[Arparso]

Update 10th Feb. 2011:

With a "slight" delay now comes the first public release of "Freespace: Evolution", a new Freespace-themed mod for the Sci-Fi-RTS "Nexus - The Jupiter Incident". Spin up your warp drives and get ready to roast some Shivan scum!

Finally it's here, version 1.0. What you'll get in this first playable release:

• 11 small to medium sized capital ships from the Freespace universe
• 21 fighters and 13 bombers
• 4 rather simple missions to get in touch with the mod
• authentic Freespace music, sounds and graphics effects

It's also perfectly compatible to the Nexus Skirmisher, so you can create your own skirmish battles for it (but don't forget to set "freespace" as mission type!).

Download Freespace: Evolution 1.0
(installer, ca. 190MB compressed, 545MB extracted)





Please keep in mind, that this is still very much a work-in-progress. Especially balancing and fighter or bomber handling need to be worked on more. There is also a whole lot of iconic Freespace ships missing, like the big destroyers obviously, but also civilian transports and such still need to be added to open the doors for some interesting mission design in the later stages.

In the meantime, Freespace: Evolution is now on Twitter. To receive all the latest updates, make sure to follow the tweet! The site on moddb will also be regularly updated, of course, although that'll be reserved for bigger news worthy of their own article.

Follow Freespace Evolution on

Have fun!







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Original message archived for "historic" reasons:
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I'm currently toying around with the idea of starting a Freespace 2 based total conversion for the strategy game "Nexus - The Jupiter Incident". After quick testing it became apparant, that converting Freespace 2 ships into Nexus wasn't that hard to do. Besides the obvious file format conversion it only requires minor adjustments to textures as well as manually placing all hardpoints required by Nexus directly on the model... which is manageable in a reasonable timeframe, if you know what needs to be done.

I actually tried converting the GTC Fenris model and textures from the 3.6.10 mediavps, which eventually resulted in this screenshot:



Now I'm not sure about your standing on the usage of your gorgeous models in other games' mods and I certainly don't want to offend anyone by secretly stealing your assets and using them in my mod. So I'm kindly asking you: Is there a possibility of using your models and textures to bring the world of Freespace alive in a completely different game? (while giving credit to the original authors, of course)

[Jeff Vader]

Moved tot the FSU board, since you mentioned only using models from the MediaVPs and the FSU team made them.

[The E]

You can use any and all models and textures from the Mediavps, provided you credit either the original creator as referenced in the readme, or the FSU team when no creator is mentioned.

[TopAce]

Actually, it's good publicity for the FSU team and FreeSpace in general.

[-Norbert-]

Don't forget to stop by here once you have something to download. I'd really like to try that one out once it has something to try out.
I love both Nexus and Freespace, so a mix could be really fun.

Even though Freespace would pretty much turn the current balancing of Nexus around 180°, since there beams are for precission attacks on subsystems and "blob turrets" are for damaging the hull (or dedicated to overload shields, but those won't be in a Freespace mod I guess).
Fighters have no shields, but Capships do.
Only in the AAA beams in both games are pretty much the same (short bursts of beamfire, even though Nexus uses 5 bursts per salvo if I remember correctly).

Just a shame FS doesn't have any weapons to make use of massive explosion effects in Nexus, like the Ionbombs or Nukes & co.

But I see a problem for the Shivans. Many of their Capships have most of their firepower to the front and the Nexus AI tends to turn their sides towards the enemy rather than the front, which would suit the GTVA much more.

[Arparso]

You can use any and all models and textures from the Mediavps, provided you credit either the original creator as referenced in the readme, or the FSU team when no creator is mentioned.

That's great to hear. Thanks!

But I see a problem for the Shivans. Many of their Capships have most of their firepower to the front and the Nexus AI tends to turn their sides towards the enemy rather than the front, which would suit the GTVA much more.

I may have to rearrange some turrets anyway, because of that issue. Nexus expects every weapon system to have at least two turrets on opposite sides of the ship to essentially be able to shoot everywhere. Single beam cannons such as the one on the Fenris violate that already. I'll have to see how it turns out during balancing, though.

Another issue will be speed. Even Freespace's cruisers are insanely slow compared to vanilla Nexus. It makes sense in Freespace, which focuses much more on fighter combat... but in Nexus fighters clearly take a backseat. It's not particularly enjoyable watching a Fenris crawl through space with its 25m/s... so compromises have to be made to allow for a good gameplay experience.

[-Norbert-]

Are you planning on adding any unofficial ships or even other races than the official ones? Since stock Nexus already has six different species, seven if you count the mechanoids implementing more than three races shouldn't be any problem.

[Colonol Dekker]

Post a link to your site (if applicable) so I can stay up to date on this. I want to see an Orion going up with nexus level explosions.
 
Also, can you port the stilletto to FS2 easily?
I love that corvette.

[Arparso]

Are you planning on adding any unofficial ships or even other races than the official ones? Since stock Nexus already has six different species, seven if you count the mechanoids implementing more than three races shouldn't be any problem.

Shouldn't be a problem... thinking of anything special? However I first need to get started really. At least the most common Freespace ships should be included first before adding anything new. I only have an unfinished Fenris right now, so there's still lots to do.

Post a link to your site (if applicable) so I can stay up to date on this. I want to see an Orion going up with nexus level explosions.

So do I

I run a forum dedicated to Nexus, Nexus modding and my Nexus Skirmisher tool in particular, where I'm most likely to post updates about this (although it's too early too tell how soon that'll be).
http://arparso.de/nexus/forum/
 

Also, can you port the stilletto to FS2 easily?
I love that corvette.

The Stiletto may actually be possible, because the game's mod tools include a Lightwave model file of the Stiletto-class corvette. Theoretically you could export that to DAE format, which you could then import in POFCS2 and make ready for use in Freespace. I never tried it, though - I actually go the reverse route from Freespace to Lightwave.

Other ships won't be possible, I fear... they're all in Nexus' proprietary format, which there is no converter for.

[Colonol Dekker]

Wait. . . . .you made the skirmisher?
 
 

* Colonol Dekker shakes hands.

 
Good to meet ya;)
 
I love that thing.

[-Norbert-]

Me too. That is a very usefull tool you made there, though it's a shame so few people use it, since Nexus never was as popular as it deserved.

And with custom ships and races I was mostly thinking of the ships from Stratcom and Steve'O (hopefully I didn't misspell the names) and the Ancients/Vishnans.
Perhaps even a full Blue Planet mod as a kind of Addon to the FreeSpace Nexus mod. 

Oh by the way, I forgot about the Raptors in when I said 6 species, so it would be 7 species plus mechaniods and that one insect ship.

Are you also going to put manouvering thrusters onto the ships? While it would look unaccustomed, it would make sense. The ships in FS2 certainly move as if they had them, even though they aren't seen. You can't fly "baseball-bat manouvers" with just vectored engines 

[Arparso]

Yeah, the Skirmisher was by me. I actually find that thing kind of embarassing, because I know the horrible, horrible mess of a code behind it. But hey, it works! ... most of the time, anyway

Custom ships and races - can't say yet. I'm not exactly up-to-date regarding FS2 modding right now... didn't play the game for years (until yesterday, that is).

Regarding maneuvering thrusters: I haven't decided yet. The Fenris currently has them present, but it looks kinda wrong without actual thrusters on the 3d model or textures. I'd have to add small thrusters to the 3d models to make that look believable, but I'm not a modeler. Don't know. Need to try things out, experiment some more and see what works. My biggest concern right now is proper weapon placement, so the turrets don't shoot through the hull while still being able to fire at almost any angle.

For now, I'm happy with my "giant green beam cannon" experimental effect (including warmup phase and authentic FS2 sound):

[Rodo]

looks  , and as mentioned before... good publicity, I want to see some screenies from the Aeolus when you got that done if possible ^^

[Colonol Dekker]

Even after all these years HLP is still "bringing modders together" that sins mod guy on the TBP board now a nexus one. . it warns me cockles. Nexus is gonna be primarily caps though. . . I'm still looking forward to the RTS mod Nuke and AE. Don't worry

[MatthTheGeek]

There is also one or two FS conversions for HW2. The one I remember of is quite old and has a lot of mistakes in it however. I should take the time of doing one myself one of those days

[Aardwolf]

Even after all these years HLP is still "bringing modders together" that sins mod guy on the TBP board now a nexus one. . it warns me cockles. Nexus is gonna be primarily caps though. . . I'm still looking forward to the RTS mod Nuke and AE. Don't worry

Nuke and Aardwolf, you mean.

Edit:

Hey Arparso, the Fenris's beam cannon is on the bottom and not the top! 

[Colonol Dekker]

Sorry my lupine compadre.i knew it was an A followed by another vowel

[Arparso]

Hey Arparso, the Fenris's beam cannon is on the bottom and not the top! 

Yeah, but that would have been an awkward angle for a cool screenshot

Everything's subject to change, anyway.





These two aren't quite as far as the Fenris. The Orion's turret textures aren't set up properly right now and both ships still need their hardpoints added or else I can't put some working engines and weapons on them.

Visually they're holding up quite nice in Nexus, I think.

[General Battuta]

They really are. Props to you and to the MVPs team.

[Rodo]

Ohhh I love that model