Pulp Adventures Mod Released!

[BentonGrey]

DG, are you editing the .exe file or the icon?  The icon is named Red Hat.  If you can't get the .exe to work (and it should have been automatically adjusted to whatever directory you chose), try copying a shortcut from one of your other mods and just changing the entry so it points to PA instead:

Target: datapath -game PulpAdventures -log

[spydermann93]

Have your mod's shortcut look like this:

Code Select Expand

Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich\ffvt3r.exe" -game PulpAdventures -log
Start in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich\PulpAdventures\..\"

Replace the game's directory (the part in quotes) with wherever your FF is installed.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks Spyder! 

Hey guys, when you finish the mod, would y'all mind giving me a rating on Mod DB?  I want to raise the profile of FF content to keep new members coming to the community.

[kkhohoho]

Just played Mission 8 and it's still fun. I also took Miss Fury out for a spin, and either I'm hearing things or there's more under that suit than there appears, because she's got the same voice as the freaking Spirit. Just figured I should point that out. (Also, her head.nif is pink, so you might want to get that looked at.)

Also, if there's one thing I think you could touch up on in a later release, it's better integrating all of the recruitable characters into the actual storyline. As it is, there's no reason as to why they show up. You get them out of nowhere after Mission 6, you can bring a couple of them with you on Mission 7 if you wish, and that's that. As is, there is no reason for them to be there. Not even the Spirit, who shows up on multiple loading screens and even the darn title screen. (Speaking of which, did he originally have a bigger role? Because he's in a decent amount of artwork for a recruitable character.) I'm not saying you have to shove them into the custscenes or anything like that. All you need to do is add in some sort of throwaway line. For example, The Shadow has a lot of contacts and knows a lot about the world, right? So it would make sense that he would know about some of the other adventurers and philanthropists out there, and how to contact them. So before Mission 7 starts up, you could just add something about him making some phone calls and getting some help. Straight, simple, and to the point. I'm not saying you have to do anything like that, but it would certainly let those recruitable characters make a heck of a lot more sense.

Oh, and before I forget, the rocks in the Mission Briefing for the Conan mission are pink. Just figured I should mention that.

EDIT: Also, most of Conan's attacks don't use up any energy whatsoever. I mean, none. The only attacks that do are his Two Bar attacks, and everything below that is free, even when it shouldn't be. I've no clue what the problem is, but I figured I should bring it up anyway.

EDIT 2: So I played through the Zorro mission, and while I had a vague idea of what to do, I wasn't sure how to do it or in what order. The Primary Objective was to destroy the ammunition, but the secondary objective said to slip past the guardposts. Well, I figured that the guards near the gate were the first 'guardpost' so to speak, so I thought I should take care of that first, but there didn't seem any way to get past them undetected. So I did what any sane man with no superpowers and only a pointy sword to his name would do; bust down a part of the wall by whittling away at it with my sword for 2 minutes and then run around the rest of the wall past the entrance. Of course, the fact that nothing happened tipped me off that I wasn't actually supposed to do that, so I restarted the mission several times until I finally got that I was supposed to blow up the boxes of ammunitions near the top-left of the wall.

After that, I tried my best to sneak past the guard posts, but alas, the cunning Fox is less like a Fox and more like an open target, or at least he was when I was controlling him. Despite my best efforts, I ended up having to fight every single one of the guards minus the few remaining back at the gate. I somehow made it through, even despite accidentally wasting a hero point. Still though, fun mission, and I look forward to the next 'story' when the mod gets around to it. These are some of the most fun missions of the game, and they make part of me want to go out and read the source material for myself.  Anyhoo, enough of that. On to more jungle action with the Phantom and Lord Greystoke  and their furry friends. (Seriously, that lion saved my arse, no joke.)

EDIT 3: Okay, first thing's first; Jungle Jim and Kolu's head.nifs are partly pink. The heads themselves are fine, but everything else in that little bubble is pink. So there's that.

Anyhoo, the real problem here is... I think it's either Mission 12 or 13. It's the one where you invade Berlin and get the Rocketeer. Technically, there's nothing actually wrong with it. There aren't any pink buildings, no real bugs of any sort, and it runs perfectly fine. My main beef with it is the level design. The first part of the mission where you take on the Nazi Rocketeer knockoffs is fine, but after that when you invade the bunker is when things get messy. Out of nowhere, nazi's and martial artists start swarming out of the bunker gates en masse, so much so that the mod suddenly has a sharp difficulty spike simply because there are so many of them to deal with. The Shadow ended up kicking the bucket in the end, poor Dick Tracy practically got murdered, and the only reason I survived was because I brought Captain Midnight and used and abused his Cluster Bombs, which might just be the most ridiculously overpowered attack in the game. And having to take on Shiwan KAAAAAAAAAHN!!! after all of that is just the icing on the cake, and I only beat him because Rocketeer and Captain Midnight kept themselves up in the air so KAAAA-- uh, ahem; Kahn couldn't touch them aside from his mental attacks. (And because Shadow and Tracy had already met their respective makers.)  The whole thing took me a hour and a half to beat just because of how tough it was. What you need to do is scale down the amount of Nazi's and martial artists in that mission down to at least half of their current numbers, because right now, it's just too much.

[BentonGrey]

Ha!  This is a great, helpful response, Kk.  I'll be addressing things in a bit, but could you tell me what difficulty you were playing at?

[kkhohoho]

Ha!  This is a great helpful response, Kk.  I'll be addressing things in a bit, but could you tell me what difficulty you were playing at?

Normal. If I was playing on Hard, this would have made sense, because it definitely felt like I was on Hard. But that wasn't the case.

[BentonGrey]

Howdy Kk, okay, you have a great round-up of issues there.  It's great and terrible!  It's great that you found them all, terrible that they exist. 

1) Miss Fury: I've apparently screwed up her voice entry.  I'll figure that out.  Her head nif, along with the others, was just the wrong file.

2) Character Integration: Good suggestions.  What you're seeing is the mostly submerged evidence of the adhoc nature of the inclusion of the extended cast.  Basically, the reason that the Spirit is featured so prominently is that he was originally the ONLY recruitable character, so it was assumed he'd be recruited.  He's actually got some dialog in various missions.  So do some of the others as well, but the nature of EZScript and optional dialog is such that you have to have the right character in the right slot to get it to work.  It's one of my biggest frustrations with modding.  As for the others, people kept making me awesome characters that I never expected to see, and I kept including them.  The final result feels a bit tacked on because, in terms of the campaign, it was.  The campaign was finished long before those characters were added.  They themselves, of course, got a lot of of attention, but I didn't go back and revise the missions to make them fit more smoothly.  I'll do that when I update it.

3) Conan: What rocks?  I'm afraid I don't see any rocks in the briefing screen, and nothing I do see is pink.  Might you snap me a screenshot, Kk?  As for his powers, I screwed with his balance some while I was testing, and I suppose I ended up with a weird assortment of power levels.  Do you think it would be better to knock those two higher tier powers down to one bar?

4) Zorro:  Hmm, I can certainly see how that could be confusing.  The guard posts are just the two guard towers.  I've edited the objectives to say 'FIRST destroy the ammo' and 'sneak by the guard TOWERS.'

I'm really glad you're enjoying the flashback missions.  I think they were some of my favorites to create!  Also, yeah, Jad Bal Ja is freaking awesome.  He is an honest-to-goodness lion, after all.  My original plan was to make him Tarzan's sidekick, but that didn't work.  It's probably a good thing, because he would throw balance out the window.

5) Kahn: Ha, your references to him cracked me up.  This mission gave me a lot of trouble in terms of balance.  Basically, M25 in his last update of EZScript changed the way minions were handled.  The game now produces the same number of them, regardless of their point value, and the number is determined by difficulty.  I find that it is difficult to use them effectively, as there tend to just be zillions of them.  I made some edits while testing, but clearly it was not enough.  I switched those minions to a limited number of villains.  That should make it more manageable. 

6) Captain Midnight: You think his cluster bombs are overpowered?  I was afraid of that.

Thank you very much for your detailed notes, Kk.  They are super helpful.  I've made some changes and I'll make some more tonight.  I'll try to release an update soon.

[kkhohoho]

3) Conan: What rocks?  I'm afraid I don't see any rocks in the briefing screen, and nothing I do see is pink.  Might you snap me a screenshot, Kk?  As for his powers, I screwed with his balance some while I was testing, and I suppose I ended up with a weird assortment of power levels.  Do you think it would be better to knock those two higher tier powers down to one bar?

I'd like to, but that would mean I've have to start the campaign over just to get to that one level, unless there's some sort of console code that can take me over there and just skip everything else. As for his powers, knocking his two higher tier powers down to one bar wouldn't solve the issue here. The issue is that his one bar attacks don't actually cost anything despite the game saying otherwise, so knocking those two bar attacks down to one would make Conan outrightpowered, as he might be able to use his most powerful attacks for free. So that's what the problem here is.

5) Kahn: Ha, your references to him cracked me up.  This mission gave me a lot of trouble in terms of balance.  Basically, M25 in his last update of EZScript changed the way minions were handled.  The game now produces the same number of them, regardless of their point value, and the number is determined by difficulty.  I find that it is difficult to use them effectively, as there tend to just be zillions of them.  I made some edits while testing, but clearly it was not enough.  I switched those minions to a limited number of villains.  That should make it more manageable.

Thanks, really. Without Captain Midnight's cluster bombs, I'd be fricked. Speaking of which...

6) Captain Midnight: You think his cluster bombs are overpowered?  I was afraid of that.

Trust me, those suckers can demolish an entire throng of nazi's in one shot if all of them hit, which is a pretty safe bet. (Though it's not enough to trivialize the whole mission, sadly.) One bomb is strong enough, though it wouldn't be worth two bars. Two would be just right. Three would need three bars to account for the increased overall damage, and four would be right out. It's a heck of a time blasting those enemies to smithereens with those cluster bombs, but it doesn't exactly make for balanced gaming.

Thank you very much for your detailed notes, Kk.  They are super helpful.  I've made some changes and I'll make some more tonight.  I'll try to release an update soon.

You're welcome Benton, and thank you for making this mod in the first place. Even with all of it's problems, it's still a hoot, and I'll be looking forward to playing it again after I beat it and seeing the changes made with the updates. (Also, if you could release a .txt guide with the the update that tells you what recruitable characters in what slots on what missions get you unique dialogue, that would be great too, though you don't have to do it if you don't want to.) 

Also, there's one last thing that bothers me a bit. There's a few different missions where you're supposed to 'sneak into' a base, but every single time, despite all of my best efforts, I still end having to fight some enemies. Now I'm not saying you necessarily have to change this, because for all I know, that was the idea, but when I hear 'sneak in', I think 'sneak in without alerting so much as a single enemy to my presence until I meet my objective.' So unless you're planning on doing a complete revamp of these levels, maybe 'break in' would be a more apt term, because that's essentially what you're actually doing.

EDIT: Also, there's something else I just found out. When I beat Kahn on the Berlin mission, it just sort of ended; I got the big FF symbol, the mission results screen, and that was that. And when I played the next mission briefing, our heroes were suddenly heading to Opar seemingly out of nowhere. I had to read the mission.txt for the Berlin mission to discover that there a whole cutscene at the end of it that I missed just because Shadow had kicked the bucket. I shouldn't miss out on a whole cutscene just because one of my heroes dies. If he's that important, then the whole mission should restart rather than finishing it without seeing the whole thing. Unless there's a way to rig so that you can see the cutscene regardless of whether Shadow gets knocked out or not, then you should probably just add a new objective along those lines, because I shouldn't have to read the mission.txt just to see what happened.

EDIT 2: So I got finished the sixteenth mission, beat the giant t-rex by making it walk on the exploding mushroom, got everyone out alive, and all was well. Or at least it seemed well, because little did I know that my heroes had all apparently took a heave dose of hallucinogens. Basically, everything in Mission 17 -- both the mission briefing as well as the mission itself -- are pink. Very, very pink. And lo and behold, this time we've got a screenshot:



I can probably beat the mission as is, but I'd like to do so without, you know, all of that pink. It's a very nice pink, but still.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks again, Kk, I appreciate your help and comments.  I've finished an update, and I'm compiling it now.  I'm just going to upload a new version that will include a range of updates.

I'll post more when it's done.

[BentonGrey]

Okay, a new version has been uploaded and is now available.  You can find it on my site here:

https://bentongrey.wordpress.com/pulp-adventures-mod/

Or on the ModDB page:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/pulp-adventures

This will address all of the problems covered by previous patches, as well as the new ones we've been discussing.  I think I've got everything major, but I haven't changed everything Kk suggested.  You'll need to delete the previous installation and replace it with this one to ensure everything works properly.  This should work with save games, but because of the way FF works, balance changes won't be available until you restart a campaign.

Kk, specific thoughts are forthcoming.  Thanks again for your help!

[crosspotts1.0]

it gives a 404 error

[spydermann93]

That's strange; it's all working for me.

Which link is giving you the 404?

[crosspotts1.0]

the one on his web site not the mod web site when i download it off the mod sit my computer blocks it an says it has a virus

[spydermann93]

The download is safe on my end, so it should be good for you as well.

I know I've had my Anti-Virus warn me in the past about some of Abenavides' executables, but they're all safe.

Which Anti-Virus do you have?

[crosspotts1.0]

my computer just deleats it same thing with the mod grave yard cause i realy wanted to play arcades revenge on there cause i like arcade and wanted the mesh too with the skin plus just wanted to play it to see how it worked

[spydermann93]

Does your anti-virus allow you to get those deleted files back? It should allow you to say "ignore these files" or something to that effect. If it can't, for some strange reason, then just turn off your anti-virus whIle you download and install the mods.

[crosspotts1.0]

alright ill try but this is what i get when i click on the page to down load

http://greylands.freedomforceforever.com/PulpAdventures.exe

Error 404: NOT FOUND!

This domain name has just been registered.

[earl of bronze]

Hey guys, I just looked in on this forum last night, saw this mod and reinstalled FFVT3R & FFX3.3 to play it. Enjoying myself until I get to teh Doc Savage intro there my game gets stuck with this error:

CTalkingHeadUnit NIF has no main object/librarycharacters\male_hunter_suit\head.nif

I thin that is right although I may have misread some of my own writing

[BentonGrey]

Howdy guys!  Thanks Spyder, for fielding CP's post for me.

CP, thanks for pointing that out.  I'm not sure what's going on.  Apparently my file disappeared off of my server.  Weird.  Anyway, I'm reuploading now.

Earl of Bronze, great to hear from you again, man!  Welcome back to the boards!  I'm glad you were enjoying the mod, and I'm flattered that you reinstalled the game to play it.  The issue you had is one that should have been resolved in the newest release.  Did you download it from ModDB?  I might need to replace that download then.  Did you download any of the patches?

[crosspotts1.0]

YEAH IM PLAYING THRU ALL UR MODS TO CHECK FOR ANY BUGS AND IM REPOTING THEM TO U TO HELP OUT SO IF U DONT HAVE THE TIME

I DO SOMETIMES

[BentonGrey]

Thanks CP, that's very helpful.  I've updated the link on my site, so hopefully it's working properly now.

[crosspotts1.0]

yes the link works now ill try again when im home

[earl of bronze]

Howdy guys!  Thanks Spyder, for fielding CP's post for me.

CP, thanks for pointing that out.  I'm not sure what's going on.  Apparently my file disappeared off of my server.  Weird.  Anyway, I'm reuploading now.

Earl of Bronze, great to hear from you again, man!  Welcome back to the boards!  I'm glad you were enjoying the mod, and I'm flattered that you reinstalled the game to play it.  The issue you had is one that should have been resolved in the newest release.  Did you download it from ModDB?  I might need to replace that download then.  Did you download any of the patches?

Thanks Benton. Yes I got it from ModDB. I installed the patches and it works now. However I cannot keep those blasted gangsters from killing the surgeon so I am stuck.

[BentonGrey]

Howdy Earl.  I'm glad it's working for you.  Clearly there's some issue with the Mod DB version of the file.  I'm in the process of updating it.  Just to be safe, why don't you download it from my website and replace your copy with the fresh one. 

As for saving the doctor, that can be a bit tough.  My advice is to rely on an overpowered egg grenade to stun the assassins, and then get between them and the doctor.  Remember that A) Doc is pretty hardy, and you've got a healup right there, as well as two hero points to work with, and B), only the guys with the Tommy guns are specifically targeting the doc.  You can temporarily ignore the others.  That encounter also won't trigger until you move towards them, so if you draw the other minions away, you can defeat them in detail.

[earl of bronze]

Ok I got past it and am a few missions further on now. I love seeing the Spider but its too bad I didn't check in while you were making this. He is horribly under powered. As someone who has read hundreds of pulp reprints I would back him in a no holds barred death match against any non Sci Pulp hero save Operator #5. A typical situation I have seen in many pulps a thug has the hero covered and how they react:

Doc Savage(if aimed at his head) has to give up
The Shadow whirls away
The Spider draws a gun from a shoulder holster and rills the thug between the eyes before he can squeeze the trigger!(superhuman reflexes yes!)
Operator #5(think a cross between James Bond  and Captain America) whips his hidden flexible rapier out of his belt sheath, lunges and either kills or disables the foe before they can fire) Really super human reflexes!

Of course the Spider and Operator #5 are my favorites because they fight a lot of super villain types. AAMOF the first Superman cartoon copied the Spider novel Satan's Murder Machines

https://www.amazon.com/Spider-Satans-Murder-Machines/dp/193307695X

[crosspotts1.0]

be for i lost everything i couldent even stat on the doc savage level it come wit a cut scen and then frezz and the shut off is any one else having this trouble

[earl of bronze]

be for i lost everything i couldent even stat on the doc savage level it come wit a cut scen and then frezz and the shut off is any one else having this trouble

Install the patch from the first post and it should work.

Stuck on Mission 7 now. So many bad guys with grenades.

[BentonGrey]

Howdy guys!  EoB, did you reinstall a fresh copy, deleting the original?  I SHOULD have fixed the AI/balance so that the grenades are a bit less of a threat.  If not, let me know and I'll give it a closer look.

CP, don't install the patches (they're out of date now), but do a fresh install.

Ohh man, EoB, I wish you had been here too!  The only Spider story I've read is Empire State, so I could definitely have used some more advice.  I'll keep this in mind when I update the mod.

[earl of bronze]

Howdy guys!  EoB, did you reinstall a fresh copy, deleting the original?  I SHOULD have fixed the AI/balance so that the grenades are a bit less of a threat.  If not, let me know and I'll give it a closer look.

CP, don't install the patches (they're out of date now), but do a fresh install.

Ohh man, EoB, I wish you had been here too!  The only Spider story I've read is Empire State, so I could definitely have used some more advice.  I'll keep this in mind when I update the mod.

I installed the version from moddb and then the patches from the first post in this thread.

As for the Spider Radio Archives offers a free ebook and audiobook:

http://www.radioarchives.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=128


http://www.radioarchives.com/Audiobooks_s/103.htm

however you do need some sort of email like outlook express installed to send them the email, which is a change from when I got the audiobook. I have bought most of those ebooks anyway. If that doesn't work for you then PM me. I have a text version  of the Prince of the Red Looters I can send you.

In any event I built my own Spider(if he shoots a thug and they don't die it feels so wrong) used the prestige cheat to recruit him and got through the mission. Chained shots work so nicely to simulate him mowing down hordes of thugs. 

[BentonGrey]

EoB, ha, that's a good way around the problem!

I'm not 100% confident that the version you had + the patches is the current one.  To be on the safe side, I'd advise reinstalling, but it may work fine for you. 

Is anyone else having issues with the balance in mission 7?

Cool!  I'll try and check those out when I get some time.  I love audiobooks!