Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Discussion, progress updates, and downloads for the Dark Times and Rising Son mods.

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Maveritchell
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Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Maveritchell »

From the onset, Dark Times has been about giving the single player lots of variety. The "random" aspects of the mod - designed to stretch the replayability of individual maps in the absence of multiplayer. Wave modes - single player challenges at heart (despite some concessions to MP, like Kamino and Hoth).

One big thing I knew I wanted to do if I did a second version of the mod was include a real single-player campaign. I had some fun ideas for implementing it, and I knew that if I had a solid base of maps to work with, I'd be able to make a decent-length set of missions that would serve the singleplayer experience very well.

"Dark Times: The Rising Son" is no more and no less than a full Rebel Alliance campaign, stretching from after the Battle of Yavin to the end of Return of the Jedi. It has sixteen missions, although only ten of them are required to finish the campaign. Why is this? The campaign uses the Galactic Conquest interface, so that I could do a planned campaign with smaller branching paths. The advantages of the GC interface also include the ability to "customize" your campaign missions with purchases and bonuses.

The campaign looks like this:
Image

The player starts at Yavin IV and proceeds through the missions to Endor. They are all land battles, and while they do use "turns," only the player himself gets turns. You can see that at three different points in the campaign, the player is given the option to move out onto shorter campaign "branches."

Each mission offers a reward for beating it (just like normal GC). The credits you receive for beating each campaign mission can be applied towards bonuses, just like a normal GC (although you will notice only the pertinent bonuses can be used - energy boost, increased ammo, health regen, and enhanced blasters):
Hidden/Spoiler:
Image
More important and probably ultimately more useful are the unit bonuses you can buy. This is a little different from a normal galactic conquest. All your basic units are already "unlocked" and available for each campaign mission. However, each of the Alliance hero support units can be purchased as a separate unlockable. Not every hero support unit will show up in every mission, but each mission (with the exception of the first) has three hero support units available to it. If you've purchased one of those hero support units, they will be able to be used in that mission. You can see how investing in these powerful units can be a great asset! It may also make each individual objective easier, too - for example, on Fest you have to take down AT-PT walkers. While you can do this with a standard heavy unit, if you have the "technician" hero support available, this will be a much easier objective.
Hidden/Spoiler:
Image
To be perfectly honest with you, I started to take some individual pictures of each of the campaigns, but there are a lot of them and my fingers were tired. You've seen all of the maps these campaigns take place on (each DT2 land map is featured as well as three stock maps), so there is very little "new" to see. Here are a couple pictures that are completely non-representative. :P
Hidden/Spoiler:
Image
Image
Each campaign is similar in length (maybe a little shorter, sometimes a little longer) to a stock campaign. It had always bothered me just a little that the stock campaign missions cut off at Hoth, since the story obviously doesn't end there. No longer! Now there's a full-length GCW campaign. I had lots of fun making it, and I know it's lots of fun to play!
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Eggman »

Very cool. I've considered using the Galactic Conquest interface for a campaign mode, but haven't actually tried it since I haven't had any need to do so. This covers pretty much everything I've wanted to see in Battlefront lately: a full length, semi-dynamic, Rebel Alliance-centered GCW campaign! :thumbs:
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by kinetosimpetus »

This is an awesome update, Mav. :thumbs:
Looking forward to playing it.
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by EraOfDesann »

You continue to push the envelope. Can't wait to try it. :D
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Nihillo »

Sounds awesome, although I will be honest and say I wish there was an Imperial Campaign too (but I guess I could just go play the stock campaign). Keep up the great work! :)
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Twilight_Warrior »

You win. The stock campaign always bugged me, too, since there was only one. BFI had a story for each faction. Granted, they were all the same (planet to planet conquest), and there wasn't much "story" at all, but at least it followed the saga in its entirety.

Congrats on making BFII campaign complete :thumbs: .
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by AQT »

Now that is just fantastic! This Campaign in itself is something to look forward to let alone all the goodness DT2 already has to offer. That looks like hours of fun and replayability right there. :D

P.S. I love those closed bunker doors on Endor!
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Sky_216 »

Now that's just plain cool.
Also I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of using space lanes as a way to do branched paths campaigns. Very simple, effective solution.
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by DarthD.U.C.K. »

i dont think there much to say, the awesomeness of this is completely obvious to everyone :faint:
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Nova Hawk »

This will be the best mod ever produced for battlefront. You always do superb work. :thumbs: 8)
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by lucasfart »

So are the optional missions marked with an a or b, and is this totally done or are you in the middle of the missions? This looks amazing Mav, and will definitely add to the playing length of DT2.
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Maveritchell »

lucasfart wrote:So are the optional missions marked with an a or b, and is this totally done or are you in the middle of the missions? This looks amazing Mav, and will definitely add to the playing length of DT2.
Anything I post in this subforum is "totally done;" I've done all the construction and they are fully implemented. Obviously they haven't been tested by anyone other than myself, but aside from that I don't post anything that's a work-in-progress in and of itself, since they are all components to a larger work-in-progress (i.e. the mod). It also helps to provide incentive to me to finish each individual part, since I don't show it to anyone until I've gotten the work done.

So yes, all the missions are done and this is working as it should.

Each small branch in the campaign shares the same preceding number (in the picture above). For example, 2, 2a, and 2b are all part of one branching path, but only Mission 2 is required to advance down the main path.
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Hebes24 »

Stang, Mav'! This looks amazing. Keep up the excellent work. You truly are a master!
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Null_1138 »

Maveritchell wrote:on Fest you have to escort stolen AT-PT walkers
Fixed. :wink:
AQT wrote:P.S. I love those closed bunker doors on Endor!
QFT.

I love where this is going Mav. Can't wait for the release!
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by acryptozoo »

whoa Mav DT2 was looking agreat before but now its just plain awesome :yes:
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Nova Hawk »

I think everyone agrees with me when I say now more than ever that we're all anxious for the release of DT2. I hope its not gonna be too far away.
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Ping »

Just when you think nobody can do better, Mav does. Holy crap!
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Anakin »

Very nice campin i like the Galctical conquest.
Have you all textes in all languages?? because it would be bad if such a great mod has instead of the right language allways [Null]
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Nihillo »

Are the optional missions harder?
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Re: Dark Times: The Rising Son (campaign)

Post by Maveritchell »

Nihillo wrote:Are the optional missions harder?
Maybe? To be honest I'm a bad judge of relative difficulty since I made them all and practice effects and blah and blah and blah...

They may be a little longer than most other missions (excepting Hoth and Endor), but for the most part they are similar. I didn't make any given mission intentionally substantially harder than any other mission in this campaign. The incentive for going off the main path is that you do get more credits than normal for each successive mission in an optional branch (i.e. normal mission is 600 credits, optional_a is 1000 credits, optional_b is 1500 credits).
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