Aaand we're back... yet again!
The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.
General Status of the Project
Between just being busy with life, and my general predisposition of jumping into a project and not really finishing it, I can't really promise that this time around will see more consistent updates than the last time. The good news is that if you kind of thought this project is cool, but you're afraid of joining and flaking out - don't worry about it. As you can see I'm no better, and the half the reason for this project is to have a community activity for TheMotte's tinkerers and artists.
The biggest update is a change in the approach to writing / art direction. Originally I was hoping we'll get enough people to hop in, divide jobs according to our strengths, and manage the project by some dialogue / mindmeld / flat-hierarchy mechanism. Writing specifically not being one of my strengths, I figured I'd leave everything vague, so someone better can have more freedom. That didn't pan out, so it became obvious that I'll need to take charge here, but the other problem was - I really didn't know where I want to go with the story, or even more broadly with world-building. Then, the other day, when I was stuck on a flight with nothing better to do but to daydream, I was hit with a sudden bout of inspiration. Ever since I had that thought about all my favorite space operas boiling down to Americans talking about their place in the world, I thought someone should make a non-Western Star Trek. I even had some vague ideas for a Gulliver-Travelsesque "fly around the universe bumping into various civilizations that satirize current-era humanity" story, but I never put pen to paper, and it's not really the kind of thing that works well with a space shooter, so it was of no use here. I don't even remember how I made the connection, but somehow I thought about Attack On Titan, and how well they pulled off the feeling existential threat, and I figured that that's the missing piece - some good old fashioned existential horror wreaking havoc, and a scrappy pack survivors trying to make it through.
So here's the setting: Sometime in the far far future - no one even knows when anymore - humanity conquered the stars and colonized the galaxy. All was well until the aforementioned horrors showed up. No one knows what they are, and what their greater goals are - not least because nearly all historical records were lost to the apocalypse they brought - but they do seem to seek out sentient life and "consume" it, assuming it's shape and behaviors in the process, but never getting it quite right, leading an uncanny appearance, as if to mock their victims with their existence. The once-glorious empire of humanity was annihilated, all that remains are nomad fleets and deeply hidden colonies. Several generations passed since this apocalypse, and the survivors got quite good at surviving, either by deploying superior tactics, or by becoming expert at hiding. Their current situation is stable, but they must maintain iron discipline at all times, and any slip will likely result in tragedy.
...and then it struck me that a post-apocalyptic Eastern European (that's where I'm from, so that's what you're getting) Star Trek with incomprehensible horrors looming at every turn is, yet again, a mashup between Freespace and High Fleet. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
Updates
Not much to show off yet, but the whole Demo Scenario is getting revamped to reflect the changes in the setting. The current idea is as follows:
Someone did make a slip. A logistics taskforce flew right into the hornets' nest, and are now being pursued by the Incomprehensible Horrors. Captain Playername receives their distress call, and as the nearest ship, rushes in to help. Reinforcements are on the way, but will need time to assemble. The logistics guys can't jump to another system due to [McGuffin, or some clever Subspace jump mechanic I'm yet to come up with], so they opted to scatter throughout the system in an attempt to buy time and minimize casualties.
The player is in command of a mid-size carrier, and has to rescue as many friendlies as he can find, before the IH's get to them. Each successful rescue gives the player a new ship at their command (in case it's one of the escorts), and/or resources like bombs/specialized ammo (when it's one of the transports), but generates more aggro (which itself has trade-offs - more aggro on you means less on the relatively defenseless friendlies). All this culminates in an assault on the IH super-capital ship, that is the source of all this trouble. This will resemble an arcadey boss-fight, where fighters will need to take apart some critical components of the enemy ship, so the friendly capital ships can approach it safely and finish it.
I think a scenario like this will be more manageable. The previous one (where the player would have to hunt down pirates raiding freighters coming to/from a mining colony) would require a pretty complex AI, while here I'm planning to go with a pretty basic "chase the thing with the highest aggro" approach for the enemy.
Actual changes since last version
I started writing the map generator. Currently rescuable ships are spawned randomly throughout the system, and I'm now working on having the enemy spawn in their pursuit (far enough away from the friendlies to no immediately detect them, close enough that they'll get picked up by patrols sooner or later). I fixed a few bugs, but apparently introduced a whole bunch of new ones (random crash to desktop with a mysterious message, for example).
Now Hiring:
Slapper-in-chief
Do you have a sadistic streak? Did I get on your nerves while posting here, and now you really, really want to slap me? This is your opportunity!
If you're not up for joining in a creative capacity, one thing that I think would help me greatly, is someone to smack me if I start slacking around. The feedback I got from @netstack helped me a lot before, so like that guy that hired someone to slap him every time he opened Facebook, I figure that regular interactions where I report on what I did, what I'm planning to do, get screamed at for not meeting my deadlines, and get some feedback on what I accomplished would help me to stay focused.
The usual
Other than that I'll still need help from other creatives, including:
- developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code
- artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions) (@FCFromSSC, still interested / do you have more time nowadays?)
- writers: worldbuilding / lore, quests, characters
- testers: the way the any program works always makes sense to the developer, so feedback from people who aren't me is always appreciated. This is a pretty easy way to get involved, though it does require an initial investment of buying Freespace2, at least until we manage to turn it into a proper total conversion, and use only our content.
A small note for potential contributors:
Don't be afraid to ask questions however small, or silly you might find them. This is literally one of the primary functions this thread has. The Hard Light documentation is... there... but it's not great, and between that, the peculiarities of LUA, the FS2 scripting API, RocketLib, and other parts of FS2 modding, it really might not be obvious how to resolve issues you run into. I might not be able to answer all questions, but I've dabbled in all these things, so there's good chances I'll be able to help.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Freespace 2. Absolute best space sim ever. Freespace Open and Blue Planet circa 2010 were the best space mods ever and I honestly till now think it has the best capital ship effect gameplay.
I unfortunately cannot contribute any meaningful art, coding or other actual useful development asset to the project. However, I will highlight one key aspect of Freespace capital ship matchups that proved to be frustrating to early modders in capital ship balancing: TerSlash.
Capital ship beam weapons are the highlight of all Freespace capship engagements. The giant beams of destructive awesomeness that melted a fighter if it so much as glanced the hitbox of the massive instakill beam. The sight of hp% values dropping with a single volley... or nothing happening if you were using terran.
For whatever reason TerSlash and VSlash coded beam weapons have massive variable damage due to the miss variable never being calculated correctly, and that highly affects theoretical balance of any capital ship. The greens always were better performance, but I do think the devs thought the slash effect looked better in cap ship engagements.
I will take a look at the stack and see if anything jumps out, but it looks super fun! Looking forward to throwing AI fleets at each other for space destruction!
Fascinating, I played the game quite a bit, but never noticed that.
Depending on how well things go we might not even use the vanilla weapons, and just code our own. Plenty of other mods did that (Wings of Dawn shipped with multi-locking missiles and beams), and it the worst case fixing the Terran beam should be no more complicated than adjusting some tables / scripts.
It became super obvious whenever the medium terran capships (called corvettes for some insane reason defying ship classifications) did broadside engagements with each other during the first few NTF missions. The blocky GTCv corvettes all shot their green beams all over the place, barely glancing each other at times when head on. Only broadsides saw massive damage because the slashing beam sometimes travelled the length of the ship, whereas for headon engagements the TerSlash just grazed the bow of any ship. Super frustrating when seeing Shivans against Terran ships, since the Shivans usually had at least 2 fixed forward beams that pumped damage consistently.
I distinctly remember the TerSlash being a cause for me dying randomly during a few times when I tried to fly the useless Hercules II and snipe subsystems. Made no sense that I'd be nuked for no reason since I was away from the target, but I still got clipped.
Should be easy to code new variables, but the visual engine for the beam weapons remains the highlight. Maybe adjusting the anti fighter beams would yield good results; using the damage effect of a BGreen to show an oversized explosion even though the particle beam is a thin lance of pain.
God, Freespace is so damn good. I highly encourage mottezens to see this awesome clip.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=n47eKbMebMo&pp=ygUOZnJlZXNwYWNlIG9wZW4%3D
For something based off 20 year old (if not more) tech, it retains excellent particle effects and highlights. And the capship scales... so good. Fighting around a Hecate class in a nebula remains a standout experience. Irritating, but standout.
Not to mention the plot! Wing Commander got all the accolades (and even name-brand actors), but most of its story was melodrama. It never managed to convey the same sense of desperation as Freespace, of fighting a true all-out war for humanity's survival against impossible odds.
Chris Roberts wanted to act out his Star Wars Starfighter only fantasy so hard he blew all his money to get Luke Hamill as an actor for 15 minutes for bis now TEN YEAR OLD trailer for a game that still isn't released.
Freespace may be the only media that successfully gave the inanimate ships a weight of history and despair and affect that makes you care about the outcome of this hunk of metal. (Homeworld Cataclysm somewhat achieves this too)
I wrote a long dump on how the Psamtik and Colossus had emotional weight to their presence because of their direct intervention in the MCs journey, and the impact of their destructions in highlighting the stakes of the plot, but it got too rambly. Freespace simply managed to hit on the sauce, hitting a near perfect combination of progression, mechanics, player emotional investment and especially flair.
Freespace stands out because its capship fights had flair. No other space sim managed to recreate the sense of starships really smashing into each other, mainly because streams of pew pew lasers or waves of torpedoes don't look interesting compared to big honking beams slashing giant ships - and Freespace did hit it on getting the sense of scale.
Chris Roberts needs I M M E R S I O N to sell his Luke Skywalker self-insert dream, but Freespace made me feel I was actually blowing up a Death Star and not just some spiky macguffin.
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