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Archived Boards => The Archive => Stellar Assault => Topic started by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 05:18:24 pm

Title: Stellar Assault FSO - The Old Thread
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 05:18:24 pm
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5830/introimage.jpg)

As has been mentioned throughout this thread, this game/mod/total-conversion is a remake of a game developed in Japan for the Sega 32x and Sega Saturn. Visually and Stylistically this game is going to be closely based off of the 32x version. Most of the remodels I have done have been strongly influenced by the Models found in the 32x Game. Gameplay will also take most of it's cues from the 32x Version.

However, nearly all PC Space Sims have a strong and heavily outlined story. The 32x game, did not. The entire story to the 32x game was told in three paragraphs in a black & white instruction manual. Not much to work with. To paraphrase; “Our old enemies have attacked us in our home system and have deployed a massive laser cannon in orbit around the sun. Fight your way to solar orbit and destroy the weapon!”
That was the gist of the original story. No lie. The game consisted of 6 Missions;

The first has you attacking two enemy frigates and 12 Fighters. You destroy them all.
The Second Mission has you attacking a gravitational acceleration gate which was just used to Launch an asteroid at the earth. You fly in, destroy the acceleration gate and its capital ship escorts (1 Frigate and 2 Destroyers).  
The third mission had you flying into the asteroid belt and killing off the booster ships that were used to move the asteroids into the acceleration gate in the first place. These booster ships are of course guarded by a compliment of fighters and two light cruisers.
The 4th Mission has you taking on an entire fleet of ships. 4 Frigates, 3 Destroyers, 2 Light Cruisers, and a Battlecruiser.
The 5th Mission has you launching an attack upon a Carrier and its two BattleCruiser escorts, the Carrier is called the Ganazula and is a beast of a ship. (Re: Gigantic). You actually fly inside it and destroy it's main reactor to kill it. It is invincible otherwise.
The Final mission has you in close orbit around the sun (omg, blindness). Where you confront the big bad laser weapon. You destroy it and win the game.

Why did I bother explaining every mission? Well, there was only six, and you could beat the whole game in under 30 minutes if you were good at it.

The Japanese-only release of the Sega Saturn version expands on the original by creating a total of 14 missions and they are insanely hard. (I've only made it to mission 12 myself.) Unfortunately, whatever story was made for this game will never be known because ALL of the dialog is in Japanese and no one has bothered translating it. I would also like to point out that it had too much dialog to begin with, and that 55 – 65% of the time in every mission was spent in autopilot listening to the moonspeak between you, your wing mates and your nav-computer. So the Saturn version while an improvement, has its flaws.
My goals in this PC version made by westerners is that we take the good points of both the 32x game and the Saturn game, combine them, and leave out the bad parts. Many of the missions in the Saturn Version are based off of the 32x missions. You still need to destroy an acceleration gate, and fight in an asteroid belt. There is still a HUGE fleet battle halfway through and you blast your way through a lot of light cruisers.

However, there were several really cool missions original to the Sega Saturn version. Like flying inside the giant asteroid Ceres, and flying 3 missions in orbit around and in the atmosphere of a Terraformed Venus. The game did a great job immersing the player within its Universe, even if you don't understand Japanese.

So, while the story is a blank slate, one thing I heartily thank the Japanese developers for in this game, is the SOLID and SIMPLE gameplay, and absolutely beautiful ship designs, I mean, the ships in both games are completely gorgeous. Its my firm opinion that every ship designed by every Western Space Sim developer is completely ****ing ugly compared to the ships and fighters found in these games. The mechanical designer who drew up these ships was one inspired dude. Every ship looks FAST, even when sitting still.

With  all of this in mind, I think that with the combination of some damn beautiful ships, and a  story written by a westerner, inspired by the combined missions of both games; a great game could be made legendary. The originals are just SO DAMN GOOD, that I want to relive them on modern hardware with modern graphics, and hopefully even great a great multiplayer game.

Thats right, I said it, a multiplayer game. First and foremost, the core gameplay will be ironed out, and a few multiplayer missions will be made. As a means to test out the game mechanics and perfect the gameplay before the single player game is finished. As a general rule, I intend to do for the Space Combat Genre what Soul Calibur, and Counter-Strike have done for the 3D Fighting Game, and First Person Shooter. I want to create a fun, noob friendly game that also Challenges and Enthralls veterans of the Genre. Hopefully bringing back a few more people to these games that I've grown up loving, and have spent the last ten years sorely missing. Maybe that would convince some commercial developers that there is still money in the Genre.
( I AM SO SICK OF FPS's, RTS's AND MMOs!!!)

Now here is the deal, I am an artist and writer, not a programmer. I can pull together a story, the artwork, and the 3D Models, but putting them into a usable engine is a road-block I am having difficulty crossing. I badly need programmers to help me pull this all together into the great game I imagine. I am fully willing take suggestions and criticism from potential team members so long as they at least take the time to play the 32x version of the game. (The Saturn version is ultra rare and insanely hard to acquire even on emulator. The going price on retro game resellers right now is $100 for the 32x cartridge and over $200 for an imported Saturn disc.) I can provide the 32x Rom for anyone interested (just pm me.)

This game will NOT be in closed development, as it is going to be based on an open source engine (either Freespace Open, or Vegastrike), anything discovered during the course of it's development will of course be shared with the community surrounding the respective engine. I still haven't decided on an engine that I want to use, the FSO in the title stands for “First Strike Operations”, not Freespace Open.  Its just a convenient acronym. Just as the Saturn Version was called “Stellar Assault SS”, I'm keeping with a theme. Third game --> three letters in the acronym.

Alright, I've spent a lot of time talking about the ideas behind the game, and how much I love it, and that I want you to love it too. But what about this story written by a westerner that I keep promising?

Here we go...

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9463/promoscreen.jpg)

The setting is some time early in the 33rd Century. Mankind has not ventured very far outside the solar system, but we have developed highly advanced technology, and have colonized and terraformed all three Terrestrial planets worth terraforming. Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Wait, what? We terraformed Venus? How?
That is central to our story here believe it or not.

Venus is the same size and mass as the earth and orbits within the sun's “habitable zone”, however, there are several factors that lead to it being a hellish hothole.
First, there are a ton of volcanoes. So many that they created a massive greenhouse effect and forced the planet into having the hottest surface temperature in the solar system.
Second, the other factor to this super hot surface is the fact that the planet's day takes longer than it's year. So it spends a lot of time baking in the sun. This probably isn't helping things.
Third, the whole atmosphere isn't just hot, but acidic, so not only do things get baked, they get dissolved away at the same time. There is water on the planet, but it is just so damn hot, that all of the water stays evaporated in the upper atmosphere.

So how does Hellish Venus get turned into the paradise that was imagined during the Victorian Era?

During the 22nd Century, the world eventually unifies due to a heavily intertwined global economy and a general desire worldwide for peace. The UN forms global government and massive monetary and human resources are put into the rapid development of the Martian colonies, the planet is colonized by rapid industrialization with factories the pollute worse than 1950s factories. The greenhouse gases raise the Martian temperature and thicken the atmosphere and allow the planet's water to liquefy. Mars develops nicely and over a few hundred years, turns into a global Tundra/Siberian climate. To facilitate the rapid Martian colonization, the global government creates a corporate entity whose sole purpose is to develop, exploit, and colonize the solar system.

The Company is called “Synthesis” and anyone familiar with their 18th and 19th century history could label this company as a historical  parallel to the British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. Synthesis is the first to begin financing the full scale exploitation of the Solar Asteroid field and puts their Base of Operations buried inside the dwarf planet Ceres. Synthesis makes incredible profits from the mining operations throughout the asteroid belt and actually possess more funds than the United Earth Government.

Using this money, Synthesis proposes to the UEG the possibility of Terraforming Venus and creating a tropical paradise there. After a long deliberation, the UEG gives Synthesis the “Go-Ahead” and they begin building a fleet of mobile gravitational acceleration gates. Over 100 were built in total and they were all moved from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper Belt. 1 Gate in particular was large enough to move a KBO the size of Pluto. Booster Ships originally meant for moving asteroids around in the asteroid belt were now being used to shove whole Comets into the 100 Acceleration Gates. Each one carefully aimed on a crash course for Venus. Each comet was put on course to impact venus as just the right angle to give the planet a 24 hour rotation, instead of it's original 584 days. These impacts also served to implant water and oxygen into the planets atmosphere.

Finally, using the ultra gate, a large Pluto sized KBO was launched towards Venus with the careful trajectory to give the planet a moon so that it would have a stable rotational axis. (A smaller KBO was sent to Mars as well to stabilize the Martian axis. It took 300 years for the Venusian atmosphere to calm down and stablize. The water in the atmosphere, finally cooled off and began raining back down upon the surface. Oceans formed and it was soon found that Venus would have even less land cover than Mars. (The combination of water from the upper atmosphere combined with the water from the comets created a rather large ocean.) Synthesis genetically engineered tropical plants to survived on Venus just as they had Alpine plants for Mars. By the end of the 31st Century, Venus was fully habitable for mankind and the profits gained from Venusian habitation has earned Synthesis even more money than the combined mining operations system wide.

And so, it is now the early 33rd Century, Venus, Earth and Mars are ruled by a combined government called the United Solar Worlds. Synthesis, has begun projects outside the solar system, mostly in and around Alpha Centauri. However, profits have been limited in that area and life is difficult for the colonists. However, less than a decade ago, a probe returned from the Vega star system revealing a solar system ripe for colonization. No earthlike worlds, but several moons that were Terraformable by way of comet collision (as was done with Venus). Synthesis gathered 50 acceleration gates (25 completely brand new, and a lot larger.) And took course for Vega.

(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9742/innersystemfleetchart.jpg)

At this point, it is important to mention the Military culture that has grown within Synthesis, much like the British East India Company, Synthesis has their own military that answers only to the board of directors. Known as the Sythesis Space Force (refered to as the SSF from now on). The SSF is a full blown military organization with its own fleet. It is also the SSF that protects and controls the Gravitational Acceleration Gates. When Synthesis sent their gates to Vega, they also sent more than half of their fleet.
2 Battle Carriers, 4 Escort Carriers, 18 Light Cruisers, and 66 Frigates.
The total military size for Synthesis consists of 3 Battle Carriers, 8 Escort Carriers, 26 Light Cruisers, and 108 Frigates. None have ever seen combat.

The Solar Government also has 3 large fleets. Mostly because many on Earth did not trust Synthesis as being the lone military force in the Solar System. (By this time, much of the population has grown to distrust Synthesis and wanted protection from unjust corporate policies.)

The Solar Government Navy consists of 5 Battle Carriers, 7 Escort Carriers, 44 Light Cruisers, and 130 Frigates. Military strategists and thinkers in both the SGN and SSF have long believed that combat in Space would consist of massive Carrier Engagements with Fighters to destroy the enemy Carrier. (Much like naval warfare in the 20th and 21st Centuries).

Fighters used by both the SSF and SGN are the Feather 1 Interceptor, Feather 2 Space Superiority Fighter, and the Feather 3 Torpedo Bomber. Most ships in the SSF have a Red/White/Graphite Color Scheme while ships in the SGN use a Blue/Off-Blue/Graphite Color Scheme.
Both the Feather 1 and Feather 2 have atmospheric flight capabilities.


Also, Here are some updates regarding the Artwork. I've remodeled the Feather 1, and a few other ships. Here is a picture of the new Feather 1. And also a Size Comparison chart for the fighters.
(http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/3383/3dmodelfeather1improved.jpg)
(http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/6082/3dmodelsizecomparisons.jpg)
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: tinfoil on April 14, 2009, 05:24:16 pm
But that would be patently unfair with the kind of weaponry at your disposal. Think about Maxims and Kaysers in an Erinies being autoguided. It would be ridiculous. That said, it would also be damn fun. :drevil:

Anyway, that is not currently a feature of the SCP, though I'm pretty sure the effect could be simulated with some creative tabling but I'm not sure what that would entail.

Oh, and I suppose you'll be wanting a

:welcome:
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 14, 2009, 05:27:10 pm
I think that something like this goes beyond tabling and into scripting. Don't know if it's actually feasible, though.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Hellstryker on April 14, 2009, 05:28:40 pm
Of all the things you would want to change... Gah, I want a challenge, not my game made easier.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: tinfoil on April 14, 2009, 05:29:24 pm
I think that something like this goes beyond tabling and into scripting. Don't know if it's actually feasible, though.

Not if you had a primary aspect-seeking weapon. they go straight into the lead indicator.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 05:32:51 pm
lol, thanks for the speedy reply!

Well in all honesty. The finished product would be a completely separate game. I want to change (simplify) the HUD. Simplify the menu system. Reduce the number of weapons. Increase the number of enemies (Low poly ships), and create an almost bright and cartoony setting while making the game so violent and hectic that the challenge comes from simply trying to survive rather than individual fighter duels.

Have you ever heard of "Shadow Squadron" or "Stellar Assault"? Both are essentially the same game. However Shadow Squadron was a 32X version of the Sega Saturn version of "Stellar Assault." Both were really simple as far as game mechanics were concerned but both are also insanely challenging from a game play perspective, and they are ridiculously fun. I just want to recreate that feel on the PC with the joystick rather than the Sega directional pad.

Link to info on Stellar Assault: http://www.segagagadomain.com/saturn14/stellarassault.htm (http://www.segagagadomain.com/saturn14/stellarassault.htm)
ingame images: (http://www.shinforce.com/saturn/reviews/StellarAssualt/pic-SASS-2.jpg)
As you can see it looks really dated. Which is why I want to remake it for the FSO Engine.

Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-lLVdj1ZI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-lLVdj1ZI) 32X Version (1996)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGvmLcQJlw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGvmLcQJlw) Saturn Version (1998)
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: General Battuta on April 14, 2009, 05:33:17 pm
I think that something like this goes beyond tabling and into scripting. Don't know if it's actually feasible, though.

Not if you had a primary aspect-seeking weapon. they go straight into the lead indicator.

Awesome! That might be exactly what's he looking for.

I personally thought the CAT turned Starlancer into a turkey shoot (and destroyed any reason to take ships other than those with aim assist), but to each his own. No reason not to try it, right?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 14, 2009, 05:35:44 pm
*snip*

Hmmm....The Shadows of Lylat (http://www.game-warden.com/starfox/) team is working on something like that for their mod, IIRC.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 05:39:15 pm
While lead assist does take some of the challenge out, it would actually be more realistic. Seriously, in the distant future when spacecraft can travel faster than the speed of light and fire energy weapons and have shields, wouldn't CAT be a no-brainer?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 14, 2009, 05:44:11 pm
Depends on the future in question :D.

Seriously, never let realism get in the way of Fun. And some of us rather enjoy a good challenge every now and then.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 06:13:31 pm
Well, if you guys can point me in the direction to get the mechanics right, I'll gladly show you a gameplay challenge of a different sort.

(I knew you guys were the Hardcore types  ;) ) Of course I want to make the "Soul Calibur" of space sims, not the "King of Fighters".


So... How do I make it track the Lead Indicator?
Scripting? Or the Table?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Flaming_Sword on April 14, 2009, 06:15:23 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Autoaim_FOV:

Makes the guns on a seraphim soooo much more effective. :P
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 06:20:17 pm
So this is done on an individual basis for each ship? This isn't something done standard throughout the game?

Does it snap to the reticule or is it a bit more precise? (I don't want it to be completely perfect...)
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Flaming_Sword on April 14, 2009, 07:16:49 pm
You have to set this for each ship, with an effective angle, ie. autoaim will only work if the target is within this angle of the gun normals.

What the setting does is if the target ship is in range of your primaries, but your aim is little off (within the set angle), your shots will leave your guns at an angle to intercept the target (and will hit as long as they don't change their speed/direction).

Check out my mod if you want to see it in action. :P
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 07:20:29 pm
Alright, I will! Whats the link? >_>
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Flaming_Sword on April 14, 2009, 07:29:58 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,60801.0.html

:pimp:

EDIT: only available for the seraphim.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 14, 2009, 09:39:37 pm
Well, I just attempted to run your mod, but it crashes on startup. Do I need to put it anywhere specific? I just gave it it's own "Shivan" folder. Should it go somewhere else?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Flaming_Sword on April 14, 2009, 11:48:57 pm
Do you have everything else there? (new-ish build, mediavps 3.6.10, modified mod.ini to point to the correct mediavps dir, etc.)

Have you tried a debug build and looked at what it was complaining about?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Nuke on April 15, 2009, 12:08:37 am
well it can and has been scripted.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Autoaim_FOV:

Makes the guns on a seraphim soooo much more effective. :P

when was that added? yet another feature prototyped with scripting.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Flaming_Sword on April 15, 2009, 02:34:49 am
I can't remember now, but it was something on the order of months, likely less than a year ago (or maybe that was when I first noticed it)? I don't have access to SCP svn from this machine to check.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Spoon on April 15, 2009, 09:48:58 am
Quote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGvmLcQJlw Saturn Version (1998)
That game actually looks like a lot of fun to play! (I guess the japanese voices also help, i'm such an otaku  :blah: )
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: chief1983 on April 15, 2009, 12:01:53 pm
There's a lot of this stuff in the Wanderer branch right now.  Most of it was at FotG's request.  We needed computer assisted targeting to make up for everything being so small and fast.  Basically, with the code in his branch (there is a build with it in Recent Builds, I'll probably put up another one within the week), you can have something like this:

Code: [Select]
$Name: BTL-A4 Y-Wing
+nocreate
$Autoaim FOV:                 5
+Converging Autoaim
+Minimum Distance:            100
$Convergence:
+Automatic
+Minimum Distance:            100

The FOV is the degrees for the autoaim 'cone', there is converging autoaim, or you can have the shots follow a parallel path by leaving that off, you can set a minimum distance for the convergence to be allowed, and then, supposedly if the Autoaim can't be achieved, it should fall back on a default convergence (I think there might be an issue with that currently).  This is all newer experimental code, but hopefully it should be cleaned up and in the main code within a few months after 3.6.10.  If you want to set a static convergence, you can but I don't remember the code for that right now.  You're probably more interested in the Autoaim FOV enhancements though anyway.  Cheers to Wanderer for this little enhancement.  Next, we're hoping to get the Primary Lock feature, so that it's not immediate but rather after a delay to acquire the lock (also definable per ship I hope).  We're also trying to come up with a unique way of presenting this lock info to the user, separate of the secondary lock mechanism.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 02:14:23 pm
Alright, I just ran the game from 3.6.10 debug, and I at least made it to the title screen. I had to tell it to ignore 4 errors. Then when loading the campaign, it hit me with one last error.

Assert: bay_num >= 1 && bay_num <= MAX_SHIP_BAY_PATHS
File: ModelRead.cpp
Line: 3784


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    model_load()    ship_page_in()    level_page_in()    freespace_mission_load_stuff()    game_post_level_init()    game_start_mission()    game_enter_state()    gameseq_set_state()    game_process_event()    gameseq_process_events()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()    kernel32.dll 77444911()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e4b6()
------------------------------------------------------------------

So yeah...
The others as well:


Warning: For 'RailgunImpact', 3 of 4 LODs are missing!
File: Weapons.cpp
Line: 1267


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    parse_weapon()    parse_weaponstbl()    weapon_init()    game_init()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()    kernel32.dll 77444911()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e4b6()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e489()
------------------------------------------------------------------

NEXT...

Warning: For 'bomb_flare', 3 of 4 LODs are missing!
File: Weapons.cpp
Line: 1267


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    parse_weapon()    parse_weaponstbl()    weapon_init()    game_init()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()    kernel32.dll 77444911()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e4b6()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e489()
------------------------------------------------------------------

Again...

Warning: Invalid +Index value of 2 specified for beam section on weapon 'LSilver'; valid values at this point are 0 to 1.
File: Weapons.cpp
Line: 2984


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    parse_weaponstbl()    parse_modular_table()    weapon_init()    game_init()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()    kernel32.dll 77444911()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e4b6()
    ntdll.dll 77a0e489()
------------------------------------------------------------------

More...

Warning: Inverted bounding box on model 'shockwave_red.pof'!  Swapping values to compensate.
File: ModelRead.cpp
Line: 2185


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    model_load()    shockwave_load()    load()    ship_page_in()    level_page_in()    freespace_mission_load_stuff()    game_post_level_init()    game_start_mission()    game_enter_state()    gameseq_set_state()    game_process_event()    gameseq_process_events()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()------------------------------------------------------------------

Last one

Warning: Inverted bounding box on submodel '' of model 'shockwave_red.pof'!  Swapping values to compensate.
File: ModelRead.cpp
Line: 2340


Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    model_load()    shockwave_load()    load()    ship_page_in()    level_page_in()    freespace_mission_load_stuff()    game_post_level_init()    game_start_mission()    game_enter_state()    gameseq_set_state()    game_process_event()    gameseq_process_events()    game_main()    WinMain()    WinMainCRTStartup()------------------------------------------------------------------


Hopefully this will lend you some help in the problem.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 02:16:18 pm
Quote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGvmLcQJlw Saturn Version (1998)
That game actually looks like a lot of fun to play! (I guess the japanese voices also help, i'm such an otaku  :blah: )
Actually, the Japanese voices were the only thing I didn't like, they go on and on. And I had no idea what they were talking about ;_;

Often the voice acting parts went longer than the combat missions. That was my only gripe with the game. They could have done all that talking during the fighting >_>
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 15, 2009, 02:18:52 pm
If you ran a debug build, there should be a log file in the \data\ folder. Posting that is usually a greater help when figuring out problems.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: chief1983 on April 15, 2009, 02:42:40 pm
Are you running the MediaVPs 3.6.10?  The 3.6.8 ones throw quite a few warnings...
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 03:04:48 pm
Here is the full Error log
>_>


Code: [Select]
==========================================================================
DEBUG SPEW: No debug_filter.cfg found, so only general, error, and warning
categories can be shown and no debug_filter.cfg info will be saved.
==========================================================================
FreeSpace version: 3.6.10
Passed cmdline options:
  -env
  -missile_lighting
  -glow
  -spec
  -mod shivans,mediavps
Building file index...
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\shivans\adv_shivans.vp' with a checksum of 0x81720c53
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\shivans\shivans.vp' with a checksum of 0xb218d3c7
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Advanced.vp' with a checksum of 0x08a62d20
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Assets.vp' with a checksum of 0xb8c5d655
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Core.vp' with a checksum of 0x0a0213e0
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Effects.vp' with a checksum of 0xb2296226
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Music.vp' with a checksum of 0xcca92482
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\FS2OGGcutscenepack.vp' with a checksum of 0x84396e99
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\multi-mission-pack.vp' with a checksum of 0x377695e0
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\multi-voice-pack.vp' with a checksum of 0xd50e7442
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\Root_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x747372cc
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\smarty_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xddeb3b1e
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\sparky_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x164fe65a
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\sparky_hi_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xa11d56f1
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\stu_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xd77da83a
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango1_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x4c25221e
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango2_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x86920b82
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango3_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x705e8d71
Found root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\warble_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xd85c305d
Found root pack 'f:\tango1_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x4c25221e
Found root pack 'f:\tangoA_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x2e10c984
Found root pack 'f:\warble_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xd85c305d
Searching root 'C:\games\freespace2\shivans\' ... 18 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\shivans\adv_shivans.vp' ... 576 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\shivans\shivans.vp' ... 1567 files
Searching root 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\' ... 0 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Advanced.vp' ... 2610 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Assets.vp' ... 1679 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Core.vp' ... 72 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Effects.vp' ... 1022 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\mediavps\MV_Music.vp' ... 15 files
Searching root 'C:\games\freespace2\' ... 6 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\FS2OGGcutscenepack.vp' ... 10 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\multi-mission-pack.vp' ... 110 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\multi-voice-pack.vp' ... 307 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\Root_fs2.vp' ... 157 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\smarty_fs2.vp' ... 10 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\sparky_fs2.vp' ... 3027 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\sparky_hi_fs2.vp' ... 1337 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\stu_fs2.vp' ... 2355 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango1_fs2.vp' ... 32 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango2_fs2.vp' ... 15 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\tango3_fs2.vp' ... 10 files
Searching root pack 'C:\games\freespace2\warble_fs2.vp' ... 52 files
Searching root 'f:\' ... 3 files
Searching root pack 'f:\tango1_fs2.vp' ... 32 files
Searching root pack 'f:\tangoA_fs2.vp' ... 0 files
Searching root pack 'f:\warble_fs2.vp' ... 52 files
Found 26 roots and 15074 files.
AutoLang: Language auto-detection successful...
Setting language to English
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_strings-lcl.tbm' ...
Initializing OpenAL...
  Using 'Generic Software' as OpenAL sound device...
  OpenAL Vendor     : Creative Labs Inc.
  OpenAL Renderer   : Software
  OpenAL Version    : 1.1

... OpenAL successfully initialized!
GR_CPU: Family 15, MMX=Yes
Initializing OpenGL graphics device at 1280x1024 with 32-bit color...
  Initializing WGL...
  Requested WGL Video values = R: 8, G: 8, B: 8, depth: 24, double-buffer: 1
  Actual WGL Video values    = R: 8, G: 8, B: 8, depth: 24, double-buffer: 1
  OpenGL Vendor     : NVIDIA Corporation
  OpenGL Renderer   : GeForce 9800 GTX+/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
  OpenGL Version    : 3.0.0

  Using extension "GL_EXT_fog_coord".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_multitexture".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_env_add".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_compression".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_env_combine".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_draw_range_elements".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object".
  Using extension "GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_framebuffer_object".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_rectangle".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_bgra".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_texture_cube_map".
  Using extension "GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias".
  Using extension "GL_ARB_point_sprite".
  Found special extension function "wglSwapIntervalEXT".

  Max texture units: 4
  Max elements vertices: 1048576
  Max elements indices: 1048576
  Max texture size: 8192x8192
  Can use compressed textures: YES
  Texture compression available: YES
  Using trilinear texture filter.
... OpenGL init is complete!
Size of bitmap info = 705 KB
Size of bitmap extra info = 40 bytes
ANI cursorweb with size 24x24 (25.0% wasted)
GRAPHICS: Initializing default colors...
OpenGL: Created 512x512 FBO!
OpenGL: Reusing 512x512 FBO!
SCRIPTING: Beginning initialization sequence...
SCRIPTING: Beginning Lua initialization...
LUA: Opening LUA state...
LUA: Initializing base Lua libraries...
LUA: Beginning ADE initialization
ADE: Initializing enumeration constants...
ADE: Assigning Lua session...
SCRIPTING: Beginning main hook parse sequence....
Wokka!  Error opening file (scripting.tbl)!
TABLES: Unable to parse 'scripting.tbl'!  Error code = 5.
SCRIPTING: Inititialization complete.
SCRIPTING: Splash screen overrides checked
SCRIPTING: Splash hook has been run
SCRIPTING: Splash screen conditional hook has been run
Using high memory settings...
Wokka!  Error opening file (interface.tbl)!
WMCGUI: Unable to parse 'interface.tbl'!  Error code = 5.
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_effects-sdf.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_adveffects-sdf.tbm' ...
ANI 2_radar1 with size 209x170 (33.6% wasted)
Windoze reported 16 joysticks, we found 1
Current soundtrack set to -1 in event_music_reset_choices
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_music-mus.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_advmuzzle-mfl.tbm' ...
Wokka!  Error opening file (armor.tbl)!
TABLES: Unable to parse 'armor.tbl'!  Error code = 5.
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_effects-wxp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_adveffects-wxp.tbm' ...
BMPMAN: Found EFF (exp20.eff) with 64 frames at 35 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (ExpMissileHit1.eff) with 44 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (exp05.eff) with 47 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (exp06.eff) with 48 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (exp04.eff) with 60 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (Maxim_Impact.eff) with 23 frames at 30 fps.
ANI Lamprey_Impact with size 80x80 (37.5% wasted)
BMPMAN: Found EFF (Gmuzzle.eff) with 5 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (PWmuzzle.eff) with 4 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (Rmuzzle.eff) with 4 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (Bmuzzle.eff) with 5 frames at 30 fps.
WARNING: "For 'RailgunImpact', 3 of 4 LODs are missing!" at Weapons.cpp:1267
BMPMAN: Found EFF (bomb_flare.eff) with 86 frames at 24 fps.
WARNING: "For 'bomb_flare', 3 of 4 LODs are missing!" at Weapons.cpp:1267
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_effects-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_tech-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_models-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_adveffects-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_flak-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_effects-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_adv_beams-wep.tbm' ...
WARNING: "Invalid +Index value of 2 specified for beam section on weapon 'LSilver'; valid values at this point are 0 to 1." at Weapons.cpp:2984
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_adv-wep.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_trails-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_tech-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_dragon-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_models-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_adveffects-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_turretangle-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_trails-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_tech-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_shockwave-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_models-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'shivans_dragon-shp.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_escort-hdg.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_effects-str.tbm' ...
loading animated cursor "cursor"
ANI cursor with size 24x24 (25.0% wasted)
Ships.tbl is : INVALID!!!!
Weapons.tbl is : INVALID!!!!
cfile_init() took 465
Got event GS_EVENT_GAME_INIT (49) in state NOT A VALID STATE (0)
ANI cursor.ani with size 24x24 (25.0% wasted)
Got event GS_EVENT_MAIN_MENU (0) in state GS_STATE_INITIAL_PLAYER_SELECT (37)
WARNING!, Could not load misc 2_title anim in main hall
ANI 2_Exit.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
ANI 2_Pilot.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
ANI 2_Continue.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
ANI 2_Techdata.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
ANI 2_Options.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
ANI 2_Campaign.ani with size 272x55 (14.1% wasted)
Got event GS_EVENT_NEW_CAMPAIGN (26) in state GS_STATE_MAIN_MENU (1)
Got event GS_EVENT_START_GAME (1) in state GS_STATE_MAIN_MENU (1)
=================== STARTING LEVEL LOAD ==================
ANI 2_Loading.ani with size 824x43 (32.8% wasted)
Starting model page in...
Beginning level bitmap paging...
BMPMAN: Found EFF (particleexp01.eff) with 10 frames at 8 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (particlesmoke01.eff) with 88 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (particlesmoke02.eff) with 39 frames at 24 fps.
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_fireball-fbl.tbm' ...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_adveffects-fbl.tbm' ...
BMPMAN: Found EFF (WarpMap01.eff) with 30 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (WarpMap02.eff) with 30 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (rock_exp.eff) with 55 frames at 30 fps.
Loading warp model
Loading model 'warp.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'warp.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 1012822985, IBX checksum: 3226283165 -- "warp.pof"
Model warp.pof has a null moment of inertia!  (This is only a problem if the model is a ship.)
 128
BMPMAN: Found EFF (shieldhit01a.eff) with 23 frames at 21 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (shieldhit02a.eff) with 45 frames at 30 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (shieldhit03a.eff) with 22 frames at 30 fps.
SHOCKWAVE =>  Loading default shockwave model...
Loading model 'shockwave.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'shockwave.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3636355033, IBX checksum:  546289972 -- "shockwave.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (shockwave3d-glow.eff) with 159 frames at 24 fps.
Model shockwave.pof has a null moment of inertia!  (This is only a problem if the model is a ship.)
SHOCKWAVE =>  Default model load: SUCCEEDED!!
MISSION LOAD: 'Shivan Mission 1.fs2'
Hmmm... Extension passed to mission_load...
Starting mission message count : 264
Ending mission message count : 269
Current soundtrack set to -1 in event_music_reset_choices
Loading model 'capital2s-01.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'capital2s-01.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3107866366, IBX checksum: 2943945225 -- "capital2s-01.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (htlravana-glow.eff) with 63 frames at 26 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (capital04-03-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (supertile1-glow.eff) with 40 frames at 10 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (scap02-glow.eff) with 21 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (minertile2-glow.eff) with 30 frames at 15 fps.
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem fighterbay01, believed to be in ship capital2s-01.pof
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem fighterbay02, believed to be in ship capital2s-01.pof
Allocating space for at least 38 new ship subsystems ...  a total of 200 is now available (38 in-use).
Loading model 'fighter2s-03.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'fighter2s-03.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum:  651225735, IBX checksum: 3749023199 -- "fighter2s-03.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (fighter2s-03-glow.eff) with 40 frames at 26 fps.
Loading model 'fighter2s-02.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'fighter2s-02.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 2246874044, IBX checksum: 3104060394 -- "fighter2s-02.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (fighter2s-02-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 25 fps.
ANI 2_lock1 with size 56x53 (17.2% wasted)
ANI 2_lockspin with size 100x100 (21.9% wasted)
ANI 2_lead1 with size 26x26 (18.8% wasted)
ANI 2_energy2 with size 86x96 (25.0% wasted)
ANI toggle1 with size 57x20 (37.5% wasted)
ANI weapons1 with size 126x20 (37.5% wasted)
ANI weapons1_b with size 150x20 (37.5% wasted)
ANI 2_toparc1 with size 252x60 (6.3% wasted)
ANI 2_toparc2 with size 35x24 (25.0% wasted)
ANI 2_toparc3 with size 41x29 (9.4% wasted)
ANI 2_leftarc with size 103x252 (1.6% wasted)
ANI 2_rightarc1 with size 103x252 (1.6% wasted)
ANI 2_reticle1 with size 40x24 (25.0% wasted)
ANI targhit1 with size 31x21 (34.4% wasted)
ANI energy1 with size 12x41 (35.9% wasted)
ANI targetview1 with size 137x156 (39.1% wasted)
ANI targetview2 with size 4x96 (25.0% wasted)
ANI targetview3 with size 7x20 (37.5% wasted)
ANI damage1 with size 148x25 (21.9% wasted)
ANI support1 with size 108x24 (25.0% wasted)
ANI objective1 with size 149x21 (34.4% wasted)
ANI wingman1 with size 71x53 (17.2% wasted)
ANI wingman2 with size 35x53 (17.2% wasted)
ANI wingman3 with size 14x53 (17.2% wasted)
ANI netlag1 with size 29x30 (6.3% wasted)
ANI head1 with size 164x132 (48.4% wasted)
ANI time1 with size 47x23 (28.1% wasted)
Loading model 'starfield.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'starfield.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum:  131622925, IBX checksum: 1025691878 -- "starfield.pof"
Model starfield.pof has a null moment of inertia!  (This is only a problem if the model is a ship.)
ANI debris01 with size 51x38 (40.6% wasted)
ANI debris02 with size 26x19 (40.6% wasted)
ANI debris04 with size 36x27 (15.6% wasted)
=================== STARTING LEVEL DATA LOAD ==================
Allocating space for at least 384 new ship subsystems ...  a total of 600 is now available (63 in-use).
About to page in ships!
ANI shield-f10 with size 112x93 (27.3% wasted)
Loading model 'fighter10.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'fighter10.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3533707295, IBX checksum: 1503289896 -- "fighter10.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (fighter10-01-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 25 fps.
ANI shieldfs-02 with size 112x93 (27.3% wasted)
ANI shieldfs-03 with size 112x93 (27.3% wasted)
Loading model 'cruiser03.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'cruiser03.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3525829606, IBX checksum: 2847941254 -- "cruiser03.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (cruiser03-03-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 20 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (cruiser03-01-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 15 fps.
Loading model 'shockwave_red.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'shockwave_red.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum:  211450703, IBX checksum:  273281165 -- "shockwave_red.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (shockwave3d_red-glow.eff) with 159 frames at 24 fps.
WARNING: "Inverted bounding box on model 'shockwave_red.pof'!  Swapping values to compensate." at ModelRead.cpp:2185
Model shockwave_red.pof has a null moment of inertia!  (This is only a problem if the model is a ship.)
WARNING: "Inverted bounding box on submodel '' of model 'shockwave_red.pof'!  Swapping values to compensate." at ModelRead.cpp:2340
Loading model 'cruiser03x.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'cruiser03x.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum:  676122068, IBX checksum: 2570923354 -- "cruiser03x.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (cruiser03x-01-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 15 fps.
Loading model 'cruiser2s-01.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'cruiser2s-01.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 2527255781, IBX checksum: 1758251859 -- "cruiser2s-01.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (cruistiles4-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 25 fps.
BMPMAN: Found EFF (cruistiles5-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 15 fps.
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem reactor, believed to be in ship cruiser2s-01.pof
Loading model 'corvette2s-01.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'corvette2s-01.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3899406533, IBX checksum: 2409004565 -- "corvette2s-01.pof"
BMPMAN: Found EFF (corvstile3-glow.eff) with 37 frames at 15 fps.
Unknown special object type $path17 while reading model corvette2s-01.pof
Unknown special object type $path25 while reading model corvette2s-01.pof
Unknown special object type $path15 while reading model corvette2s-01.pof
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem fighterbay, believed to be in ship corvette2s-01.pof
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem reactor, believed to be in ship corvette2s-01.pof
Loading model 'support2t-01.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'support2t-01.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 3647508254, IBX checksum: 1158518330 -- "support2t-01.pof"
Loading model 'carrier3t-01.pof'
IBX: Found a good IBX to read for 'carrier3t-01.pof'.
IBX-DEBUG => POF checksum: 2533234878, IBX checksum: 2516311486 -- "carrier3t-01.pof"
Warning: Ignoring unrecognized subsystem fighterbay, believed to be in ship carrier3t-01.pof
Int3(): From d:\c++\freespace\fs2_open - 3.6.9 development\code\globalincs\windebug.cpp at line 1051


I don't understand Hex at all, so this stuff means pretty little to me. But if any of you guys understand it, have a blast.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 15, 2009, 03:13:40 pm
Not the error log. Go to your fs2 folder. There is a folder called data in it. In that folder, you will find a file called fs2_open.log. Post that here.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 03:18:09 pm
Last post edited for new log. And yes, it is much more interesting.

You'll have excuse my noobishness, I've played Freespace for a long long time, but this is my first time really attempting to mod it or learn the nuts and bolts.

By the way, where should I start when beginning a project? I have a game plan written up, but as far as how I "Start" a mod, where should I begin? Models? Game code? Interface?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: chief1983 on April 15, 2009, 03:36:01 pm
How much of it do you think you're going to be doing?  You probably won't need much code unless you're trying to do something pretty different from any existing behavior.  Models is always a good place, interface is usually not necessary unless you're doing a full total conversion.  Then, it can't hurt but you probably want to start on the gameplay with models, weapons and effects.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 15, 2009, 03:37:11 pm
Yes, that's much better. Now, first off, you can make FS2 look a lot more awesome by using a few custom flags (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Sample_Lighting_Settings) for lighting and so on. Also, your graphics card should be able to handle the shaders for added normal mapping goodness.
Second, there is something (a FreeSpace CD?) in your disk drive. Please remove that.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: chief1983 on April 15, 2009, 03:41:10 pm
Yes, the files it found on drive F: could be causing issues.  Or it could be something wrong with Shivans, I don't know how stable that mod is in terms of debug warnings and such.  Also, I'm wondering why your shaders aren't already on.  You did not run the game with -no_glsl, so if the shaders were found, it should be using them.  The MediaVP files look like the current set, so my only other guess is that you're using a 3.6.10 build that is too old.  If so, get the RC2 build (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,62210.0.html).  Shaders should just work then.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 15, 2009, 03:43:58 pm
I just tried shivans! 0.21 with the regular RC2 build, and it worked just fine for me. The debug build did complain a few times, but it didn't crash.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 04:02:56 pm
Alright, I'm downloading RC2.

On the subject of my project, yes I plan on creating a full blown TC.

It shouldn't look anything like FS2 when finished.

I'll go ahead and past my Game-Plan from wordpad to give you guys an idea of what I'm shooting for.

Stellar Assault FSO
Game Plan

Ships:
Friendly:

Feather 1 - Playable (Interceptor)
Feather 2 - Playable (Space Superiority)
Feather 3 - Playable (Experimental)

Support Ship - NPC
Torpedo Bomber - NPC

Capitals:

Main Carrier - NPC
Light Cruiser - NPC
Destroyers - NPC

Enemy:

Easy - "Twin Claw"
Basic - "Tri Blade"
Improved - "Quad Cannon"
Advanced - "Piercer"
Space Superiority - "Delta Fluke"

Capitals:

Delmer - FF
Balsark - DD
Medelus - CA
Carvelus - BC (BB?)
Ganeluza - CV (EPIC SIZE!)

Others:

Acceleration Gate
Booster Ship


Civilian Vessels:

"Sail Ship" - Cruiseliner


Features:

Stellar Assault will focus on a simplified game design focusing on a story driven campaign with a variety of combat venues.
There will be three main things to worry about on the HUD:

Shield Strength   (Recharges, but drains the Main Energy with each    recharge...)
Main Energy Stores (Supplies both the weapons and Sheilds, the more the lasers, plasma missiles, & sheilds get drained, the more this runs out)
Targets (Displayed around the main target reticule. These function as normal in most Space Sims.)

The game will also feature Newtonian physics as well as Computer Assisted Targeting. Ships will "auto-glide" when the accelerator isn't held down. Enemy Squadrons and forces will be massive in number and will be set up so as to overwhelm the player's senses.

The game challenge will not focus on individual "Fighter Duels" but rather on survival and being able to prioritize targets while also managing the Shields and Main Energy. Hull strength is not very strong and the player may as well forfeit their life when shields are fully down.

Style:

The game will try to look as much like its predecessors as possible while also taking advantage of the graphical features of the FSO Engine and the PC in general.

The ships will be brightly colored and may very well be visible from very far. Because of the larger than normal number of enemies, Poly counts will be kept  as close to the original games as possible while making up for that with texturing.

All fighters have Capital-Ship killing capability. As a result, warfare in this distant future is Carrier Based, and destroying the enemy Carriers will be of paramount importance whenever possible.

While I do plan on creating a full campaign based on the Sega Saturn Campaign, emphasis will be based on multiplayer if possible.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: The E on April 15, 2009, 04:09:30 pm
Then i guess the first thing you should get working on is the modelling side of things. Models are, (for obvious reasons) the most visible part of your game, and the one thing that seems to draw the most attention.
And *ahem* that's a very ambitious project. Good Luck with it.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Mobius on April 15, 2009, 04:12:48 pm
I always thought FREDding was the most important part... :nervous:
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 04:13:38 pm
Well...
Help from any interested parties would be much appreciated  :nervous:
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Mobius on April 15, 2009, 04:18:04 pm
Can you FRED?
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Snail on April 15, 2009, 04:19:31 pm
FREDding is what makes your game. Models are just parts of it.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 04:21:06 pm
I can model, I can texture, and I can even script a bit. Tabling shouldn't be too hard to learn. And I attempted a bit of fredding a few years before FSO came out. To be brief, I have dabbled. Help from anyone with more experience is always welcome >_>
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Mobius on April 15, 2009, 04:23:04 pm
You will get some help if your models and the plot you've planned can attract some attention. :)
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 15, 2009, 04:25:12 pm
Where do I go to start a project thread? So I can attract some attention...
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: chief1983 on April 15, 2009, 08:28:08 pm
Pretty much you'll be stuck to threads in this board until it looks like you've done enough to get space as a hosted project.  Takes a bit of effort first though.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: tinfoil on April 15, 2009, 10:11:52 pm
Go start a thread in this here modding forum giving a few details about your mod and what kind of people/ skills you need etc. if you're serious of course, you've got to be willing to follow through.
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on April 16, 2009, 02:02:23 pm
Well, last night gave a serious effort, but was retarded in that I did not save. And my completed Feather 1 was lost forever ;_;
Title: Re: What can I do to change the game mechanics?
Post by: Quanto on July 27, 2009, 04:28:10 pm
Did some work in Silo, produced a complete Feather 1, UV Maps aren't done yet, but this is the model.

(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6789/3dmodelfeather1.jpg)
This is as close to a replica of the Sega Saturn Version as I could get.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Commander Zane on July 27, 2009, 05:18:47 pm
Ooh, impressive.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: colecampbell666 on July 27, 2009, 08:39:14 pm
Sexy.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Getter Robo G on July 28, 2009, 01:31:22 am
Don't be afraid to go a little "beyond".

Look at WC Saga. In the alpha build you had ships that were pretty much the same as they were in the games. But with SCP capabilities, those became, rather dated. So new models were made to take advantage of all the features.

 ;)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Alan Bolte on July 28, 2009, 04:10:04 am
I'm wasn't familiar with the games, but I am intrigued and have looked up some gameplay videos. Am I understanding correctly that this model is your variation on this (http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/9/584369_46659_front.jpg) and this (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/32x/image/584369.html?box=87735)? I like both the box art and your version.

Was your intent to have the player pilot the Feather 2 (as opposed to autopilot) and replace its manually-aimed gun with autoaim? Or were you mostly interested in one or two degrees of autoaim for the Feather 1, and planning something else for Feather 2? I'm not sure if it's presently possible to turn FS2 into a rail shooter, though Starfox-style corridors are apparently being worked on for Shadows of Lylat.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on July 28, 2009, 04:37:09 am
My plan for the moment is Auto-aim for both fighters.

The Feather 1 will have less of a degree of auto-aim as the feather 2, but the Feather 1 will have full auto for it's lasers.

The Feather 2's Role will probably be Capital Ship busting. So in that regard, the Feather 2's beam weapon will be SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the Feather 1's auto-lasers, but it will have to be fired like a semi-automatic weapon. (Clicky, Clicky with the fire button.) The alternate weapon for the Feather 2 is also different from the Feather 1's. I'm not sure if any of the videos on Youtube actually showed the F2 in all its glory, but it does have a very powerful cap-ship busting weapon that the manual for the game didn't even mention. If you double-tapped the fire  button, a massive energy ball weapon would charge up and fire from the rail cannon and nearly destroy a smaller cap-ship in a single shot. This used a large amount of energy though and could only be used sparingly. However I think adjustments could be made for the FSO version to make it more viable and a lot easier to use. A key point to keep in mind is that the F1 is very nimble (your classic Anime-style fighter) and the F2 tends to fly like a bus. So its the simple trade off of firepower/maneuverability.

In the cover art for the US version of the 32X game, there is a third ship in the upper left, that is the support ship and arrives to dock with the feather 1 to provide it with an additional recharge in weapon and shield energy. The F2 does not get that support and has much larger stores.

The majority of fighters created for the FSO version will be enemy craft as I hinted towards in my original production plan.

I urge anyone interested to check the videos for the Sega Saturn Version of the game. Plot-wise, FSO will be following that game very closely as it has the more robust plotline. Both games (32x/Saturn) have similar missions, but the Saturn Version goes far more indepth, and has an awesome battle in orbit around Terraformed Venus. (Check the Sega Saturn Version, Missions 6-10).

Stylistically this game is going to be a cross between the Japanese-style space sims, and western style. Western structure and plot writing, with a class 80's anime mecha game feel. The model above is just under 5000 polies, I'm not sure what the recommended requirement is for the Engine, but I can bring it down to under 1500 if I have to. The key thing I want to point out is that I don't want these ships to look like the typical western style ships we've all seen before in games like IW, Starlancer, Wing Commander, and Freespace.

Here are some of my pre-modeling sketches...

Feather 1
(http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1018/feather1sketch.jpg)

Feather 2
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7817/feather2sketch.jpg)

Enemy Fighter
(Tier 5, for difficulty reference, you don't start seeing this one until about the 3rd-to-last mission in the 32x Game) I'm not entirely pleased with this sketch, I may make another attempt at this one. The Enemy fighters ingame were about half the polies of the friendly fighters, so I had to use a lot of imagination as far as additional design is concerned.
(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7532/deltaflukesketch.jpg)


These ships are sleek, fast, and in actuality probably several hundred years more advanced than ships in the typical space sim.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: chief1983 on July 28, 2009, 09:55:19 am
Customizable autoaim code is in trunk now, so have fun.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on October 29, 2009, 05:38:22 am
Well, I found some spare time and I've created one of the other main stars of the game. The Feather 2. Now the Feather 2 isn't as nimble as the Feather 1, but its a LOT MORE firepower. This will the ship of choice for people who love to bust some capital ships. It's particle beam weapon is nearly a one hit killer against fighters and does massive damage to Capital Ships. However it also possesses a powerful High Energy Plasma Burst that will cripple any ship smaller than a destroyer. (Keep in mind I'm using classic Naval terminology, not Freespace terminology.)

And so without further ado, the Feather 2, with color scheme included...

(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6700/3dmodelfeather2.jpg)

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7301/3dmodelfeather22.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on October 29, 2009, 07:05:22 am
One more thing to add, this has a lot to do with general gameplay in relation to the Feather 2. For anyone seriously interested in what I've been putting together here, this is a big deal

Feather 2 Infosheet (Big file, sorry)


(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6408/feather2infosheetreadab.png)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Thaeris on October 29, 2009, 02:38:11 pm
Thank you for posting those video links... you're right, the original game looks like it was quite fun! I wish you the best in your deveopments.

...As I've seen Silo mentioned on the net before, and that you were using it as well, I decided to look up the program on the developer site. Needless to say, I'll have to try the demo this weekend.  :yes: What version of the software are you using, by the way?

Lastly, I like your approach to concept art very much. Simple, yet tremendously descriptive.  :D
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on October 29, 2009, 06:07:26 pm
I am using an older one, Silo 2.0, not 2.1 which is what you will likely be using.

Silo is a great program once you figure out what each tool is in relation to that of other programs.

If you are familiar with 3DS, the Silo Bevel Tool is more like Champfer in 3DS, and the "Select Ring" button does not appear in the default configs, so you have to customize the menu yourself and add one. But for the most part, nearly every tool you need is right there on the screen.

Oh and the Smooth Tool is equiviliant to "Relax" in 3DS. So of these things just need to be mentioned.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on October 29, 2009, 10:20:58 pm
ENEMY FIGHTER SHOWCASE

Got another model done. This time it's the second best Enemy Fighter, the Piercer.
This one is a lot like the Feather 1 in Design and Purpose. Its actually faster than the Feather 1 and has the nearly the same agility. It is also the only enemy fighter Equipped with their own Equivalent to the Human Multi-Target Missile Array. However these take longer to achieve lock and can only target up to 8.

(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5684/3dmodelpiercer.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on October 30, 2009, 03:20:24 am
Ever have one of those days where you find yourself listening to some really good music and all you think to do while listening is be creative? I'm having one of those nights, and so I've produced yet another model. This one is the Quad Cannon. In the 32x Version of the Game, you run into these a lot, and they really are the workhorse of the enemy fleet. A good all around fighter, its both sleek and beautiful. Plus those four laser cannons give it a little extra killing power.

(http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3791/3dmodelquadcannon.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on January 15, 2010, 04:50:04 pm
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5830/introimage.jpg)

As has been mentioned throughout this thread, this game/mod/total-conversion is a remake of a game developed in Japan for the Sega 32x and Sega Saturn. Visually and Stylistically this game is going to be closely based off of the 32x version. Most of the remodels I have done have been strongly influenced by the Models found in the 32x Game. Gameplay will also take most of it's cues from the 32x Version.

However, nearly all PC Space Sims have a strong and heavily outlined story. The 32x game, did not. The entire story to the 32x game was told in three paragraphs in a black & white instruction manual. Not much to work with. To paraphrase; “Our old enemies have attacked us in our home system and have deployed a massive laser cannon in orbit around the sun. Fight your way to solar orbit and destroy the weapon!”
That was the gist of the original story. No lie. The game consisted of 6 Missions;

The first has you attacking two enemy frigates and 12 Fighters. You destroy them all.
The Second Mission has you attacking a gravitational acceleration gate which was just used to Launch an asteroid at the earth. You fly in, destroy the acceleration gate and its capital ship escorts (1 Frigate and 2 Destroyers).  
The third mission had you flying into the asteroid belt and killing off the booster ships that were used to move the asteroids into the acceleration gate in the first place. These booster ships are of course guarded by a compliment of fighters and two light cruisers.
The 4th Mission has you taking on an entire fleet of ships. 4 Frigates, 3 Destroyers, 2 Light Cruisers, and a Battlecruiser.
The 5th Mission has you launching an attack upon a Carrier and its two BattleCruiser escorts, the Carrier is called the Ganazula and is a beast of a ship. (Re: Gigantic). You actually fly inside it and destroy it's main reactor to kill it. It is invincible otherwise.
The Final mission has you in close orbit around the sun (omg, blindness). Where you confront the big bad laser weapon. You destroy it and win the game.

Why did I bother explaining every mission? Well, there was only six, and you could beat the whole game in under 30 minutes if you were good at it.

The Japanese-only release of the Sega Saturn version expands on the original by creating a total of 14 missions and they are insanely hard. (I've only made it to mission 12 myself.) Unfortunately, whatever story was made for this game will never be known because ALL of the dialog is in Japanese and no one has bothered translating it. I would also like to point out that it had too much dialog to begin with, and that 55 – 65% of the time in every mission was spent in autopilot listening to the moonspeak between you, your wing mates and your nav-computer. So the Saturn version while an improvement, has its flaws.
My goals in this PC version made by westerners is that we take the good points of both the 32x game and the Saturn game, combine them, and leave out the bad parts. Many of the missions in the Saturn Version are based off of the 32x missions. You still need to destroy an acceleration gate, and fight in an asteroid belt. There is still a HUGE fleet battle halfway through and you blast your way through a lot of light cruisers.

However, there were several really cool missions original to the Sega Saturn version. Like flying inside the giant asteroid Ceres, and flying 3 missions in orbit around and in the atmosphere of a Terraformed Venus. The game did a great job immersing the player within its Universe, even if you don't understand Japanese.

So, while the story is a blank slate, one thing I heartily thank the Japanese developers for in this game, is the SOLID and SIMPLE gameplay, and absolutely beautiful ship designs, I mean, the ships in both games are completely gorgeous. Its my firm opinion that every ship designed by every Western Space Sim developer is completely ****ing ugly compared to the ships and fighters found in these games. The mechanical designer who drew up these ships was one inspired dude. Every ship looks FAST, even when sitting still.

With  all of this in mind, I think that with the combination of some damn beautiful ships, and a  story written by a westerner, inspired by the combined missions of both games; a great game could be made legendary. The originals are just SO DAMN GOOD, that I want to relive them on modern hardware with modern graphics, and hopefully even great a great multiplayer game.

Thats right, I said it, a multiplayer game. First and foremost, the core gameplay will be ironed out, and a few multiplayer missions will be made. As a means to test out the game mechanics and perfect the gameplay before the single player game is finished. As a general rule, I intend to do for the Space Combat Genre what Soul Calibur, and Counter-Strike have done for the 3D Fighting Game, and First Person Shooter. I want to create a fun, noob friendly game that also Challenges and Enthralls veterans of the Genre. Hopefully bringing back a few more people to these games that I've grown up loving, and have spent the last ten years sorely missing. Maybe that would convince some commercial developers that there is still money in the Genre.
( I AM SO SICK OF FPS's, RTS's AND MMOs!!!)

Now here is the deal, I am an artist and writer, not a programmer. I can pull together a story, the artwork, and the 3D Models, but putting them into a usable engine is a road-block I am having difficulty crossing. I badly need programmers to help me pull this all together into the great game I imagine. I am fully willing take suggestions and criticism from potential team members so long as they at least take the time to play the 32x version of the game. (The Saturn version is ultra rare and insanely hard to acquire even on emulator. The going price on retro game resellers right now is $100 for the 32x cartridge and over $200 for an imported Saturn disc.) I can provide the 32x Rom for anyone interested (just pm me.)

This game will NOT be in closed development, as it is going to be based on an open source engine (either Freespace Open, or Vegastrike), anything discovered during the course of it's development will of course be shared with the community surrounding the respective engine. I still haven't decided on an engine that I want to use, the FSO in the title stands for “First Strike Operations”, not Freespace Open.  Its just a convenient acronym. Just as the Saturn Version was called “Stellar Assault SS”, I'm keeping with a theme. Third game --> three letters in the acronym.

Alright, I've spent a lot of time talking about the ideas behind the game, and how much I love it, and that I want you to love it too. But what about this story written by a westerner that I keep promising?

Here we go...

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9463/promoscreen.jpg)

The setting is some time early in the 33rd Century. Mankind has not ventured very far outside the solar system, but we have developed highly advanced technology, and have colonized and terraformed all three Terrestrial planets worth terraforming. Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Wait, what? We terraformed Venus? How?
That is central to our story here believe it or not.

Venus is the same size and mass as the earth and orbits within the sun's “habitable zone”, however, there are several factors that lead to it being a hellish hothole.
First, there are a ton of volcanoes. So many that they created a massive greenhouse effect and forced the planet into having the hottest surface temperature in the solar system.
Second, the other factor to this super hot surface is the fact that the planet's day takes longer than it's year. So it spends a lot of time baking in the sun. This probably isn't helping things.
Third, the whole atmosphere isn't just hot, but acidic, so not only do things get baked, they get dissolved away at the same time. There is water on the planet, but it is just so damn hot, that all of the water stays evaporated in the upper atmosphere.

So how does Hellish Venus get turned into the paradise that was imagined during the Victorian Era?

During the 22nd Century, the world eventually unifies due to a heavily intertwined global economy and a general desire worldwide for peace. The UN forms global government and massive monetary and human resources are put into the rapid development of the Martian colonies, the planet is colonized by rapid industrialization with factories the pollute worse than 1950s factories. The greenhouse gases raise the Martian temperature and thicken the atmosphere and allow the planet's water to liquefy. Mars develops nicely and over a few hundred years, turns into a global Tundra/Siberian climate. To facilitate the rapid Martian colonization, the global government creates a corporate entity whose sole purpose is to develop, exploit, and colonize the solar system.

The Company is called “Synthesis” and anyone familiar with their 18th and 19th century history could label this company as a historical  parallel to the British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. Synthesis is the first to begin financing the full scale exploitation of the Solar Asteroid field and puts their Base of Operations buried inside the dwarf planet Ceres. Synthesis makes incredible profits from the mining operations throughout the asteroid belt and actually possess more funds than the United Earth Government.

Using this money, Synthesis proposes to the UEG the possibility of Terraforming Venus and creating a tropical paradise there. After a long deliberation, the UEG gives Synthesis the “Go-Ahead” and they begin building a fleet of mobile gravitational acceleration gates. Over 100 were built in total and they were all moved from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper Belt. 1 Gate in particular was large enough to move a KBO the size of Pluto. Booster Ships originally meant for moving asteroids around in the asteroid belt were now being used to shove whole Comets into the 100 Acceleration Gates. Each one carefully aimed on a crash course for Venus. Each comet was put on course to impact venus as just the right angle to give the planet a 24 hour rotation, instead of it's original 584 days. These impacts also served to implant water and oxygen into the planets atmosphere.

Finally, using the ultra gate, a large Pluto sized KBO was launched towards Venus with the careful trajectory to give the planet a moon so that it would have a stable rotational axis. (A smaller KBO was sent to Mars as well to stabilize the Martian axis. It took 300 years for the Venusian atmosphere to calm down and stablize. The water in the atmosphere, finally cooled off and began raining back down upon the surface. Oceans formed and it was soon found that Venus would have even less land cover than Mars. (The combination of water from the upper atmosphere combined with the water from the comets created a rather large ocean.) Synthesis genetically engineered tropical plants to survived on Venus just as they had Alpine plants for Mars. By the end of the 31st Century, Venus was fully habitable for mankind and the profits gained from Venusian habitation has earned Synthesis even more money than the combined mining operations system wide.

And so, it is now the early 33rd Century, Venus, Earth and Mars are ruled by a combined government called the United Solar Worlds. Synthesis, has begun projects outside the solar system, mostly in and around Alpha Centauri. However, profits have been limited in that area and life is difficult for the colonists. However, less than a decade ago, a probe returned from the Vega star system revealing a solar system ripe for colonization. No earthlike worlds, but several moons that were Terraformable by way of comet collision (as was done with Venus). Synthesis gathered 50 acceleration gates (25 completely brand new, and a lot larger.) And took course for Vega.

(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9742/innersystemfleetchart.jpg)

At this point, it is important to mention the Military culture that has grown within Synthesis, much like the British East India Company, Synthesis has their own military that answers only to the board of directors. Known as the Sythesis Space Force (refered to as the SSF from now on). The SSF is a full blown military organization with its own fleet. It is also the SSF that protects and controls the Gravitational Acceleration Gates. When Synthesis sent their gates to Vega, they also sent more than half of their fleet.
2 Battle Carriers, 4 Escort Carriers, 18 Light Cruisers, and 66 Frigates.
The total military size for Synthesis consists of 3 Battle Carriers, 8 Escort Carriers, 26 Light Cruisers, and 108 Frigates. None have ever seen combat.

The Solar Government also has 3 large fleets. Mostly because many on Earth did not trust Synthesis as being the lone military force in the Solar System. (By this time, much of the population has grown to distrust Synthesis and wanted protection from unjust corporate policies.)

The Solar Government Navy consists of 5 Battle Carriers, 7 Escort Carriers, 44 Light Cruisers, and 130 Frigates. Military strategists and thinkers in both the SGN and SSF have long believed that combat in Space would consist of massive Carrier Engagements with Fighters to destroy the enemy Carrier. (Much like naval warfare in the 20th and 21st Centuries).

Fighters used by both the SSF and SGN are the Feather 1 Interceptor, Feather 2 Space Superiority Fighter, and the Feather 3 Torpedo Bomber. Most ships in the SSF have a Red/White/Graphite Color Scheme while ships in the SGN use a Blue/Off-Blue/Graphite Color Scheme.
Both the Feather 1 and Feather 2 have atmospheric flight capabilities.


Also, Here are some updates regarding the Artwork. I've remodeled the Feather 1, and a few other ships. Here is a picture of the new Feather 1. And also a Size Comparison chart for the fighters.
(http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/3383/3dmodelfeather1improved.jpg)
(http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/6082/3dmodelsizecomparisons.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Commander Zane on January 15, 2010, 04:55:45 pm
Wow that is quite a post. :D
Bottom two ships look really nice.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Thaeris on January 15, 2010, 10:09:22 pm
I really have to applaud your work here... This is really cool!  :D

I do believe there are a few Japanese or Japanese-speaking members on the HLP, so if you have the manuals and a scanner, you might be in luck! I know there's a fellow who was in the highlights a while ago by the name of Komet or KometJpn... something to that order... who made a port of retail FS2 to the Japanese language. If you can't find him, I could try and contact him for you.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on January 15, 2010, 10:29:48 pm
My saturn version is in emulator form so i am manual-less.
The 32x Version I have is the Localized US Version. So, no manuals to scan ;_;
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Thaeris on January 15, 2010, 10:30:31 pm
No luck on the internets?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on January 15, 2010, 11:39:33 pm
Nope, as I mentioned in the big post, Stellar Assault is not a very well known game. Those who do know about it are mostly retro gamers and sega uber-fans. Current running prices from Retro-Stores and Ebay run in the hundreds of dollars. Even more than Panzer Dragoon Zwei. (Which I also have, but to be honest, Stellar Assault is just simply too amazing to be left only to history.)

Really tho, I have no interest in translating the original game. None at all.

I am much more interested in building some kind of development team. Seriously. I can do the artwork, but I have absolutely NO experience working with the Freespace Open engine. Its insanely daunting.
If anyone, ANYONE, is interested in helping, even just a little bit, it would be a huge morale booster and motivator. I truly believe this is something worth working on, and would love some help from people who know their way around the engine.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 16, 2010, 05:51:56 pm
Shadow Squadron, eh? Seeing as I only had the Genesis before and never got a 32X, I never could play it on a console. Well, I played that game before on an emulator, but it's hard to do with a keyboard and getting owned so quickly.  If I could use a mouse I would be so much better.

But, anyhow, I'm interested in your project. I'm good at concept design, writing, management, but you seem to have those covered very well. I MIGHT be able to do some FREDing, but I have no tables and plus I doubt my talents in that department. But, I'll try to help in some way, as it seems you have a lot of ambition to get it a finished product out into the world.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on January 17, 2010, 01:57:12 am
I would gladly take you on board, we could learn the system together.
My steam ID is El_Quanto
I am online nearly everyday between 3PM EST and 1AM EST. I also have a ventrilo server.
If you are serious about giving this a shot you are more than welcome to hit me up. This message goes for any lurkers as well. I need all the help I can get, cause I am sure people will come and go.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 19, 2010, 06:14:01 pm
Well, we been conceptualizing (primarily story element) for a while, and I can say that what we need the most is programmers, because we want to add concepts that are not even present in the engine at all (i.e. one of our ideas for storyline advancement would be in the form of a visual novelesque sequences in between missions.)

Also, concept art that Quanto didn't post here yet.

(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3968/emblems.png)

^ First one is the concept of the logo for the SGN. The second logo is the Synthesis Space Force. This was actually seen the Saturn version of the game very often.

Some fighter sketches. (http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/4783/fighters.jpg) For the sake of variety, we wanted to add a few more fighters outside of canon for the sake of variety. We're not even sure if we're going to use these designs however.

And lastly, some characters.
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8476/jenkartcs.jpg)

(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6746/natbryacs.jpg)

Quanto's first deadline: Get the first set of models imported into the game by the end of next week. As for me, I need to come up with more ideas for infodumping by when it's done. =P
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: General Battuta on January 19, 2010, 06:31:57 pm
Um, you can do cutscenes between missions pretty easily.

If your programmers want to work with the FSOpen engine, they should join the FreeSpace Source Code Project. You can find the forum here on Hard Light.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Quanto on January 19, 2010, 06:33:42 pm
Um, you can do cutscenes between missions pretty easily.

If your programmers want to work with the FSOpen engine, they should join the FreeSpace Source Code Project. You can find the forum here on Hard Light.
Well, thats kind of the problem, we don't have ANY programmers. We're asking for some >_>
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: General Battuta on January 19, 2010, 06:39:25 pm
You'll have to put out a demo, some material to attract talent, something like that. Coders are in extraordinarily high demand, and they all work together on the Source Code Project to add features for FSOpen that may be useful for individual projects. There aren't any special forks of the engine used for particular projects.

You can also post feature requests in the Source Code Project forum, but you should research them heavily first. For example, the idea of having cutscenes between missions can already be done pretty easily, but the total number of cutscenes per campaign is limited.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 19, 2010, 07:11:17 pm
Well, like so;
(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/7153/3dmodeltwinclaws.jpg)
we have been posting material to build interest. And we are hard at work to pull this sucker together.
However, we aren't talking about "cutscenes" we could do cutscenes. What we are talking about is sort of a "between mission" player to character interaction. Where the player in way of an RPGesque or Mass Effect style thing where you interact with your wing mates between missions.
We want to build the story outside of the cockpit.
As a player of more action oriented space games, I've never been a fan of sitting in autopilot, or flying in a straight line for 5 - 10 minutes while listing to my wing mates yammer on about the games plot. When in battle, you have more important things to worry about than the story. Like, survival.

So the idea has been to develop the characters outside the battlefield. Through a multi-option dialogue system. The mission briefings would also come directly from this format.
Example:
Admiral Joe gives the mission brief.
Rather than jumping straight into the fray, you have a multitude of dialogue options to ask Admiral Joe, like secondary objects, details on the mission that might not have been mentioned in the brief. Perhaps even give the player opportunities to shape their character to how they may behave themselves in a situation.

This game will also have two possible endings. And two possible factions to fight for. 25 or so missions per faction. (35 total, the first 10 missions are fought with the "Shadow Squadron". Mission 10 will be the planned branching point. So about 60 missions total.)

I'm kind of rambling here, so I'll just end the infodump here.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: General Battuta on January 19, 2010, 07:13:54 pm
Ah. Well, if it was text-only, that kind of interaction might be hacked into the engine somehow, at great length and only after (I think?) the interface code was pretty well overhauled. Doing it with animated characters would be unfortunately pretty much impossible.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: The E on January 19, 2010, 07:22:04 pm
Yeah, doing it would take a major overhaul of how the engine is set up. It might be possible to do something like this using scripting to override the engine functionality in those places, but there would be a need for experimentation.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: General Battuta on January 19, 2010, 07:24:28 pm
The branching missions are easy though. And you can also do branching dialogues in-game.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: The E on January 19, 2010, 07:26:22 pm
Yeah, all those features needed to do that are already implemented.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 19, 2010, 07:28:55 pm
As the only FREDer (and the only other member) on board atm, branching missions and dialogue based on certain choices a player makes outside the cockpit once that part actually does get implemented. But, yes, the General is right, we need at least something playable at the very least if we are going to get any attention and have anyone want to be a part of the team.

Remember, I'm going to blame you if you don't get any models in game by next week, Quanto.  ;7
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Pet Project
Post by: Thaeris on January 20, 2010, 10:27:50 am
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6746/natbryacs.jpg)

Blast Damnit! They're playing on one of my weaknesses: My affinity towards red-headed women...

 :lol:

Good work on the concept art, gentlemen. I need to get back to that soon, actually...
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 21, 2010, 02:13:06 am
I finished the UV Maps for the Feather 1.
The current texture however is only a draft, just to make sure the seams all fit together.
I started up Daz Studio and did a quick render with the new textures. I didn't do the background however, that's just from my wallpaper collection.
Keep in mind that I haven't yet done the specularity maps, illumination maps, or normal maps. Any glow or reflection in this render is from the Daz Studio Material editor. Sort of a "Preview" of how it should look.
(http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/7510/feather1gloryshot2.jpg)
And for comparison, some cover-art from the 32x Box.
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/6277/shadowqs.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on January 21, 2010, 05:46:05 am
I've been following this thread for a while now. Nice to see so much work is already being put into it  :nod:

I personally like the more blocky feel of the Feather on the box art more then the rounded look you have going now though.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 21, 2010, 07:27:39 am
(http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5688/blockyshading.jpg)
Well
If you want a boxier look, I can always shut off the smooth shader.
However, I doubt Freespace would allow me to use flat face shading. As it is a MUCH older technology, and I doubt its included as part of the renderer.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Rodo on January 21, 2010, 11:39:52 am
the first one looks really cool  :yes:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 21, 2010, 08:57:09 pm
And while we're showing off concepts, this is one for a fighter that plays the interceptor role. It's a very rudimentary and simplistic MS Paint sketch, as I'm not all that great of an artist. Quanto will do better in making it look better if it gets to be a finished product.

Click this. (http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/Misc/FeatherInterceptor1.png)

May or may not look like this in the end.

In other news, however, some concepts on the human Callisto class escort carrier (http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/1562/shipschematics.png) Quanto did.
Title: A Big Snag
Post by: Quanto on January 27, 2010, 08:00:13 am
Alright, its Wednesday, two days before my Model Import Deadline, and I've hit a snag.
I'm making this post in two threads, the Stellar Assault thread, and the PCS User to User thread. Hopefully an expert will have an answer in one of them.

I followed "JGZ’s Max – PCS2 – FS2 Rigging Tutorial" as much as was possible (some things about textures and scene roots were not mentioned in it) and ended with these results in Max. As far as I know; how it's supposed to end.
Materials
(http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9477/materialsheet.jpg)
Object List & Wireframe
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/7356/wireframet.jpg)
I also finished the model hierarchy as best as I knew.
Here it is for your viewing.
3DS Max Schematic View
(http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8467/scematicview.jpg)

After all that work, the Collada exporter poops itself and leaves me with this...
PCS2 Results
(http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7643/pcs2dae.jpg)
lvlshot tags are n times better than img tags. --Jeff Vader

Just to clarify, even though all of you have only seen my work in Silo up until now, I would like to point out that I am EXTREMELY familiar with Max and it's interface. (I learned my modeling in max, and I've done organic character modeling in max long before I ever done anything in Silo.) So while there may still be a lot of things unknown to me in Max, I am by no means a total newbie.
However, I am an EXTREME noob towards PCS2. As well as the Collada format.
I did my research and I tried some of the things mentioned in the "Max to PCS2 tutorial (Plus ideas how to make work simplier)" Thread and tried
Quote
27.   Do a search and replace

    * a.   Search for:   -node”   (include the quote)
    * b.   Replace with:   “ (just the quote)
    * c.   This gets rid of any “detail1-node” and replaces with with “detail1”
    * d.   Save
that just before opening the file in PCS2, and Notepad++ said there was no " -node" " in the file. So I shrugged and went about my business. However, I suspect that may be part of my problem.
Also, here's a text snip of the dae code:
Code: [Select]
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                  <instance_material symbol="Material__28" target="#Material__28"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__29" target="#Material__29"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__30" target="#Material__30"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__31" target="#Material__31"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__32" target="#Material__32"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__33" target="#Material__33"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__34" target="#Material__34"/>
                </technique_common>
              </bind_material>
            </instance_geometry>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="debris2" name="debris2">
          <translate sid="translate">0.000000 0.083805 -0.077154</translate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -90.000009</rotate>
          <scale sid="scale">1.948361 1.948361 1.948361</scale>
          <node id="debris2-Pivot" name="debris2-Pivot">
            <translate>0.000000 3.342054 -0.624320</translate>
            <rotate>0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000</rotate>
            <instance_geometry url="#debris2-lib">
              <bind_material>
                <technique_common>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__25" target="#Material__25"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__26" target="#Material__26"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__27" target="#Material__27"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__28" target="#Material__28"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__29" target="#Material__29"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__30" target="#Material__30"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__31" target="#Material__31"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__32" target="#Material__32"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__33" target="#Material__33"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__34" target="#Material__34"/>
                </technique_common>
              </bind_material>
            </instance_geometry>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="debris3" name="debris3">
          <translate sid="translate">0.000000 0.083805 -0.077154</translate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -90.000009</rotate>
          <scale sid="scale">1.948361 1.948361 1.948361</scale>
          <node id="debris3-Pivot" name="debris3-Pivot">
            <translate>0.000000 3.342054 -0.624320</translate>
            <rotate>0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000</rotate>
            <instance_geometry url="#debris3-lib">
              <bind_material>
                <technique_common>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__25" target="#Material__25"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__26" target="#Material__26"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__27" target="#Material__27"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__28" target="#Material__28"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__29" target="#Material__29"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__30" target="#Material__30"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__31" target="#Material__31"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__32" target="#Material__32"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__33" target="#Material__33"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="Material__34" target="#Material__34"/>
                </technique_common>
              </bind_material>
            </instance_geometry>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="shield" name="shield">
          <translate sid="translate">-0.064861 -0.000000 0.016669</translate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -90.000009</rotate>
          <scale sid="scale">1.000000 1.000000 0.292063</scale>
          <instance_geometry url="#shield-lib"/>
        </node>
        <node id="gunbank01" name="gunbank01">
          <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 179.999995</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 0.000005</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -179.999981</rotate>
          <node id="gunbank01_01" name="gunbank01_01">
            <translate sid="translate">5.841074 -0.070214 5.886694</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
          <node id="gunbank01_02" name="gunbank01_02">
            <translate sid="translate">-5.812989 -0.098296 5.886695</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="missilebank01" name="missilebank01">
          <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 179.999995</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 0.000005</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -179.999981</rotate>
          <node id="missilebank01_01" name="missilebank01_01">
            <translate sid="translate">5.742786 0.294862 5.619490</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
          <node id="missilebank01_02" name="missilebank01_02">
            <translate sid="translate">-5.897235 -0.421231 5.619491</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="missilebank02" name="missilebank02">
          <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 179.999995</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 0.000005</rotate>
          <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -179.999981</rotate>
          <node id="missilebank02_01" name="missilebank02_01">
            <translate sid="translate">5.911278 -0.449313 5.649301</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
          <node id="missilebank02_02" name="missilebank02_02">
            <translate sid="translate">-5.756825 0.294862 5.649302</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -0.000010</rotate>
          </node>
        </node>
        <node id="thrusters" name="thrusters">
          <translate sid="translate">0.000001 -0.000000 -0.000000</translate>
          <node id="thruster" name="thruster">
            <translate sid="translate">5.612184 0.939538 3.186410</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 11.562624</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 2.640578</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -12.690355</rotate>
            <scale sid="scale">0.857175 1.000000 0.794196</scale>
          </node>
          <node id="thruster_ncl1_1" name="thruster_ncl1_1">
            <translate sid="translate">-5.625733 0.980588 3.176965</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -10.933821</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 -2.498948</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 -12.718549</rotate>
            <scale sid="scale">0.734667 1.000000 0.794196</scale>
          </node>
          <node id="thruster_ncl1_2" name="thruster_ncl1_2">
            <translate sid="translate">6.064066 -1.149637 3.143420</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 11.878109</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 -3.123746</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 14.524656</rotate>
            <scale sid="scale">0.809807 1.258971 1.000000</scale>
          </node>
          <node id="thruster_ncl1_3" name="thruster_ncl1_3">
            <translate sid="translate">-6.029687 -1.149637 3.143419</translate>
            <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -10.371258</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 2.732766</rotate>
            <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 14.388163</rotate>
            <scale sid="scale">0.819146 1.132390 0.924351</scale>
          </node>
        </node>
      </node>
    </visual_scene>
  </library_visual_scenes>
  <scene>
    <instance_visual_scene url="#RootNode"/>
  </scene>
</COLLADA>
Hopefully that will be of some use to you guys.
So anyways, I'm chomping at the bit here trying to figure this problem out. I really want to put this model and a few others into the game by friday and this issue has really knocked me over the head. I'm hoping you more experience FS2 modelers will be able to throw me a bone here.

/EDIT/
Just a quick update,
I did some quick googling to help myself and I pulled my head from my ass. The end result it a proper DAE import into PCS2.
Just figured I would let you all know before you actually decided to waste valuable time with something I fixed myself.

(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/904/wootc.jpg)
Not all of my textures loaded, but I'll worry about that later.

\EDIT2\
Alright, its been a few hours, and I just cannot figure out how to fix my texture problems. This is getting crazy.
At this point, PCS2 seems to load the textures for the main vehicle fine. However, it refuses to recognize that the Cockpit texture is mean to be assigned to the cockpit. Is this something I can change in PCS2, or do I need to fix it in Max? Because at this point I am starting to Rage.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 27, 2010, 04:50:13 pm
Self Bump, cause I am in desperate need of help. I'm friggin serious.
Alright, for some reason, when I export from the 3DS Max file, to Collada, I lose my texture data. And it's making me freak out. I am in desperate need of help/suggestions.

On the bright side, the ship at least works ingame:
(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2711/fs2open3611r20100121r58.png)

But this is what it looks like from the cockpit view. O_o;;
(http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/1296/ingame1.jpg)

So yeah, anyone have suggestions?
Ideas?
Answers?!

I'm so burnt out right now.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: General Battuta on January 27, 2010, 05:01:00 pm
I don't know. Take a break from it, maybe post a separate thread asking for help?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: The E on January 27, 2010, 05:08:52 pm
He did post a separate thread.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 27, 2010, 10:50:09 pm
Are the textures in a format that both PCS2 and FS2 can read?  Also are they in <mod>\data\maps?  PCS2 can find them other places but FS2 can only find it in the mods directory.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: ChronoReverse on January 27, 2010, 11:26:30 pm
The problem has been fixed (manually).  The Max exporter simply fails beyond belief.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 27, 2010, 11:29:11 pm
The problem has been fixed (manually).  The Max exporter simply fails beyond belief.
Whats funny is, that's an understatement, at least we know how to deal with it in the future now.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on January 28, 2010, 04:58:24 am
Good to hear you got the problem resolved.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on January 28, 2010, 10:29:41 am
Again, I have to give you mad props, Quanto ( :yes: :yes: :yes:) - this is looking superb!

I wonder, are you going to eventually implement a working cockpit interface once the code is stable enough to do it? (It might be already...) The display seems simple enough that applying a radar screen (and perhaps a different guage type(s) as well) wouldn't deter the "HUD only" crowd...  :nod:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on January 28, 2010, 12:24:15 pm
Again, I have to give you mad props, Quanto ( :yes: :yes: :yes:) - this is looking superb!

I wonder, are you going to eventually implement a working cockpit interface once the code is stable enough to do it? (It might be already...) The display seems simple enough that applying a radar screen (and perhaps a different guage type(s) as well) wouldn't deter the "HUD only" crowd...  :nod:
Believe it or not, I'm actually one of those "HUD Only" peoples.
But at the same time, I recognize that a good cockpit is expected in these games these days, and I would be lazy not to include one. But at the same time, I've also been wanting to create cockpits that are practical as well. Ones that don't obstruct the pilot's vision. And I think i've accomplished that for the feather1.

As can be seen below, the problem is resolved, thanks to CR, and Scooby, who really put their heads together to fix it.
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2711/fs2open3611r20100121r58.png)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: chief1983 on January 28, 2010, 02:59:08 pm
IL-2 has a good setup for cockpits, which I liked better than Combat Flight Simulator's.  In CFS you could switch between drawn cockpit, virtual cockpit, and no cockpit.  In IL-2 you can switch between the cockpit model, and the generic gauge stuff, but the server can force you to leave the cockpit on in multiplayer, heightening the sense of realism and increasing difficulty somewhat, since you have a more realistic view area.  It also affects the balance of the fighters themselves, you have to take their real view area into account.  Being able to toggle cockpits on and off in game, plus having the ability to disable this when running a multi game, would be epic win.  _That's_ what games have these days :)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 28, 2010, 04:36:25 pm
In other news, I've been working on another mission. It's yet another test mission, but this one involves SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/screen0009x.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/screen0010.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/screen0012.jpg)

Prolly will keep these test missions in the final release, just hiding them off in the mission simulator section. Though, I may need to spruce them up and polish them (especially the first one) more before that happens.  :shaking:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Scooby_Doo on January 28, 2010, 07:27:41 pm
If you need to convert more models through dae, grab this little .net app:

 http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67805.0

This should fix the material naming up.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on January 31, 2010, 02:21:12 am
I suppose I should show off some videos of this TC in action.

Have fun and watch. (http://www.xfire.com/video/203e10/)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on February 08, 2010, 08:30:46 pm
Hoooyah. It's been a while since someone posted an update. So, I might as well (http://www.xfire.com/video/212eb7/)

btw, that video I probably the most serious business mission I've made yet for this mod, to the point that it may be a mission in the main campaign. An early one, but still one. Also, notice how there's new alien ship models that actually have been put it. Weeee

Now if Quanto could make more stuff. =(
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on February 08, 2010, 08:33:48 pm
Hoooyah.

Navy much?  :D
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on February 23, 2010, 04:11:47 am
Just a short post featuring two upcoming Capital ships. Two frigates for both factions. The Human FF "Sinope" and the Veslan FF "Delmmer"

Just to point out some thing here about Capships in SA:FSO, this game will follow traditional Naval Ship Class Designations.

Quote
CC = Corvettes** ~100m long
FF = Frigates ~ 250m
DD = Destroyers** ~350m
CL = Light Cruisers ~500m
BC = Battle Cruisers** ~700m
BB = Battleships* ~1km
CVL = Escort Carriers ~600m
CV = Carriers* ~1.5km
BV = Battle Carriers ~1km
DN = Dreadnaughts* ~1.5km or larger

*Not featured in planned campaigns, however, we are leaving the option open.
** Ship Size only utilized by the Veslans

(http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6628/delmmersinope.jpg)
(http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/3702/sgnfrigate.jpg)

As far as the direction we are going, we have had points of contention. But for the most part we have agreed on several core elements to this game, as far as the "Realism" / "Fantasy" tug'o'war is concerned.

As far as realism is concerned;
1. We will be focusing on doing PROPER Astronomy. As in, star systems are being researched as best as possible based on the information we can gain from the internet. My biggest pet peeve has always been when game designers get stars wrong. We won't be doing that.
2. I have been pushing for "Realism in Human Nature", events in the game will be based on pragmatism and human nature, combats decisions made by the admirals and captians in the story should not feel "forced" or "awkward" by the player. Everything should hopefully run its course the way one would expect.
Quote
Nothing leading to a,
(http://ui18.gamespot.com/2897/whywouldyoudothat_2.jpg)
"Why would you do that?!" reaction should happen.

As far as fantasy is concerned;
1. We are following the rule of cool. Its more important that the ships in the game are cool looking than practical.
2. We are throwing the laws of physics out the window. This game never had a good physics model to begin with and we won't try to fix it.
3. We are avoiding "exact" numbers as much as possible. The more generalized the game is, the better. (Fewer things for nitpicks to pick at).
4. This is a TC based on a VERY OLD Sega game. As such, I am pushing to preserve something of a "Classic Sega Arcade" feel to the game. For the player, this should look, sound, and feel like a Classic Late 80s - Early 90s Sega game. (Think Galaxy Force II or After Burner II, only without the rails.)
5. THIS IS NOT AN "ON RAILS" SHOOTER. (I hate those games anyways, especially Star Fox, ***waves middle finger at nintendo.)
6. This is a game meant for Nostalgia fags, while at the same time being fun and simple enough to hopefully attract the casual crowd.
7. I want to do multiplayer with this someday, so game balance is very important outside the singleplayer campaign.


But yeah, that's that.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: TrashMan on February 23, 2010, 05:16:49 am
Just to point out some thing here about Capships in SA:FSO, this game will follow traditional Naval Ship Class Designations.

Official Naval designation don't contain 1km long ships...and they don't contain dreadnoughts either. DN's are battleships...or should I say, were early battleships.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on February 23, 2010, 05:26:12 am
Official Naval designation don't contain 1km long ships...and they don't contain dreadnoughts either. DN's are battleships...or should I say, were early battleships.

True enough. Can you forgive me for utilizing at least SOME artistic license?
My bigger point is that FS games don't use them at all. (Destroyers being Gigantic uberships? wtf?)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on February 23, 2010, 09:32:04 am
The epic win continues!

Good work, chaps!  :D :yes:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on March 13, 2010, 10:51:19 am
SAFSO now has a modDB page! (http://www.moddb.com/games/stellar-assault-fso)

Also on there is our (rather, Quanto's) first developer diary. He describes the ideas and how awesome Stellar Assault is, and the basic plotline of SAFSO. Enjoy!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on March 13, 2010, 04:18:21 pm
Interesting listening to what Quanto had to say  :nod:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on March 13, 2010, 04:54:46 pm
Good stuff, chaps! The more I see this project, the more I continue to like it!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on March 24, 2010, 01:02:15 pm
Double post for possible utility...

Quanto, as you're going to be producing what is assumed to be a fairly large number of people for your cutscene endeavors, you might find this free application useful:

http://www.makehuman.org/

It's possible you have a better program for the purpose of character art (I get the feeling Silo particularly biased towards character art), but this program seems to be a free equivalent to Poser. Hopefully this could be useful to you.  :)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: headdie on March 24, 2010, 02:57:27 pm
does it do hair yet?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on March 27, 2010, 11:50:29 pm
Why you should join the SSF:

(http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3758/ssfpropaganda.jpg)

You get to have sexy fighters!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on April 25, 2010, 12:10:56 am
After a sudden burst of creativity (which died down progessively after the burst, mind you...), I felt the need to take a stab at what the Feather 4 might look like, or how some interesting physical forms on an anime-style starfighter might appear:

(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pviBd4KmbFPcYFKVlsDvHMFlDDONvElV-iLA062UJv__ioNoccSGnAV1nd0rXPIkGjDU4dDoQVpnDKRfUga52JV0ajHVIMNeu/Feather%204%20Concept.jpg)

This is by no means Quanto's vision of the fighter from what I've gleaned of his opinions on the type. The design is unrefined, sloppy in some areas, and doesn't quite fit in with what we've seen of the Stellar Assault universe. But, it does have some traits that, if developed, might actually mature to be quite appealing. Also a good little bit of practice with "organic mechanical" forms. Thanks, anime!  :p
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on April 25, 2010, 10:01:40 am
Wow!   :yes:

That is genuinely awesome looking. Like... I want to fly it. NOW.
I'm gonna go ahead, and get to modeling it. I'll add some artistic liberties of my own. But I'll freely admit, I like your concept more than my own.
Thaeris, that is a pretty impressive burst of creativity you had!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on April 25, 2010, 10:11:22 am
I agree, looks awesome  :yes:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on April 25, 2010, 10:23:17 am
I suppose I could work at streamlining the fighter/getting rid of the lumps. The small lateral profile is mostly rubbish, really - the desing needs some real tweaking if it's to look proper. However, I'm sure you've got a handle on it, Quanto.  ;)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: starwolf1991 on April 25, 2010, 10:29:10 am
Wow, dude! This is amazing stuff you got going here. Really great work!

I reckon I could learn a thing or two about sketching concepts from your artwork here.  Love to see more!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on April 25, 2010, 10:53:53 am
I DO WANT. It looks awesome. Oh so awesome.

Also, does it have 4 guns for the primary banks or 2?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on April 25, 2010, 10:58:58 am
As drawn, it has two light/standard guns and a heavy cannon on the ventral portion of the hull. The plasma missile banks would have four firing ports each.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on April 25, 2010, 08:19:51 pm
And for those who haven't seen yet, we tested multiplayer yesterday (and a little today).

You can watch through my perspective and watch how I totally own everyone and dominate! get owned by Quanto. = ( (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ1uCPpA2H0)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on April 25, 2010, 09:22:06 pm
I found a few Videos for the Sega Saturn version of Stellar Assault while looking up the video you posted... I can identify the Terran fighters just fine, but I don't recognize any of the capitol ships. Any input on this, Quanto? Upon analysis, I must also note how you merged design elements from both versions of the game in your fighters to date...

Also, apart from the 32X version and the Saturn version (which looks much prettier, I must say...), were there any other releases of the game? Again, I'd be curious to track down a Japanese speaker on HLP to decipher available elements of the story (on YouTube, mostly)... just so you'd know.  :)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on April 26, 2010, 07:03:05 am
I found a few Videos for the Sega Saturn version of Stellar Assault while looking up the video you posted... I can identify the Terran fighters just fine, but I don't recognize any of the capitol ships. Any input on this, Quanto? Upon analysis, I must also note how you merged design elements from both versions of the game in your fighters to date...

Also, apart from the 32X version and the Saturn version (which looks much prettier, I must say...), were there any other releases of the game? Again, I'd be curious to track down a Japanese speaker on HLP to decipher available elements of the story (on YouTube, mostly)... just so you'd know.  :)

Nope, there weren't any other games of Stellar Assault. Just the 32x and the Saturn game. It would be cool if someone could translate what they are saying though.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on April 26, 2010, 10:02:30 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M22zp91ARFE

With my poor knowledge of moonspeak I could deciper this:
"This Hawk 1, name, name, can you read/hear me?"
"Yes commander/captain/leader/whatevertherankis"
"Something about beginning the operation, let's go"
"Something about the mission area coordinates and starting jump/warp/ftl"
"Something about putting scans on a display"
"Computer voice confirming something along those lines"
"All units break formation/scatter, let's do this quick and return home"
"Computer saying something I dont understand"
"Unit has reached scan point"
"Okay, activate the support device"
"Computer voice saying something about standing by"
"Computer voice saying the device has began scanning"
"Support device has finished scanning"
"Okay, beginning docking sequence. Let's finish up and return home"
"Computer saying something about detecting a reaction at the enemy"
"Huh? Have we been discovered?"
"High energy reading! An enemy attack!"
"'kaito 3' (that support device), down."
"Something I can't understand"
*battle*
"How's that, somethingsomething"
"Computer saying it is reading a reaction at the enemy ship again"
"A whole bunch of stuff I can't understand or can't hear clearly because of the music"
"Orders to follow the enemy thing (I think)"
and that's the end of the video.

I really wish my knowledge of moonspeak was better than this  :p
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on April 26, 2010, 10:08:03 am
Perhaps we should enlist Komet to assist with this?

There were also a few briefings as well as the introduction posted on YouTube. The... first ten missions of the Saturn version were also posted - I think there might have been more missions with that game, though.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: bizzybody on April 27, 2010, 03:33:54 am
I like the plot laid out for this remake/homage to the original game, but have some issues with the depiction of terraforming Venus.

Not only does Venus rotate really slowly, it also rotates in the opposite direction of all the other planets in the solar system. Making it go faster the direction it's already going would be less trouble than trying to reverse its spin. The new moon you park in orbit around it will likewise have to run the opposite way from every other moon in the solar system. Ask a scientist who knows about orbital mechanics if you're interested in the nitty gritty details.

Next up, for your new Venusian and Martian moons, you'll have to watch out for the Roche Limit. It varies depending on the size of the two bodies and the tensile strength of the smaller body. What the limit is, is the closest the smaller body can orbit the larger without breaking up from tidal stress. the 'ideal' Roche Limit is often calculated with the smaller body having the strength of water. Solid bodies can get closer.

After its slow, retrograde rotation, the next largest obstacle to terraforming Venus is its atmosphere. It has far too much of it and the wrong combination of gasses. The surface pressure is about 92 times Earth's. Its surface temperature is between 800 and 900 degrees F or around 460 degrees C.

The *last* thing you want to do is slam comets or anything else into Venus that'll add more gasses to the atmosphere. You need to eliminate 90% of it, ending up with around 70% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 0.03% carbon dioxide. Other trace gasses, no problem as long as they're not irritants or deadly poisons. Even then little bits of stuff like chlorine and sulfur won't be an issue. Water vapor and ozone will come naturally when you get around to filling the oceans. Ozone is naturally created and destroyed constantly by solar radiation.

One idea I've had for simultaneously dealing with the rotation and atmosphere problems is to build several giant towers around the equator. Put some frikin huge nuclear rockets (based on the NERVA or DUMBO designs) that use the Venusian atmosphere as reaction mass, pumped up from below, through some handwavium device that keeps the nitrogen and oxygen while passing most of the rest. Over time the thrust spins Venus up to a 24 hour day, sunrise in the West! Once started, pumping wouldn't be required due to the huge pressure differential between the surface and the vacuum of space at the tower tops. Giant nuclear powered siphon pumps, no moving parts but the reaction mass of Venusian atmosphere.

The "air" would have to be accelerated to escape velocity, otherwise it'd just whirl around a bit and fall back down, mostly negating the effort to increase the spin, sort of like putting a fan on the stern of a sailboat, blowing into the sail. ;)

Another method would use the towers, but in combination with electromagnetic catchers and accelerators to grab and hurl large pressure tanks that run in highly eccentric orbits around Venus. Catch an empty tank, which adds a little spin to Venus, fill it full of compressed gasses then fling it away, which also adds a little spin. When the tanks are far enough away from the planet, vent the gasses in such a way they won't get back to Venus. the vented gas could also be used to guide and accelerate the tanks back to be grabbed again. That would take massive amounts of power, so again something nuclear.

Lots and lots and lots of tanks would be required, possibly millions. Extra 'kick' could be provided by periodically sending in tanks full of water, compressed oxygen, loads of cargo etc. Whatever's useful and HEAVY to be grabbed and add its kinetic energy to making Venus spin faster.

Either way the major MAJOR problem is what to build the towers of that can withstand the extreme surface temperatures.

If you want to get into higher high tech, use antimatter to react with small amounts of the atmosphere and blast that through a siphon jet, dragging up large gulps of air. Of course the antimatter would have to be totally annihilated with normal matter so none comes in contact with any of the parts of the system you want to keep intact. Then there'd be the problem of the rather large amounts of hard radiation created, wouldn't want anything like, oh, Earth getting in the path of the exhaust streams. Other than those piddling little issues, lots more thrust and shorter time to those scenic western sunrises. ;)

Finally, a quote from some book I can only remember this from. "On Venus, if your exhaust temperature isn't hotter than the atmosphere, you're not running a rocket, you're running a refrigerator." Was something about how difficult it is to have jet propelled aircraft in an atmosphere as hot as Venus when even at 1,000 degrees F exhaust temperature the engines were horribly inefficient.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: bizzybody on April 27, 2010, 04:15:18 am
For some idea of how harsh Venusian surface conditions are, the only probes to survive landing on the surface were the USSR's Venera 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. The longest any survived was Venera 13 at 127 minutes. It may have lasted long enough for its batteries to go dead, before the heat fried the electronics.

Before Venera 7 the probes were only built to withstand 25 times Earth pressure and were crushed before reaching the surface, failed to get to Venus or lost communications before getting to Venus. Venera 3 lost communication just before entering the atmosphere and became the first manmade object (and first manmade piece of space junk) to land on the surface of another planet.

Most of the series that survived long enough to send data back from the surface had various equipment failures, including camera lens covers failing to pop off. 9 and 10 had two cameras each but one cover on each probe failed to release. The cover design was changed for 11 and 12 but on those none of the covers came off. Venera 14 had the bad luck of one of its camera covers landing exactly where the soil compression probe was made to touch the surface.

Venus is quite the nastiest place in the solar system with a solid surface reachable by human technology. That gives some idea of the difficulty of doing anything with Venus.

Terraforming Mars would be far easier. It needs a whole lot more atmosphere, but no additional carbon dioxide at all. Some way to get rid of most of what it has would be a good thing. Periodic replenishment would be required due to Mars' low gravity being unable to hang onto it, though it'd likely be on a time scale of thousands of years before a built up atmosphere would bleed away to too little to breathe and hold in warmth. It's unknown what the peak of the Martian atmosphere was, but from surface erosion features it had to have been enough to have high enough pressure and temperatures for liquids to flow in large quantities. Another factor for Mars could be its lack of a large moon of approximately the same size ratio as Earth's moon to keep tidal stress heating going in the Martian core. That's another unknown for Mars, does it still have any molten or semi-molten rock? It has a very weak magnetic field but it's unknown whether or not it has a strong dipole orientation like Earth's. In any case, particles from the Solar wind can hit Mars more strongly than they can Earth, which doesn't help atmosphere stick around. Quite odd that so little study of this has been done. Most martian probes have had no magnetic field instruments.

It's even worse for Venus. It has no magnetic field and it's unknown why, mainly due to there being such a tiny amount of data obtained through the Venera probes. We know it's really frigging hot and the pressure is high and in a few spots there are types of basalt rock similar to some found on Earth and that's pretty much it. If an internal dynamo like Earth's could be jump started by making Venus spin faster and finding it a Moon-sized moon, that'd help a lot. Otherwise Venusians will need SPF one-billion sunscreen to go outdoors.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: SpardaSon21 on April 27, 2010, 12:21:17 pm
Hey, don't ruin the perfectly good plot with reality, okay?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on May 25, 2010, 10:56:05 am
Bizzy, I truly appreciate that you took the time to read my backstory outline, and my mind is blown with the amount of input you have regarding that.
However, SpardaSon is right in saying, don't get realism mixed up in the plot.
I did my best to take into account all the factors and hindrances towards colonization of Venus-like worlds. However, there are two primary of reasons for even suggesting that Venus is terraformed at all.

1. In the Sega Saturn Version of Stellar Assault, a good 5 missions take place over Terra-Formed Venus, no (english) explanation is given for exactly HOW they did it, they simply did.
2. In both Stellar Assault Games, (32x & Saturn), there are Acceleration Gates, and in both games, asteroids are shot through them.

In my process of writing the Story Outline, I've simply done my best to connect all of the "cool" elements of the Original games into a coherent story and plot line. Finally, if I change the story's "science" behind Venus-World terraforming, then the whole basis for the Game's War is completely defunct. So, respectfully, I will have to decline the suggestions you've made in the game's back-story.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 02, 2010, 01:02:49 pm
Double Posting!
For those of you who remember Thearis' Concept Sketch for the Feather 4:
(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pviBd4KmbFPcYFKVlsDvHMFlDDONvElV-iLA062UJv__ioNoccSGnAV1nd0rXPIkGjDU4dDoQVpnDKRfUga52JV0ajHVIMNeu/Feather%204%20Concept.jpg)

I present the completed Geometry!
(http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/5076/3dmodelfeather4.jpg)

And here is a view from the proposed Eyepoint:
(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/343/f4eyepoint3.png)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: The E on June 02, 2010, 01:28:08 pm
Niiiiiice  :nod:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: headdie on June 02, 2010, 01:52:50 pm
nice wook, just goes to show what happens when you mix good concept art with a good modeller, keep it up guys
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Rodo on June 02, 2010, 02:33:58 pm
yeah, it's starting to look really nice.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 02, 2010, 03:34:14 pm
Quanto, I'd like to say that I'm sorry I couldn't get the time to go back and over the concept art for you...

...I'd also like to say that your interpretation of the design is damn sexy!

 ;)

Awesome work, man!
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on June 02, 2010, 03:40:16 pm
Lookin' Gooood~  :yes:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 04, 2010, 01:51:44 pm
I"ve been on a big push to get the Human Space-craft finished. Here are the Feather 3 and the Feather Support Craft. The Feather 3 is a torpedo bomber featured in the second mission of the Sega Saturn Version.
(http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/6553/3dmodelfeather3torp.jpg)

The Feather Support Craft (FSC) is actually a core craft featured in both games. It serves as a refueler support ship and also as an AWACS/EWS craft in the Saturn Version, it will continue to fill all of those roles in our version of the game.
(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1199/3dmodelsupportship.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 04, 2010, 05:15:25 pm
Hmmm...

I was thinking about something for the Feather 3, actually... If I get some time, I could put my pencil to use for you again if you'd like.

*EDIT

Quanto, do you think you could send me a couple shots of the Original Feather 3 from Stellar Assault?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 05, 2010, 07:41:38 am
Enjoy
(http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1012/feather3.png)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 05, 2010, 11:45:09 am
Hmmm...

So it did have the cockpit out in front after all... My initial interpretaions of the design suggested that the canopy was further aft.

*EDIT

I've been playing with a few preliminary sketches, but I really need to know how big this bird is. Do you have some dimensions I can work with?

...I also really want to stick a particle beam cannon under that nose...  ;7
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 05, 2010, 02:39:29 pm
Well, the Feather 3 is totally not a dog-fighter, and as far as the campaigns are concerned, NONE of the missions will make the player fly it. It will be available as a flyable ship in Multiplayer, but as a singleplayer craft, it will only be flown by the AI.

The weapons we have tabled for it are 2x2 Primary banks, and a 1x4 Secondary (for the torpedoes). I really don't want to equip it with the PBW just because that has always been planed as a special weapon for the Feather 2 only. The primary weapons planned for the F3 are probably going to be special anti-subsystem weapons. But really, the 4 Torpedoes will be enough to destroy even a BattleCruiser, so its already got the firepower required for its purpose. In the existing model that I've put together, it has two RPFCs under the Chin/Nose.

Actually I was wondering if you would like to design some of the fighters that would be flown by our in-universe privateers who hang around Alpha Centauri. They will be flying pre-feather generation fighters (so about 80 years old) and they should look like precursors to the current fighters. Other than that I grant you full design freedom.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 05, 2010, 02:53:41 pm
Indeed - the '3 should probably handle like a potato. :p

As far as older-gen ships go, I was actually looking at Gall Force's Bain fighter today. The craft shares quite a few lines with the Feathers and also has quite an older feel to it - the vector petals make it reminiscent of a B5 fighter. I think I could derive something from those lines to your liking.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 08, 2010, 06:53:09 pm
The Bain?! Really? I've always been a fan of the Balsam or the Wasp myself. They have beautiful curves.
But I trust you to produce some pretty designs. I was actually wondering if you could sketch out some nice textures too, for the Feather 1 and 2. They really do look rather plain, and while I am aiming to keep them looking clean and painted, they are lacking some "mechanical" elements. Nothing too complex or unrefined, but something that adds to the overall design of the models. I'm at a loss for ideas myself, and my nostalgia goggles really do cloud my judgment in terms of "modernizing" the designs for the game.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on June 08, 2010, 07:59:21 pm
Can I has Bronze-D (X is fine too)?
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 11, 2010, 08:39:05 am
Sorry Spoon, no mechs in space.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 11, 2010, 06:11:42 pm
Sorry Spoon, no mechs in space.
/me approves of this message!

Good work, Quanto.  :lol:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Getter Robo G on June 12, 2010, 01:25:51 pm
Lots of mechs in space, just not in that mod...

 ;7
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on June 13, 2010, 08:45:25 am
Lots of mechs in space, just not in that mod...

 ;7

There are plenty of mechs...just not in space. They are where they belong: on the ground.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: headdie on June 13, 2010, 09:17:48 am
Lots of mechs in space, just not in that mod...

 ;7

There are plenty of mechs...just not in space. They are where they belong: on the ground.

dont tell transformers that ;)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 13, 2010, 05:25:32 pm
And now for our dissident friends over in Alpha Centauri/Proxima...

(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p1RiaINLZvTUO_iv2xEHy-2ALfx2hJtIykBeX1KNdGr8_tKriW9vCS5WVQcfGFN3UlqVkcLvZk5jkEp-81MDD1tD3MP3Ye_ti/Starbane.JPG?psid=1)

This is what I've titled the "Starbane," a nod to the inspiration for the fighter:

http://www.gearsonline.net/gallforce/eternal/mecha/bain.html

Note that "Bain" is supposed to sound like "bine," but there you go...

The idea of the craft (to date) is that it is a good deal older than the Feathers and was placed into service before plasma cannons on starfighters were commonplace. As such, it uses a pair of gatling mass drivers as its primary weapons - these would have a superior range to plasma and have a high volume of fire, but (a.) ammunition is finite and (b.) they're not too effective against shields (I'd like to think plasma weapons are good at dissipating shields, while projectiles tend to be diverted/deflected). They are wicked against ship hulls, however...

However, the fighter has been updated to the point where its upper missile cells can mount copious quantities of plasma missiles. On the ventral surface of the fusalage is another antiquated weapon system - the Rocket Artillery Pod. This is a launcher fed by a large internal magazine which is capable of deploying large swarms of medium-yield unguided rockets, which again are limited in effectiveness vs. shileding but are lethal against ship hulls.

Another upgrade to the craft is augmented shileding, which is comparable to the shileding about the Feather 1, for example. The hull of the fighter was always fairly durable as a whole, making the fighter a tough one to crack. However, it's not all that maneuverable, being massive as it is and having a fairly high moment of inertia...

...But it is FAST. A high power-to-mass ratio makes the fighter quite tough to catch. When properly managed, this fighter is quite a problem for Synthesis forces... Which makes it popular with mercenaries, pirates, privateers, and local militaries.

Now, none of the above data is confirmed until Quanto makes it so, or at all. Or even an element in Stellar Assault, for that matter. If this is a go, I'll try and get some quick profile drawings in order - until then, there you go.

:D
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on June 13, 2010, 06:17:57 pm
The design looks a little off, but I said that with the Feather 4 (or rather, Quanto's interpretation of it) when everyone else thought it was cool. I guess this time it's about how overly long the canopy feels compared to the rest of the fighters seen by the humans. As for what has what weapons, that's Quanto's thing and not mine.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 14, 2010, 12:50:29 pm
That is indeed a beautiful ship, can you do some additional sketches of it?
Showing a profile view of the Front, Side and Top?
That wing at the bottom, does it point straight down?

I'm not planning on there being too many other Privateer fighters, maybe one more in addition to this. I do like your design, its a little long, but I can shorten it. The design as a whole reminds me of the Fighters in Macross actually, with the large cockpit connected  by a thin neck to a larger body. Very aesthetic.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on June 14, 2010, 02:18:02 pm
Thanks, Quanto.

I'll get some more sketchwork under way shortly. I hope you didn't mind the description much, that was merely something I had in mind whilst developing the shape and concept (and as such was essential for the design evolution). I can also post some of the preliminary concept works to demonstrate the design workflow.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Getter Robo G on June 14, 2010, 05:49:18 pm
No wonder it's under the Gallforce entries. :) Very similar to Macross type design.  :yes:

Lets see more of it, and more like it...
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on June 22, 2010, 11:00:36 am
Hey Thaeris, how are those sketches coming. I'd like to get started on the Starbain, but I'd like those other view angles. Getting the proportions correct is important to me.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on July 15, 2010, 07:04:05 pm
/me drops down unexpectedly from the ceiling...

WHA-BAM!

To assist with the inevitable resizing of the Feather 3, I'll leave you with this:

(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pKqwORkhoz--XDuVnvseU1bYJwC9th1fLMdNboaTxWFMvdPTEj-hSinDwghRKs5FTxwpmDihL7A_AnZH13CJfZMazLP3e1lM5/Feather%203%20Revision.jpg?psid=1)

 :cool:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on August 08, 2010, 11:04:30 pm
/me does the same magic as Thaeris does

WHA-BAM!

Figured I'd make a minor update so people actually notice this thread.

Here is the Terran Callisto-class escort carrier. A ship of this class, currently named the SSF Shadow will be the ship you will be based on initially. Geometry's finished, and now needs a UV map and textures.

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/callistofinal01.png)

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/callistofinal02.png)

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/callistofinal03.png)

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/callistofinal04.png)

Hey, I figured I'd use the actual thread for once. =P
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on August 09, 2010, 12:51:57 am
...

Andy, you have horrible timing. :p

I thought we could use some motivation in this thread, so I whipped out a simple, non-serious image using tools I rarely touch: pens...

 :shaking:

(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pIBXtZDuo-YhvKgMqDmrDzjwHl9cCdPD7irqOZBAf6eg624J3mtB0khXrdvxt-UwKT5m6OxZ2NkryeA95jGo74COjbWQfPUBv/Feather%201.jpg?psid=1)

...

Geometry's finished, and now needs a UV map and textures.

Not quite, actually. Quanto and I discussed and worked on the geometry to a fairly good extent for a great part of Friday and Saturday morning. The geometry will hopefully be finalized soon, however.

 :nod:
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Scooby_Doo on August 09, 2010, 01:10:57 am
...

Andy, you have horrible timing. :p

I thought we could use some motivation in this thread, so I whipped out a simple, non-serious image using tools I rarely touch: pens...

 :shaking:

(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pIBXtZDuo-YhvKgMqDmrDzjwHl9cCdPD7irqOZBAf6eg624J3mtB0khXrdvxt-UwKT5m6OxZ2NkryeA95jGo74COjbWQfPUBv/Feather%201.jpg?psid=1)


The front cockpit section kinda reminds me of Armada Starscream
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on August 09, 2010, 11:36:52 am
A Transformers comparison?

NOOOOOooooo!!!

:p
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Scooby_Doo on August 09, 2010, 03:18:47 pm
 :D  http://www.tfu.info/issue12/stufffromaaronsdesk/14-armss.jpg (http://www.tfu.info/issue12/stufffromaaronsdesk/14-armss.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 09, 2010, 08:43:24 pm
Regardless of any similarities you may see between Stellar Assault and *cough* Transformers, let it be known, it is all coincidence.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 17, 2010, 12:59:21 am
I've finally finished the FF Sinope, the SGN/SSF's frontline Screening Frigate, its gone through a lot of revisions, but now I can finally say it is done~ :pimp:

(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/3091/sinope.jpg)

(http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/8047/sinope2.jpg)

(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/1525/sinope3.jpg)

(http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/4479/sinope4.jpg)

(http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/6521/sinope5.jpg)

This is the general look and appearance that will be seen throughout all of the Terran spacecraft; smooth, sleek, and vibrantly painted.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on August 17, 2010, 01:09:09 am
DO WANT IN GAME.  :D
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: JGZinv on August 17, 2010, 01:49:50 am
I'd call that metallic blue.  :nod:

Good work guys, look forward to seeing what your mod can come up with.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on August 17, 2010, 11:59:33 am
Sinopii~ <3
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on August 17, 2010, 04:35:00 pm
Hot damn, this came about beautifully.

:D
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on August 18, 2010, 01:44:57 am
It's in game!

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/SinopeSGN.png)

^ From the F3 Lab

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/Royous/StellarAssault/screen0282.jpg)

^ Two Sinopes weaving through a huge furball over Earth.

I've fought these things, and it's a beast to handle. Compare the Aeolus for an equal to FreeSpace. You'll learn to fear them once you finally get to play against them! =o
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 18, 2010, 02:49:07 am
More Screens for your enjoyment, cause we sure enjoyed it :D
(http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/3302/fs2open3612rinf20100818.png)
(http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/3302/fs2open3612rinf20100818.png)
(http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/3302/fs2open3612rinf20100818.png)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Spoon on August 18, 2010, 11:26:56 am
Sinopii~! <3
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Droid803 on August 18, 2010, 12:21:32 pm
Do you have edgesplit on that?
The lighting looks very wrong...
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Thaeris on August 18, 2010, 12:46:07 pm
Do you have edgesplit on that?
The lighting looks very wrong...

Alright, constructive criticism is great, but, for the love of God...

Don't use Blender jargon. None of our regular team uses Blender on a general basis, so terms like "edgesplit" are really pretty useless. I'd assume you're trying to say "unweld the verticies in a certain area of the model," but then, I don't know. After all, that's a bit of AC3D jargon.

However, if you'd like to assist us in any way, please get in contact with one of us. :)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: pecenipicek on August 18, 2010, 01:02:41 pm
edgesplit is also known as "smoothgroups".



basically its a way of telling the phong shading algorithm "stop here, no highlights go over this edge continuously..."



the spec map of the Sinope needs a bit more work prolly, also, some subtle noise introduced into the normal map would work wonders in toning down the whole "shining mirror of doom" thing :p



also for a short demonstration of differences between a model with edgesplit and one without.

No edgesplit.
(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9738/edgesplitoff.th.jpg) (http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9738/edgesplitoff.jpg)

With edgesplit.
(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6927/edgespliton.th.jpg) (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6927/edgespliton.jpg)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Droid803 on August 18, 2010, 01:06:04 pm
I don't even use blender. :P
I just see the term thrown around enough to get what it means.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 18, 2010, 01:07:31 pm
Oddly enough, it didn't look that way, when the Shinemap was in TGA format. Only after we converted it to .dds did it become bright white mirror of doom. So if there is are any technical details about the dds format I am missing, please don't keep a secret.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Droid803 on August 18, 2010, 01:09:48 pm
How's the Alpha channel on the shine map?
Cause that controls ENV mapping. If its all-white or close to that, you'll get MIRRORZ
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 18, 2010, 01:11:47 pm
The alpha is practically black actually. So again, I have no clue why it is doing what it is. And again, it looked perfectly fine when it was in TGA format. Only after the DDS conversion did it go all mirror on us.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Droid803 on August 18, 2010, 01:18:43 pm
Did you use the right DDS compression method? (DXT5)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 18, 2010, 01:22:37 pm
DTX5, Alpha enabled. Yes I use the Gimp thread on a regular basis whenever I texture.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Droid803 on August 18, 2010, 01:34:17 pm
*shrug* donno then.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: Quanto on August 18, 2010, 09:06:29 pm
Problem solved, apparently Gimp was saving the DTX5 wrong, or something along those lines. Saving the DDS in Paint.net fixed the problem. We'll probably be doing this for the rest of the ships as well as time drags on.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - A Total Conversion
Post by: AndrewofDoom on September 11, 2010, 12:02:12 pm
We have been doing stuff and such, so yeah. Just wanted to post our news update and make you doods aware of it. (http://www.moddb.com/games/stellar-assault-fso/news/silent-running)
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - The Old Thread
Post by: chief1983 on October 20, 2010, 06:00:40 pm
Paint.NET _fixed_ it?  I always had to save those with Gimp because Paint.NET does something horribly wrong.  I think you might need to look at how your channels are really set up.  Black or not has nothing to do with it, it's opacity.  You want black but only at about 10% opacity or less for a lot of surfaces, and more solid black for highly shiny surfaces.  In fact, the color is only the way the app represents it to you I think, it could show it white, red, or black, depending on the app.  It's opacity that matters though.  Paint.NET probably broke it but differently, unless the plugin has been updated.
Title: Re: Stellar Assault FSO - The Old Thread
Post by: Quanto on October 20, 2010, 06:19:37 pm
Paint.net works perfectly.

I tested the textures of the Sinope on TGA first, then I converted to .dds in Gimp. Horrors abound.

After a conversation with The_E, it was discovered that either I didn't understand how Gimp's plugin works, or that it didn't work at all, but when it was saved in .dds from Paint.net, the results were exactly the same as the TGA versions. So I'm sticking with Paint.net now, plus it loads up a hell of a lot faster, and it takes fewer mouse clicks to get what I want from it.

[edit]
Oh, and I _was_ talking about opacity. An Alpha channel is the color channel that controls an image's Opacity.
100% Black = 100% Transparent
100%White = 100% Opaque

Thats basic graphic design knowledge, I'd pity anyone who attempts to create textures or even web graphics and not know that.