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Beyond the Red Line Demo Released!!
RedAssAg05
Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
We at Beyond the Red Line are pleased to announce the release of the Beyond the Red Line Demo!!
Visit the release thread Here:
[URL="http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3502"]Beyond the Red Line Demo Release[/URL]
SPOILER WARNING: The following readme and the game itself contain spoilers for Battlestar Galactica Season 2. If you have not seen the series as far as the the episode "Scar", you might want to avoid playing for the time being.
[spoiler]
We thought we were saved. A week after the Nuclear Holocaust our rag-tag fleet of civilian ships, led by the captain of the Scylla, wandered aimlessly through space. We were overcrowded, under-armed, low on fuel and nearly out of food. Our handful of battered Vipers were only minor nuisance to the daily Raider attacks and after a week, when the Base ship appeared, most of us were resigned to our fate.
But then, appearing like a savior from the Gods themselves, a lone battlestar pounded through the Cylons’ defenses. We cheered the arrival of Battlestar Pegasus; her crew had saved us. Or so we thought...
Scylla was first. We watched from the observation deck of the charter liner Requiem, as the Raptors docked with it. We caught a brief burst of wireless comms from Scylla, frantic and distorted, but the message was clear: get away. It was too late; when Pegasus' Raptors found Requiem a few minutes later, they brought nothing that gave us reason to praise the Gods. Mechanics arrived to claim Requiem's vital systems, and Colonial Marines--with guns drawn--claimed warm bodies. Death at the mechanical hands of the Cylons would have been better.
1.1 ABOUT THE DEMO
Drafted and pressed into service, your only hope of survival is to fall in line and train to join the ranks of the elite Viper pilots of Battlestar Pegasus. Get a taste of the action that awaits you in the upcoming main campaign with intense single- and multiplayer missions. Will you become one of Pegasus’ elite, or will you give your life in the vast, cold battleground of deep space?[/spoiler]
Game features:
• Powered by the revamped Freespace 2 engine
• Entirely stand-alone, Freespace 2 not required
• Accurately detailed high-resolution ship models
• High quality, originally engineered audio
• Authentic, original in-game soundtrack, in addition to pieces by Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs
• Original characters and voice acting
• A three mission single player campaign depicting never-before-seen events, interwoven with and true to the series’ storyline
• Head online and go head-to-head with your friends—and foes—in intense multiplayer missions including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and others
• Exciting Viper combat with authentic weaponry and flight controls
We have been hard at work and are very excited to finally bring the Beyond the Red Line experience to the public. If you've been waiting to go head to head in your Viper or Raider, now is your chance!!
Beyond the Red Line is a complete conversion modification of Freespace 2. It is free to the public. We the Beyond the Red Line team make no money or profit from this mod project in any way.
Visit the release thread Here:
[URL="http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3502"]Beyond the Red Line Demo Release[/URL]
SPOILER WARNING: The following readme and the game itself contain spoilers for Battlestar Galactica Season 2. If you have not seen the series as far as the the episode "Scar", you might want to avoid playing for the time being.
[spoiler]
We thought we were saved. A week after the Nuclear Holocaust our rag-tag fleet of civilian ships, led by the captain of the Scylla, wandered aimlessly through space. We were overcrowded, under-armed, low on fuel and nearly out of food. Our handful of battered Vipers were only minor nuisance to the daily Raider attacks and after a week, when the Base ship appeared, most of us were resigned to our fate.
But then, appearing like a savior from the Gods themselves, a lone battlestar pounded through the Cylons’ defenses. We cheered the arrival of Battlestar Pegasus; her crew had saved us. Or so we thought...
Scylla was first. We watched from the observation deck of the charter liner Requiem, as the Raptors docked with it. We caught a brief burst of wireless comms from Scylla, frantic and distorted, but the message was clear: get away. It was too late; when Pegasus' Raptors found Requiem a few minutes later, they brought nothing that gave us reason to praise the Gods. Mechanics arrived to claim Requiem's vital systems, and Colonial Marines--with guns drawn--claimed warm bodies. Death at the mechanical hands of the Cylons would have been better.
1.1 ABOUT THE DEMO
Drafted and pressed into service, your only hope of survival is to fall in line and train to join the ranks of the elite Viper pilots of Battlestar Pegasus. Get a taste of the action that awaits you in the upcoming main campaign with intense single- and multiplayer missions. Will you become one of Pegasus’ elite, or will you give your life in the vast, cold battleground of deep space?[/spoiler]
Game features:
• Powered by the revamped Freespace 2 engine
• Entirely stand-alone, Freespace 2 not required
• Accurately detailed high-resolution ship models
• High quality, originally engineered audio
• Authentic, original in-game soundtrack, in addition to pieces by Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs
• Original characters and voice acting
• A three mission single player campaign depicting never-before-seen events, interwoven with and true to the series’ storyline
• Head online and go head-to-head with your friends—and foes—in intense multiplayer missions including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and others
• Exciting Viper combat with authentic weaponry and flight controls
We have been hard at work and are very excited to finally bring the Beyond the Red Line experience to the public. If you've been waiting to go head to head in your Viper or Raider, now is your chance!!
Beyond the Red Line is a complete conversion modification of Freespace 2. It is free to the public. We the Beyond the Red Line team make no money or profit from this mod project in any way.
Comments
Now, if only I had my joystick with me. Oh, well, I'll be back home in a month.
Much thanks!
So here are my first impressions on the BtRL demo:
The (Windows) installation went smooth enough, with the exception of the known problem with getting an empty game folder in the start menu after the installation completes. That's easy enough to fix though. While you are in the default game folder "C:\Games\BtRL\Demo" to create the shortcut to "BeyondtheRedLine.exe" check out the file "RunMeFirst (Open AL 2006-12-12).exe", I had to run it once just to be able to get the game launch window where you configure your game settings, otherwise I got an error message. Make sure to select a resolution to at least 1024X768, otherwise the game won't run.
And that's all the technical glitches I encountered so far and I didn't even RTFM, but I did check out the thread on the BTRL forum.
On to the demo itself.
The interface is pure FS2 (just as I remember it, but I could be wrong) with some BSG touches (logos and icons). Nice work there.
You start your journey with a tutorial mission with your instructor who seems to be a Starbuck sound-alike and who does a nice job at letting you know all the "do's and don't's" (all inside-cockpit communications come with the familiar distortion so you'll feel quite at home). One part I succeeded without actually being able to do it was the strafing part, where you are supposed to fly in one direction and aim at another, but then I've been using my mouse as the main controller, which granted, is not the most intuitive way to steer a viper. Anyway, the 3D models of the vipers look nice too, as does the planet the tutorial takes place around. Nice texture work there.
One nitpick: the narrator voice (you know the one that comes with Windows) is used to read the text in various places of the game and while I wouldn't mind Stephen Hawking telling me about the history of space, this really seems like an easy way out of getting a voice actor to do this. It's not like there weren't enough people who applied for the job. Ok, so maybe I don't sound like Bill Adama, but then I don't look like him either. :D
Ok, so with this out of the way, there is also a Colonel Tigh sound-alike who does some briefing to the nugget who's about to embark on his first mission (that would be me). After that standard graphical briefing (which hasn't changed since we saw it in LucasArts' X-Wing videogame and which has me always just as clueless.) I'm back in the cockpit of my viper, now with a wingman, following Blue Wing, another pair of vipers (Mark VII in case you were wondering). As far as I understood the briefing I was supposed to follow Blue Wing along a set of waypoints, which I did, only to notice after a while that I was flying in circle around a large asteroid (also here, the visuals are very nice, very much like those seen in the episode "Scar") with small spinning rocks impacting it every so often. Anyway, by that time I was getting a bit restless, not so say upset, so I figured, since I don't know what the hell I'm doing I might as well experiment a little, so I fired a few shots at Blue One, and guess what, after a few salvoes (I think Blue One is a little deaf, but again, it's a Rag-Tag-Fleet.) Blue One told me to check my fire, so I did, and fired at her again, and again, and again, and again, until they all turned hostile, and then a nice dogfight ensued, which ended by me dispatching 3 vipers and figuring out what to do, follow the waypoints myself... (Yeah, I know, it wasn't really that hard to figure out, but I wasn't really paying attention, just enjoying the view.) After the fifth or so waypoing I finally encounter my first Cylon raider. Since I was all by myself and at 59% hull strength, I did a few spins around the raider just to get a feel for them, and I have to say, they are a lot more maneuvrable than the vipers and much harder to hit.
And that's when I aborted the mission to write this mini-review.
So, if you haven't tried the demo yet, go ahead, you won't regret it. It's a 380MB download. I played it on a laptop (Dell Precision M65) and it runs and sounds great. Your mileage may vary though as some people have encountered various technical glitches and difficulties. Check out their forum, the Chief is on duty and ready to help you should you require assistance. :D
I haven't tried the multiplayer aspect yet, so I won't be rating the demo at this point. All I can say is, it's a great demo, and well worth the price of admission. Now what are you waiting for? B5:ITF? Well this is as close as you are going to get today, so might as well get it now. :D
Pros: You are a frakking nugget in the Colonial Fleet!! Great sound and visuals, it's FS2, but with Cylons. Great voice acting in-flight and during most briefings.
Cons: Generic voice acting in some places (windows narrator), sloppy installation bug. :whip:
The one thing I wanted to address:
[quote]One nitpick: the narrator voice (you know the one that comes with Windows) is used to read the text in various places of the game and while I wouldn't mind Stephen Hawking telling me about the history of space, this really seems like an easy way out of getting a voice actor to do this. It's not like there weren't enough people who applied for the job. Ok, so maybe I don't sound like Bill Adama, but then I don't look like him either.[/quote]
Those parts 'narrated' by the Windows voice actually were never meant to be voiced. In the game launcher, if you go the Voice tab and deselect those options, Sam will be silent:)
Is it just me or does the music jump up and sound volumes go down when attacking Cylon raiders, just like in the series? I experimented with different settings, and found a no-sound, music & comm loud -setting oddly satisfying... :p And I have to say that although my SideWinder FF2 hasn't seen almost any action at all since Crimson Skies, I'm VERY glad I didn't sell the baby somewhere along the line. Any good flight stick with a hat comes in handy. The manoevrability of the Viper go up ten notches when you assign the lateral and vertical thrusters to the hat. It's like a third leg you never knew was there. Need just that extra oomph to avoid collision or position the Raider so that it has most visible surface to scorch on? No sweat.
The Glide-option is a nice touch but would work much better if FS2 supported physics better, like I-War or so. The Glide-thing has a bit of a cut & paste feel to it now, since popping it on and off comes with an immediate jerk in motion, but its presence altogether is commendable. If it was there in FS2, I sure as hell never noticed it. Nor the x & y -axis thrusters. If it was implemented to the game, it's a good attempt to bend an outdated engine. 'Gratz.
Also, the graphics look very nice considering it's a very outdated engine. The first thing that impressed me was the size and quality of the planet texture. Whoah. Secondly, I get very decent and playable framerates with all the bells and whistles on with an W2K, Athlon 2600+, GF 6600 GT and 1G RAM -system --which in some parts is already becoming an outdated system. Even for some heavier FS2 graphic updates. Looks nice and plays well. Great job.
Also, I think that Scar is just about the fastest enemy ship I've ever tried to tackle in any game before this one. Period. After a bit of trying I gave in and turned my joystick's deadzone to flat zero. Had much more potential after that. ^^
Also noted that you can run out of ammo, which can easily be forgotten in the original FS2 since all the weapons were pretty much replenishable energy. Eventually I had to lure Scar back with a pretty nifty asteroid surface - dodge the bullets -type of run back to my team in order to get him stuffed. I ran out on ammo meself'. Darn.
All in all, I've been disappointed with quite a few mods that promised a lot but didn't exactly deliver, and this one seems to be one of the few that really stand out on the positive side. I was in fact impressed, and that's quite a hard thing to achieve nowadays.
Go give the toasters a spin for their money. And grab a joystick on the way there if you don't already own one. Make sure it has a hat. ;)
I'm more than interested to see what the full campaign delivers. :)}:)
ETA: And, hours later...
After playing it (Yay!) I have a few... comments (boo!).
The game itself was superb. Got the feel right down, many of the sounds, and I enjoyed the trash-talking of my squadmates (though it took me a while to work out what exactly was happening and where everyone was).
There were a few technical issues, though. The center block of the dust-cloud background in the "Scar" levels looked like the transparency was inverted, and occasionally flickered to its correct form. The planet in the tutorial level had several blocks of it blacking out and returning as I pivoted around. When I had the detail settings cranked up (sorry, I'm not sure which one did it), a "ghost" asteroid appeared on the Scar levels. A bunch of twisted floaty asteroid-textured polygons, that moved with my ship, and rotated and disappeared as I turned. And, most weird, when I tried to adjust the gamma in the "options" menu, the entire screen got a blue tint that only went away when I closed and reopened the game. Also, audio-wise, the debriefings had a tendency to cut themselves off mid-word.
Aside from the technical issues, I enjoyed the demo tremendously. I'm looking forward to the end of the month, when I'm reunited with my joystick and throttle, so I can play it properly. As I once heard it said, playing a flight sim with a mouse (or trackball) feels like trying to fly to the moon riding a frisbee.
(Oh, and I have no idea how far you guys are with making the DRADIS icons for the briefings, but if you need any, you're more than welcome to [url=http://web.mac.com/david_of_mac/iWeb/3D%20Website/DRADIS%20Icons.html]poach mine.[/url] Just let me know if you do.)
Otherwise, I'm glad you've enjoyed it for the most part!
Thanks to your team for the great game. I'm letting all my friends that like BSG know about it.
And you are quite welcome; we enjoy the work (most of the time;)); thanks for telling your friends, I'm sure they'll love it too!
But the game [b]ROCKS[/b]. And looks great to this day. Nice nods towards Crimson Skies as well with the hollow asteroid. :D
There are a few nooks and crannies to sand down and polish, but this will be a genuine killer if (and hopefully) when the whole game is released at some point.
I've pretty much secured a job around here, and with that I'll probably be able to update my computer somewhere around Christmas... glad to see that I have something else to look forward to besides Bioshock.
All in all... These guys wrote the book on suspension of disbelief. :D If you haven't given this a go... do it. This isn't a typical mod by all means, it's better than most commercial stuff out there today.
I am the story writer for the project (I didn't write the demo campaign, but have been working on the main campaign since Early 05), and I've been thinking about doing a "developers' diary" series on the progression of the storyline development on our forums. Haven't decided if I'm gonna do it or not, but if you guys are interested I can post here as well.
Visually, this is awesome. I cannot express how :cool: this is! The interface, the ships, the maps, all fantastic. It really suits the FS2 engine.
There a few things I would like to see, but hey, this is a demo :).
Keep up the amazing work!
However, related to that point is my only real complaint: if you're going to have the pilots have a big long conversation at the start of the mission, have some time for the conversation to play most of the way through before you have to start doing stuff for the mission. In the 2nd mission, I found I sometimes missed dialogue because I was too busy Spoiler: trying to get to a rock on the other side of the ship in time without colliding with the ship, and so lost the flow of the conversation. In general, some warm up time at the start of every mission is good anyway, to allow the player to adjust to their surroundings a bit. Real pilots would get time to adjust from launch, not just dumped straight into it, so unless they're being launched into a cloud of cylons, the player needs to get a little time as well.
Also, have a chat to your coders. Sometimes spoken dialogue didn't appear in text form at the top, which is annoying if the sound of your guns drowned out what they said.