are a lot of consistency issues and mission bugs. At the moment it is looking more like an alpha-type version due to the bugs and stuff, but it definitely has potential. Here is my usual bug report listing for new campaigns: (this is mostly just stuff intended for bugfixing)
Yeah, I thought a few bugs would slip through anyways, even though we tried to have about 2-3 beta testes before release.  Very hard to legislate for different approaches.

general:
• there are a considerable number of spelling/grammar errors in various places, the only major one being that the Daedalus fighter is spelled Deadelus, so if you change that you will need to change all instances of it in the missions too. If you double-check all the text (command briefs, briefings, messages, tech descriptions, etc.), you will probably catch most of them; just watch the comma usage and run-on sentences.
noted
• a few of the tech room animations have some letters that are much darker than the rest and difficult to make out; this might be due to their having the 0-255-0 color and thus the black background showing through.
Yup.. it's alpha green transprency, but I don;t have the original frames to alter anymore.  I never really considered it a major problem, though
• the message "head" animations only appear for a split second due to the length of the sound file; put in some extra delay at the end of the file to correct this.
noted
• the Daedalus and Aurora look great but there is some weird effect in the back of both ships where a couple of lensflare-like circles flicker at all times; I'm not sure if this was intentional or not.
I've no idea what you mean by this, unless you mean the rear lights on the fins of both ships.  I realise there is a bit of a strobe light effect there, but I'm happy with it
• what exactly is Icarus? I thought it was the code-name for that person, but then they talk about "destroying all related materials" or something.
Both, in a way.  'Icarus' is the codename for the person in charge / responsible for the Icarus project.  Later on it should be a bit clearer, when some of the tech is revealed.

mission 1:
• beginning is very confusing; who are you fighting and where/when does this mission take place?
I think this is partly intended to be intentionally confusing
• many of the messages come out garbled due to nebula interference, so you might want to have the pilots repeat a few of them.
The, um, low EMP nebula seems to be a bit temperamentaal.  It's custome, and sometimes there is no EMP whatsoever, and sometimes some.
• I think this takes place after the main FS2 campaign, so you need to have some reason why most of the weapons are not available.
Limited space on the Agamenmon class destroyer.  It is a small cover unit, after all
• one of the objectives has the default "mission goal text" for its name.
noted- thought this had been fixced, actually
• I blew up all the enemy fighters and waited for several minutes, but no further messages came and after jumping out I got a "no debriefing for mission" message; I think I failed the mission, but it let me pass to the next one anyway.
noted... this has been a bit of a problem, as it's very easy to lose sight of the Mentu in mission... it's pretty hard to legislate against, though, and I'm not sure how we can resolve this.

mission 2:
• the briefing was again confusing, but this time it must have been due to my not knowing what happened in the last mission.
I found that one ok...the gist is that you have lost the GTVI operative, and she's now onboard a cargo vessel that you have to ID and capture
• how did a person survive in a cargo container? I doubt those things have any life support at all...or is it just the dead body?
Cargo pods have a life support system.. i think it's mentioned in the fS1 mission involving McCarthy, is it not?
• player secondary loadout is screwy; I started off with 343 "MegaBeam"s and 32 Hornet D's, and judging from the power of the
former weapon I don't think you are supposed to get that.
Never happened to me, so I dunno
• some of the freighters start off too close to each other and bump into each other a lot while moving.
Not seen myself, but I'll try and get that fixed
• the Bes looks weird carrying the TAC1 container since it is too big and overlaps the engines; try putting in the VAC4 or VAC5 instead.
noted, though I think this was chosen specifically to make it tough to disable the vessel
• the freighters tend to accidentally blow up the cargo when attacking you just after you scan it; make it invulnerable for a few seconds.
Never happened to me sofar, I'll take a look
• the freighters run away from you too fast; try setting their speed to 15m/s or so instead.
noted
• the background planet is spectacular, but the sun is too close to it and you can see its glow graphic shine through the planet; try moving them apart slightly.
Actually, i like that
• explain to the player what the tractor beam is/does somewhere, since it is new technology.
Isn't it mentioned in the brief?
• the message "He is travelling through subspace..." is sent out twice.
noted
• several messages get sent in succession very fast when the Triton jumps out; put some delay between them.
noted - 'twas sure I'd fixed that
• put in a return to base directive.
noted
• the debriefing talks of Ma'at freighters which I think should be changed to Bes.
noted

mission 3:
• the cyclops#short is available in the loadout screen, which results in the player seeing two cyclops there.
noted
• the AI wingmen have no primary weapons by default.
Yup, don't know why yet
• briefing has a weird sentence in the last screen: "...there is a need to know for business but we don't have the need to know."
don;t remeber that offhand, will check
• make the minimum distance of 1000 smaller (maybe 750 or so), since the transport tends to wander near you accidentally at times, which can be frustrating after following it for a while
Well, that's the trick, innit?  Seriously, I never had that problem... the alternative way to do it is to use instruments only and just realign your nose so the transport is never decreasing in distance.. I never got closer than 1500m when I last played it, so I'm not sure this is a major bug
• you can hear the friendly arrival music when the nav buoys "arrive."
never noticed, I never folowed the nav buoys
• make it so that once you have the Queb position, it becomes okay to get near the transport (by that time they know you are around anyway); at the moment, you cannot dodge any incoming shots from the enemy ships since you might risk going too close to the transport.
I thought we had that done, actually... guess not
• the debriefing recommendations seem to be incorrectly placed, since I was given tips to tag the Queb after it had already been done.
noted
Anyway, I need to do some other stuff at the moment but I will probably play the rest of them tomorrow night.

All this stuff will be dealt with in the voice version, and we'll re-release the fixed missions as a patch aswell.  I'll forward it all onto Shadowwolf for fixing, FREDing isn;t my forte unfortunately.

[J.F.K.]

Hey, well done! I bet this took you a while.

[Alikchi]

All of my comments have already been said my CP. Great mods, though!

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by J.F.K.
Hey, well done! I bet this took you a while.

'bout a year, give or take.

[CP5670]

Yeah, I thought a few bugs would slip through anyways, even though we tried to have about 2-3 beta testes before release. Very hard to legislate for different approaches.

That always happens to me as well, even after testing them over 50 times each; I suppose that it is impossible to make them absolutely perfect...

I've no idea what you mean by this, unless you mean the rear lights on the fins of both ships. I realise there is a bit of a strobe light effect there, but I'm happy with it

yeah, that is what I was talking about. I wasn't sure if that was a flaw or supposed to be there, but I thought I should notify you just in case it was some bug on my computer only. A few of the lights (e.g. the yellow one on the new bomber) have a steady strobe period of about half a second, which looks very nice indeed, but the rest of them flicker on and off extremely fast so it looks like something is broken there. It's a clever effect though; did you do that using animated textures?

Both, in a way. 'Icarus' is the codename for the person in charge / responsible for the Icarus project. Later on it should be a bit clearer, when some of the tech is revealed.

ah, I see now.

The, um, low EMP nebula seems to be a bit temperamentaal. It's custome, and sometimes there is no EMP whatsoever, and sometimes some.

That is sort of what I have noticed as well, but I think the messages in that mission are kind of important, so it might be nice to have the pilots say something like "I repeat, ..." (as in the loop2-1 mission) for a couple of the messages when there are a lot of them coming in at a time.

Limited space on the Agamenmon class destroyer. It is a small cover unit, after all

oh okay, that makes sense then.

I found that one ok...the gist is that you have lost the GTVI operative, and she's now onboard a cargo vessel that you have to ID and capture

yeah, it was probably because I didn't know what happened in the last mission this time, so it's no big deal here.

Cargo pods have a life support system.. i think it's mentioned in the fS1 mission involving McCarthy, is it not?

they do? I don't remember seeing that but my FS1 knowledge is a bit fuzzy, so I will need to check.

noted, though I think this was chosen specifically to make it tough to disable the vessel

ah okay, but I think the container goes through parts of the engines and the freighter "arms" so there are some graphical tearing effects there, but it might just be on my computer.

Actually, i like that

I also think it looks pretty cool, but I think the effect you are looking for here is something like the one in the Petrarch ending speech movie, where it looks like the sun rays are sort of reflecting off the edge of the planet. The only problem in this mission is that if you look at the sun directly, you can see its "shadow" (the glow map) on the side of the planet facing you, although it otherwise looks fine. You could try to move them apart just slightly (so that the reflective effect is still there) or have a special sun for that mission that has a dimmer glow bitmap, but it isn't really a big deal.

Well, that's the trick, innit? Seriously, I never had that problem... the alternative way to do it is to use instruments only and just realign your nose so the transport is never decreasing in distance.. I never got closer than 1500m when I last played it, so I'm not sure this is a major bug

Actually I think the nebula radar distance is 1500, so you have to stay between 1500 and 1000. Most of the time this is not a problem since you can just match speeds and let it run by itself for a while, but at one point the transport seems to turn around and come almost towards you, so the distance drops below 1000 very quickly if you aren't careful.

All this stuff will be dealt with in the voice version, and we'll re-release the fixed missions as a patch aswell.

cool, I'll be looking forward to that.

[karajorma]

More Bugs

Mission 4 - You have the choice of any of the weapons or ships (including terran Mara's and dogfight weapons! )

There's no music in the mission.

The Disable directive actually appears BEFORE you`re told to disable the AWACS

After destroying all enemy forces I sat around for a couple of minutes doing nothing much before a message popped up telling me the mission was over

Mission 5 - 2 Mission goals become true at 00:00 (the ones to do with protecting the capships)

Additional : In the mission Dante's inferno the ships just sat there and did nothing at all after I`d cleared the sentry guns away. Might have something to do with me taking time out to blow the crap out of an isis I spotted flying about rather than returning immediately to protect the Ironheart but even so....

[karajorma]

Yet more bugs

The delay where nothing happens for minutes I mentioned above is eventually followed by a huge number of messages coming in instantly.  

The Ironheart and the Tempest appear in later missions as GTD AgamemnonDamaged class. Surely a use of alt name is called for here!

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma
More Bugs

Mission 4 - You have the choice of any of the weapons or ships (including terran Mara's and dogfight weapons! )
Doh.

There's no music in the mission.
I think that's intentional for atmosphere up to encountering the Vasudan 'tail'


The Disable directive actually appears BEFORE you`re told to disable the AWACS
ok

After destroying all enemy forces I sat around for a couple of minutes doing nothing much before a message popped up telling me the mission was over
It's to do with the ELysium decoy - it has to get a certain distance away.  One of the objectives is to keep the Vasudans waya from visual range of it, though they're usually dead by then.  It is a bit dodgy, arguably, though.

Mission 5 - 2 Mission goals become true at 00:00 (the ones to do with protecting the capships)

Hmm, never noticed that one

Additional : In the mission Dante's inferno the ships just sat there and did nothing at all after I`d cleared the sentry guns away. Might have something to do with me taking time out to blow the crap out of an isis I spotted flying about rather than returning immediately to protect the Ironheart but even so....
You need to actually order all fighters to protect the Ironhear IIRC. It is mentioned by command, though
 

[karajorma]

Originally posted by aldo_14
You need to actually order all fighters to protect the Ironhear IIRC. It is mentioned by command, though

I did. Both times.

 BTW something needs to be done if the player does decide to pot the Isis (at least warn him not to)

[ShadowWolf_IH]

ok, i am taking mental notes and working on these things.   I thought we had taken care of most of this stuff.   of it is just plain wierd, things that i know shouldn't happen, but for some reason are, like the Megabeams, i know i didn't do that.  I don't think i even put the cyclops in.  Anyway, thanks guys.

of things were done purposely, things like the freighters being so hard to disable.  I also purposely said Ma'at and used Bes, just to show you how unreliable the intel could be.  My mistake in that was not saying anything about it afterward, sorry.

[StratComm]

Ok, here's my two cents:

Models and effects: excellent across the board.  This mod is a visual treat to play.

Mission design: Lots of good ideas, and some good moments thus far, though there are some major flaws as well.  First off, some information on when this is supposed to be set would be useful; I remember some reference to the NTF but it seems much later than that.  If things are supposed to be confusing, let the storyline show that, not a genuine lack of necessary background.  One extra frame of command brief at the beginning would solve this problem easily.  Also, there are a lot of times when it is really unclear as to what the pilot should be doing, or too much is going on (mission 4 [maybe 5, can't remember] is a good example; I understand that you are going for a chaotic opening with this one, but it would be nice to have a few seconds to ascess the situation before I fail that objective about protecting the support ships.  Also, KEEP THAT CAPSHIP FROM MOVING ON ITS OWN FREE WILL!  Its flailing around and banging into things looks really stupid.)  I don't think any missions need a complete overhaul, but there are a lot of things that could be worked on.

And in that first mission, just turn off the EMP.  You've got a lot of campaign-critical messages coming and going, nothing but aspect-locking weapons in the loadout, and nothing to actually damage enemy fighters with besides one promethius cannon.  If you could chose your loadout, and there was a line in the briefing about "intense electromagnetic interferance," then perhaps the EMP could serve your purpose, but as it stands it is just maddening.  Maybe turn up the lightning intensity instead.

Mods: Did you do something to ship explosions or are the shields on both new fighters unbelievably weak?  I should not be dying from shockwaves from Bes freighters.

And did you change the AI?  Fighters are behaving much differently than they did in the main campaign, for the better I think.

The source code seems to be tricking you out in places, like the no default weapons bug, but I can't begin to help you on that one.

That was more critical than I planned to make it, but I hope that it helps make the voice version of the campaign much more polished.

[Knight Templar]

I have to comment about something before trying to play it again past the second level; the Back Grounds 0wn

I've been looking forward to the destroyer for a long time.

Daedlus is a sweet ship

and about the sun comin gthrough the planet, I thought it was pretty sweety in that it made it seem like the sun was reflecting off the water (even though it is thousands of kilometers away) it still rawks

[aldo_14]

I did create a coupla new AI settings (see ai.tbl), but not sure if they were ever used.  I'm pretty sure we did use a much higher level of AI setting on average, though.  

Also, we can;t stopthe capships 'jiggling' - it's a problem because there's no way of generating reliable MOI settings for new mods, you get it with any large ship (and fighters, to a lesser extent). That may also explain the spalsh damage from the freighters.

Fianlly, the NTF reference is that Cpt. Pellestrom was a GTVI 'plant' within the NTF (the cbanim lists her assignments and role).  As a result, she is considered a war criminal by more extremist Vasudan factions who are unware of her double role.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

kinda off topic, but kinda on topic too........

Where the hell are my voices?

Seriously guys, i could use them so that i could get this mod off of my plate.  Next up......i could also maybe use a few more voices.  Interested parties should contact me through any channel including this one.

[EDIT]  I will be leaving town tuesday for a week, so if we want the voices to be released before i go, i need them by friday.  If not, it'll have to wait til i get back.  [/EDIT]

[karajorma]

Guess what. Yep. Even more bugs. (I think I`m becoming an entomologist. I collect bugs all the time)

Revenge.

Its not actually that clear what the captain of the Agrippa actually did wrong. I`m guessing it was firing on the station but in the heat of combat it's hard to tell.

ummm. I don`t know how to break this to you but there are NO solar panels on the station. I guessed that the awacs dishes are what the briefings refer to but that wasn`t until I`d wasted time cycling through all the systems of the station looking for them.

Yet again two of the goals evaluate to true at the start of the mission. And this time I extracted the mission and had a look at it to see what's going on.

If you put in an objective

when
-not
--is-destroyed
---ships names

it will evaluate true immediately. That's why it's true right at the start of the mission. You need to also include an event that only occurs at the end of the mission

No Jump out orders (actually this is true of a lot of the missions). Very annoying cause your only hope is to leap out and hope that something wasn`t meant to happen a minute later (which would mean a failed mission and that you had to play it again)

I got a reccomendation to scan the isis in the debrief dispite the fact that I had scanned it

Casualties of War

Where's the music?

[ShadowWolf_IH]

ya know, none of this crap happens on my comp.  I don't know what's going on with this.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Fixes:

RTB's in

Mission 1

goal text revisited

If you lose sight of the Mentu, hit f12, we set that hotkey up a long time ago, it's in Fred.

Mission 1A (Red Alert)

the reason i don't keep thre Queb from firing at you is that your stealth system is flawed, it tells you that in the briefing about the ship.

The weapons bit, secondary being screwy is beyond me, it's a red alert mission, you should have the same weaps as you do in mission 1.


• the message "He is travelling through subspace..." is sent out twice.  Yes it is, once for each of the freighters that you disable.


several messages get sent in succession very fast when the Triton jumps out; put some delay between them.    There are delays, the voice version will handle it.


EDIT
Mission 2

Cyclops short handled

According to Fred the AI wingmen do have weapons.  Karajorma looked at this too.   I don't know what to do about it.


"...there is a need to know business but we don't have the need to know."   Typical Intel Ops phrase


• you can hear the friendly arrival music when the nav buoys "arrive."  not anymore

make it so that once you have the Queb position, it becomes okay to get near the transport (by that time they know you are around anyway); at the moment, you cannot dodge any incoming shots from the enemy ships since you might risk going too close to the transport.     Handled, now once you target the Queb it doesn't matter how close you get to Isis.

the debriefing recommendations seem to be incorrectly placed, since I was given tips to tag the Queb after it had already been done. oops, fixed.



Mission 3

 You have the choice of any of the weapons or ships (including terran Mara's and dogfight weapons! )   fixed

There's no music in the mission. fixed

The Disable directive actually appears BEFORE you`re told to disable the AWACS   fixed

Mission 4

2 Mission goals become true at 00:00 (the ones to do with protecting the capships)  fixed

Additional : In the mission Dante's inferno the ships just sat there and did nothing at all after I`d cleared the sentry guns away. Might have something to do with me taking time out to blow the crap out of an isis I spotted flying about rather than returning immediately to protect the Ironheart but even so.... There is a message telling you trash it if it deviates from it's course.  

The delay where nothing happens for minutes I mentioned above is eventually followed by a huge number of messages coming in instantly.
 there are delays built it, but once we get the voice version out, it will be better.

The Ironheart and the Tempest appear in later missions as GTD AgamemnonDamaged class. Surely a use of alt name is called for here!   fixed

ummm. I don`t know how to break this to you but there are NO solar panels on the station. I guessed that the awacs dishes are what the briefings refer to but that wasn`t until I`d wasted time cycling through all the systems of the station looking for them.   fixed

Yet again two of the goals evaluate to true at the start of the mission. And this time I extracted the mission and had a look at it to see what's going on.   fixed as per your suggestion

Casualties of War

Where's the music?   it's in there



END EDIT