[Lt.D]

Bem Cavalgar

Bem Cavalgar is a campaign set during the Shivan invasion of Vasuda in the Great War. The story follows a group of loyalist Vasudan officers who stay behind to defend their homeworld and the evacuating civilians.

You play as both Captain Senbi, leader of the loyalists, and as an unnamed fighter pilot, Azriel 1.



Installation

Bem Cavalgar requires the Freespace Port 3.4, the FSPort MediaVPs and the MediaVPs 3.6.12 to function.

Make a folder in your root FS2 directory and unpack everything there. Select 'Bem Cavalgar' via your FSOpen launcher.



Loadout

Note that loadout is persistent across the campaign. At the moment (v1) it's set during the introductory cutscene at the start of the campaign and doesn't change afterwards; the exact number of ships and weapons you get is tied to the difficulty.

Play the introductory cutscene on Very Easy to get a full choice of ships and weapons. Play on higher difficulties to have your stocks proportionately reduced.



Credits

Freespace Port - all Freespace 1 content
Freespace Upgrade Project - strategic map ships based on their models
Black Wolf - Abydos installation
Trashman - Vasudan corvette
Ransom Arceihn - Comship model
Blue Planet - fonts, AI
Ben Prunty - Faster Than Light music (Federation and Last Stand)
David Nicolle - furusiyya translation

This campaign owes additional debts to:

Blue Planet
Goober5000
Ransom Arceihn



Download

FSMods: http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.901
Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7u8ijb65x3byjhc/bemcavalgar.rar

[Lt.D]

Okay, so this post right here is to 'explain' Bem Cavalgar, at least from my perspective. I don't want to influence people overmuch so I'll keep things light (and spoiled!) for now.

1. Balance

Spoiler:

The most pressing issue for me at the moment is balance.

One of the core themes I tried to write into Bem Cavalgar is the idea of the dilemma or difficult choice. Hopefully that's apparent in at least some of the mission design and in the 'strategic map' as a whole.

Part of the concept of the dilemma is that it's a forced choice - there's a kind of pressure on you to make the 'right' choice, whatever that is. Strategically, at the moment that's done almost entirely through the Time variable, which controls what missions are available when. In later releases there'll be more missions so mission choice won't be quite as significant.

The other kind of 'strategic' pressure comes in the form of the ship and weapon stocks. Again, at the moment there are only a few missions so this doesn't matter so much - plus the variables are static anyway, so you'll always have the same resources available. In later releases, I'd like to heighten this aspect so that the player is tempted to take missions based on possible material benefit rather than just what they feel like doing at the moment.

Part of realising this will be including a way to lose resources - wingman deaths will result in shipframe and cannon losses, naturally. I haven't implemented this yet for various reasons (again, at the moment the campaign is only 5-7 missions long!).

The other part is making missions difficult enough that weapon and ship advantage can tilt the battle in the player's favour. Weapons and ships need to be powerful enough/the default Anubis and Avenger loadout needs to be weak enough that skipping saving civilian lives to get a supply package from the PVN is a tempting idea.

So: I've tried to balance missions roughly along the lines of a player using the default loadout of Anubis/Avenger/Fury playing on Normal can achieve roughly half of the mission objectives (i.e. save 50% of civilian lives, destroy 50% of Shivan ships).

Is this balance setting accurate? Does the default loadout give you roughly a 50% success rate in each mission?

[Lt.D]

I've always been a proponent of iterative design and Bem Cavalgar is the kind of campaign (low narrative focus) where I might actually be able to put it into practice. This post will be about plans for later releases.

I also believe in content-sharing. Unfortunately as a FREDder I've never really been able to do this for myself - I can use other people's assets, but not share my own.

There are some things I would like for v2 of Bem Cavalgar. I'll scavenge or attempt to make my own, but I'm also willing to negotiate tit-for-tat FRED-for-assets deals, in the spirit of sharing and enabling content creation.



BUGFIXES

• Change Terran personae in M5
• Update credits in readme.txt
• Include mainhall setting in campaign file
• Deprecated info in AI table?
• Vasudan corvette model fixes?
• FSPort Upgrade tbm override
• Vasuda Prime is the fourth planet in the Vasuda system

BALANCE

• Amun bomber shields too strong?
• Shivan weaponry too weak?

MODELS

• PRIORITY - Some kind of giant Vasudan railgun/artillery piece
• Vasudan solar array? Might be able to use BW's construction kit here

SKYBOXES

• PRIORITY - Vasuda Prime atmospheric skybox
• Vasuda Prime orbital skybox
• Brihispati gas giant atmospheric skybox?
• orbital skyboxes for Mangala and Brihispati?
• generic Vasuda system skybox?

BACKGROUNDS

• Sun background
• Vasuda Prime background
• other planet backgrounds?

[Black Wolf]

Congrats on the release! Downloading now.

[Rodo]

Uhhh a new campaign, gotta play it on the weekend

[Lorric]

Not just a new campaign, but a new person. Welcome.

A release on your first post, nice way to enter the forum. Your ideas intrigue me, and I favour the FSPort over FS2, so I think I'll be trying this sometime.

[Nyctaeus]

I'm impressed. Not everyone's first post is release of the campaign. Downloading.

[Luis Dias]

bem cavalgar? why that name?

[Lt.D]

Not exactly new.

bem cavalgar? why that name?

Bem Cavalgar refers to a medieval Portuguese manual on horsemanship and jousting. One of the key themes I wanted to touch on in this campaign was chivalry and martial brotherhood.

e: I'm aware it probably sounds either really trite or bizarrely pedestrian to Portuguese speakers

[Luis Dias]

Sounds funny. Especially when one tries to read it in english! I am not able to play your campaign right now, but I'll give it a try later on, really nice of you to publish it here!

[Oddgrim]

Congrats on your first release. c:

[Black Wolf]

Wow. OK, I have to admit, I went into this sceptical. An unannounced campaign by a new member - we've had these before - often they're great, but sometimes they lack polish. Boy was I wrong. This campaign is totally, totally worth a play - not only that it's properly, legitimately good. Really good.

Seriously, download it!

OK, so with that out of the way, this is my initial impressions post - I'm not finished the campaign yet, so I shouldn't be able to spoil too much, but if you don;t want to hear anything, stop reading here.





Right, impressions.

First of all, the bad. I did run into a few bugs - the very first mission selection map had no messages, although I could read them when I pressed F4, so that may have been a HUD issue. I also had an error about the fiction viewer monochrome file, which may have been somehting on my end - my mediaVPs had a different named file in there - it's possible that the latest FSPort mediaVPs use the filename I needed here.

Other bugs so far have been minimal - Terran personae on the mission with the Abydos being the mnost obvious so far. Thanks for using the Abydos by the way - it's really, really cool to see my stuff getting used, especially so soon after release.

Also, I have to admit to being a little disappointed with the decision to give the Shivans FS2 ships and weapons, and a little more disappointed with the decision to give the Vasudans extra weapons as well - flak and railgun type projectiles that I've encountered so far. I know that the FS1 canon weapons are a little limiting, but still, I found myself wishing it'd stuck to canon. I recognise that it's a stylistic choice - I guess I just would have made a different one. Others will disagree with me there - this exact sort of thing was suggested by Fury some time back, and IIRC received some degree of support - just not from me.

Also, some of the fiction seems a little... odd. Hard to put into the context of the storyline. Although again, that's style, and I might just be missing something that will be obvious to others.

But, I should emphasise, the good here far, far outweighs the bad! The map system is cool, forcing you to choose what to prioritise - do I want to take down that Shivan corvette or save the refugees? The fact that you generally can't do both - unlike, for example, FS2's SOC loops - makes the choice a lot more meaningful. I'm assuming that the decisions affecting Shivan power, refugees saved etc. have an incremental effect down the line, or between missions?

This sense of choice follows on to the missions themselves - Is my time better spent evacuating the station or defending it? How do I best equip my wingmen for the objectives outlined in the briefing? And you have to be careful because this campaign is hard. Correct use of wingmen is critical, and expect to lose a lot of them. If the objectives are to keep people alive, you're going to have to send them home early. Part of this (a big part) is that the FS1 weapons just aren't very powerful compared to FS2, and add in shield management provided by Fury AI and you'll be pounding away for twice, three times as long on a fighter here than you would in a similar FS2 or post Capella campaign. On the flipside, though, some of the Shivans didn't feel that tough either - I felt like an absolute tank in my Amun - they just couldn't get through its shields without immense sustained firepower. Also, there are a lot of things to do and a lot of Shivans - I don't think I've completed a single mission with all the objectives 100% complete yet.

The missions themselves feel a little simplistic if you're expecting something like a VD or WiH level of complexity - there aren't many gimmicks or FREDding tricks beyond the big one in the mission selection stuff - but they're rock solid, bug free (as far as I can tell), well laid ourt, aesthetically satisfying, and most importantly they're fun - and they'll keep you coming back. If you're planning on re-releasing or iterative development then I do have some specific suggestions regarding individual missions, but I think I'll save them until I've 100% finished - but before I can do that I need to figure out how to kill this Demon!

So, yeah, in summary - although there are a few stylistic decisions I would have made differently, that takes nothing away from a unique, well FREDded remarkable first effort. Top marks!

[Luis Dias]

I'm halfway through and I am really really impressed with it. I confess I was most annoyed by the initial cutscene where I see a Moloch slashing beams in Vasuda Prime's space, and then I see a Demon doing the same... My initial impression wasn't great, but then when I saw that command hub I was absolutely convinced this was a damn good campaign. I love that hub, the conversations happening, the events, the briefings, etc., and most of all the tactical gameplay of choosing this or that mission, with what appears to be consequential throughout the campaign.

That concept is really cool. I will still have to play it to the end to see how it fares. It would be great if for instance a player chooses every mission regarding the protection of fleeing convoys and so on only to get their last missions just utterly impossible to beat, because the player never chose one single mission of taking out shivan convoys and reinforcements, etc. to that point. Conversely, if one only chooses the latter, one will really diminish the shivan power, but never really saves anyone at all...

[Goober5000]

This looks outstanding.  I haven't played it yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the "command hub" people are talking about is a full-fledged version of the "choose your own adventure" style of campaign that I demonstrated in FreeSpaceLancer.  (I assume that's the reason for my inclusion in the "additional debts" section.)  I'm glad somebody finally took that concept and ran with it.   Really looking forward to this.

[achtung]

http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.901

approved on fsmods

[est1895]

Will it run on the new FS-Open 3.7.0 RC2?

I assume that you mean FSPort 3.4?

[Lt.D]

It was mostly constructed using RC1, so RC2 should work as well.

FSPort 3.4, yes.

[Rodo]

Nice campaign man, had a blast playing it.

[Echelon9]

A really interesting idea executed with the command hub. Like it.

A word of advice is prior to release, always run your mod through with a Debug build. It will note a range of issues with tables, models and settings that aren't otherwise picked up in the more accommodative Release builds. For instance:

Code: [Select]

Warning: "$perform less checks for death screams" flag is deprecated in favor of "$perform fewer checks for death screams"
Warning: "$allow primary link delay" flag is deprecated in favor of "$allow primary link at mission start"
Warning: "$perform less checks for death screams" flag is deprecated in favor of "$perform fewer checks for death screams"
Warning: "$allow primary link delay" flag is deprecated in favor of "$allow primary link at mission start"
Warning: "$perform less checks for death screams" flag is deprecated in favor of "$perform fewer checks for death screams"
Warning: "$allow primary link delay" flag is deprecated in favor of "$allow primary link at mission start"
Warning: "$perform less checks for death screams" flag is deprecated in favor of "$perform fewer checks for death screams"
Warning: "$allow primary link delay" flag is deprecated in favor of "$allow primary link at mission start"
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Interceptor#Shivan"  in ship: SF Dragon." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Phoenix V#Shivan"  in ship: SF Basilisk." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Interceptor#Shivan"  in ship: SF Manticore." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "MX-50#Shivan"  in ship: SF Manticore." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "MX-50#Shivan"  in ship: SB Nephilim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Synaptic#Shivan"  in ship: SB Nephilim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Phoenix V#Shivan"  in ship: SB Nephilim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "MX-50#Shivan"  in ship: SB Nephilim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "MX-50#Shivan"  in ship: SB Seraphim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Synaptic#Shivan"  in ship: SB Seraphim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "Phoenix V#Shivan"  in ship: SB Seraphim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "Unable to find WEAPON_LIST_TYPE string "MX-50#Shivan"  in ship: SB Seraphim." at parselo.cpp:2719
WARNING: "main_hall_init() was passed a blank mainhall name, loading first available mainhall." at mainhallmenu.cpp:412
WARNING: "Couldn't open texture 'glow_blus_small4' referenced by model 'VasMCorvette.pof'" at modelread.cpp:1837
WARNING: "PVCv Khepri (VasMCorvette.pof) has a null moment of inertia!" at ship.cpp:4593
WARNING: "PVCv Khepri (VasMCorvette.pof) has a null moment of inertia!" at ship.cpp:4593
WARNING: "Invalid subobj_num or model_num in subsystem 'sensors' on ship type 'Comship'. Not linking into ship!  (This warning means that a subsystem was present in the table entry and not present in the model it should probably be removed from the table or added to the model.)" at ship.cpp:5304
WARNING: "Invalid subobj_num or model_num in subsystem 'communications' on ship type 'Comship'. Not linking into ship!  (This warning means that a subsystem was present in the table entry and not present in the model it should probably be removed from the table or added to the model.)" at ship.cpp:5304
WARNING: "Invalid subobj_num or model_num in subsystem 'weapons' on ship type 'Comship'. Not linking into ship!  (This warning means that a subsystem was present in the table entry and not present in the model it should probably be removed from the table or added to the model.)" at ship.cpp:5304
WARNING: "Invalid subobj_num or model_num in subsystem 'navigation' on ship type 'Comship'. Not linking into ship!  (This warning means that a subsystem was present in the table entry and not present in the model it should probably be removed from the table or added to the model.)" at ship.cpp:5304
WARNING: "Invalid subobj_num or model_num in subsystem 'engine' on ship type 'Comship'. Not linking into ship!  (This warning means that a subsystem was present in the table entry and not present in the model it should probably be removed from the table or added to the model.)" at ship.cpp:5304

[Lt.D]

Some of these are beyond my powers to fix (found some more model errors with Trashman's Vasudan corvette turrets just now). Others aren't going to go away (Ransom's Comship, which I forgot to credit him for officially, is an intangible model, so there's nowhere for subsystems to go).

Still a little confused over the FSPort weapons still being called up. I thought that would be overridden due to being in secondarylist in the mod.ini. I've got an override tbm that I can distribute to fix that.

I can fix up the mainhall thing as well - silly oversight. Might be able to edit the Fury AI table as well - assuming that's where those errors are from, though they didn't appear for me.