TFTC Project: An update and a preview trailer
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:03 pm
I’ve heard it said that it's become something of a running joke about the TFTC project always being "in progress". Well with Bmans blessing I’ve prepared an update for you, some tangible proof progress is being made and I even made a lovely preview trailer for the TFTC project to showcase what you can expect beyond just a simple port of the original TF campaign to XWA. I joined Bman last year and though I’ve had bouts of inactivity myself since then I do as much work as I can, particularly the last couple months since I got laid off in lockdown, so I've been working heavily on this. So without further ado I present to you the trailer:
https://youtu.be/d8EbwANhJDQ
So what exactly am I doing? I’m taking each TF mission, building upon and expanding them to fulfill their potential in the XWA engine which you, the fantastic and amazing XWA modding community, have spent the last 20 years improving every aspect of, notably in the last year significant graphical enhancements to the engine! But simply porting TF into XWA has problems which often breaks the mission flow and pacing or just outright leaves you unable to complete mission objectives without cheating, quite often this is related to destroying capital ships which as you all know, tend to shoot down incoming warheads which TF did not do. Additionally the AI is significantly better and the game itself is far more energetic than the original TF. So what we’re actually doing here is two things.
One will be a reimagined campaign which as mentioned, which take many liberties with the original campaign. In some cases this will only mean some minor aesthetic changes, an increase in the number of ships fighting but structurally, its essentially the same mission as the original. But in a few cases, they are missions rebuilt from the ground up which combine elements of two or more missions together. The reason for this is that, in order for the original TF to accommodate a larger engagement, it often broke up its larger fights into 2 or 3 separate missions. So let’s take Battle 7: Missions 1, 2 and 3. All the same fight to finally destroy the VSD Protector and protect the INT Harpax in essentially 3 stages. Well in XWA we can pretty much do that in one massive fight now but requires some creativity in structuring the mission to proceed in a similar fashion of course. It is the final Battle in the main campaign of TF before the Expansions, so we want this to be an epic fight before Zaarin begins his own coup attempt at the end of the main Campaign. This also means some liberties will be taken with the story at times and most of it will undergo a rewrite to be more in-depth as well as maintain more consistency in the names of various capital ships you will encounter throughout the campaign. I offer below two Work-in-Progress examples of this:
https://youtu.be/x_Pwz2l5wII - Battle 4: Mission 5 Rebel Arms Deal – This is an example of a mission which has been significantly expanded upon its original version but otherwise has the same basic objective. Stop an arms deal between the Rebels and Nharwaaks for new hyperdrive technology by destroying the FRG Xerxes (with additional objectives added to kill Nharwaak ships too).
https://youtu.be/TBXSV1fXJP0 - Battle 3: Mission 5 Trap the Rebel Fleet – Don’t recognise that? That’s because the original was B3M5: Thrawn Inspects NL-1 followed by B3M6: Wait for Relief Forces. Well this is an example of a mission built from the ground up to combine elements from both missions but changing the story to show off the tactical genius of Thrawn in eliminating the combined Pirate and Rebel forces harassing the Pakuuni sector which have been trying to prevent you from establishing the NL-1 Station on this new frontier for the Empire. The end result is the same, you are successful in establishing a firm foothold in the system for the Empire and defeating the enemy forces.
But I understand there might be some purists out there who might simply want to play the original campaign without such changes. Well don’t worry because the second thing is we intend to offer both the Reimagined and Classic campaigns. To this end, the original will ONLY be edited in as far as making sure the briefings look visually correct (most of them don’t visually translate very well into XWA), all original voiceovers are intact and making sure you can complete mission objectives without having to cheat all the time. Otherwise no other changes will be made.
So that begs the question of course, when will this be out? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but I’m really hoping in the next few months we could offer a release of the Main campaign and do the expansions later. I’m expecting a kid in September so I’m concentrating on this as much as I can while I still have the ample free time to do so and Bman is also doing a lot of work in updating many models with new weapon layouts and balancing ships – so for example Corvettes aren’t instadeath murder machines to everything in sight! I’ll let Bman pipe in with his own comments below of course
Otherwise feel free to comment, ask questions or put in suggestions!
https://youtu.be/d8EbwANhJDQ
So what exactly am I doing? I’m taking each TF mission, building upon and expanding them to fulfill their potential in the XWA engine which you, the fantastic and amazing XWA modding community, have spent the last 20 years improving every aspect of, notably in the last year significant graphical enhancements to the engine! But simply porting TF into XWA has problems which often breaks the mission flow and pacing or just outright leaves you unable to complete mission objectives without cheating, quite often this is related to destroying capital ships which as you all know, tend to shoot down incoming warheads which TF did not do. Additionally the AI is significantly better and the game itself is far more energetic than the original TF. So what we’re actually doing here is two things.
One will be a reimagined campaign which as mentioned, which take many liberties with the original campaign. In some cases this will only mean some minor aesthetic changes, an increase in the number of ships fighting but structurally, its essentially the same mission as the original. But in a few cases, they are missions rebuilt from the ground up which combine elements of two or more missions together. The reason for this is that, in order for the original TF to accommodate a larger engagement, it often broke up its larger fights into 2 or 3 separate missions. So let’s take Battle 7: Missions 1, 2 and 3. All the same fight to finally destroy the VSD Protector and protect the INT Harpax in essentially 3 stages. Well in XWA we can pretty much do that in one massive fight now but requires some creativity in structuring the mission to proceed in a similar fashion of course. It is the final Battle in the main campaign of TF before the Expansions, so we want this to be an epic fight before Zaarin begins his own coup attempt at the end of the main Campaign. This also means some liberties will be taken with the story at times and most of it will undergo a rewrite to be more in-depth as well as maintain more consistency in the names of various capital ships you will encounter throughout the campaign. I offer below two Work-in-Progress examples of this:
https://youtu.be/x_Pwz2l5wII - Battle 4: Mission 5 Rebel Arms Deal – This is an example of a mission which has been significantly expanded upon its original version but otherwise has the same basic objective. Stop an arms deal between the Rebels and Nharwaaks for new hyperdrive technology by destroying the FRG Xerxes (with additional objectives added to kill Nharwaak ships too).
https://youtu.be/TBXSV1fXJP0 - Battle 3: Mission 5 Trap the Rebel Fleet – Don’t recognise that? That’s because the original was B3M5: Thrawn Inspects NL-1 followed by B3M6: Wait for Relief Forces. Well this is an example of a mission built from the ground up to combine elements from both missions but changing the story to show off the tactical genius of Thrawn in eliminating the combined Pirate and Rebel forces harassing the Pakuuni sector which have been trying to prevent you from establishing the NL-1 Station on this new frontier for the Empire. The end result is the same, you are successful in establishing a firm foothold in the system for the Empire and defeating the enemy forces.
But I understand there might be some purists out there who might simply want to play the original campaign without such changes. Well don’t worry because the second thing is we intend to offer both the Reimagined and Classic campaigns. To this end, the original will ONLY be edited in as far as making sure the briefings look visually correct (most of them don’t visually translate very well into XWA), all original voiceovers are intact and making sure you can complete mission objectives without having to cheat all the time. Otherwise no other changes will be made.
So that begs the question of course, when will this be out? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but I’m really hoping in the next few months we could offer a release of the Main campaign and do the expansions later. I’m expecting a kid in September so I’m concentrating on this as much as I can while I still have the ample free time to do so and Bman is also doing a lot of work in updating many models with new weapon layouts and balancing ships – so for example Corvettes aren’t instadeath murder machines to everything in sight! I’ll let Bman pipe in with his own comments below of course
Otherwise feel free to comment, ask questions or put in suggestions!
