Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: prometh on December 16, 2013, 03:46:03 pm
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While I see progress on many unknown ships and "uglies", it makes me wonder whether anyone has made any Death Star models. Both versions are a very important part of the Star Wars universe.
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The Death Stars. Famous, yes. Important, not necessarily. They are only important if they are needed. The Star Wars 'verse is much bigger than the Death Stars.
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The Death Stars are more important than a ZY-Wing, no?
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In stories already told. I have little desire of flying a Death Star including campaign, as I know it would inevitably lead to a Battle of Yavin/Endor finale and I'd blow the thing up. Again. The official games did this more often than not and personally, I've grown weary of doing it.
It's time to move on from that and play something new and fresh. About the Uglies, I view them to be as important as the Death Stars in that they help build the star wars 'verse and in fact do a better job of world building than Death Stars. Death Stars are a single point in the canon of Star Wars, whereas there is an entire galaxy out there that can be created and explored and open to anyone to build on.
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The only time we've ever been able to play a Death Star run with full space sim controls was in the original X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance. The Rogue Squadron games were arcade style.
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Also, those things are way too big to be more than background props. Skyboxes do that better, unless you want to do trench runs, in which case you only model the trench.
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As cool as a Death Star would be, I think it'd be a pretty massive and prominent project meaning that if there was one floating around here somewhere, everyone would know about it already. Unless of course someone intentionally didn't want everyone to know about it, in which case someone could have a Death Star but they still wouldn't admit to it now.
Just trying to keep a little optimism here. :lol:
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They managed it all in X-Wing, man.. it's surely possible
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Sure, it's possible. Still, it's not like whatever you see in X-wing isn't incredibly primitive, so doing something that'd otherwise match the visual quality of FotG would require a heck of a lot of work and all sorts of bizarre trickery. The engine's not exactly built to support things like that out-of-the-box.
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To build a Death Star to the level of quality everything else is being built, and to scale (because not having it to scale is for wusses), it would eat the FS2 engine and superlaser the remains. It's a LOT of data.
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it would eat the FS2 engine and superlaser the remains.
LOL
That's too bad, though.. it's been my dream to play such with modern graphics. Rogue Squadron games come close, but they're too arcade'y for my fantasy.
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I remember someone (Omni?) making a trench run video ages ago, more as a detail box proof-of-concept than anything else, but that wasn't exactly up to the visual standard that a legit mod release would need. You pretty much would need to have it be just a skybox, or at the very best model a (relatively) small portion of it as terrain.
(I will say this though: even though it's an arcade style, given its age, Rogue Squadron 2 holds up extremely well graphically.)
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using detail box/spheres you could probably keep the rendering load down, especially while in the trench, would still be a massive undertaking though
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What if the FCP team merged in a flight sim engine? Could be used for both the Death Star and planetary missions
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Omni's error with the Death Star and the trench run, was that he mistakenly believed that the trench was the equator groove and as such his model was too small by comparison. That said, it WAS a proof-of-concept, as Mongoose pointed out, for detail boxes and it succeeded in that respect.
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What if the FCP team merged in a flight sim engine? Could be used for both the Death Star and planetary missions
A google search of these very forums will probably show you numerous times when merging in other engines has been proposed in the past, and what follows is usually a long technical explanation of why not, so I won't bother to repeat any of those explanations here.
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Sure, it's possible. Still, it's not like whatever you see in X-wing isn't incredibly primitive, so doing something that'd otherwise match the visual quality of FotG would require a heck of a lot of work and all sorts of bizarre trickery. The engine's not exactly built to support things like that out-of-the-box.
Well, I once tested a proof-of-concept version you made. Not an entirely flawless implementation, and could use a better model set, but I liked how it ran. :) I might still have it, actually.
Indeed, the biggest problem is getting a FoTG-quality Death Star. I once toyed with an idea of an AU campaign involving multiple superbomber raids (not by Rebels, it introduced a few new players into the war) against DSII's important points, like hangars, superlaser and Emperor's tower. The mission concept turned out to be completely unfeasible due to sheer size of the thing. Even just basing the player off Death Star (which I also wanted to do) would be rather hard to do well. If I ever return to the idea, I'll probably end up splitting the DSII's role between Executor and Eclipse, with anything involving DSII happening in the background/behind the scenes. FS engine isn't just suited for objects that big, especially if they're supposed to interact with the rest of the game. Inferno did have a huge Earth in back in retail, but it was just a prop, and you weren't getting close to it.
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i m bad for liking battle of endors? :( they are the equivalent of space LOTR battles...
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You're only bad if you like the bad ones (which is most but not all of them).
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I love BoE's. To say "you can only like non-bad BoE's" is unnecessary. Just as I hate bad convoy missions or bad strike missions or whatever, bad BoE's are... bad!
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They have a bad name because they are notoriously hard to execute as a compelling mission in which the player has any effect at all on the outcome, and on top of that most rookie mission designers try to make one without understanding all the fundamentals of successful mission design. So, most BoE attempts are laughable at best. I don't doubt that a seasoned, motivated mission design veteran could create a compelling BoE mission but I don't know of any who have.
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Inferno had a good one, BP2 had a good one, Derelict lets you kinda watch a good one, Wings of Dawn had several good ones.
Checkpoints are really helpful in designing them.
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The engine couldn't handle the actual BoE if we used fully functional ships for everything due to engine limits, but with clever design and maybe some scripting it should be possible to make something that's significantly more convincing than any previous game version. Gonna be missing quite a few necessary ship classes at first release, but it's a good long term goal :)
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Yeah. 30 ISDs, in FoTG quality, would probably bog down most computers. :) And that's not counting support units, DSII, Executor, and the Alliance fleet. And of course the swarm of fighters. Wookiepedia has a decen OrBat, and it's quite impressive. Still, some sort of multi-part "approximation" of the original BoE could be possible.
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as someone who did toyed a little with huge models (real sized planets) as well as near warp speed travel and stuff like that, I can say is possible to work with giant models with some scaling trickery, the UI allows you to change "scales" of speeds and distances, working with this, means you can actually shrink everything and make everything slower, allowing you to create models that look "huge", however in some overly complex models, some discrepancies start to happen in the collision detection department, probably related with decimal points, refresh rate of the engine and/or simple accuracy of the engine, I m sure the_E could detail the reasons better, but so far the best I have been able to tinify things, is to 1/4 size for my star trek mod with fighter-like capital ships.
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I am wondering if the same technique used to create the Battle of Yavin for The Battlefield 2142 Star Wars mod, First Strike, could be used with FS2?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkYbVD4A4Y
The outer Hull, Tie Hanger and trench of the Deathstar are made up of multiple rectangle shaped pieces that fit together like a mosaic floor tile. What looks like one huge object is many much smaller sized objects designed to connect together into one seamless giant object. The line of sight distance is also reduced, so that players only see part of the deathstar. This all helps to reduce rendering lag.
I am the remaining dev of the now dead First Strike mod for BF2142 and can provide the models if anyone is interested. When EA pulled the plug on BF2142 it essentially killed any mods for it.
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If you look one page back, Zookeeper did pretty much that in a mod I once tested. There were two models, surface and trench, which were turned on and off by the script depending on the player's position. Another way would be to use a huge "terrain" model (which is a proven method of doing planetary missions in FS), use detailboxes for the finer detail and have the "landmarks" (turbolaser towers, hangars and such) as individual structures, much like Blue Planet made its cities.
It was an interesting experience and it probably could be made to work again, but it'd have to be refined, especially if you wanted to include the landmarks. The demo worked, but it was incredibly simple.
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Nice to have you here Dnamro. I was fond of First Strike myself. :)
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Thanks for the reply and welcome guys.
I hate the way EA pulled the plug on Battlefield 2142 and many other games last year. BF2142 was set up to always use an online account and First Strike proved to be buggy with random crashes without the online account connection.
I have been looking into other game engines. Battlefield 2 was the first thought, since they use the same model format, but it does not have the mech or space map support that would be needed. It would take a lot of work to recode an AT-ST to work in Battlefield 2. I also too a hard look at the Unreal 4 engine, but textures would have to be redone for a new game engine and the engine is not fully develolped. The models and textures looked great 10 years ago, but texturing has changed a lot since then. Count B tipped me off last year to this Freespace 2 mod. I shared our Tie Defender, but I think that was the only thing the team could use at the time. It looks like Freespace 2 could be a good choice for porting some of the First Strike space maps.
I wasn't sure if what Zookeeper tested was similar or not. So, it sounds like it should be workable to port over the Battle of Yavin from First Strike to freespace 2. When I get some time, I will see about porting over the objects for the Deathstar into Freespace 2. If that works, there are a couple of space stations and many space containers as well as sattelites.
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I am wondering if the same technique used to create the Battle of Yavin for The Battlefield 2142 Star Wars mod, First Strike, could be used with FS2?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkYbVD4A4Y
The outer Hull, Tie Hanger and trench of the Deathstar are made up of multiple rectangle shaped pieces that fit together like a mosaic floor tile. What looks like one huge object is many much smaller sized objects designed to connect together into one seamless giant object. The line of sight distance is also reduced, so that players only see part of the deathstar. This all helps to reduce rendering lag.
I am the remaining dev of the now dead First Strike mod for BF2142 and can provide the models if anyone is interested. When EA pulled the plug on BF2142 it essentially killed any mods for it.
No way to hack an unofficial server for 2142?
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Anyone can host a BF2142 server. Here is a run down of the many issues with BF2142 since the EA shutdown of the game:
http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18233&st=0#entry191540
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I was trying to rip the models some time ago :D , i remember that was difficult.
I have as well a BF model viewer "bfmeshview220" and some other tools, if someone is interesed i will upload all.
(http://s25.postimg.org/45bxnomsf/DS1.jpg)
(http://s25.postimg.org/js37120kf/DS2.jpg)
(http://s25.postimg.org/kvnbd0l7j/DS3.jpg)
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I am the remaining dev of the now dead First Strike mod for BF2142 and can provide the models if anyone is interested.
If you have the models, can you share them ?, i have many errors when trying to convert them from BF to OBJ.
Wrong normals, missed textures....
May be you have other working versions, thanks
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Yes, those are some of the models I was talking about. Yes, I can convert them to obj format.
BFMeshviewer is just a viewer. It has no export capability. The trick is that the import/export plugins for 3ds max were proprietary and only set up for max 7 - 9.
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bfmeshview220 has an option to export OBJ, but it makes a crunchy model.
I remember now how difficult was all the process with 3ds max plugins and MAX 9 :banghead:
Nice if you can share them :P
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I exported a few models with 3ds max. Try these out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_o_kOaz7RpTWWJ2YVY2ZkFLbHc/view?usp=sharing
I assume that you have access to the textures, so just included the models.
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I was thinking about how a deathstar mission would work.. the main thing that bothered me in all previous game attempts is that there is very little good reason to fly down the trench. Why not just fly along the surface and then enter the trench there?
I suppose placing a load of turrets around the top of the trench except for the beginning, so that the best way to stay alive is to stay low and move fast would work. Preceded by having to take out a few towers/TIEs before it's your turn to make the run.
Would be exciting!
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Sensor towers up top. Turbolasers might be too slow to accurately track a starfighter, but TIEs certainly can. And if they have an accurate lock on your position, you can be sure you would be swarmed with them. At least, in the trench, they are going to be coming at you from some point on the trench, and you will be zipping to all sides of the trench, so the best shot at you is from them following you (above - can't get an accurate bead on the enemy craft before you have to break off your attack, from the front - dangerous and extremely hard to get a target lock on enemy craft before they are past, so, it must be pursuit from behind to catch the Rebel starfighters).
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In the FirstStrike version, the sensor towers have to be destroyed first. Someone can't go right to the port and destroy it first. The trench is useful to help hide the Rebel ships from the ties. Once the sensor towers are destroyed, players will want to go down the trench to attack the port to help avoid the ties flying around.
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Sounds like a good idea since in the film the turrets had a hard time hitting the rebel fighters. Would mean the player would have to divide their attention between destroying objective and dogfighting as well. I suppose the AI Gold/Most of red can make their failed runs while that's going on.
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I exported a few models with 3ds max. Try these out:
Many thanks , i have the textures but as well some problems with them.
Now i´m busy but i will report what happens when i have some time.
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Ok, first, i can´t open the OBJ files directly on 3Ds Max, it happens with other models that i have as well.
When i have this problem, i normally use 3D Object Converter to save to OBJ again, it works but i´m not sure if i´m loosing the information about textures when converting.
The textures that i have doesn´t works with your models, may be are different ?
Inside 3DO i can see the textures for the model ds_tile1.obj
- BaseDetailDirtCrackNDetailNCrack
- BaseDetailDirt
I don´t have any texture with this names, have you got them ?
Thanks.
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Ok, i think i have the textures, only 1 missed, i was confused a bit.
With bfmeshview the right textures appears as you see in the screenshot, as well the model looks normal on the viewport.
When i open your OBJ files always i have missed the textures, maybe the mesh doesn´t has the information about that ?
Have you got the MAX files to share ?, i think can be faster :p
(http://s25.postimg.org/rdxs6z3vj/Tile1.jpg)
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CoffeeSoft,
Yes, max files should work a lot easier and I have tested that newer versions can read max9 format. I have been really busy and my system bit the dust. I will have to set up max 9 and reimport the files on another system. I probably won't have time until July. If you can send me a message on MODDB, we can exchange emails and coordinate better.
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Ok, i will contact you, many thanks ;)
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I am inn too for not liking it. I don't know how people enjoy it.
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I am inn too for not liking it. I don't know how people enjoy it.
:rolleyes: ??
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Could be some sort of bot.
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Uaw, amazing Death Star Model from the new Battlefront :eek:
I think it's the best I've ever seen in a video game.
Now I'm remembering the first I saw on X-Wing DOS version , and how much time i spent flying around the scene :)