ApexMods Posted March 18, 2015 Author Share Posted March 18, 2015 Thanks, guys. Now, to be clear - just as before, the Heroes Unleashed campaign will still consist of the original Ghost Recon, Desert Siege, and Island Thunder campaigns rolled into one trilogy sequence and retaining the original mission objectives and briefings. What I plan to do is completely re-think and then re-script all of those campaign missions from scratch (literally starting with an empty script and map setup), with the main goal being to maximize realism and replayability. Among other things, I'm aiming for e.g. more plausible enemy presence and reaction, more random elements, less static scripted events, prolonged mission durations, etc. Additionally, I want to extend the number of campaign missions. Originally, there are 31 missions total - 15 for Ghost Recon, 8 for Desert Siege, and 8 for Island Thunder. If all goes according to plan (keeping my fingers crossed over here), there should be 40+ campaign missions total in the end (I'll actually try to push for 49), so you'll better take good care of your men, as the campaign will span almost 3 years of military conflict across 3 continents, with a plethora of chances for casualties on our side during the many hours of real-time action, and you should try your best to bring all of our boys (and girls!) home alive. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeealex Posted March 18, 2015 Share Posted March 18, 2015 sounds freaking awesome!!! please tell me there'll be recon and intel missions to fuel the future main mission? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted March 18, 2015 Share Posted March 18, 2015 Ambitious to the extreme, as always! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 Hehe, of course, Rocky. No harm in aiming high. Alex, you bring up a good point (as usual). I'll have to make a fundamental decision here: should I stick to the original mission briefings verbatim to be able to retain the professional voiceovers, or should I deviate from the text losing the voiceovers in the process? You see, the current briefings are somewhat of a limiting factor when it comes to inserting new recon or intel missions that directly relate to or fuel the originals. For example, "M02 - Eager Smoke" (the farm night CSAR of the pilot and WO) would be a very good candidate for a reconnaissance mission on the day map to precede it, but then the night mission briefing sounds like intel about the situation has just arrived ("Last night, the bad guys got lucky with a SAM and took out one of our F-18s.") from external sources ("Recon photos show the F-18 is still largely intact but heavily guarded"). While this may seem like a small and purely cosmetic matter, it also plays a huge role for realism and immersion, because as soon as the campaign's contextual coherence and credibility is diminished, realism and immersion levels may drop, too. Maybe I'm overestimating the impact of change due to being so used to the original mission sequence, but I definitely don't want to expand the campaigns in a way that may diminish their credibility and realistic feel. Anyhow, there'll be plenty of time to discuss this issue and think it through fully before the campaign scripting starts, because it looks like I'll be spending a considerable amount of time on the new equipment kits setup. Handling the amount of kits I had in mind turns out to be a far more complex matter than I had anticipated, to say the least. Nonetheless, I just love modding Ghost Recon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Now, before you start to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome and broken mouse buttons, you will not have to click through all those kits - I've found an easier way for in-game kit selection. Thank the lord! Thanks for the work mate, look forward to it! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeealex Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 (edited) okay, if it says 'last night' make the farm night the one that precedes it, and use farm day as the CSAR no? stupid idea? shut up Alex? you could photoshop out the F18 on the command map, and have the recon units actually search for any remnants of the aircraft and the SAM that took it down. I know most die hards will know where the jet is, but they won't know where the SAM is XD the new kit selection sounds intriguing... very curious I must admit i miss GR modding, it is much less stress inducing and ambiguous as ARMA Edited March 22, 2015 by Zeealex 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Maybe further ideas, on stone bell mission you could have an advanced recce team to track the armor position and movement/ETA on HQ. Just a thought. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 26, 2015 Author Share Posted March 26, 2015 Thanks for the input, folks. Very good suggestions from both of you, indeed. While I can't wait to start mission scripting and get the creative juices flowing, I always seem to find something that just "has to be done" beforehand, e.g. for the last couple of days - instead of doing the kit reorganizing thing like I had told myself to do - I got sidetracked (of course) and dove into map textures once again. Found another boatload of textures with wrong surface properties (which causes e.g. the wrong sound to be played when shooting them or stepping on them, as well as showing the wrong kind of bullet holes etc.) and another bunch with erroneous alpha settings (e.g. blending instead of testing or vice versa, causing all kinds of transparency/translucency issues). I'm pretty sure I still haven't fixed them all, but at least there will be a lot less texture attribute errors in the next version of Heroes Unleashed. So, with the map textures done, surely Apex started working on the equipment kits straight away, right? Wrong! Apex got sidetracked(!) to work on some UI elements, because he noticed they weren't perfect yet. Could someone please tell Apex to ###### concentrate and stick to the plan?!? Seriously, I really have to force myself to be more focussed on the stuff that matters most! I'm still wasting too much time on those "side quests" when I should really just get the update ready ASAP! I'll try to do better from now on. Yesterday I started systematic work on an equipment kit roster spreadsheet e.g. to find the gaps of missing weapons for the 8 different playable military units present in beta 9. Oops, guess I just slipped another bit of teaser info there. Did I mention that I love modding Ghost Recon? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted March 26, 2015 Share Posted March 26, 2015 Your not getting sidetracked, your just advancing in a different direction! Any hints or the such on how we'll be cycling through the kit/weapon list in a faster manner like you mentioned!? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 26, 2015 Author Share Posted March 26, 2015 I'm actually thinking of releasing the kit selection feature as part of a separate mod soon (to make it accessible to use without Heroes Unleashed), so forgive me if I don't want to spoil the surprise just yet. Only so much for now: It's not revolutionary, but gets the job done a lot quicker and with much less hassle than before, IMHO. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 29, 2015 Author Share Posted March 29, 2015 Of course, right after mentioning that separate mod (see above), I started "advancing in a different direction" once again. Thanks, Jeza! Putting that extra mod together is going to be a quite complicated task, now that so many aspects of Heroes Unleashed are interwoven and interdependent, so I'll probably postpone that project until after the new beta of GRHU is released. There. Much better. On the HU development front, things are moving along nicely now. The equipment kit roster starts to take shape, and so far there's just 37 needed weapons and equipment items still missing which I'll have to add before moving on to the creation of all the KITs and multiplayer KILs. To be honest, I somewhat dread that process, because it will involve handling those thousands upon thousands of possible equipment combinations, and of course I want every single kit to be realistic and useful, while the whole selection should offer a perfect mix of variety and authenticity. Not an easy task for someone with a tad of obsessive-compulsive disorder mixed with a bit of neurotic perfectionism. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Ok, so the default equipment roster for all 8 units nears completion (yay!), and there's yet 25 new weapons to go (ugh!). Still, I'm glad the standard kits are almost sorted out, and the gaps of missing equipment are not too numerous. BTW, once I've added those 25 remaining weapons, there'll be a grand total of over 400 different equipment items to choose from. Sounds good? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMoon Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 It just keeps getting bigger. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Hooray, no need for this anymore with loadouts! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Indeed, that won't be needed anymore. And talking about getting bigger... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted April 5, 2015 Author Share Posted April 5, 2015 Promises to be a productive weekend. Weapons import, adjustment, and integration almost done with just 8 guns to go. Still, I didn't think it would require this much time to put it all together again, and I basically have no idea how long the equipment kits setup for SP and MP is going to take, so I'll have to ask you all for yet more patience. Thinking back, I've been working on the Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed mod for about 13 years... better get a move on now. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 I'll let you have 13 more, but no more after that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted April 7, 2015 Author Share Posted April 7, 2015 Tough deadline, but I'll try! So, I finished those 8 remaining weapons. Time to get to the equipment kits, right? Wrong, again! Of course, I remembered that one sniper rifle that just has to be included, too. Then I remembered that one pistol, that's just essential to be in there, as well. Oh, and don't forget that one important SMG, and... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted April 10, 2015 Author Share Posted April 10, 2015 Turns out that getting sidetracked with those new weapons actually was a good thing for once, because it made me stumble over a major oversight with the current gun setup which I'll have to remedy pronto. On the flip side, this is extra work I hadn't planned for, so I guess there goes my weekend, again. However, this brings me to another important point. The new version of Heroes Unleashed will have a huge amount of new features, and it is completely changed "under the hood", because I basically rebuild the entire mod from scratch. As a consequence, I think it's more than likely that the new build will yet again have a couple of many brand new bugs. Although I will of course try my best to fix them all before release, some errors are probably bound to slip through, so I hope some of you folks will be kind enough to point out any shortcomings you'll encounter. I think I've mentioned this before, but just to make sure: The upcoming release is supposed to be the final beta version of Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed. If all goes according to plan for once (yeah, right), the next step after this update would be the full feature-complete (for now) 1.0.0 release in the hopefully not too distant future. I will need your feedback to get there. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 LOL, you are some guy!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delliejonut Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 If I may throw my two cents in about the briefings. You previously posed the question of whether or not you should scrap the old briefings and lose the voice acting or keep them and risk them not being relevant to the mission. My advice? Scrap them. If they are outdated and irrelevant to your missions you should make new ones. I would find your custom briefings much more immersive anyway, because I always read faster than the actor Been playing your mod for a long time, I can't wait for 1.0 to drop Thank you for all your hard work 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApexMods Posted April 12, 2015 Author Share Posted April 12, 2015 Welcome to the forums, Delliejonut! Thank you very much for dropping in and your kind words! Of course I very much appreciate your feedback about the briefings. I'm still kinda torn on the subject, but one thing's certain: if the original briefings turn out not to fit the reworked missions anymore, I'll definitely scrap them (the briefings, not the missions). Looks like it's still going to be a while until scripting starts again, though. Been taking the new weapons setup apart all weekend and found about a thousand things to fix and a million things to improve. Will this never end?!? Don't worry, though. I'll pull an all-nighter if I have to, but I WILL get those weapons fixed by Monday! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kothen Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 I'm always so excited when I see you post progress. Thank you for keeping us in the loop! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeza Posted April 23, 2015 Share Posted April 23, 2015 How we looking Apex mate? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeTwelve Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 I'd like to say what a fine job you've done ApexMods. This mod is fantastic and reading about the upgrades that you're working on makes me very excited. Thank you for your effort! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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