[Admiral Nelson]

Sync

Sync - the Sync drive hurls you and your friends into unexplored space and past the edge of sanity. Loosely and eerily related to Transcend, Ransom Arceihn's debut is in it for the story, with gameplay taking amicable but sometimes stilted second fiddle. The slow psychological degradation of your wingmates and companions reflects Ransom's preoccupation with the deprivation and isolation of space travel, the horrors that echo in a space more vast than the human mind.

This new version of Sync has been cleaned up and debugged for use with the latest builds and Media VPs. Additionally, nameplates have been added throughout the campaign.

1) INSTALLATION

* Extract all contents of the zip file to your Freespace folder.
* Select the mod "Sync" via your FSOpen mod launcher.
NOTE: This release requires that you have installed the MediaVPs 2014.  There should thus be folders named the following in your Freespace2 directory:
MediaVPs_2014

2) CREDITS

Ransom Arceihn - Original concept and campaign
Admiral Nelson - Patch to version 1.1 as documented below
FrikgFeek - Testing

3) FIXES IN 1.1

Nameplates added for ships which support these
Ensure proper functioning with MediaVPs 2014
The high(er) poly Hedetet replaces the ancient low poly model
Minor FRED bugfixes
Spelling fixes
Dialogue fixes pertaining to ship names
Player orders that could break missions removed
Certain missions made more tolerant of unexpected player behavior

4) DOWNLOAD

Mediafire

[perihelion]

Man, where is a "mod parent up" feature when you need one!

You are beautiful human being, Admiral!!
 

[Cobra]

Man, I really want to get this voice-acted.

Hmm.

[HLD_Prophecy]

Man, I really want to get this voice-acted.

Hmm.

You know, a buddy of mine suggested that to me a while back, but we both realized that, honestly, it's not likely to work.

Like Vassago's Dirge, anything less than inhumanly awesome voice acting would fail to do it justice. You'd need someone who could get into the role of a desperate individual, ripped out of his normal life, thrown into a cosmic horror story, deprived of sleep and in the cockpit for weeks (months? years technically speaking ) and trying to retain some shreds of sanity.

And such voice actors don't come cheap, especially what with 30-40 missions needing voicework.

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

I dunno. I think I could manage that kind of emotion. Maybe I'll take a crack at a couple spots some time just to see if I can match the tone of the campaign with some voice acting. Also, have you heard the voice acting for Blue Planet or Derelict? Awesome stuff, and all, last I checked, volunteer work.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Awesome stuff, and all, last I checked, volunteer work.

Battuta had to pay people for some major BP roles (e.g. Simms, simply due to the sheer number of lines).

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

I had no idea. Wow.

[Cobra]

Also, have you heard the voice acting for Blue Planet or Derelict? Awesome stuff, and all, last I checked, volunteer work.

Still took Blaise a while to get all of Derelict acted, and a bunch of people weren't even members of HLP... though I think all of us, myself included, did fairly well despite being total amateurs.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, we did all right for being a bunch of random members trying their best, but certainly nowhere near the nigh-professional level that the likes of BP and ST:R have managed.  I know there was an attempt at doing Transcend ages ago, and I even got a script for it, but as far as I know no one really wound up submitting anything substantial.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Yay!

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Bit late to the party, but:  thanks a lot for this one! I really enjoyed playing this golden classic with all the latest goodies. Keep up the good work!

Here's hoping for Transcend next

[Admiral Nelson]

Y'know I did a bunch with Transcend, but I replaced some of its old models with newer, higher quality models.  I then remembered that the last mission had the video gameplay sequence which now did not match the new models. 

I suppose I'll come back to it later, but right now I have a different project in the works....

[Iain Baker]

Hi there!

I tried booting up Sync via Knossos, but the following error appeared, as in the image below.

It worked fine before when using WXLauncher.

Any idea what I need to do to fix this?

Cheers :-)

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]

[FrikgFeek]

You're using FSO 3.8.0 with the latest MediaVPs which require a recent nightly build.

[Iain Baker]

Doh!

That fixed it, that and almost all the other mods that were having errors 

Thank you.

[MrxPL]

Hi, I cannot play this with Media VPs, any of them. I'm using wxLauncher downloaded with FSO installer. Sync was also downloaded with it. When I activate Sync I cannot activate any of the media VPs packages...

[ngld]

You can only have one mod active at a time. However, that mod might need other mods to work (the 2014/3.7.2 MediaVPs in this case). If you have a MediaVPs_2014 folder in your FS2 directory, Sync should work as expected and automatically use the updated models, etc. from the MediaVPs.

[MrxPL]

Well I downloaded all possible mediaVPs packages that were offered in FSO downloader and still nothing but I managed to overcome this problem by downloading Knossos

[Ferret]

Been trying to replay Sync today and have run into a couple of issues. I assumed they were related to changes that had been made in more recent FSO versions but I was even more confused when I noticed the `mod.json` file for Sync had been update to require FSO >= 23.0.0.

Here's the couple of issues I came across:

In SyncE2M7 "...Is To Invite Destruction" the freighter Qetesh is supposed to start zooming away towards the node at some point but doesn't move at all, causing the mission to lock-up. I had to skip it.

In SyncE2M8 "Lost Souls" there are a few ships that are supposed to disappear, but they don't. They stick around but are untargetable, making some of the dialogue pretty hilarious. I suspect this happened in another mission if the same method of removal is being used, but I don't remember specifically which one.

I managed to play through the rest of the campaign without issues beyond these. Wouldn't have reported them if the min-FSO version hadn't been pinned to 23.

This was using FSO 23.1.0-20230423.

[Admiral Nelson]

Hi Ferret,
Thanks for the report.  You should really only be using nightlies when you want to test out some new feature that they add, and not for playthroughs of campaigns that don't have any of those new features.  I tried the two missions you mentioned without incident on 23.0.0.

It is now pinned to use the current FSO since it also is using the current mediavps.