[Nyctaeus]

I always wanted to have such thing. This is the place where all of the updates regarding our upcoming projects set withing SR setting will be congregated. Usually with some [I hope so] pretty pictures or walls of text? Well, we will see.

The first post of this development blog is also available on the Official Series Resurrecta Profile on ModDB.



I'm Nyx, right? My job is to keep things shiny :]. So I have several shiny things for you!

I'm happy to announce, that development of third campaign set within the setting of Series Resurrecta is being launched. Although we still work on improvements on Gehenna's Gate and The Spirit of Ptah, we also have modpack required for the third installment mostly assembled. Mobius begun freding of M01, and in the meantime I assemble some cosmetic things which are not critical but certainly nice to have :].

The title of the next campaign is classified, but so far I will refer to this project as: Srdp

I can officially reveal, that the next campaign will feature several, original factions. Some of them are canon, others are not. Some of them are terran, others are not. The first two I can reveal are: Adhara Coalition - one of major, terran blocks formed after the collapse of GTA. Player character is a pilot in service of Adharan Navy, onboard ACD Uhuru. The second faction is Regulus Syndicate. As a small reminder, both are canon to Freespace universe just like Luyten New Alliance and Antares Federation.

One of the staples of Series Resurrecta is large and fancy modpack, featuring several, new, carefully picked classes of starships. Srdp is no different in this regard, and as your local provider of polygons covered in shiny bitmaps, I feel obliged to not disappoint you :].

So let's start with Adhara Coalition assets:

As the Srdp is set during Reconstruction, we deliberately want to keep things consistent with FS1. Although various interstellar powers introduced some new ship classes, they are usually very few and restricted to easy to produce classes. Both AC and RS rely mostly on GW-era craft possibly with some retrofits. Adharan fleet is based mostly on Fenris, Orion and Leviathan, but they introduced their unique corvette - the ACCv Midgard. The Midgard was developed by Mirfak Fleet Yards as terran counterpart of Sobek project commenced by reformed Vasudan Empire. The GTA commissioned couple prototypes of this revolutionary vessel, right before it's eventual downfall and dissolution. Those vessels significantly contributed to the power of Adharan Coalition, providing exceptional subspace agility and due to shortage of capitalships, they also provide so direly needed housing for fighters to secure unstable borders of Coalition space. Including the Sigrun, the elite Adharan interceptor based on Valkyrie. The Sigrun was designed to hunt pirates, outlaws and HoL threatening the citizens and trade lines of the Coalition. The Sigrun overwhelm her enemies using exceptional primary firepower and power output of her next-generation engines.

But while the AC inherited large resources, industry and science facilities, they are dwarfed by their neighbour in fleet tonnage. Featuring immense fleet of 5 Orion-class destroyers and countless cruisers, the Regulus Syndicate is one of the major terran powers in the former GTA space. The Syndicate was mostly formed from former officers, crewmembers and soldiers of several GTA fleets, contributing lots of loyal hands to their cause and establishing their position as military power. The RS inherited 3 star systems desolated by Shivans during the Great War. Their economy is insufficient to support expansion or even provide enough resources to keep their large fleet in working condition. Additionally, they border even powerful Vasudan Empire. The life in RS-controlled space is hard, but Syndicate is proud nation with great dreams and ambitions. They introduced very few new technologies. One of them is their unique Proteus-class heavy fighter. Instead, they used to rely on loyal and well trained crew with years of experience. They use mostly the Great War-era craft with dedication, believing that simple, reliable and trusted weapons are all they require to ensure their superiority.

I hope you enjoy this little preview of what's coming :]. Let us know what you think!

[Ertanax]

*Hungry grabby hands*

[Mobius]

The time has come to show off the ACF Lino, the Adharan Coalition retrofitted and upgraded version of the aging GTF Apollo:

[ShadowsOfLight]

So, it's been a while since I've last engaged with this community. Life has changed a lot since I first started playing this game, and while I rarely have time to play it (or any PC games, really) these days, it still holds a place as one of my favourites of all time. And the creative freedom it allowed the community, both in terms of standard mod-ability and updates to the source code, are unparalleled in my mind. My interest in writing soundtrack music is largely due to this game; so when Mobius approached me a couple of weeks ago to use some of my newer music in this Mod, it was easy to say yes!

In the end, three of my newer tracks are being used in the newest Series Resurrecta release: Melancholy Revelation, Promise of Splendor and Uncharted Waters. The latter two were modified to fit the in-flight standard, the first is being used as a standalone track. These were all created in different contexts, as part of my learning journey over the last year, but the team believed they would be a good fit into the mod.

I was also asked if I could write one or two original tracks for the campaign, to suit a couple of specific situations where the team felt that existing tracks didn't quite cut it. Throughout the pandemic, I had been trying to improve my composition capabilities, and recently have been trying to refresh my virtual instruments… So I thought I would see what I could come up with in a few evenings' worth of work. I powered through what I could in my (ever-decreasing) free time, and came up with three new tracks: Resurfacing Mystery, Losing Our Stars, and Ruinous. They were meant to fit some new enemy factions revealed through the campaign, and specific situations / moods. Through this process, I also discovered that I have a much easier time writing a single track to split later, rather than work on Ambience/Battle/Arrival tracks separately.

All 6 of these tracks are currently posted to my SoundCloud account, all freely downloadable, on the following playlist: https://soundcloud.com/shadowsoflight/sets/series-resurrecta. Each individual track has a quick little blurb with more details, for those who are interested. Of course, the in-game Split/Tabled/OGG'd versions will come with the modpack... Along with the hard work done by the rest of the Series Resurrecta team, tracks by various other composers, and some of the amazing creative content that the HLP community has been generating for years.

I hope that many of you get a chance to enjoy these tracks, either within the game or outside of the game... Very early in the new year, we will be adding a second little one to the family, so I am expecting an extreme drop in musical productivity for at least 6 months.

In the meantime, I will see if I have anything else up my sleeve 

[Mobius]

[Brought to you with love by Mobius, Nomad and the rest of the SerRes Team]

New Year's Update
Hi there, we are wishing everybody a happy new year, and to brighten everyone’s mood, we have some good news to kick 2021 off with. We have been a little quiet on the ‘developer updates’ front recently, and the flow of screenshots has been a mere trickle. Some of you may have wondered “Is the project still being worked on - at all?”

We can gladly say now that the answer is a resounding “Yes, it most definitely IS still being worked on - a lot!” We haven’t shared many screenshots due to the eye candy being rather ‘spoilerish’, and we have simply been too busy modeling, FREDing, composing and writing to keep the dev blog up-to-date. Oops! Sorry about that. Hopefully, we can make this up to you all with the good news we are announcing today. We are proud to announce that progress has been going very smoothly, despite ‘the cough’, and notable milestones have been achieved in the past couple of weeks. So, what’s the latest with Series Resurrecta? Good question, but where do we start?  Starting at the beginning with the campaigns that have already been released seems like a good idea, so…

Gehenna's Gate and The Spirit of Ptah
Thanks to the great efforts of Nomad, our pet scribe, the writing overhaul project of Gehenna's Gate and The Spirit of Ptah is pretty much complete. The next release of SerRes will feature revamped versions of these campaigns, with enhanced eye-candy, improved writing, more tech room entries, checkpoints and much, much more… 

We can't wait to show them off with you all. We will let you all know when it comes out. Or keep a sharp eye out for the magic blue ‘Update Avail!’ box on Knossos.

Serendipity [Srdp]
A while ago we announced the development of Serendipity. We had to let the campaign simmer for a bit as we were putting the finishing touches to Gehenna’s Gate and The Spirit of Ptah, whilst also laying the foundations of the campaign that was to come after it. (We know, we know, ‘finish one campaign before starting work on the next’ and all that, but doing so is asking for way too much patience from our hyperactive little crew).

Since we went back to it properly work has developed apace. Not only has the campaign had a major facelift (i.e., eye candy!), it has now been completed and is ready for its dates with the playtesters and bug squishers. The following, non-spoilerish screenshots come straight from Srdp. We'd love to show you more but we really can't right now. Info regarding two of the main factions seen in Serendipity, as well as the main ships they use, can be seen here. FYI, the final versions will include even more content.









[REDACTED]
Serendipity won't come out alone, as we are continuing Shadows of the Great War's two-campaigns formula for our next release. We can't tell you any more right now, but details will follow soon(ish). Oh ok, one little tidbit, since you asked so nicely. While Serendipity goes deep into the Reconstruction Era, the other campaign will be far, far closer to the Great War timeline.

New Music
ShadowsOfLight has composed several new tracks for Series Resurrecta, many of which have already been released in a new album. These tracks will help generate the atmosphere we're looking to create for Serendipity in particular.

How to get in touch with us
Would you like to keep up-to-date with developments, see the latest content and contact the devs directly? If so, we would love to be contacted by you, so let’s make that happen. Here’s how:

If you're on Hard Light Productions, either as a registered member or as a ‘lurker’, visit the official Series Resurrecta board.
Discord also features a dedicated subchannel devoted to this project, under the tag #serres, and you can get in touch with us over there as well.
And finally, if you want to dive into the details concerning this project, the Series Resurrecta category on the FreeSpace Wiki features many articles, including walkthroughs and trivia. Just be aware that the Wiki contains heavy spoilers, so perhaps hold off visiting until after you have completed the campaigns, or if you are having real trouble beating a mission.

That’s all for now. We had best get back to it, those missions aren’t going to FRED themselves after all.

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This news article is also available on ModDB.

[Mobius]

Second SotGW Anniversary Update
Check out the calendar! Today is October 16th, 2022, which marks the second anniversary of the release of ‘Shadows of the Great War’. As we are making progress on the next release, named Entanglement or Entgm, we at the SerRes team thought it was a good time to share with the public the latest news and updates on the status of SR.

What’s around the corner?
The next SR campaign to be released will be Serendipity - or Srdp - set in 2342. Several screenshots of this campaign have been shared with the public. From these, you can see just how deep the setting ventures into the Reconstruction Era – the Era that followed the Great War of 2335.

The second Entanglement campaign has not been formally revealed - yet. That said, in channels such as our Discord server the abbreviation of its title has been made public: HesT. What “HesT” is short for will be revealed in the future. No further details can be shared yet, but as you can tell from a few of the pictures, this campaign will be centered on the almighty Hades, the Galactic Terran Intelligence Superdestroyer, meaning that it will take place sometime around 2335.

But that’s not all. As well as working on the two new campaigns, we have been busy improving Gehenna’s Gate and The Spirit of Ptah, the two campaigns released in 2020. The next SR update will include these enhancements as well, such as: plot additions, more ships, checkpoints and compatibility with upgraded graphics. These features should boost the gameplay experience of these two campaigns – so not only can you enjoy Serendipity, but you will also have a very good reason to go back and replay GehG and TSoP as well!

Music development
Now, an update from ShadowsOfLight, our fellow music artist!

As the primary composer on the Series Resurrecta team, I wanted to share a bit of a blog about my work on the team, which has been focused on the Serendipity campaign.

My additions to the soundtrack – most of the music, but not all – are quite a whirlwind journey that starts in December of 2020: Mobius, the project lead, messaged me on SoundCloud to ask if he could use one of my recently created tracks in the mod. This was right around the time I was doing a significant refresh of my virtual instrument toolkit, and looking for ways to practice working with my new additions. I happily gave permission to use the track (“Melancholy Revelation”), and asked if there was any other music I could help with. This is where the journey begins… (Note that some details are left out to remain spoiler-free.)

My first task was to write two standard FS mission-suites that had a bit of an exotic element to them – one of which was meant to sound heavy and desperate. The first of these, “Resurfacing Mystery”, went over quite well with the SR team, making use of a moon guitar to create a bit of an exotic vibe. The second, “Losing Our Stars”, while liked by the team, did not have the intensity desired; a tabla and eastern flute were used as exotic elements for this track. Thus, a third mission track was created: “Ruinous”, meant to musically crush the player under the weight of a terrible in-game situation. I think I pleasantly surprised the team with the depths of despair that this track took them to…

It felt good to get back into writing music for FS mods, and from this point there has been a relatively consistent rotation of FS-related composing in my life (both in and out of the SR space). This is a good balance to the more carefree, optimistic side of my usual personal projects…

There were several tracks that I wanted to make, which came without an explicit request from the team. In the spirit of Series Resurrecta, I decided to dig up one of my old mission suites – which was never publicly released – and give it a complete reimagining. This made it into the soundtrack as “Forging Through the Black”. It is a little bit different from the rest of the OST for this reason, with the battle section being driven with more of a rock/metal feel in the drums, bass and guitar. The briefings “Something Out There” and “Starset” were both created without a direct request from the team. I wrote Starset as a way to celebrate the release of the 0.0.7 internal candidate; it was an attempt to capture the feeling of James Bond in space, in the form of a trailer track, and ended up turning into a team favourite. The main menu track, “Into the Abyss”, was something that I wanted to add to ensure completeness to the Serendipity soundtrack – even though players don’t necessarily spend a lot of time in the main menu, I feel that it is important to remind them that this is not vanilla FS, and help set the tone of the mod. The somber mood is punctuated by a middle-eastern guitar called a saz, which also finds its way into a couple of the standalone tracks. Finally, one of the playtesters felt that the original briefing track selected for the first mission didn’t properly fit the mood of the mod, suggesting it would be better to have a briefing track that was anthemic without being peppy, and so “Might of Adhara” was born.

The final requests from the dev team were big ones, and resulted in some of the work I am most proud of on the OST: four standalone tracks that play at key moments in the campaign. The first of these ended up being “Wreckage of Serendipity”, something to keep the player company while they explore <REDACTED>. Meant to be relatively innocuous, not melancholy like much of the rest of the OST; this song sweeps through with some gentle arpeggiations and a steady processed beat. The second, “A Keeper Among the Ruins”, was to take the place of a well-loved track taken from another source, which plays during two of the saddest moments of Serendipity. The original selected track was too short, and I needed to replicate the mood as best as possible while creating something unique. Luckily, the combination of a choir, gentle synth arpeggiation, saz, cello and classic FS-esque synthesizer did the job.

At this time, I shouldn’t reveal the titles of the last two songs, as they contain some spoilers. They were created for epilogue scenes at the end of the game; two possible endings with two different contexts. The first continues with a slightly “exotic” theme, using the saz to drive the main melody - a bit of inspiration for this song was taken from the most ancient song known to our modern world, the Hymn to Nikkal, which dates back to 1200 BCE. The second epilogue track required something that was both unique to Serendipity, and unique to the FreeSpace soundscape in general; it has a folky, celtic feel to achieve this uniqueness. The unique elements are layered on top of the familiar vintage synth beds and cinematic chord progressions, which I’m hoping will result in a fresh, epic track that still feels like it fits in the FreeSpace universe. I couldn’t think of a better way to end the soundtrack than this particular song.

It has been an absolute blast to write the OST for Serendipity. The SR team has been extremely supportive of my work, and puts a lot of their own passion into these campaigns. I am excited for the community to see how it all comes together, and excited to once again share a little bit of FreeSpace into my wider group of fans. The feedback, suggestions and prompts given by the team - especially Nyctaeus and Mobius - have helped push me to make some killer tracks.

Long live <REDACTED>!

Screenshots by team member Colt

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This news article is also available on ModDB.

[Mobius]

I would like to inform everyone that we're currently in the process of making infrastructural changes to the next release, in the form of bug fixes, minor improvements, and so on. I don't feel like setting a deadline or anything like that, but the pace is extremely encouraging and we really hope to deliver soon. 

As a reminder, the next release will feature the following:

- The core modpack of Entanglement, which includes entire new factions and many ships that were not present in Shadows of the Great War;
- The first of the two planned Entanglement campaigns, Serendipity, which is a Reconstruction Era story set in 2342;
- Upgrades and improvements of Gehenna's Gate and The Spirit of Ptah, which include much needed checkpoints;

[Mobius]

The SR Team is proud to announce that the final testing phase of the next release has officially begun! Though we can't quite claim to be "there" yet, as some infrastructural changes to the modpack are still in progress, we can reasonably announce that the next release is now closer than ever.

Just as a reminder for those who didn't keep up with the latest news, the next release will feature a new campaign set in 2342, Serendipity, plus a significant upgrade of both Gehenna's Gate and The Spirit of Ptah.