Freedom Force v1.3 Patch

Freedom Force v1.3 Patch

This recent Freedom Force patch will upgrade the game to version 1.3 from all previous US or European versions. Read below for all the details.

Freedom Force Patch v1.3

Introduction

Welcome to the Freedom Force Patch version 1.3! This patch is intended for use

by users of the US or European version 1.0 or higher of Freedom Force. It

includes all fixes made in previous patches 1.1 and 1.2.

Freedom Force version 1.3 fixes a problem where the game would not run

successfully under Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Please note that this patch is released "as is" and no representation is made

about its fitness for any specific purpose (read the attached EULA Patch for

full details).

Below are some additional notes on patch functionality that was originally

included in patch 1.2.

Skirmish Mode

Skirmish mode is an exciting new way to play Freedom Force against random or

pre-generated selections of enemies. It's a good way to test out your custom

heroes or just to try re-playing missions to see if you can improve your

performance.

Access skirmish mode from the main menu or from the base (in campaign) by

pressing the "danger room" button. This will take you to a series of screens

from which you select the skirmish mode, the characters you wish to play with

and, depending on the mode, the enemies that you want to fight.

Select a Mode and Map

On the first screen you select the mode that you wish to play and the map.

There are three major modes provided:

1. Campaign re-play. Here you can re-play any campaign mission that you have

already reached in the campaign. The game automatically tracks which missions

you have reached in the campaign and only shows those missions.

2. Danger Room: Here you can fight against up to 24 enemies that you select.

3. Instant Action/Iron Man/Beat the Clock: In these modes you will fight a

series of enemies that appear in waves. The set of enemies provided depends on

the mode.

Once you have selected the mode you wish to play, you will need to select a

map. Danger room and instant action modes only utilize the multiplayer maps.

Once you have picked a mode, you can also see the top 5 scores for that mode.

When you are done picking the mode and map, press the Next button to continue.

Select Heroes

Now you can select the heroes you wish to use in the upcoming battle. This is

just like picking heroes for a campaign mission or multiplayer battle. You can

choose up to four characters from either the multiplayer characters or your

custom characters.

Note that some campaign missions may only allow limited numbers of characters.

Also, you can replay campaign missions with non-standard characters (i.e. take

Bullet in the first mission instead of Minuteman).

Be careful when picking characters, as your final score will be scaled by the

total point value of your squad. Points awarded are multiplied by 40,000 and

then divided by the total value of your squad so picking more than 40,000

points of heroes will result in a lower final score (you can never get more

than 100 times as many points or less than one tenth so don't bother picking

squads that are worth less than 400 points!).

Press the Next button when you are done picking your heroes.

Select Enemies

If you selected Danger Room mode you will now have to select the enemies you

wish to fight (other modes will skip straight to the mission). Up to 24 enemies

can be selected from either custom characters, villains or multiplayer

characters. When you are done, hit the Next key to enter the mission.

Mission

Danger Room missions will end when you have defeated all enemies. Other modes

will end when all waves of enemies have been KO-ed. Watch the message box at

the top of the screen for scoring information.

Debrief

Once you have won or lost a mission, you will see the debrief screen. In

non-campaign modes you can now see your score. Click on the Heroes tab to see

how many points were scored by each hero. Click on the Enemies tab to see a

breakdown of scores by enemy type. The Score tab shows how the total score is

scaled by the cost of your squad and by any additional bonuses you got.

Finally, the High Score tab shows you the top scores.

Have fun!

Version 1.3

Code Fixes

- Game runs under Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Version 1.2

New Features

- Enabled Surround Gaming for Matrox Parhelia

- Hypnosis speech added

Code Fixes

- Fixed text edit caret jumping to the end of the field when typing

- Fixed crash when entering danger room with an invalid campdef.dat

- Custom characters now run around when they run out of ep in the danger room

- Fixed Alex's Danger Room mod not working

- Fixed odd display of prestige bonuses

- Fixed: after selecting a 'beneficial' power effect in the power creation

screen, the stun and knockback boxes would never reappear

- Fixed: characters would run in place while an active defense was in use

- Fixed: 'Max Instances' box was grayed out

- Fixed: Ambient sounds continuing after the end of the mission

- AIs flying in danger room improved

- AIs will stop when they have run out of EP less often

- If renderer fails initalisation, 640x480 mode is tried as a fallback before

exiting

- Fixed: Sukhov's powers are now set correctly for his AI

- Fixed: Enraged enemies would attack those with lowest hitpoints first, now

their target selection is based on distance only

- Fixed: Enemies would be alerted to power usage when their AI was disabled

- Fixed a graphics corruption bug with NVidia Detonator drivers v40.*

- Fixed game crashing after playing "Nick Of Time" in campaign danger room

Tuning

- Speeding bullet knockback and damage increased

- Lightspeed attribute: damage bonus restored to 50%

Version 1.1

New Features:

- New skirmish mode added including:

o buttons to danger room from main menu and base

o new skirmish mode selection screen

o new character selection screen

o new enemy selection screen

o new skirmish debriefing screen

- Enemies now react to physics events such as thrown objects colliding.

- Hero portraits now flash if hero takes damage while off-screen.

- When a hero is damaged off-screen, his pain sound is now played 2D.

- Enabled python scripts to be read from a mod's Missions/Scripts folder.

- Multiplayer hosts can set pause speed on the creation screen.

- Multiplayer game now waits 4 seconds before showing end-of-game screen.

- Games of different build numbers now cannot play MP together (to prevent

patched versions playing against non-patched versions).

- Multiplayer screen now remembers CP, time, map and max players.

- Added new difficulty level (impossible).

- Difficulty now modifies villain and minion health as well as damage done.

- Added script function Object_CalcPrestige for calculating prestige costs of

characters.

- Added script function AI_SetAlerted.

- Added script command Object_SetOrientation.

- Popup help is now available to show how much CP is recovered from removing an

attribute.

- A countdown is shown in multiplayer when game time approaches 'time up'.

Tuning:

- EP for melee attacks now deducted on contact rather than when triggered.

- Capped number of monsters (20) killed for prestige purposes.

- Speeding bullet knockback is now scaled by distance traveled. Also, cost is

increased.

- Molecular excitation now does more damage.

- High knockback made more expensive.

- High stun made more expensive.

- Material costs for stone and metal increased.

- Villains have double hit points (like heroes).

- Strength gives less melee damage bonus.

- Multiple contract points now cost more.

- Attributes crack shot and cybernetic brain are now more expensive.

- Attribute 'radioactive' is no longer cheaper than invertebrate, since it's

better.

- All attributes that increase your vulnerability to damage are now worth 50

more points.

- Changed description for lightspeed plus reduced damage multiplier.

- Bullet's melee attacks are now set to medium swiftness (he actually misses

once in a while).

- Melee attacks can no longer knock back characters while they are getting up.

- Beneficial 'support' powers can no longer be assigned stun and knockback

(this would have the effect of bypassing the target's resistances).

- If a character's stats are over 10, they are now clamped to 10.

- Multiplayer squad selected list is no longer sorted.

- You can no longer indicate that you are ready to start a multiplayer game

with an empty squad.

- You can no longer pickup or wield objects while invisible

or displaced.

Code Fixes:

- Fixed potential crash/ corrupt stack.

- Fixed bug where heroes that had direct attacks wouldn't use those attacks

when they were enraged or hypnotized.

- Fixed: Ant could pick up canisters when burrowed.

- Tweaked thug with gun's retreat distance to fix bug where they would

oscillate between attacking and retreating.

- Fixed bug where panicked characters sometimes got stuck.

- Fixed bug where moving camera quickly and then releasing camera control

button

- sometimes caused camera to jerk continuously.

- Fixed drag select 'sticking' when dragged outside of the map.

- Fixed widescreen_leave sound distortion on briefings.

- You can no longer target yourself with a wielded object.

- Active defense effects were wrongly positioned on the character in the power

creation animation/effect screen.

- Fixed status text box hanging around during load screen.

- Fixed pause clock hanging around for save/load screens.

- Character weights are now shown correctly in multiplayer.

- Cars don't collide with characters so much anymore.

- Fixed: Bullet's Electrify power's first explosion wasn't doing damage.

- Fixed: being unable to fly or land whilst having shield activated.

- Fly no longer appears on the menu when carrying objects.

- LockupFlying tactic added to AI, for robots. Robots no longer get confused by

flyers in Mr Mechanical's base.

- Fixed talking heads moving in slow-motion during game paused.

- Fixed increased/decreased game speed carrying over into cutscenes and

debriefings.

- Fixed passive defense appearing as default power when no zero-cost

- melee was available.

- Fixed move splat sound being played once for each hero in a formation.

- Game now uses non-exclusive input by default, enabling screen shot programs.

- Water damage type is now resolved to crushing.

- Players are kicked from multiplayer if their squad points total is unusual.

- Fixed: repeated overpowered projectiles didn't do extra damage.

- Fixed: Mercy transferred hitpoints to ground or buildings and buildings

collapsed when Mercy used on them.

- Fixed: Balance gave wrong results when hit points above maximum were granted.

- Fixed: some secondary states (power nullify, empathy, etc.) were not cured by

- Commuted Sentence

- Fixed: Levels do not increase projectile damage.

- Fixed: Empathy no longer causes damage to attacker when beneficial powers

- are used on target (e.g. energy transfer).

- Fixed: Timemasters would attack Manbot in final level.

- Fixed Law and Order recovering hero points when transforming.

- Triggering an attack now cancels the invisibility state.

- Fixed: Fire Shield and a few other FX not configured properly.

- Six new fx should now be accessible in the char screen.

- Named El Diablo's and Manbot's power tiers.

- Numerous grammatical and spelling errors fixed up.

- While throwing an object, you can no longer target the object that you are

holding.

- Fixed: if an enemy did not have a entry in the string database, then they

would not appear on the debrief screen.

- Fixed: move commands would sometimes be ignored after a wield.

- El Diablo would keep his fiery feet after being stunned or knocked back in

the air.

- Fixed: EP Drain and EP Transfer did not work correctly in multiplayer

Script fixes:

- Came A Hero: civilian in alley will no longer panic if her muggers are

already KO'd, it won't re-assign the objective either.

- Came A Hero: cafe will no longer fade in cutscene.

- Strange Visitors (a): alarm is raised and alarm light appears only if the

alarm and station are intact.

- Skating on Thin Ice (a): frozen ice trooper will get knocked out 15 seconds

after he's frozen.

- Skating on Thin Ice (a): cop who flees muggers will react to enemies normally

after the event.

- Skating on Thin Ice (b): weird interrogate on ice queen works the standard

way now.

- Nuclear Winter (a): heroes weren't standing around an ice queen if you

interrogated her.

- Nuclear Winter (a): heroes will now properly face the interrogated NW minion.

- Nuclear Winter (a): moved a badly placed ice trooper.

- Nuclear Winter (b): remove the arrow before cutscene.

- Nuclear Winter (c): nuclear winter will always detect you, so you can't sneak

up behind him and disarm the bomb.

- Nick of Time (c): after nick's second feeble speech, minute man will not say

that they have to take pinstripe down if they already

have.

- Thug in Sea Urchin/Man O War intro cut-scene no longer stuck in terrain up to

his eyeballs.

- Where Shadows Fall (a): trainer at start of level only plays once now.

- Looking For Trouble (b): RPG system is now switched off for intro cutscene.

Also moved order back slightly.

- Deja Who (a): the extra two chars beyond Minuteman and Liberty Lad run in the

final cutscene now.

- Deja Who (b): Eve is added after the cutscene where you talk to her, so you

don't see her selection ring now.

- Robots Rampage (b): awkward transition in final cutscene smoothed out.

- Robots Rampage (b): one of the robots in the intro was facing the wrong way.

- Destruction Production: the exploding robot no longer blows up twice.

- Destruction Production: final cutscene no longer snaps to Minuteman before

he's in position.

- United We Fall: Alchemiss was sometimes obscured by the third character in

final cutscene.

- A God Walks the Earth: heroes 3 and 4 now have proper places to stand during

the final cutscene.

- A God Walks the Earth: the cop at the station will no longer assign you the

objective to clear the entrance if you already have.

- Pandemonium: Mentor no longer speaks the same line twice when you move over

both ramps in the first room.

- Beginning of the End: added a slight pause before the final cutscene changes

locations on you.

- Beginning of the End: the thugs around the crystal will halt their speech if

attacked.

- Beginning of the End: added a pause for end cutscene.

- End of Time: Timemaster will no longer have his lines get cut off when he

disappears.

- End of Time: the portal had an attention mark on it in the final cutscene.