DCUG: Released But Still Under Construction

[BentonGrey]

Yay!  Good work, Trelau.  That isn't an easy fight.  Yeah, the sabotage weirdness is a result of the object I used in that mission.  I'm guessing the bounding box doesn't quite fit.  Still, little graphical glitches like that were too small for me to worry about, considering I was mostly just fighting to get the thing working.  Thanks, I'm glad you mentioned his dialog with the ring.  I really wanted to give him a bit more personality than was seen back in the day, and there is nothing like a sidekick to give a hero straight lines!  I thought it would be fun if the ring was more than a tool, you know?  I didn't get tons of space to play with it, but I always liked the idea that Hal was a child of the space age, you know, who loved the idea of adventure in the old Buck Rogers sense.  My Hal is a big classic science fiction buff, and his ring has been infected with his tastes.  That, plus a daredevil/explorer type of mindset gave me something to work with in the small amount of screen time he has.

Pay attention to what Aquaman says, he's a pretty smart fellow and he just might be giving you a clue about how NOT to get your head handed to you.

[Trelau]

Oh, you got me there ^^

Spoiler

So after Aquaman's interlude (introducing a character before we actually use him...that's actually a nice way to break the monotonous "here's your character, go!") i got to play the flash mission. It might well be my favourite so far. First, Barry Allen in his civilian cloth before the fight, again, a nice touch that makes the story more believable and less boring.

Also dialogue were okay, not as "captivating" than the batman/superman ones, and not as funny as the GL one; but the flash pun made me smile. I don't know what flash says in latter mission, but i was expecting a little more "new frontier" flavor :a quick iris reference, or a short pun about how he's gonna be late again would have made the dialogue a little more light hearted.

Then, the actual mission: before playing it i was considering suggesting you to change the superman mission to have little random encounters like this to save civilians, now i see it would have been redundant.

Flash's hero file is fun and playable. his zero cost sprint is probably the most fun part of it, every time i heard/saw a shot i paused and sprinted on the other side to dodge the bullet ^^ I'm actually quite jealous because i always was unable to make good speedsters hero file, so congrats on that. Maybe (but that's just a question of flavour, it would probably make him too powerful) i'd give him a cone attack with medium knockback (because his projectile attack isn't too useful: it's usually more effective to sprint next to the vilain and do a melee or area attack). Yeah, maybe replacing his projectile with a cone, i'd probably use it more.

The encounters: fighting thugs is fun, but it can quicly become repetitive. By having us rescue the civilians at the same time (from the fires) or protecting the building from the bat/grenade guys (the school encounter) you make it funnier and challenging : if it was just a straight fight they'd have no chance, but by rushing stupidly the first time, a grenade thug killed all the civilians by targetting me ^^ again, taught me a lesson.

The last battle is probably the final touch that achieved convincing me it was my number one mission sa far: i was surprised in a good way when i realised i couldn't defeat the two scientist by just punching them, and then i remember the constant burning fire that destroyed the previous building...
I assume that's what you had in mind, so i became intangible in the middle of the burning debris while the two alien where taking damage: real smart way to make us think about how to win a fight, this sort of mechanism is what makes this mod great.
Then again, maybe you could divide their life bar by two, because once you've understand the trick, the fight has no reason to last forever (i had to do the fight twice because of a the little problem i describe below, so it might because of that that i was a little bored at the end of the second time.)

So the little technical problem: i actually saved in the middle of the last battle because i had to do something else for about an hour. When i relaunched the game and the save, the fires finished there normal lifespan (a few second i believe) but they stopped spawning...I relaunched the game and the save, but it was no use, i had to restart the mission (since i enjoyed it so much it wasn't really a problem)
I don't know if it's a common problem, or a "corrupt" savefile of some kind, but you might want to look into it.

But too conclude on this one, like i already said twice: maybe my favorite so far.


Then, the Aquaman fanboy rise!
I see you were not kidding about the difficulty
First play with the king of the seas, so quick hero file review: he's definitely well balanced and quite straightforward to play. He's a little less fun than his modern age counterparts could be (no hooks, no aquakinesis...uh, don't know if i got that right...his "magical water hand"). Now to be fair, he's from a kind i don't usually like, the ones with lots of powerful passive ability and not a wide variety of attack(or maybe tier B unlocks when he cut of his hand later in the campaign?) but i liked him anyway because of his telepathy: I really like the fact that his mental powers don't play like manhunter's ones: manhunter uses hypnose and enrage as primary means, aquaman is all panick and mental blank. I can't wait to pair this two together to see how well this mixes

Last note on the herofile: superleaper is a little buggy, if i try to "jump to" an out of range object, aquaman teleports in range and then jumps. But i believe its an ffx problem, superleaper always gave me weird results.

The mission: like i said, you weren't kidding about the difficulty ^^ the neat thing is that even though the fights are hard, you still feel powerful (throwing a tank on a bunch of soldiers sometimes have this effect). I died once trying to kill the tanks by throwing barrel at them (a soldier shot the barrel in my hands...ouch) and a second time by running to far behind enemy line without activating the turrets. Once i figured out good tactics with aquaman and found the switches to take cover behind turrets, it got easier.

It was fun. Pure and simple "THIS...IS...ATLANTIS!" fun: you stun a guy with a punch, mental blank the soldiers surrounding you with a psychic wave, scare an ennemy charging at you with a mental attack and finally take out the stunned ennemy with a powerful melee combo...Benton, you've made me an Aquaman supporter, if i can take him with me in a mission i will!

The end of the mission when the heroes finally meet is well done dialogue-wise ("hey fishman!") but the camera and character placement could be improved: maybe having all the others in a half-circle facing aquaman, because batman felt a little "compressed" between the others in the line; and i also tend to prefer camera closer to the ground during cutscene but that's more of a personal taste.
Releasing Manhunter, that scene was nice. The subtle hint that you like aquaman a little more than the other ("you're more powerful than you know") made me laugh a little, considering how long you've tried to convince everyone here that he IS that powerful. I completely buy it, and the fact that a trapped telepath calls another telpath to save him makes perfect sense.

A very good mission, and a strong argument in favor of "Aquaman is cool".

I finish with the interractive cutscene (it's not really a mission, i think you'll agree) of MM talking about the history of the martians's war. Making it in this form is certainly less boring than if it had been a long cutscene. Dialogue are good, you keep the plot simple enough for someone who doesn't know the story to understand it, and it not too long so that it becomes a lecture, so nothing to say here.

I stopped playing there, and since i'm going to see my parents this weekend for easter i won't play, so probaly no review until monday.
If the other campaigns are that well made, then this mod will have been well worth the wait. We can really feel the work behind each character, mission and dialogue. We really see that you wanted to tell a story, and from what i've seen so far you've done a very good job.
I think that we can truly thank you for what you've done, because i believe that it will join The Strangers and Liberty Bay in the club of the you-must-play-this mods of this community.

So stay tune, have a nice week-end and new feedback on monday!

[Trelau]

Ah-ah, i'm back with new feedback!

Spoiler

I only played the WonderWoman mission, but i was afraid to forget all i wanted to say about it:
First: playing as Diana as an introduction to Wonderwoman? Awesome. Answer the riddle right or get pummeled? More Awesome.
So i'm really sold on the concept, but there a lot of little things that bugs me, some not that important (the absence of music..or was that a bug? or a choice?) and some more important (MAn-o-Taur needs a new hero file).
So just assume here that if i don't mention it, then it means it's perfect (the riddles, the map, Diana's dialogue, difficulty/length of the mision, etc) and let's get to the long boring list of stuff that might needs reworking:

_a few technical problems first:
 Like i said, no music, i though it was odd but maybe it was for the ambiance? or maybe a FF bug, i seem to recall sometime the music doesn't start itself in some case.
 The Medusa and Amazon Warriors counts as civilian casualties (and negative prestige) at the end of the mission.
 In the room of the third riddle (pillars, stone mask on the walls, a fire in the center...i'm pretty sure it was third riddle) i had pink boxes on the wall in the mouthes of the "stonemask". i'll try to make a screenshot.
 The medusa mesh seems to have a problem, it looks like they had a copy of themselves running at horizontal. I think it was the scoped part of their armor, so maybe there's a reset XForm problem here (i don't know the real term in Nifscope, but in max it would be that there's something wrong with X,Y,Z axis, i'm guessing the scoped part have a different orientation than the bodies)

_now that the boring stuff is done, the gameplay suggestion:
Medusa is a fine adversary, the only "problem" is her tendency to go enrage and to attack the other ennemies, since the groups are generally small, it makes the fights sometimes too easy. So maybe one or two more by encounter to even this a little bit, or even better...

...replace the Man-o-Taurs. Or give them a "proper" herofile. They were the most boring ennemies, because all they did was Run-Roar (scares you) throw a punch or two and then re-Roar. They are physically strong and a relatively good challege for Diana, plus mythological and all. But the use of the same tactics (and the fact that Diana is not immune or even resistant to fear) means the fights got a little boring/repetitive, and that i kept waiting for Diana to calm herself before throwing one attack and being re-scared (i was glad they weren't there in the final fight). It's really my bigest beef on this mission (so you can see that you don't have much to worry about for this one too)

_Diana on the other is interesting. Two things that might be changed though: her flight gives her an enormous advantage (i killed the Man-o-Taur by flying constantly, that way if i got scared they still couldn't hit me. Yep, not really fair but they weren't playing fair either), if "princess diana" is never seen again (meaning we only play as Wonderwoman after this intro-mision) maybe you could remove it. The second thing is her tiara, which is too powerful for one reason: chained! in the final fight, it was too tempting to just keep throwing the tiara to damage sometimes up to five amazons in one shot. Otherwise the idea (low piercing damage + moderate stun) is a good choice of attack for WW (and we don't have the lasso yet, so points for variety too)

_The final fight: the best part, but could be more fun (you may realize it's my motto in all my reviews of your missions: how could i make this cool mission even more fun to play? )
So there's a bunch of amazons, and for some reason two medusa. I don't know if they were meant to be here (i had a little bug with the last riddle, so...) but if they are here on purpose they probably shouldn't: it an all-amazonian smashfest!
And on this note, the only thing that could make this fight better: make the amazonians stronger, but make them fight each other in addition to you. That would be an epic battle royal between all the pretendant to the WonderWoman title. But i wonder if it might not be difficult to code or something...Well if it can be done it would be cool

_another one from the top of my mind,   i though of this while writing the paragraph above: the map is nice, i don't remember if its one of Pan's map taken as a base or a completely original one, but i really like the labyrinth design and the progression from one section to another. but what about traps? That would be a nice addition, you already have branching corridors that goes to the same room, what if you trapped the shortest route? (wall that shoots a spear at you when you are in range, prosimity mine with goo or all other stuff like that) especialy if you remove diana's flight, to force the player to think a little and take the longest but safest way (instead of running/fying in straight line to the next wraith)

There, i think i remembered everything i had in mind. I re-read myself and I think i made this critic look more negative than what i actually think of this mission, because like i said the concept of playing a young diana, having to answer riddle in a labyrinth, fighting amazonians in the end for the Wonderwoman title (definitely my favourite part of this mission), all that is really cool, exciting and new. Once again, it's a mission that is different from what we're used to see, and that's definitely one of your strenght.
Still, to be fair, that's probably the mission that needs the most work if you intend to do a "final" release (the technical oddities; and please, please, the Man-o-Taurs   )

[BentonGrey]

Awesome, some more reviews!  Ha, thanks Trelau:

Spoiler

Oh, you got me there ^^
So after Aquaman's interlude (introducing a character before we actually use him...that's actually a nice way to break the monotonous "here's your character, go!") i got to play the flash mission. It might well be my favourite so far. First, Barry Allen in his civilian cloth before the fight, again, a nice touch that makes the story more believable and less boring.

Also dialogue were okay, not as "captivating" than the batman/superman ones, and not as funny as the GL one; but the flash pun made me smile. I don't know what flash says in latter mission, but i was expecting a little more "new frontier" flavor :a quick iris reference, or a short pun about how he's gonna be late again would have made the dialogue a little more light hearted.

Thanks, the organization of Aquaman showing up there is at least partially accidental.  Ha, I juggled these middle missions around a lot before I got an order I liked.  Still, I enjoyed being able to get a quick look into Atlantis.  Yeah, I wanted to do more with the heroes' secret identities, but didn't really have the space.  As for the dialog, I didn't have quite as clear an idea of who Barry Allen was as I did for a lot of the other characters.  He develops a bit later on, but he never gets as much screen time as I might have liked.

Then, the actual mission: before playing it i was considering suggesting you to change the superman mission to have little random encounters like this to save civilians, now i see it would have been redundant.

Flash's hero file is fun and playable. his zero cost sprint is probably the most fun part of it, every time i heard/saw a shot i paused and sprinted on the other side to dodge the bullet ^^ I'm actually quite jealous because i always was unable to make good speedsters hero file, so congrats on that. Maybe (but that's just a question of flavour, it would probably make him too powerful) i'd give him a cone attack with medium knockback (because his projectile attack isn't too useful: it's usually more effective to sprint next to the vilain and do a melee or area attack). Yeah, maybe replacing his projectile with a cone, i'd probably use it more.

I'm glad you like his build!  I had a REALLY hard time balancing Flash and Bats to go with the rest of the League.  I wanted them to fill different roles than the other heroes, be true to the comics, but still be able to pull their weight.  I'm not entirely sure how well I accomplished that, but I like to think that Flash is still useful later on, especially in missions where speed is a factor.  I've considered the cone, but I did want to limit him pretty well in terms of ranged powers.

The encounters: fighting thugs is fun, but it can quicly become repetitive. By having us rescue the civilians at the same time (from the fires) or protecting the building from the bat/grenade guys (the school encounter) you make it funnier and challenging : if it was just a straight fight they'd have no chance, but by rushing stupidly the first time, a grenade thug killed all the civilians by targetting me ^^ again, taught me a lesson.

Thanks!  I have a hard time designing missions that are interesting, playability wise, so I'm really glad that you found this one so engaging!

The last battle is probably the final touch that achieved convincing me it was my number one mission sa far: i was surprised in a good way when i realised i couldn't defeat the two scientist by just punching them, and then i remember the constant burning fire that destroyed the previous building...
I assume that's what you had in mind, so i became intangible in the middle of the burning debris while the two alien where taking damage: real smart way to make us think about how to win a fight, this sort of mechanism is what makes this mod great.
Then again, maybe you could divide their life bar by two, because once you've understand the trick, the fight has no reason to last forever (i had to do the fight twice because of a the little problem i describe below, so it might because of that that i was a little bored at the end of the second time.)

I'm very surprised that this Flash mission was your number one, as it was definitely one of my 'thrown together' missions.  The only real idea I had was for Flash to have to race between different fires and such.  Ha, your solution is actually really fantastic, but it is also completely new to me!  I never thought of that.  Instead, I always did my best to keep the Warlord alive, so that he could deal some damage and distract the "scientists."  Then, I would get one of them to aim at me, sprint behind his buddy, and laugh as he was hit by friendly fire.  That plus some overpowered vibration punches (I forget what they are named) along with a bit of cat and mouse allowed me to drop them.  It was always meant to be a fairly tough fight, though.  I really like your solution, and I wish I had thought of it!

So the little technical problem: i actually saved in the middle of the last battle because i had to do something else for about an hour. When i relaunched the game and the save, the fires finished there normal lifespan (a few second i believe) but they stopped spawning...I relaunched the game and the save, but it was no use, i had to restart the mission (since i enjoyed it so much it wasn't really a problem)
I don't know if it's a common problem, or a "corrupt" savefile of some kind, but you might want to look into it.

But too conclude on this one, like i already said twice: maybe my favorite so far.

That would be an issue with EZScript, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

Then, the Aquaman fanboy rise!
I see you were not kidding about the difficulty
First play with the king of the seas, so quick hero file review: he's definitely well balanced and quite straightforward to play. He's a little less fun than his modern age counterparts could be (no hooks, no aquakinesis...uh, don't know if i got that right...his "magical water hand"). Now to be fair, he's from a kind i don't usually like, the ones with lots of powerful passive ability and not a wide variety of attack(or maybe tier B unlocks when he cut of his hand later in the campaign?) but i liked him anyway because of his telepathy: I really like the fact that his mental powers don't play like manhunter's ones: manhunter uses hypnose and enrage as primary means, aquaman is all panick and mental blank. I can't wait to pair this two together to see how well this mixes

Last note on the herofile: superleaper is a little buggy, if i try to "jump to" an out of range object, aquaman teleports in range and then jumps. But i believe its an ffx problem, superleaper always gave me weird results.

I'm really glad you like Arthur.  I worked very hard on his build, and I've never been entirely happy with it.  The panic for his mental attack never set quite right for me, but I can see that, in terms of balance, it actually works out alright.  Superleaper is, I'm afraid, a function of FFX, and I've got no control over any weirdness there.  I have the same issues sometimes, but I'm not sure that anything can be done about it.

The mission: like i said, you weren't kidding about the difficulty ^^ the neat thing is that even though the fights are hard, you still feel powerful (throwing a tank on a bunch of soldiers sometimes have this effect). I died once trying to kill the tanks by throwing barrel at them (a soldier shot the barrel in my hands...ouch) and a second time by running to far behind enemy line without activating the turrets. Once i figured out good tactics with aquaman and found the switches to take cover behind turrets, it got easier.

It was fun. Pure and simple "THIS...IS...ATLANTIS!" fun: you stun a guy with a punch, mental blank the soldiers surrounding you with a psychic wave, scare an ennemy charging at you with a mental attack and finally take out the stunned ennemy with a powerful melee combo...Benton, you've made me an Aquaman supporter, if i can take him with me in a mission i will!

Woo-hoo!  My mission is complete!  I definitely wanted to make a mission that you'd really have to think your way through, and it sounds like I did a decent job with it.  I'm glad that you enjoyed it so much, and even more, I'm glad that you didn't give up because of the difficulty!

The end of the mission when the heroes finally meet is well done dialogue-wise ("hey fishman!") but the camera and character placement could be improved: maybe having all the others in a half-circle facing aquaman, because batman felt a little "compressed" between the others in the line; and i also tend to prefer camera closer to the ground during cutscene but that's more of a personal taste.
Releasing Manhunter, that scene was nice. The subtle hint that you like aquaman a little more than the other ("you're more powerful than you know") made me laugh a little, considering how long you've tried to convince everyone here that he IS that powerful. I completely buy it, and the fact that a trapped telepath calls another telpath to save him makes perfect sense.

A very good mission, and a strong argument in favor of "Aquaman is cool".

Yeah, the camera placement isn't something I can control too closely with EZScript, but I could probably tweak Batman's positioning easily enough.  I noticed him being a bit scrunched too, but it would require me placing more markers to fix it.

Well, see, this whole thing just made perfect sense to me.  In the JLU pilot Martian Manhunter manages to contact Superman, despite being imprisoned.  Why did he reach out to Superman?  Why was Superman more receptive?  It never really made a whole lot of sense to me.  However, if Aquaman had been on the team (like he should have), that would have made some sense.  After all, not only is he a telepath, he's also got what is, undoubtedly, one of the most powerful minds on the planet.  If he can control hundreds of thousands of marine animals miles upon miles away, then he has to have a mind as far beyond, say, Superman's, as Superman is beyond mere mortals in terms of muscles.  So, if MM is sending out a telepathic S.O.S., who might be able to detect it?  The only one that makes sense is...Aquaman!  I'm glad to hear that this scene "worked" for you, and that you bought into my premise.

I finish with the interractive cutscene (it's not really a mission, i think you'll agree) of MM talking about the history of the martians's war. Making it in this form is certainly less boring than if it had been a long cutscene. Dialogue are good, you keep the plot simple enough for someone who doesn't know the story to understand it, and it not too long so that it becomes a lecture, so nothing to say here.

Yeah, I had this massive speech (or perhaps 'lecture' would be the right word for it) by MM in the middle of the campaign.  Prev. or someone once said to me, "no-one is going to read that," and I imagine he was probably right.  One of the things I really wanted to do when I updated the mod was to make this exposition scene more interesting.  I'm glad that it at least worked in part.

I stopped playing there, and since i'm going to see my parents this weekend for easter i won't play, so probaly no review until monday.
If the other campaigns are that well made, then this mod will have been well worth the wait. We can really feel the work behind each character, mission and dialogue. We really see that you wanted to tell a story, and from what i've seen so far you've done a very good job.
I think that we can truly thank you for what you've done, because i believe that it will join The Strangers and Liberty Bay in the club of the you-must-play-this mods of this community.

So stay tune, have a nice week-end and new feedback on monday!

Man, to be ranked alongside The Strangers, one of the biggest reasons I ever tried my hands at modding in the first place, not to mention Liberty Bay itself...that is high praise indeed.  I don't think I'll ever consider my poor efforts in the same category as those masterpieces.

[BentonGrey]

And more:

Spoiler

Ah-ah, i'm back with new feedback!

I only played the WonderWoman mission, but i was afraid to forget all i wanted to say about it:
First: playing as Diana as an introduction to Wonderwoman? Awesome. Answer the riddle right or get pummeled? More Awesome.
So i'm really sold on the concept, but there a lot of little things that bugs me, some not that important (the absence of music..or was that a bug? or a choice?) and some more important (MAn-o-Taur needs a new hero file).
So just assume here that if i don't mention it, then it means it's perfect (the riddles, the map, Diana's dialogue, difficulty/length of the mision, etc) and let's get to the long boring list of stuff that might needs reworking:

I REALLY wanted to experiment with the Simple Choice plug-in, and I have to admit that Imlasof did all the hard work, and I based the riddles off of a great mission he created.  Still, I was really happy with the way it turned out (with a few minor exceptions).  I definitely enjoyed the change of pace this mission gave me, and I had a blast looking the riddles up.  What did you think about their difficulty?  Did the other choices seem plausible?  You thought Diana sounded right?  She was another one that I was never terribly comfortable writing, so I'm glad to hear that.

_a few technical problems first:
 Like i said, no music, i though it was odd but maybe it was for the ambiance? or maybe a FF bug, i seem to recall sometime the music doesn't start itself in some case.
 The Medusa and Amazon Warriors counts as civilian casualties (and negative prestige) at the end of the mission.
 In the room of the third riddle (pillars, stone mask on the walls, a fire in the center...i'm pretty sure it was third riddle) i had pink boxes on the wall in the mouthes of the "stonemask". i'll try to make a screenshot.
 The medusa mesh seems to have a problem, it looks like they had a copy of themselves running at horizontal. I think it was the scoped part of their armor, so maybe there's a reset XForm problem here (i don't know the real term in Nifscope, but in max it would be that there's something wrong with X,Y,Z axis, i'm guessing the scoped part have a different orientation than the bodies)

I had music in the other missions?  If so, I've completely forgotten about that.  Whoops.  The Amazon Warriors counting against you would be because I set them up as cops or heroes, just in case you wanted to use them in the danger room or something else.  The Medusas counting that way are a mistake.  I'm not sure what the missing texture is.  I never saw it.  The weird graphical thing you describe could be the ghosting problem.  Try turning off all shadows, and you might not see it anymore.  Eventually I may get around to fixing that for all of the meshes included, but it would be a huge project to fix everything.

_now that the boring stuff is done, the gameplay suggestion:
Medusa is a fine adversary, the only "problem" is her tendency to go enrage and to attack the other ennemies, since the groups are generally small, it makes the fights sometimes too easy. So maybe one or two more by encounter to even this a little bit, or even better...

...replace the Man-o-Taurs. Or give them a "proper" herofile. They were the most boring ennemies, because all they did was Run-Roar (scares you) throw a punch or two and then re-Roar. They are physically strong and a relatively good challege for Diana, plus mythological and all. But the use of the same tactics (and the fact that Diana is not immune or even resistant to fear) means the fights got a little boring/repetitive, and that i kept waiting for Diana to calm herself before throwing one attack and being re-scared (i was glad they weren't there in the final fight). It's really my bigest beef on this mission (so you can see that you don't have much to worry about for this one too)

Hehe, using the Man-O-Taurs is purely a function of my being in burn-out mode when I created that mission.  I didn't want to do any extra work.  I could tweak them eventually whenever I get around to updating the mod.

_Diana on the other is interesting. Two things that might be changed though: her flight gives her an enormous advantage (i killed the Man-o-Taur by flying constantly, that way if i got scared they still couldn't hit me. Yep, not really fair but they weren't playing fair either), if "princess diana" is never seen again (meaning we only play as Wonderwoman after this intro-mision) maybe you could remove it. The second thing is her tiara, which is too powerful for one reason: chained! in the final fight, it was too tempting to just keep throwing the tiara to damage sometimes up to five amazons in one shot. Otherwise the idea (low piercing damage + moderate stun) is a good choice of attack for WW (and we don't have the lasso yet, so points for variety too)

I could lose her flying.  You really only use her in this one mission.  Also, the tiara could lose chained, I suppose, although I sorta' liked the way it worked.  I tend to think that the low damage makes up for the chaining.

_The final fight: the best part, but could be more fun (you may realize it's my motto in all my reviews of your missions: how could i make this cool mission even more fun to play? )
So there's a bunch of amazons, and for some reason two medusa. I don't know if they were meant to be here (i had a little bug with the last riddle, so...) but if they are here on purpose they probably shouldn't: it an all-amazonian smashfest!
And on this note, the only thing that could make this fight better: make the amazonians stronger, but make them fight each other in addition to you. That would be an epic battle royal between all the pretendant to the WonderWoman title. But i wonder if it might not be difficult to code or something...Well if it can be done it would be cool

Yeah, the Medusas probably just wandered in from another part.  Go figure.  I could create two different groups of Amazons that fight each other, but I couldn't make it a free for all.  Still, I could probably do that, but I rather think it would be too easy.

_another one from the top of my mind,   i though of this while writing the paragraph above: the map is nice, i don't remember if its one of Pan's map taken as a base or a completely original one, but i really like the labyrinth design and the progression from one section to another. but what about traps? That would be a nice addition, you already have branching corridors that goes to the same room, what if you trapped the shortest route? (wall that shoots a spear at you when you are in range, prosimity mine with goo or all other stuff like that) especialy if you remove diana's flight, to force the player to think a little and take the longest but safest way (instead of running/fying in straight line to the next wraith)

Yep, it's the interior of Pan's Island, with very few tweaks by me.  I COULD do traps, but only switch-able traps work in EZScript.  I may get around to that one day, but there are already several encounters running at the same time.  I'm not sure if more would be a good idea...although I suppose I could spawn them progressively.  Either way, it would take a lot of work that I'm not likely to do any time soon.

There, i think i remembered everything i had in mind. I re-read myself and I think i made this critic look more negative than what i actually think of this mission, because like i said the concept of playing a young diana, having to answer riddle in a labyrinth, fighting amazonians in the end for the Wonderwoman title (definitely my favourite part of this mission), all that is really cool, exciting and new. Once again, it's a mission that is different from what we're used to see, and that's definitely one of your strenght.
Still, to be fair, that's probably the mission that needs the most work if you intend to do a "final" release (the technical oddities; and please, please, the Man-o-Taurs   )

Ha, what did you REALLY think about the Man-o-Taurs!  Well, this was, I think, just about the last mission for this storyarc that I wrote, so it didn't get tested as thoroughly as some of the others.  Also, I'm glad you liked it so much, since the only real idea I had for it was to have a riddle mission.

Let me know what you think when you get to the Metropolis mission!

Is anyone else playing the DCUG?  Has anyone tried out the Mystery in Space campaign?  Has anyone tried out any of the unfinished campaigns? 

[Trelau]

 

Spoiler

i've just finished the Metropolis mission. I don't have time to write a full-fledge review right now but...Wow. New favourite mission, obviously.

[bengal]

I've been trying to download the DCUG all night.

It downloads alright, or seems to, and through 7Zip it creates the zip file, but there on I'm having trouble.

The first zip file, DCUG.zip.001, says that the zip file is empty; all following zips say to enter the last disk for the multi-disk install. 

I was only able to get 7zip to even create the subsequent zips by renaming all DCUG.zip.002 and on files to DCUG2.zip.001 .

What am I doing wrong, and how can I do it right?

[BentonGrey]

I've been trying to download the DCUG all night.

It downloads alright, or seems to, and through 7Zip it creates the zip file, but there on I'm having trouble.

The first zip file, DCUG.zip.001, says that the zip file is empty; all following zips say to enter the last disk for the multi-disk install. 

I was only able to get 7zip to even create the subsequent zips by renaming all DCUG.zip.002 and on files to DCUG2.zip.001 .

What am I doing wrong, and how can I do it right?

Hmm...if I understand you correctly, you've merged them improperly.  You should select all of the downloaded parts, named just as they were, and right click, select 7-Zip, then "extract files."  Extract them to DCUG.zip, which should be the default suggestion, and you're set.

[earl of bronze]

And more:

Spoiler

Ah-ah, i'm back with new feedback!

I only played the WonderWoman mission, but i was afraid to forget all i wanted to say about it:
First: playing as Diana as an introduction to Wonderwoman? Awesome. Answer the riddle right or get pummeled? More Awesome.
So i'm really sold on the concept, but there a lot of little things that bugs me, some not that important (the absence of music..or was that a bug? or a choice?) and some more important (MAn-o-Taur needs a new hero file).
So just assume here that if i don't mention it, then it means it's perfect (the riddles, the map, Diana's dialogue, difficulty/length of the mision, etc) and let's get to the long boring list of stuff that might needs reworking:

I REALLY wanted to experiment with the Simple Choice plug-in, and I have to admit that Imlasof did all the hard work, and I based the riddles off of a great mission he created.  Still, I was really happy with the way it turned out (with a few minor exceptions).  I definitely enjoyed the change of pace this mission gave me, and I had a blast looking the riddles up.  What did you think about their difficulty?  Did the other choices seem plausible?  You thought Diana sounded right?  She was another one that I was never terribly comfortable writing, so I'm glad to hear that.

_a few technical problems first:
 Like i said, no music, i though it was odd but maybe it was for the ambiance? or maybe a FF bug, i seem to recall sometime the music doesn't start itself in some case.
 The Medusa and Amazon Warriors counts as civilian casualties (and negative prestige) at the end of the mission.
 In the room of the third riddle (pillars, stone mask on the walls, a fire in the center...i'm pretty sure it was third riddle) i had pink boxes on the wall in the mouthes of the "stonemask". i'll try to make a screenshot.
 The medusa mesh seems to have a problem, it looks like they had a copy of themselves running at horizontal. I think it was the scoped part of their armor, so maybe there's a reset XForm problem here (i don't know the real term in Nifscope, but in max it would be that there's something wrong with X,Y,Z axis, i'm guessing the scoped part have a different orientation than the bodies)

I had music in the other missions?  If so, I've completely forgotten about that.  Whoops.  The Amazon Warriors counting against you would be because I set them up as cops or heroes, just in case you wanted to use them in the danger room or something else.  The Medusas counting that way are a mistake.  I'm not sure what the missing texture is.  I never saw it.  The weird graphical thing you describe could be the ghosting problem.  Try turning off all shadows, and you might not see it anymore.  Eventually I may get around to fixing that for all of the meshes included, but it would be a huge project to fix everything.

_now that the boring stuff is done, the gameplay suggestion:
Medusa is a fine adversary, the only "problem" is her tendency to go enrage and to attack the other ennemies, since the groups are generally small, it makes the fights sometimes too easy. So maybe one or two more by encounter to even this a little bit, or even better...

...replace the Man-o-Taurs. Or give them a "proper" herofile. They were the most boring ennemies, because all they did was Run-Roar (scares you) throw a punch or two and then re-Roar. They are physically strong and a relatively good challege for Diana, plus mythological and all. But the use of the same tactics (and the fact that Diana is not immune or even resistant to fear) means the fights got a little boring/repetitive, and that i kept waiting for Diana to calm herself before throwing one attack and being re-scared (i was glad they weren't there in the final fight). It's really my bigest beef on this mission (so you can see that you don't have much to worry about for this one too)

Hehe, using the Man-O-Taurs is purely a function of my being in burn-out mode when I created that mission.  I didn't want to do any extra work.  I could tweak them eventually whenever I get around to updating the mod.

_Diana on the other is interesting. Two things that might be changed though: her flight gives her an enormous advantage (i killed the Man-o-Taur by flying constantly, that way if i got scared they still couldn't hit me. Yep, not really fair but they weren't playing fair either), if "princess diana" is never seen again (meaning we only play as Wonderwoman after this intro-mision) maybe you could remove it. The second thing is her tiara, which is too powerful for one reason: chained! in the final fight, it was too tempting to just keep throwing the tiara to damage sometimes up to five amazons in one shot. Otherwise the idea (low piercing damage + moderate stun) is a good choice of attack for WW (and we don't have the lasso yet, so points for variety too)

I could lose her flying.  You really only use her in this one mission.  Also, the tiara could lose chained, I suppose, although I sorta' liked the way it worked.  I tend to think that the low damage makes up for the chaining.

_The final fight: the best part, but could be more fun (you may realize it's my motto in all my reviews of your missions: how could i make this cool mission even more fun to play? )
So there's a bunch of amazons, and for some reason two medusa. I don't know if they were meant to be here (i had a little bug with the last riddle, so...) but if they are here on purpose they probably shouldn't: it an all-amazonian smashfest!
And on this note, the only thing that could make this fight better: make the amazonians stronger, but make them fight each other in addition to you. That would be an epic battle royal between all the pretendant to the WonderWoman title. But i wonder if it might not be difficult to code or something...Well if it can be done it would be cool

Yeah, the Medusas probably just wandered in from another part.  Go figure.  I could create two different groups of Amazons that fight each other, but I couldn't make it a free for all.  Still, I could probably do that, but I rather think it would be too easy.

_another one from the top of my mind,   i though of this while writing the paragraph above: the map is nice, i don't remember if its one of Pan's map taken as a base or a completely original one, but i really like the labyrinth design and the progression from one section to another. but what about traps? That would be a nice addition, you already have branching corridors that goes to the same room, what if you trapped the shortest route? (wall that shoots a spear at you when you are in range, prosimity mine with goo or all other stuff like that) especialy if you remove diana's flight, to force the player to think a little and take the longest but safest way (instead of running/fying in straight line to the next wraith)

Yep, it's the interior of Pan's Island, with very few tweaks by me.  I COULD do traps, but only switch-able traps work in EZScript.  I may get around to that one day, but there are already several encounters running at the same time.  I'm not sure if more would be a good idea...although I suppose I could spawn them progressively.  Either way, it would take a lot of work that I'm not likely to do any time soon.

There, i think i remembered everything i had in mind. I re-read myself and I think i made this critic look more negative than what i actually think of this mission, because like i said the concept of playing a young diana, having to answer riddle in a labyrinth, fighting amazonians in the end for the Wonderwoman title (definitely my favourite part of this mission), all that is really cool, exciting and new. Once again, it's a mission that is different from what we're used to see, and that's definitely one of your strenght.
Still, to be fair, that's probably the mission that needs the most work if you intend to do a "final" release (the technical oddities; and please, please, the Man-o-Taurs   )

Ha, what did you REALLY think about the Man-o-Taurs!  Well, this was, I think, just about the last mission for this storyarc that I wrote, so it didn't get tested as thoroughly as some of the others.  Also, I'm glad you liked it so much, since the only real idea I had for it was to have a riddle mission.

Let me know what you think when you get to the Metropolis mission!

Is anyone else playing the DCUG?  Has anyone tried out the Mystery in Space campaign?  Has anyone tried out any of the unfinished campaigns? 

I finally got this working today. I left my PC for about 20 minutes and the mod had finally booted up.(it had not in 5 minutes of waiting) I jsut completed the first mission and really enjoyed it especially MM's stretch punch.

How do we try out the other campaigns? All I saw was the normal start campaign button which goes to the JLA one.

[BentonGrey]

Hey EoB, I'm glad it finally started for you...although it certainly took its time, didn't it!  Ha, well, the best I can figure is that it just runs REALLY slow upon boot-up on older systems.  Did it run alright once you actually got it started?  As for the other campaigns, if you check your readme, you'll see some instructions on how to play them, but I'll summarize here.  If you open your DCUG directory, you'll find a folder that says "campaigns."  Within this folder is a copy of every campaign file that shipped with the DCUG.  Simply chose the one that you'd like, and copy it into the main DCUG directory.  Then, find the campdef.dat file which is already there, and rename or delete it (there should be a copy of the JLA file still in the campaign folder, so deleting it won't do any harm), and rename the one you want to campdef.  Now when you start your game, that will be the campaign that you access.

[earl of bronze]

It seems to be working ok except in mission 2

Spoiler

I finally completed the final survive until Superman objective but the mission would not end. SO I had to use the mission win cheat to finish.

I will attempt the other camps after I finish the JLA. Thanks!

[BentonGrey]

It seems to be working ok except in mission 2

Spoiler

I finally completed the final survive until Superman objective but the mission would not end. SO I had to use the mission win cheat to finish.

I will attempt the other camps after I finish the JLA. Thanks!

Hmm....can you give me some more details, EoH?

Spoiler

So, you survive until Supes arrives, right?  You actually see the cutscene where he shows up?  Did you see the CS where they figure out the place is rigged to blow?

[earl of bronze]

It seems to be working ok except in mission 2

Spoiler

I finally completed the final survive until Superman objective but the mission would not end. SO I had to use the mission win cheat to finish.

I will attempt the other camps after I finish the JLA. Thanks!

Hmm....can you give me some more details, EoH?

Spoiler

So, you survive until Supes arrives, right?  You actually see the cutscene where he shows up?  Did you see the CS where they figure out the place is rigged to blow?

Spoiler

It said that objective was completed then nothing happened for quite some time. Since I had already had to reload about 20 times to finish the last 3 objectives I just gave up.

[BentonGrey]

It seems to be working ok except in mission 2

Spoiler

I finally completed the final survive until Superman objective but the mission would not end. SO I had to use the mission win cheat to finish.

I will attempt the other camps after I finish the JLA. Thanks!

Hmm....can you give me some more details, EoH?

Spoiler

So, you survive until Supes arrives, right?  You actually see the cutscene where he shows up?  Did you see the CS where they figure out the place is rigged to blow?

Spoiler

It said that objective was completed then nothing happened for quite some time. Since I had already had to reload about 20 times to finish the last 3 objectives I just gave up.

Hmm...it's possible that something is wrong with the final cs.  Could you post your script.log here:
http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=49032.msg707189#new

Heh, yeah, that's a tough mission, huh!  Don't neglect your limpet mines, as they are probably your most effective tool against those bad guys!

[earl of bronze]

It seems to be working ok except in mission 2

Spoiler

I finally completed the final survive until Superman objective but the mission would not end. SO I had to use the mission win cheat to finish.

I will attempt the other camps after I finish the JLA. Thanks!

Hmm....can you give me some more details, EoH?

Spoiler

So, you survive until Supes arrives, right?  You actually see the cutscene where he shows up?  Did you see the CS where they figure out the place is rigged to blow?

Spoiler

It said that objective was completed then nothing happened for quite some time. Since I had already had to reload about 20 times to finish the last 3 objectives I just gave up.

Hmm...it's possible that something is wrong with the final cs.  Could you post your script.log here:
http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=49032.msg707189#new

Heh, yeah, that's a tough mission, huh!  Don't neglect your limpet mines, as they are probably your most effective tool against those bad guys!

Where do I find the script log?

And I did use the exploding batarangs. The problem was the enemy would panic and fly around too fast for me to hit.

[BentonGrey]

Where do I find the script log?

And I did use the exploding batarangs. The problem was the enemy would panic and fly around too fast for me to hit.

Your script.log is in your main FF directory.  You get to choose things for your utility belt at the beginning of the mission, make sure to pick the mines and plant them in strategic places.  Doorways are good for that.  Then lure the bad guys over them and trigger the mine...BOOM!  When using your exploding Batarangs, make sure to aim at the floor, not the bad guy himself.  That way, you'll get them in the blast, even if the enemy dodges.

[earl of bronze]

Where do I find the script log?

And I did use the exploding batarangs. The problem was the enemy would panic and fly around too fast for me to hit.

Your script.log is in your main FF directory.  You get to choose things for your utility belt at the beginning of the mission, make sure to pick the mines and plant them in strategic places.  Doorways are good for that.  Then lure the bad guys over them and trigger the mine...BOOM!  When using your exploding Batarangs, make sure to aim at the floor, not the bad guy himself.  That way, you'll get them in the blast, even if the enemy dodges.

I posted the script.text which is all I see in the main FFVTTR folder.

I didn't see any option to choose something for the belt. I did throw at the floor which is how I got most of the bad guys. However the last few waves flew around so fast it was almost impossible to hit them. I would throw well in front of where one was but they would be past it and out of the blast zone before it exploded. Unless of course I threw it so close it would get me too. Which I had to do a lot.

[BentonGrey]

Where do I find the script log?

And I did use the exploding batarangs. The problem was the enemy would panic and fly around too fast for me to hit.

Your script.log is in your main FF directory.  You get to choose things for your utility belt at the beginning of the mission, make sure to pick the mines and plant them in strategic places.  Doorways are good for that.  Then lure the bad guys over them and trigger the mine...BOOM!  When using your exploding Batarangs, make sure to aim at the floor, not the bad guy himself.  That way, you'll get them in the blast, even if the enemy dodges.

I posted the script.text which is all I see in the main FFVTTR folder.

I didn't see any option to choose something for the belt. I did throw at the floor which is how I got most of the bad guys. However the last few waves flew around so fast it was almost impossible to hit them. I would throw well in front of where one was but they would be past it and out of the blast zone before it exploded. Unless of course I threw it so close it would get me too. Which I had to do a lot.

Hmm, when you spawned, didn't you see several objects around Batman?

[earl of bronze]

Where do I find the script log?

And I did use the exploding batarangs. The problem was the enemy would panic and fly around too fast for me to hit.

Your script.log is in your main FF directory.  You get to choose things for your utility belt at the beginning of the mission, make sure to pick the mines and plant them in strategic places.  Doorways are good for that.  Then lure the bad guys over them and trigger the mine...BOOM!  When using your exploding Batarangs, make sure to aim at the floor, not the bad guy himself.  That way, you'll get them in the blast, even if the enemy dodges.

I posted the script.text which is all I see in the main FFVTTR folder.

I didn't see any option to choose something for the belt. I did throw at the floor which is how I got most of the bad guys. However the last few waves flew around so fast it was almost impossible to hit them. I would throw well in front of where one was but they would be past it and out of the blast zone before it exploded. Unless of course I threw it so close it would get me too. Which I had to do a lot.

Hmm, when you spawned, didn't you see several objects around Batman?

No but I wasn't looking for them so maybe they were there but anyway:

Spoiler

I played the next 3 missions. The GL one was my favorite. There was nice funnydialog in the first cut scene. I didn't expect the ring to talk. I liked the power ideas you put in a lot. The Flash mission was a lot of fun and again I like what you did with his powers. The white martians were very tough for Flash to take down but I won with about 5-10 hit points and no hero points left. The Superman mission was good too, I just liked the GL and Flash ones better.

[BentonGrey]

No but I wasn't looking for them so maybe they were there but anyway:

Spoiler

I played the next 3 missions. The GL one was my favorite. There was nice funnydialog in the first cut scene. I didn't expect the ring to talk. I liked the power ideas you put in a lot. The Flash mission was a lot of fun and again I like what you did with his powers. The white martians were very tough for Flash to take down but I won with about 5-10 hit points and no hero points left. The Superman mission was good too, I just liked the GL and Flash ones better.

Ahh, well if you ever replay that mission, watch out for the things that spawn around Batman in the very beginning.  You can choose what goes in his "utility belt," with everything from a medical kit to handcuffs, and the limpet mines that I mentioned are one of the choices.  The mission is significantly harder without the medical kit and limpet mines.

Spoiler

Awesome, I'm really glad that you liked the next missions, and even more so that they didn't give you any weird bugs.   Yeah, I really enjoyed writing the GL mission as well, and, as I told Trelau, I felt like Hal needed someone to play off of, so I made his ring into a sidekick of sorts.  Ha, that last fight in the Flash mission is a tough one, huh?  Trelau outsmarted me and led the scientists to the still-burning-fire down the street!

[earl of bronze]

About the next mission

Spoiler

Got hammered and checked out the spoilers for Aquaman. I take it that the pink blobs are supposed to be the turrets mentioned earlier? Ok they do work and apparently the Martians cannot hit them because of the missing art files. So I spent over an hour throwing stuff at them while they shot at the turrets in vain. But at least it's possible now.

[Trelau]

Glad to see someone else is going through this mod, it's really a must-play. Also glad that i found a unexpected way to beat a tough fight ^^

So just a quick message out of courtesy: i'm going to india for the next two weeks, so i'm gonna be MIA for quite some times. That doesn't mean i'm not gonna finish this mod when i come back, and i'll definitely try to post reviews for the metropolis mission (and the rest) as soon as i have a chance.

So don't worry if i stop posting here, i'm not stopping until i finish all the campaigns

[BentonGrey]

About the next mission

Spoiler

Got hammered and checked out the spoilers for Aquaman. I take it that the pink blobs are supposed to be the turrets mentioned earlier? Ok they do work and apparently the Martians cannot hit them because of the missing art files. So I spent over an hour throwing stuff at them while they shot at the turrets in vain. But at least it's possible now.

Okay EoB, those turrets' mesh should have been in the mod, but I apparently screwed up and left them out.  I'm going to see about putting up a smallish patch sometime in the next few weeks with a few different tweaks, assuming I can find the energy to mess with the DCUG.  In the meantime, you can simply download the meshes themselves here:

Then drop that folder into your DCUG/Art/Library/Characters folder, and you're all set.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tummf2ttmmj

I'm guessing it worked for Trelau because, like me, he had the mappack installed, so the game just looked in there for it when it couldn't find it in the DCUG folder.  Any performance issues your having are likely the result of the fact that we're all using different PC's that have very different specs.  Because something runs smoothly on my rig doesn't mean that it will run at all on someone else's.  Unfortunately, EZScript is somewhat more resource intensive than regular scripting just because of the way it works, and the JLA mod is rather epic in scope and scale.  The Batman and Hawkman ones should run a bit more easily.

Hey Trelau, have a great trip, man!  I definitely can't wait to read some more of your excellent reviews, but I suppose I'll have to.  

[earl of bronze]

Well the bigger problem is that the mission would not end.

Spoiler

I went to the door that had the ! on it and examined it but did not complete the objective. The last group of bad guys a few WMs and 2 tanks I was able to ko because they did not fight back. However the mission still would not end. So since i had been at it for 3+ hours I used mission win. That said I had gotten 18/16 WMs so I didn't miss any. I am moving on, I cannot take anymore of that mission.

Oh as for performance the other missions run just fine. It was just the Aquaman one that is choppy and real slow.

The WW mission was much much better.

[BentonGrey]

Well the bigger problem is that the mission would not end.

Spoiler

I went to the door that had the ! on it and examined it but did not complete the objective. The last group of bad guys a few WMs and 2 tanks I was able to ko because they did not fight back. However the mission still would not end. So since i had been at it for 3+ hours I used mission win. That said I had gotten 18/16 WMs so I didn't miss any. I am moving on, I cannot take anymore of that mission.

Oh as for performance the other missions run just fine. It was just the Aquaman one that is choppy and real slow.

The WW mission was much much better.

Hmm.....that is extremely odd.  That's two fairly large bugs you've had.  It sounds like it is probably a bug related to cutscenes, since it has to do with the missions ending.  Any time you come across something like that, it would help me to troubleshoot if you'd post your script.txt before you moved on to the next mission (because the script log only record whatever was most recent).  There might be something in there that will help us.  At least you were able to get past it.  I'm glad you enjoyed the WW mission more.  The Aquaman mission is fairly resource intensive because there are several things going on at the same time.  Of course, it is also possible that something else entirely is at work here.  If it IS a performance issue, it will likely rear its head again in the Metropolis mission.

[earl of bronze]

Spoiler

About the next mission, how can you sneak past the guards? They activate  everytime I try. And then cut scene after cut scene of they spotted us really hurts. Batman starts to throw a exploding batarang at a large group, cutscene, ep gone no attack. That really smarts.

Oh and is there anyway to play camp missions in the rumble room with different characters. You have them locked in which means I cannot get any satisfaction from the Batman/Aquaman maps by playing them with another character.

[BentonGrey]

Spoiler

About the next mission, how can you sneak past the guards? They activate  everytime I try. And then cut scene after cut scene of they spotted us really hurts. Batman starts to throw a exploding batarang at a large group, cutscene, ep gone no attack. That really smarts.

Oh and is there anyway to play camp missions in the rumble room with different characters. You have them locked in which means I cannot get any satisfaction from the Batman/Aquaman maps by playing them with another character.

Spoiler

Try taking the extreme righthand path.  If you do that, there is only one guard that MIGHT spot you, and if you're careful, he'll never see you.  Take good advantage of Flash's speed to catch any guards that DO spot you.  He doesn't have to kill them, just knock them down long enough for you to take them out with Bats or MM.  

No, I'm afraid not.  You COULD do some relatively minor editing to allow that kind of play (creating skirmish files for the mission you want, replacing all references to the particular character with a generic "Hero1," etc.  However, they weren't designed for that, so I can't guarantee anything.  Also, you could make the references in the mission generic and then change the required hero through FFEdit.  That would work as well.

[earl of bronze]

Ok thanks for the mission info. As the second I have no idea how to do that.

[BentonGrey]

Ok thanks for the mission info. As the second I have no idea how to do that.

It'd be pretty easy.  You just open up the mission.txt folder within the mission that you'd want to change (and they are labeled in a very straight forward manner.  Then, you either copy the file into your stories directory (if you're doing option #1) or just edit the file (if you're doing #2), and, using the "replace" command under the "edit" button in notepad, change every specific reference to, say, "aquaman_classic" to "Hero1."  However, looking at the two missions you were interested in, they are already setup with the generic descriptor, so all you'd have to do is:

Either create a skirmish mission file, and for that you can simply copy one of the MiniMod files in your skirmish folder, rename it to, say, "02_jla," and change the reference within the file to point to 02_jla instead of whatever it was already pointing to.

OR

Open up FFEdit, point it at the DCUG, click on the campaign tab, find the mission you want to play with someone else, deselect the default hero, and select someone else.  If you can't save it after doing that, move the mission up and then back down in the order, and it will let you save.

[earl of bronze]

Hmm, I tried FFedit but it still gives me the default hero in the rumble room. Oh well I will try it again tomorrow.

Spoiler

I got to the Metropolis mission. It was great! The ruins at the edge of the city were great atmosphere and btw your cut scene dialog between the members of the JLA is excellent. "No telling what trouble Superman has gotten himself into" or something like that from Bats would be just what he'd say. 

I might not be able to play during the next four days depending on how work goes. But I will be playing again by Friday at the latest.