[CT27]

You said that in Act 3 there would have been multiple endings (like there was in the first two Acts); could we at least find out what those would have been (if you don't do a general plot dump)?

[Voelkel]

You said that in Act 3 there would have been multiple endings (like there was in the first two Acts); could we at least find out what those would have been (if you don't do a general plot dump)?

Certainly:

Spoiler:

Three endings were planned:
1) Humanity gets reunited with whatever's left of Earth forces, the Vasudan Empire gets severely weakened, the GTVA falls apart.
2) The Terrans remain permanently isolated from Earth forces, the GTVA however, becomes stronger than ever.
3) The Shivans vipe out the human and Vasudan races.

[slayer tier]

hi, is it possible for you to make the MV_CB_ANI_1 MV_CB_ANI_2 MV_CB_ANI_3 MV_Cutscenes_1 MV_Cutscenes_2 not compulsory installs?

[Voelkel]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

As I mentioned previously, I no longer have the capacity to develop Reunion for a while and the situation will likely not change for a few years down the line.

The good news is that Iain Baker has volunteered to continue the project in my absence, so the development of Reunion will continue with his supervision.

Iain has been extremely valuable in the testing and bug-fixing of both Act 1 and Act 2; his ideas and feedback have helped this project move forward in the past many times already. He has FRED-ding skills that in many ways surpass my own and is altogether a very experienced member of this community.

I thank Iain for carrying on the torch of Reunion and I thank the community for being with me during the journey that has been the development of Act 1 and 2 of this project.

[Iain Baker]

Thank you, Voelkel, you are too kind.

I should point out that my FRED-ing skills are actually pretty much non-existent at the moment, so I will either have to assemble a team to help me with it, or learn it all from scratch. Can this old dog learn new tricks? I guess we will find out. 

An update to acts one and two may come out in a month or two, as I have already made several minor balance and gameplay changes based on simple table edits, and Voelkel has a partial update ready that can be incorporated too.

I'm also working on the text and dialogue to fix any grammar and spelling errors I find, fixing typos and the like.

I have also added TTS (Text To Speech) support for act one so that it matches act two. It will be included in act three as standard (unless it is voice-acted of course.)

Tech room text etc. will also be created where needed.


Act three, and any more substantive changes to acts one and two, will be a job for 2023 since I have several books I need to get into a publishable state first. That and, you know... learn how to FRED 

I'll publish my ideas for the future and a rough development roadmap in a week or two. If, after they have seen that, anyone would like to get involved to help make those aspirations a reality, then the more the merrier. I'll set up a Reunion Dev discord and the like to help keep things organised and all the team members connected :-)

I’m planning on being realistic, and I’ll scale what I attempt to do with it based on how well my FRED-learning goes and/or the size and skill set of the hypothetical team that grows around it. The design doc and roadmap will reflect this. Too many multi-act campaigns have been left unfinished on cliffhangers due to well-intentioned ambitions outstripping resources, so it would be good to bring Reunion to a satisfactory conclusion. 😊 (That and show Valve that we can count to three  ) 

[Marguel]

That's great news!!!
That's no small effort you're undertaking, and congratulations are in order!
Looking forward to act 3, whenever it may come.
I've been experimenting with FRED, and have my own project to work on...if I sharpen my skills and get a little time, expect my message offering assistance!

[Iain Baker]

Thank you, much appreciated. 

[CT27]

I'm glad to hear there's still a chance for Act 3.

A question for Voelkel about the plot of Act 2:

A little bit after the protagonists reunited with the GTVA main forces, it was alluded to that:

Spoiler:

The main characters from Act 1 died.  I believe it was said they died when they stayed behind to fight the Shivans that emerged from the opening of Olympus.

My question based on that would be:

Spoiler:

  Would they really have stayed behind at Olympus when the call to retreat was given?  None of them seemed super gung-ho about dying in a blaze of glory.

[Voelkel]

I'm glad to hear there's still a chance for Act 3.

A question for Voelkel about the plot of Act 2:

A little bit after the protagonists reunited with the GTVA main forces, it was alluded to that:

Spoiler:

The main characters from Act 1 died.  I believe it was said they died when they stayed behind to fight the Shivans that emerged from the opening of Olympus.

My question based on that would be:

Spoiler:

  Would they really have stayed behind at Olympus when the call to retreat was given?  None of them seemed super gung-ho about dying in a blaze of glory.

Yes, indeed, however, it can be explained:

Spoiler:

Even if you chose to depart in the face of the Shivan invasion, the Formidable jumped out much earlier. So Alpha wing went MIA in the face of the chaos that unsued in Delta Serpentis after the arrival of the invasion.

Regardless, I was planning to make Simmons and his wing show up in SOC in Act 3, if they survived Act 1. I guess now it depends on how Iain and his team decide to work this one out

[Iain Baker]

Hi all! If anyone is interested, here are my plans for Reunion, including roadmap, progress report, change log thingy. I'll set up a Discord for it on Monday 🙂 If anyone would like to join the Reunion team (current memembers - er, me and Voelkel - who is too busy with IRL stuff to do much for the forseable) message me on here or join the Discord once I have it set up - the more merrier :-)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bmus84XyWgeNKxUhjIVIpjgF-AE4LKLX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101417727212119794448&rtpof=true&sd=true
Google Docs

[Iain Baker]

Hi everyone: If anyone would like to join me in bringing Reunion 2.0 to life please join the Reunion 2.0 Development Discord server - DM me for the link :-)

Punch and pie ;-)

[Iain Baker]

Updated to-do list and project ideas for anyone interested  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bmus84XyWgeNKxUhjIVIpjgF-AE4LKLX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101417727212119794448&rtpof=true&sd=true

[Shivan Hunter]

 

Finally got around to playing this! Overall a really enjoyable campaign, with a perfectly satisfying about of beamz.

Spoiler:

I loved the first few missions, which absolutely nailed the desolate and uncertain atmosphere out in uncharted space. I'm pretty sure we killed fleeing civilians in that mission with the jump node - would have liked to see that revisited in dialogue, with another character having an "Oh ****" moment (Maybe I missed it?) Otherwise, the reintroduction of the Shivans was spot on. Also liked the Tex/Korhonen subplot woven in amongst the mission dialogue.

I also enjoyed the twist when Zach goes ape**** on you - it seemed like it was building up to a "Make your wingmen play nice" subplot that's in so many campaigns like Blaise Russell's, only to be tragically cut short (but in a realistic way, not a "subverting tropes for the hell of it" way)

The Shivan slog in the middle was probably the low point of the campaign IMO. It felt a bit paradoxical: the missions didn't make the Shivans feel terrifying the way they "should" be (they have an astonishingly small force compared to the GTVA, and we kill the Sath pretty much immediately), and yet the gameplay itself can be quite frustrating.

I ended up modding the Kvasir (or whatever you renamed it to) to carry TAGs for that TAG mission, because FUUUCK doing that mission in a ship that can't reach 200m/s. I also was ready to fail the Sath mission until Korhonen berated me for not doing exactly what I had in fact done and bringing all bombers etc etc so I www.freespace2.com'd my way through that mission. (The follow-up mission basically plays itself and the Aquitaine shows up (yay!) and tbh I think that's the right decision gameplay-wise)

Loved the way the politicking played out during/after the jumpgate mission (I played all three scenarios - I tentatively consider the ending where you fail and bug out and meet up with the SOC to be the "best" ending, but of course I have no idea what you have/had planned for the sequel!) It all felt like the natural conclusion of each faction's motivations, rather than being forced for the sake of plot.

I'll echo someone else's critique that the Zod ending seems almost cartoonishly evil, to the point that I was rolling my eyes at some of the dialogue. I like the idea that being loyal to the system and to keeping the peace turns out to be the "worst" ending, and I *do* get that they're a paranoid anti-Terran cult (as explained - though possibly with their own biases - in the SOC ending) but it could have been far less on-the-nose about it. Miller's intermal monologue seemed especially out of character there.

Though, I DO like that no ending gives you all the information. Each ending gives you context about what's really going on in the others. (Seriously peeps just play all three from the tech room, they're just single missions)

BUGS that I can remember atm:

• Numerous issues with fighter dockpoint paths, support ships taking a million years hovering around the farthest path vertex before moving in to rearm me. I've fixed dockpoints like that before (don't remember exactly what I did) so I might take a look at them and upload some fixed pofs. Definitely affected the Chiron and that big INF bomber, possibly others too.
• Also, this happened on both the Qeb and the ship you're disabling in the Zod epilogue - some (subsystem? subobject? idk) gets destroyed, and then weapons stop colliding with the ship entirely. It only sometimes happens. I think it happened when the Qeb's armor subobject got destroyed. Dunno any other details than that.
• Also in my dockpoint testing I noticed that in the Sath mission, Alpha 2 and 3 are in the wrong positions (2 to A1's right and 3 to A1's left), so they crash into each other trying to right themselves lololol
• Oh and also, the not-Kvasir has 3 gun banks defined but it only has 2 "real" gun banks in the POF
  
• Another random nitpick that I modded - the Chiron's top speed is 65, Oclk speed is only 70, but it burns up to 180, which just seems... really weird. Idk if it was like this in Act 1 and I just missed/forgot it. Anyway I ended up changing its Oclk speed to 100 in a tbm and it felt a lot more natural when fiddling with ETS. Just a thought

[Edit2ElectricBoolgaloo]

Here's the models with fixed dockpoints for the Chiron, Sleipnir, Gryphon, and Ymir. I tested all the new ships available in the Sath mission so I may not have gotten everything, but the other new ships in that mission seemed fine. Docking procedure (support ship called in right at mission start) cut down by about 14 seconds in each case (which is an eternity when you've got Shivans shoving missiles up your butt)

In general, based on my cursory testing (and observation of the ones that work), a fighter dockpoint path should look like this: Vertex 1 (the outermost one) about 100m away from the dockpoint, with huge radius (~1000); Vertex 2 about halfway between vertex 1 and the dockpoint, with a radius of 60-70ish so it encompasses Vertex 1, but doesn't extend out by a lot; Vertex 3, only about 10m above the dockpoint with a radius of about 10m; and Vertex 4, at the dockpoint, with a very small radius. There are some very different dockpoint path setups out there and they seem to work less well. You can vary vertex 1's distance if you want it faster, or want to be really sure the support ship can avoid bumping into you if coming up from below; >100m will make it take longer and <100m can make it a bit faster to dock.

[Iain Baker]

Hi all!

I stopping by to give everyone a quick progress update. Herkie and I are hard at work fixing up Reunion, so please send through any suggestions you may have.

Here is a quick run-through of what we are and what we are not doing.

I'll start with what we are not doing:
•   We are not creating the third act. Reunion is still Voelkel's campaign, and he clearly had a plan for where act three was going story-wise, but he didn't tell us what it was. This will be for him to do if/when he comes back. (With our help of course, if he wants it.)

•   We are not radically changing anything story-wise for Acts One and Two for the same reasons. Again, if Voelkel wants to make such changes, we can help him if he wishes it.

What we are doing
•   Adding TTS to act one to match act two

•   Fixing grammar and spelling mistakes

•   Fixing the bugged models, dock points etc.

•   Fixing and rebalancing bugged and unbalanced weapons. For example, the missiles from the Njord missile cruiser have been doubled in power but have had their RoF halved – no more being tied up in frustrating missile spam.

•   Adding shield icons to the ships that were missing them or using the wrong ones (no more generic shield doughnuts of Doom 😊)

•   Fixing / replacing bugged skyboxes

•   Extra eye and ear candy

•   Adding optional GXYZ movement for the player's craft

•   Adding optional GXYZ movement for enemy crafts (They will be far more interesting to fight now)

•   Adding optional and configurable auto-aim for those who want it

•   HD Radar Icons – Generic as an optional dependency

•   Better radar icons


•   Some minor (and possibly not so minor) mission alterations to improve balance, fill up 'downtime', make them more interesting etc.

•   We may overhaul capital ships blob turrets too so they don’t suck and are actually a threat too, so long as this doesn't horribly unbalance everything.


ETA for all this - sometime this year. I can't be more specific than that since I'm tied up in so many other projects. So it's a case of 'it gets done when it gets done.' We will try out best to make it worth the wait. :-)

[Shivan Hunter]

Awesome!

[Iain Baker]

Hi everyone, I hope you are all getting ready from Crimbo and not waiting to the last minute. Not that I would ever do that, not me, no

Ok, progress update. Due to Herkie's tragic demise work on this was on hiatus whilst I was doing other FS stuff, getting my book ready for release, life stuff etc etc. but now those are done I'll get back to this in the new year.

The first thing I will need to do will be fixing the errors that it has suddenly started throwing up - I don't think it likes FSO 23 and / or the new MVPs. I may need some help with that since this will be my first time having to do that. If there is a tutorial or wiki page I should be looking at, please let me know.

Next will be fixing the spellings and gramma, which I can definitely do on my own, and then the missions, which I should be ok doing on my own (hopefully.)

If you have any suggestions for gameplay improvements please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I know someone mentioned it was kinda odd that the Chiron had the same normal speed as a Perseus, but had a full afterburner speed of 180MPS. This is a fair point, but some of the missions involve having to travel some considerable distance in FS terms, and slowing it down would make traversing such distances even more of a chore, and would probably bork mission balance since everyone would be dead by the time you got there, especially on higher difficulties. So I probably can't do much about that without radically altering said missions, which I'm not planning on doing.

I also recall someone saying the Subach Alpha was a little overpowered, which is also a fair point. This I can do something about. I have just created an Excel spreadsheet which auto-calculates the DPS, RoF, range etc etc of the various primaries for this very purpose. Expect a far more balanced line up of primary weapons with the next release.

If anyone wants to join the project send me a DM on here or Discord, I would definitely welcome the help - especially from people who are more experienced at FS modding than I am. (Which, to be fair, is probably most people on HLP - I'm still a padawan. Oh, wait, wrong franchise )

That's all for now, so if I don't hear from you in the meantime, Merry Chrismas, Happy Hanukkah and the bestofius to the restofus 

[CT27]

Based on what Voelkel said would have happened in one of the three endings in pt.3...

Spoiler:

maybe the GTVA would deserve to fall apart if the GTVA Vasudans were going to commit acts of war against GTVA Terrans like that