Introduction

As some of you may have noticed, my missions have been down. Originally I took them down due to changes in S6 which made many objects have odd display names. Then the Foundry was super laggy, so I was reluctant to fight with it to work on the missions. And then while I was at it, I decided to make a few updates to the missions with the new features available with S6 (primarily increased detail object count).

Anyway, I'm finally relaunching my series, and I'd like your feedback on the results. The major changes are listed below.

Dereliction Duty

Changes are primarily on U.S.S. Atlas Deck 13. I was very disappointed with how this level turned out when I first made it. It was very bland with boring bare walls, and kind of weird lighting, but there was nothing I could do about it because I hit the detail limit. Now, with the higher detail limit I could add a few more objects. The lighting is still kind of weird, and I wish I could do more with it, but I think it's a major improvement from before.

U.S.S. Atlas Deck 13:

• Added "Galaxy Class" style Wall Panels to the walls.
• Added some more consoles to Security Control and the Security Locker Room.
• Revamped the brig.
• Added a few general objects here and there, like the Galaxy class banner in the transporter room, and the UFP logo on the floor there, the "war map" behind Gonzales in the briefing room, a plant and monitor in Qig's quarters, etc.
• Added a couple more interacts. Be sure to explore the level to find them!

Rest Of Mission

• Added to and tweaked a few conversations.
• Added more "Acknowledged." responses and reduced the number of "Continue" responses
• Changed Hailing interacts to be instant instead of short.

Feedback requested:
1) What do you think of the new Deck 13?

• Does it run ok?
• Are there any objects, consoles, etc, which you don't like?
• Are there any rooms that specifically need improvement (feel free to make suggestions!)
• Let the Hercules officers kill you (so you have to respawn) to see an interesting new addition!

2) Any general complaints about anything in the mission (plotline, conversation, level design, whatever)

• If you have something you want changed, or a suggestion to make, now is the time since I'm actually working on the mission. Once I finish this overhaul I probably will not go back to it, at least not any time soon.
• Keep in mind I can only make relatively small changes. I'm not going to overhaul the entire mission!

3) Any bugs encountered-- please let me know!

Here are some screenshots of the changes for Deck 13. I know they're not exactly the same angle, and the "before" shots are actually taken from Atlas Affair, Part 2, instead of Dereliction Duty, but it's essentially the same deck. In any case, it should be enough to see the changes. I'm not saying it looks amazing now, but it really looked like crap before. I think it might look a little bit better in-game than in the screen shots too. Click here to see a larger version.

Quite liked the new Deck 13, looked more like a Starship than it orginally did,performance wise it worked fine on my PC, wasn't able to see all the triggers (I will try to though) and was unabe to get killed by the Hercule's Officers so I'll give those a try when I play again, overall I enjoyed your mission.....again!

Thanks, I'm glad you liked the changes. As far as the Hercules officers, just set a waypoint for your boffs far away from the battle so they can't help, and then the NPCs should be able to kill you.

I actually tried to make the Hercules officers a little more challenging by adding an extra ensign to the group, but they still didn't seem very formidable when I faced them. Probably hardly anyone will actually end up losing that fight so the thing I added won't really be seen by many, but oh well.

I'll have to make sure to destroy them personally.

the visual changes are pretty nice.

Explored the whole level this time, really like the new triggers (at least I think I found them all!) and lost against the Hercules officers and liked that addition you made

and yeah they're not really challenging when I first did it,I didn't even fire on them yet my boff's easily took care of them.

I'm glad you have put your episdoes up again. I had played through Deriliction Duty before, but the rest had gone by the time I got round to going for Atlas Affair. I played through DD again last night, to recap myself for the rest, and I thought the Atlas looked different. I didn't go exploring like I did last time though, as I wasn't aware there had been changes. Though now I'm tempted to. Feedback of what I did note though, the corridors look a lot better with those panels. The banners and warmap in the briefing helped to add the feeling that this was a command ship, and though only small changes, really made the thing feel more like a starship. I'm afraid I didn't notice any other changes, though it was a few months between the two playthroughs.


If I may ask, which assets did you use for the panels and walls? I'm in the middle of creating a galaxy class interior as well, though it wont be as expansive as yours, and would really like it to have that shiny factor.

I'm looking forward to replaying this and having a look for you.
Yours are some of my favorite missions.
I love Dereliction Duty, looking forward to running the remastred version when I can convince myself to take a break from making my contest missions.

The walls are Wall - Generic Ship 03, and Wall - Door 01 (non-opening), or the other Wall - Doors (opening). You can mix those two types of walls (and basically have to since there is no matching non-door version of the door walls).

There are some tricks you need to know though. Each wall piece should be offset by 9.2 for them to fit together seamlessly. What I mean by that is if your first wall piece is at X = 0, then your second wall needs to be at X = 9.2. You also need to change the other coordinates (in this case Z) by .001 to make it so there isn't geometry fighting between the two walls (just alternate back and forth, ex: 10, 10.001, 10, 10.001).

If you were setting them on the opposite axis you'd change the Z value from 0 to 9.2 for the second wall, and then change the X value by .001.

At each corner, you adjust the X and Z values both by 4.53 (instead of 4.6, which is exactly half of 9.2). This minimizes the jutting of the corners. However, this slightly different value can end up causing things to end up getting slightly out of alignment over the course of an entire deck, so you have to be careful.

If you want the light stripe to line up, you need to offset the Y values of the walls like this:

Wall - Door 01: Y = 0
Wall - Door 02 (thru 08): Y = 0.08 (yes, the opening doors don't line up with the closed one )
Wall - Generic Ship 03: Y = -1.15

The panels are Console - Wall Panel 01 (the ones used for the console stripe). I think that's what you were asking about, but just in case I also used these in other places: Console - Wall 04 (large purplish monitor), Console - Generic Ship S 01 and Console - Generic Ship S 02 are the small and medium greenish monitors.

I hope this made sense. The whole thing is kind of convoluted and there's a lot to have to remember.

Yeah, those wall mounted console stripe things along the main corridor are the ones i was meaning. Thanks. That's useful info about the walls as well. I noticed some clipping on mine, I was going to write it out as some kind of funky hallucagenic (still might).


One thing I forgot to mention, the little workaround you put in with the boffs leaving the transporter room. I didn't have any trouble, but clicked it anyway to see what would happen. That was a fantastic little touch you put in there.