By: Orange, April 30, 2000

An Explanation
I talked to former DC staffer, Dynamo about his work on his campaign that he is currently working on. You may have noticed that his previous work of art, Retournent was halted short due to his time slots, so we got the update. Oh yeah, my words are in teal (I was going to make it Orange, but I thought it would look bad.

It's been awhile since we've heard anything about Retournent, what's going on?

Well, I let the campaign sit on the back burner for awhile due to Real Life (tm) issues. When I got back to FREDing, I took a look at what I had so far and decided, this isn't going where I want it.

So what are you up to now?

I spent the next week or so hammering out a new story idea, and now I'm banging out a new campaign.

What are you going to call this campaign, and what's it about?

I haven't got a name for it yet, although Retournent could fit quite nicely. Basically, it takes place about 3-4 years after the Capella incident. The GTVA prepares a fleet to visit and make amends with a colony that was created around the time line of the original Great War. Shortly after the Tombaugh incident, the GTA and PVN sent out seeder colony ships to keep the races going in case the Shivans rendered both the Terrans and Vasudans extinct.

Speaking of, how many missions will there be and when will it be completed?

When it's done, whenever that will be, I don't know. I feel that I'm making better progress than before. Since a lot of the better missions from the old Retournent could be ported over to the new story easily, I would say that I'm about a third finished with the missionI haven't decided on a final number, but there will be no less than 8 and no more than 15.

Do you have plans for any modifications (MODs) to be put in your campaign, either completely original, or previously created?

I am planning (hoping) to make something of a Total Conversion. I would like to add several new ships, models, and weapons. I'm also planning a new main hall screen, some AI tweaks, and a new persona list. It all depends on how much help I can get from the mod community.

I'm sure you won't have any troubles finding help, modeling is always the tough one. Do you expect to have a site up in the near future (or do you have one?) like you did with your previous campaign?

I had a new neat design for the old Retournent right before I went off-line for awhile. If I keep the same name, I should have the new design with the new campaign data up at the old url shortly.

As soon as you get that site up, let us know. What kind of missions can we expect out of your campaign?

The best, hopefully. With the original Retournent, I had a lot of original mission ideas. Many of those carried over to the new campaign as well as some new ones. Members of the now defunct Eclipse Design will recognize Europa Star. (The proposed opening mission from the design group). I want to keep what that mission is about under wraps for now, though. There will be some other different things done. There'll be some nebula missions, some big convoy missions, and a red-alert mission.

In the main Freespace 2 campaign, you go through different squads and whatnot. Will you be incorporating this in to your campaign?

I've decided to take a different route than most FS campaigns use and employ a character based system. The player will take the role of Captain Travis Sinclair, recently assigned to a squadron on the GTD Ithaca. He won't transfer to any other squads during the campaign, but I hope to keep things interesting anyways.

Well.. thanks for your time! Any closing words?

I just want to thank the community for their support. With out them, I wouldn't be doing this. Hopefully, when this campaign is all finished, they'll want to go out and play it.

Comments? Email them to Orange (orange@volitionwatch.com)

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