Secret Defenders Mod: Hype and Help (lotsa pictures)

Urthman · February 17, 2007, 07:51:47 PM

(How many Secret Defenders can you identify? Portraits are in order of appearance, except for Dr. Strange. JKC knows one of the illegible ones, but he's not telling!)

I'm getting close to finishing my Secret Defenders mod for the original Freedom Force! So I thought I'd make a little fuss and see if I can get some help with some of the stuff that's holding me up.

Over a year in the making, the Secret Defenders mod is a re-working of the original Freedom Force campaign, replacing almost all the characters with ones from the marvel universe and using the text descriptions and dialogue to slightly re-work the plot to make sense with those characters. It's not really based on the Secret Defenders comic. I'm just using that name as an excuse to use Dr. Strange and a grab-bag of characters I enjoy and thought would be fun and appropriate substitutions.

Why you might like it:

* A big long game - every mission of from the original FF campaign re-done with new characters.

* Lots of attention to detail in recreating the characters and their powers. Lots of great skins and meshes from the FF community. More than a hundred FX (most remixes or recolors of existing ones, but also a few new ones). Rewritten descriptions for all the characters and their powers.

No one can talk trash like Thor!

* Easter eggs for all you Marvel zombies. I've thrown in lots of references to Marvel history in my attempts to squeeze characters into the existing Freedom Force framework.

* Liberal use of FFX to make the charactes more interesting. For instance, Dr. Strange's attributes and weapons allow him to cast a total of 32 different spells, each with it's own cool FX.

Cast up to 4 of the Wand of Watoomb's seven offensive spells per mission.

The Book of the Vishanti contains defensive and non-violent spells.

Urthman · February 17, 2007, 08:01:49 PM

And bird-men into eagles?

Thugs turning into wolf-men? Ape-men?

Wolf-men into wolves?

(Looks like Dr. Strange dropped the Book of the Vishanti! Better hope it doesn't get destroyed...)

This crazy woman turned into a tiger-lady!

Who could be behind these bizarre events?

Urthman · February 17, 2007, 08:08:40 PM

Why you might not like it:

* At bottom, it's really just the original Freedom Force campaign again. You're still gonna be fighting commies on a frozen aircraft carrier, smashing the warehouses of a crime boss, protecting buildings and historic statues from robots, shutting down alien portals, destroying a giant clone ray, rescuing a charmed teammate from a pagan god, and battling the bosses all over again to stop a cosmic badguy from using the power of one of your own to destroy all life in the universe.

If you've played that until you're sick of it, this mod might not be for you.

* I'm not exactly a photoshop wiz. Some of those fake covers I've cobbled together in my freeware photoeditor look pretty lame - more like a ransom note cut out of the newspaper than actual cover art. I shoulda shrunk those screenshots another 50%. You can always read a book while the levels are loading...

Urthman · February 17, 2007, 08:12:26 PM

HELP!

The main thing I need help with at this point is AI. I've been able to do 90% of what I want to do with the existing built-in AI (especially if you count CGenericMinion. What the heck is that? It works great for many characters, but it's not in the docs, so I don't quite trust it. I've asked before, but no-one has been able to tell me what exactly it does.)

But there are a few things I can't do, like getting villains to use FFX attribute attacks like Fire Control or Environmental Control. I've looked at the AI documentation, but it still is pretty over my head. I don't even know - can you add a new AI for use in a mod, or do you have to modify one of the existing ones?

Anyway, if there's one or two experienced moders who would be willing to help me do some AI stuff, that would really help me get this thing finished.

(I'd also appreciate help getting Beyonder's Thor head.nif to work right. It needs some kind of lights added to it.)

Lunarman · February 18, 2007, 12:02:22 AM

omg!!! That mod looks awesome. Really awesome. Awesomely awesome!

OH YEAH

AWESOME WORK!

Lunarman

Monkeyman · February 18, 2007, 07:51:16 AM

Holy Cow that looks amazing!, I cant wait till you release it :lol:

Arlecchino · February 18, 2007, 05:32:42 PM

:eek2:
OMG!
That looks great. It looks like Im going to have to re-install the original FF after 2 years.

tommyboy · February 18, 2007, 05:53:37 PM

This looks good to me too.
I look forward to it's release.
Great stuff.

Carravaggio · February 18, 2007, 07:54:20 PM

I've been wondering when you'd preview what you've been up to in your little corner of the universe, Urthman. This looks incredible, despite your warnings its a reworking of the original campaign, i still imagine a lot of people will download it. I hope someone with the right skills can help you out to add those finishing touches.
It is very impressive, you should be proud of yourself, and thanks for sticking with it. The FX in particular are very flash, i'm sure many FR'ers are anticipating this anxiously.

BentonGrey · February 18, 2007, 08:37:55 PM

Wow, it looks great! I deffinetly want to try it out when it's finished. Here's hoping someone will give you the hand you need.

kkhohoho · February 19, 2007, 04:03:28 PM

Looks good.

Dreaded Porcupine · February 19, 2007, 04:43:26 PM

This looks awesome. Always loved the Defenders. Looking forward to playing it.

Sledgehammer · February 20, 2007, 04:41:21 AM

This is a Mod I'm definitely gonna play, even if it means replaying the old FF missions. Obviously, the new characters and the slightly different story makes it worthwhile. Besides, as you have different powers, you must use different tactics to beat the same old guys...

Seems you have a very good and versatile roster there. Cap, Iron Man, Blink, Thor, Strange, Wanda, Havok... Can't wait to see the final list of playables.

Urthman · February 20, 2007, 08:25:52 AM

Quote from: Sledgehammer on February 20, 2007, 04:41:21 AM
Seems you have a very good and versatile roster there. Cap, Iron Man, Blink, Thor, Strange, Wanda, Havok... Can't wait to see the final list of playables.

Well, they're all right there in that first screenshot. Some a little easier to see than others... ;)

quiet · March 01, 2007, 05:19:42 PM

Who are some of the villains going to be? or is that the "secret"? :D

Urthman · March 02, 2007, 08:07:32 AM

Quote from: quiet on March 01, 2007, 05:19:42 PM
Who are some of the villains going to be? or is that the "secret"? :D

Well, there are 5 or 6 mentioned or pictured above already. And who could be behind clones that degenerate into beast-men and beasts?

Oh, and someone seems to have stolen Red Ronin again:

Stolen technology and robots on the loose? Who could be responsible for that?

kssaints · March 03, 2007, 11:47:11 AM

The Mod looks incredible. I can hardly wait to give it a try. Always liked the secret Defenders series back when it came out. Too cool.
Kssaints

Carravaggio · March 03, 2007, 10:37:06 PM

Quote from: Urthman on March 02, 2007, 08:07:32 AM
And who could be behind clones that degenerate into beast-men and beasts?

I'm gonna go with high evolutionary.

bearded · March 24, 2007, 11:51:56 AM

giving my support for this. looking forward to it.

Manfred · May 14, 2007, 10:37:45 AM

This looks incredible,

I hope to see it soon. Even with the original FF missions, it would be awesome to play with an all-Marvel lineup.

:thumbup:

The Phantom Eyebrow · May 14, 2007, 01:17:09 PM

I just can't get over the number of powers Doc Strange has! :blink:

Juanjete · September 17, 2007, 04:21:33 AM

Great job Urthman!!! :thumbup:
Any news about the mod?

Urthman · September 22, 2007, 06:35:37 PM

Quote from: Juanjete on September 17, 2007, 04:21:33 AM
Great job Urthman!!! :thumbup:
Any news about the mod?

Got a sweet new computer so I've been a little distracted by the backlog of awesome games I hadn't been able to run on the old one (including :ffvstr: !)

But I got a clean install of :ff: on the new computer and have installed the in-progress Secret Defenders mod and I'm in the process of going through the artwork and making sure all the fx are actually included in the mod - I sloppily had a bunch of stuff in the main FF directory. Good news: most stuff works, including the incredibly rube-goldberg spaghetti weapon master code I'm using for Dr. Strange's spellbooks and wand! I thought sure that stuff would fail when I tried it on another computer.

I've still got a some missions and characters that aren't finished and I've got a few problems that I've got to either solve or figure out how to live with. (Law and Order still don't work right on my computer. I was hoping a reinstall would solve that problem :banghead:)

But I've got so much done that I'm definitely not giving up. No idea when I'll be done though.

Juanjete · September 23, 2007, 01:39:18 AM

Thanks Urthman!
take your time, and good luck with this awesome work.

jeremy355 · September 23, 2007, 08:11:43 AM

Glad to hear you're still working on this, can't wait till comes out.

crocodamon · September 23, 2007, 10:58:36 AM

oh boy......oh boy

I can´t wait to see this mod,

Unbeliveble work, the best i ever seen.

:thumbup:

Manfred · September 24, 2007, 07:49:02 AM

Awesome, been waiting on this one! Glad to hear the project is still alive :thumbup:

crocodamon · September 25, 2007, 12:40:59 PM

I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed it :wacko:

Cruciamentum · February 27, 2008, 06:58:06 AM

So, is this mod still being worked on? Are there any news? And what of the skins/meshes? I've actually found this only because of my search for a dr. strange skin/mesh...

Urthman · March 13, 2008, 09:18:36 AM

Quote from: Cruciamentum on February 27, 2008, 06:58:06 AM
So, is this mod still being worked on? Are there any news? And what of the skins/meshes? I've actually found this only because of my search for a dr. strange skin/mesh...

Maybe. When I got a new computer I reinstalled Freedom Force and moved all the mod files over, but several things are broken and I don't know why (most disappointingly, the weaponmaster stuff that gave Dr. Strange his cool wand and spellbooks).

There's still a lot of cool stuff in here. I might try to finish a few of the major things and release a buggy version that people could play with if they're interested. It's been long enough now that I think I might enjoy playing through the thing if nothing else :)