Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Arparso on January 14, 2010, 05:01:41 am
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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 (http://arparso.de/nexus), 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 (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution/downloads/freespace-evolution-10)
(installer, ca. 190MB compressed, 545MB extracted)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_nebula_01.jpg)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_nebula_02.jpg)
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 (http://twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com/twitter-a.png) (http://"http://www.twitter.com/FreespaceEvo")
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:
(http://arparso.de/nexus/fs2nexus.jpg)
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)
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Moved tot the FSU board, since you mentioned only using models from the MediaVPs and the FSU team made them.
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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.
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Actually, it's good publicity for the FSU team and FreeSpace in general.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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/ (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.
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Wait. . . . .you made the skirmisher?
/me shakes hands.
Good to meet ya;)
I love that thing.
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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. :nod:
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 :lol:
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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):
(http://arparso.de/bilder/fs2nexus2.jpg)
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looks :yes:, and as mentioned before... good publicity, I want to see some screenies from the Aeolus when you got that done if possible ^^
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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 ;)
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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 :p
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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! :lol:
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Sorry my lupine compadre.i knew it was an A followed by another vowel ;)
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Hey Arparso, the Fenris's beam cannon is on the bottom and not the top! :lol:
Yeah, but that would have been an awkward angle for a cool screenshot :P
Everything's subject to change, anyway.
(http://arparso.de/nexus/fs2nexus_aeolus.jpg)
(http://arparso.de/nexus/fs2nexus_orion.jpg)
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.
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They really are. Props to you and to the MVPs team.
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Ohhh I love that model :)
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The Aeolus in particular looks really nice with that lighting. :)
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Hmmm.
Nice bloomy stuff, no light/glowmaps yet?
Are you going to add custom debris as well? I had a look in my nexus mod folder and attempted to view the .lwo in another prog and the debris is a solid hulk as opposed to our chunks. . . Does nexus support multi part debris?
Can't wait to see an orion fire up a fort shield.
(Blatant fanboi request) ;)
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Can't wait to see an orion fire up a fort shield.
(Blatant fanboi request) ;)
That would be so damn awesome feature in fs2_open.
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Heh, I loved Nexus. I love Freespace. This will be a mod to enjoy
Also, if you want a tiny little list of FreeSpace ships try here:
http://starships.wikia.com/wiki/Starships_Wiki (http://starships.wikia.com/wiki/Starships_Wiki)
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Nice bloomy stuff, no light/glowmaps yet?
Are you going to add custom debris as well? I had a look in my nexus mod folder and attempted to view the .lwo in another prog and the debris is a solid hulk as opposed to our chunks. . . Does nexus support multi part debris?
Glowmaps are there already - you just don't see them well enough with that bright lighting. If you'd turn the camera to look at the part not lit by the sun you'd clearly see the lights. If you look closely you'll see small lights at the front of the Aeolus or the lighted portion above the Orion's hangar.
Nexus doesn't support colored glowmaps, though, so I had to bake the glowmaps onto the color map to preserve the lights' colors while also converting the glowmap to grayscale. Works quite well this way and unless you'll turn the lights off entirely, you can't really see a difference to colored glowmaps.
Custom debris in Nexus - I'm not too sure about that. I believe there's at least a script command to break a ship apart into smaller chunks, so it should be possible, but for now I'm just converting the base model and ignore the debris. Nexus' huge explosions already feature some generic debris effects and mask the usual "huge ship suddenly disappears when killed"-problem well enough, I think. At least at the moment ;)
(http://arparso.de/nexus/fs2nexus_fenris_explosion.jpg)
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If I remember correctly there isn't anything like the FS debris in Nexus. The big, one piece wrecks are ships that float dead in space, because the crew evacuated due to massive hull damage.
Once you blow a ship up completely, you get a massive explosion and then the ship is gone for good, apart from those small, generic pieces that Arparso already mentioned, that are part of the explosion effect rather than the ship as far as I'm aware.
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That's why I asked :p
We need to decide where the evac shuttles (hermes ;)) are gonna appear from on the cruisers and corvettes etc :D
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aaaaaaaaaaaa this is going to be so cool.
I love Nexus explosions.
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:wtf:
Didn't know these models were so awesome.
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aaaaaaaaaaaa this is going to be so cool.
I love Nexus explosions.
I also lovveee them!! :) hopefully sometime we can have similar explosions in FS...(burning peices with some trails...)
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Not a screenshot this time, but a short video showing the current beam cannon weapon effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTPzDNSmPB8&fmt=22 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTPzDNSmPB8&fmt=22)
... and yeah, it's still firing from the wrong turret :P
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Beautiful, and very true to FS.
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I'll have to get 'eyes on' that at home, my phones a bit laggy and can't stream properly right now. . . Damnit.
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Definitely the wrong sounds, and the radar dish still doesn't rotate, but aside from that it's really looking good, great job :)
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Wrong sounds? How about wrong weapon or wrong turret or wrong ship? ;)
That was just an effects test. The Fenris still needs some work... like... a working radar animation :P
I did some work on the Aeolus, though, which now has 5 working turret pairs and 2 single beam cannons. The turret pairs are needed as a compromise for Nexus' aiming system - it expects at least two turrets per weapon slot facing in opposite directions each covering their own hemisphere, so every weapon slot can fire at every direction. I'm still unsure about the actual weapons in these 5 slots, though. If I stick to the Freespace 2 loadout, 4 of these slots would be used by flak or the anti-fighter beam... which would leave only the two beams and the regular turret (pair) as anti-capital weaponry. Anti-fighter weapons sadly can't shoot at capitals in Nexus, so the Aeolus wouldn't be very useful in most battles (Nexus tends to focus heavily on capital ship combat).
Guess I'll need to see how good Nexus handles large amounts of fighters/bombers and if I can make them dangerous enough to warrant such an anti-fighter loadout for the Aeolus.
(http://arparso.de/nexus/fs2nexus_aeolus_laser.jpg)
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We've got all the info you could possibly need for stats. The scales may need adjustment but you seem to have a very good handle on freerspace modding too :D
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Hi there Arparso!
I stumbled upon at the Fenris on your website and went all "wait, that's the MediaVPs one..." :lol:
And thanks for the Skirmisher tool. Really. The mission/campaign scripting in Nexus is just "WTF" to me... I don't understand a lot of it but at least I got around to adding a new ship or two in the campaign (I'm stuck with a ship not appearing/available for loadout when I want to at the start of chapter 2... it's supposed to replace a ship that goes into the depot at the end of the wormhole thing... and then there's fort shields but I'm going off-topic)
Now if Nexus 2 been made, an FS mod would be cool with all the proper beam weapons and fighter dogfights that don't use boring-looking beam lasers...... that's a dream to have. :sigh: :lol:
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Another short video, this time the Aeolus with beam cannons, turrets and flak guns and a glorious Nexus-style explosion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66wdFAUQTgM&fmt=22 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66wdFAUQTgM&fmt=22)
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If I stick to the Freespace 2 loadout, 4 of these slots would be used by flak or the anti-fighter beam... which would leave only the two beams and the regular turret (pair) as anti-capital weaponry. Anti-fighter weapons sadly can't shoot at capitals in Nexus, so the Aeolus wouldn't be very useful in most battles (Nexus tends to focus heavily on capital ship combat).
Considering how devastating fighters (especially gunboats) are for Nexus ships once they lost their shields I guess fighters might be a lot stronger and more important in a FreeSpace mod than in plain Nexus, considering that FreeSpace capships don't have shields.
Besides according to the techroom describtion the Aeolus is supposed to be an anti-fighter based ship for escorting other fleet assets in the first place.
The shooting of the beam and accompanying sound are a bit off. The beam shoots out a bit before the firing sound is played (less than a second but still noticeable). But considering that the Fenris video has a bigger delay than the Aeolus one I guess it happened during the screencapture (or was tweaked in the meantime).
I am a bit surprised though that you made the AAA beams able to fire at capships rather than use them as anti-fighter defense. I can understand why you would make the flak into "big" weapons since they do considerable damage to big ships in FS2, but the AAA beams don't seem to do any damage whatsoever to capships. I can't speak in term of table entries here, but from ingame observations they look absolutely useless against anything bigger than a bomber.
And now for something else: How do you plan to handle subsystem targeting? In Nexus the beams (or laser) are for destroying subsystems. Are you going to switch blob turrets and beams out so that beams deal damage and blobs target subsystems (probably doing both hull and system damage)?
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The shooting of the beam and accompanying sound are a bit off. The beam shoots out a bit before the firing sound is played (less than a second but still noticeable). But considering that the Fenris video has a bigger delay than the Aeolus one I guess it happened during the screencapture (or was tweaked in the meantime).
It wasn't actually tweaked since the Fenris video. The sound isn't exactly final - I hacked it together quite quickly to have something to use with the beam effect I was writing. I ran into a few problems showing the charging of the beam cannon, because Nexus' weapons usually don't allow for that and always fire immediately. I had to code around that and needed a proper sound effect to go along with it. So it's not final, it will be tweaked before an eventual alpha/beta release.
I am a bit surprised though that you made the AAA beams able to fire at capships rather than use them as anti-fighter defense.
Just for testing purposes. I don't have any fighters in the game yet and setting up an enemy AI launching fighters just so I can test the visual effects would have meant more work anyway. Both flaks and anti-fighter beams will be classified as anti-fighter weapons (since weapons in Nexus can't fight both fighters AND capitals, unlike Freespace). I may switch out a flak turret for some anti-capital weaponry later on, depending on how balancing goes... but I will preserve it's anti-fighter role, of course.
]And now for something else: How do you plan to handle subsystem targeting? In Nexus the beams (or laser) are for destroying subsystems. Are you going to switch blob turrets and beams out so that beams deal damage and blobs target subsystems (probably doing both hull and system damage)?
I always had the impression, those beams were the actual heavy-hitters, but considering my last playthrough was a few years ago I may be off there. Will have to check the tables to be sure, of course.
For now I don't have a definitive balancing plan. First I want some actual ships and weapons in the game before really caring about damage types and balancing. Right now I'm just sticking to the FS2 damage values and will be seeing how that works out at the end. I most definitely have to increase firing ranges, though, or else those ships may have trouble properly steering in close proximity to each other... especially big ones such as the Orion or Colossus.
/edit:
Doh! Seems I misread that last bit of yours. Yeah, beams in Nexus are usually meant for surgical destruction of devices. Not in Freespace, however, and I'm trying to follow Freespace's rules. I still have to playtest, if weapons can damage both the hull and devices as they do in Freespace - if that's possible in Nexus, then I'll go that route, probably creating a few weapons which excel at device destruction along the way to keep things interesting.
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I'm pretty sure doing both subsystem and hull damage is possible in Nexus. Because if my memory isn't totally messed up that's exactly what gunships (especially the Preatorians) and ghost laser do.
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Are there actually any maps or detailed screenshots around showing a few Freespace star systems? Would be pretty helpful as a reference to create a few star systems for the Freespace mod like Deneb, Beta Aquilae or Vasuda. I already know the node map and star system descriptions in the Wiki, although I'd prefer a few more visual clues besides just replaying the FS2 campaign (and thus taking time away from actual modding).
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I am a bit surprised though that you made the AAA beams able to fire at capships rather than use them as anti-fighter defense. I can understand why you would make the flak into "big" weapons since they do considerable damage to big ships in FS2, but the AAA beams don't seem to do any damage whatsoever to capships. I can't speak in term of table entries here, but from ingame observations they look absolutely useless against anything bigger than a bomber.
AAA beams most definitely do damage to other capital ships in FS2; I've seen a few ship-to-ship fights where one party was killed via being nibbled to death by AAA fire during an anti-capship recharge cycle. Granted, from what's been said about Nexus's mechanics, they should definitely be left to anti-fighter roles in the mod, but they're not completely limited as such in FS2.
And Arparso, this looks fantastic. I really wish we could get those explosions into FS2. :D
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Whew... just had a squadron of three Hercules totally obliterate a Fenris in only one approach with just Subach and Prometheus R. Guess, I'll need to tweak those damage values a bit ;)
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Video time again :)
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Give them dual-fired hornets, they'll be unstopable! Muahahahaha.
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I've entered the project into moddb.com now, so I have a central place to show off any progress and keep everyone updated, who is interested in this mod:
Freespace: Evolution @ moddb.com (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution)
... yeah, "Freespace: Evolution" ... what a cliché name, I know ;)
Anyway, got a few pics of the Hercules in action so check them out, if you want:
Full gallery @ moddb.com (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution/images)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_hercules3.1.jpg)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_hercules1.1.jpg)
I also already have the Hercules Mk2, the Perseus and Pegasus ingame, but not equipped for battle yet. They really look awesome, thanks to your detailed models and textures :)
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Small suggestion: Can you post these in General FreeSpace of the gaming forum? Because this thread is, I believe, not the right place for it. I realize that it has drifted off-topic quite some time ago, but if you want to show off your work (and show it off you should!) then a dedicated thread would probably be best.
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Let's just move this to Gen FS as-is.
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*imagines playing FreeSpace on brand new graphics engine*
:(
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The pegasus can't have a ghost engine can it?
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Why would you want the Pegasus to have a violet engine exhaust?
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What I should have asked is can fighters have stealth in nexus?
I didn't think it went into that much depth.
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I don't know, haven't tried it yet. Fighters can't have shields, though, which buggers me much more right now :(
... and they also can't operate alone without a carrier around. No wing of Shivan fighters suddenly appearing out of nowhere then, I guess. However, I managed to at least get the visual appearance of a subspace jump-in for fighters by adjusting the default undocking/docking animations. Undocking fighters now seem to appear out of subspace, so cruisers can now be accompanied by fighter wings without needing a proper hangar bay. Only drawback is fighters only being able to jump in/jump out next to their "carrier". Still better than nothing, I suppose.
After fiddling around with all these fighters I may need to add an engine trail to them, unlike Freespace... otherwise they're just very hard to see when being zoomed out. It would be great, if Nexus automatically placed icons on top of these squadrons when they're getting too small to see (much like Supreme Commander), but sadly it doesn't and there's no way a mod could change that.
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i've never heard of this Nexus game before now, but it looks pretty baller.
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i've never heard of this Nexus game before now, but it looks pretty baller.
It's a rather interesting (and really good looking) 'space ship strategy simulator'. Most of the time you are just watching how ships are pounding on each other and it becomes nearly unplayable in later mission where you have to micromanage 6-7 ships at the same time.
It also has some rather horrible dialouge :P
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I thought the later missions were actually rather fun.
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Yeah, horrible dialogue and a story that is just babbling incoherently, but very nice graphics and pretty cool gameplay.
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bad storylines don't bother me too much. i mean, i made it through silent threat alright :P
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Nexus... Storyline was awful. Mandatory save the universe subplot within save the universe main plot didn't exactly improve it. And mission design after the very promising good start seemed to steadily decline.. Voice acting was pretty horrible at least later on (the screaming of the allied aliens being the worst).
Loved the game play though. Absolutely fabulous. Still have it.
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And there I thought the german translation was only medicore, but from what I read here it seems that's still better than the original.
As for fighters jumping in on their own, could you perhaps make an invisible object that's completely undetectable to launch them from?
If that undetectable part can't be done, you could call it a subspace disturbance or something instead I guess.
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Nexus... Storyline was awful. Mandatory save the universe subplot within save the universe main plot didn't exactly improve it. And mission design after the very promising good start seemed to steadily decline.. Voice acting was pretty horrible at least later on (the screaming of the allied aliens being the worst).
Loved the game play though. Absolutely fabulous. Still have it.
Initial missions = greatness
Plot = garbage (with that whole AI gods thing...ugh)
Voice Acting = great for humans, terrible for aliens
Gamepaly = excellent
Modding capability = limited. Too much hard-coded stuff for my liking.
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Yeah, sadly there's a lot of hard-coded stuff. I'd really like to change the warp effect or the default fighter commands, for example, but that's just not possible without ugly and error-prone workarounds.
As for fighters jumping in on their own, could you perhaps make an invisible object that's completely undetectable to launch them from?
If that undetectable part can't be done, you could call it a subspace disturbance or something instead I guess.
Should be easily possible, although that invisible object would at least appear on the target list. Not really a big deal, though.
Now onto some new images :)
Aeolus and fighters heading into battle:
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_battle01.jpg)
Two Aeolus cruisers approaching each other firing blobs, flak and aaa beams:
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_battle02.jpg)
Lovely beam cannons...
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_battle03.jpg)
The new fighter warp-in effect:
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_battle04.jpg)
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The part with "it" still being in the target list was what I meant with detectable. I was afraid it might be impossible to avoid that....
And the pics look great. Can't wait to see flak/AAA vs fighters in moving pictures :)
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Maybe I could hide that invisible "fighter spawn object", but I guess, that'd make the fighters also disappear from the target list... which makes targetting them somewhat harder ;)
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But would work very well for the Pegasus and the Vasudan equivalent (Ptah or something like that).
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Couldn't you make them appear from that invisible object and transfer to one of the capships? Last time I checked that could be done!
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What would that accomplish? If there is already an enemy capship you could attatch the fighters to that ship in the first place. The question is how to make fighters appear when there is no enemy capship present.
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I think keeping them attached to the invisible object is actually more helpful - transfering them to a capship at the other end of the map would only serve to confuse the player, since he'll expect those fighters to be coming from that ship's direction when in fact they may come from a completely different point in space.
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Sorry for double-posting, but I thought some of you may want to see that:
'Freespace: Evolution' gameplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otx-IMVTuAs)
Certainly better than a lame weapon effects test ;)
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Lame is right. I don't know why you bothered. .
I for one can do without this mod as it looks to frank a waste of my, and your time. . .
Wait, I meant the complete opposite of that ;)
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That is awesome.
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but I thought some of you may want to see that:
You though right. Looks nice. I feel sorry for those fighters....
But there is one thing that bothers me a little bit about the AAA beams. In FS2 those only give off a longlived constant beam against capships and transports. Against fighters they give of 3 short bursts of fire in each salvo (pretty much exactly as the original Nexus flak, but with a longer recharge time after each tripple burst instead of continuous fire like in Nexus).
Should such tripple bursts be impossible in Nexus I'd suggest you simply use the original Nexus flak mechanics but with lowered rate of fire.
Though I'm not sure wether the fighterdefense weapons in original Nexus are really called flak. In the german version they are.
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But there is one thing that bothers me a little bit about the AAA beams. [..] Against fighters they give of 3 short bursts of fire in each salvo
Good call. Fixed it! :)
... although the burst fire is only a visual effect right now - it still counts as a single shot, so all three beams will target the same fighter and all three will either hit or miss altogether. There's no real burst fire mode in Nexus: a weapon aims, charges and then shoots before repeating the cycle. You can make the weapon shoot multiple projectiles/beams, but they all would be fired at the same time and give the visual impression of a sci-fi shotgun.
And yeah, I think it's called flak in the English version as well.
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Wow - this looks really cool. I've never actually played Nexus, so I was wondering, how do resources work? I'm assuming there's some kind of gathering involved? Obviously, FS has plenty of industrial ships like the Triton and Zeph, but does Nexus need facilities and stuff? We're a vit short on things like that.
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No, there's no gathering. It's a tactical game, not a strategy game.
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Right, you just have your fleet vs. the enemy. Any reinforcements will have to be scripted into the mission or campaign - there's no resource gathering or ship building involved here. ;)
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Gah, now imagine seeing it on the Nexus 2 engine ! Too bad the game was cancelled :(
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Two new shots showcasing solar systems I set up for mission making goodness:
(http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14572/fs2nexus_environments_02.jpg)
(http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15/14572/fs2nexus_environments_01.jpg)
... I obviously love sunsets ... :D
In the past few weeks Mass Effect 2 took its toll, slowing down development progress significantly. Now I'm back on track again and busy importing additional ships, so I can show something different than the same old Fenris and Aeolus cruisers ;)
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Holy ****. I want FS to look like that...
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Elk it will once this mod is finished :p it'll just be in a different game ;)
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Icon creation was a fun little distraction from adding weapon hardpoints and tweaking the models and textures to look right in Nexus... so here's the result of that endeavour:
Terran:
(http://arparso.de/bilder/terran_boats.png)
(http://arparso.de/bilder/terran_capitals.png)
Vasudan:
(http://arparso.de/bilder/vasudan_boats.png)
(http://arparso.de/bilder/vasudan_capitals.png)
Shivan:
(http://arparso.de/bilder/shivan_boats.png)
(http://arparso.de/bilder/shivan_capitals.png)
Some ships are still missing, but I'm slowly getting there ;)
PS: These icons will be displayed in Nexus' contact lists to help you select your own ships or target hostile vessels, in case you're not familiar with the game and wondered why I'd need these icons.
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Those look great, but it seems that they use perspective projection instead of ortographic one, which may be better for this.
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That's right - those icons are based on ingame screenshots in front of a greenscreen texture, which was kind of a quick-and-dirty solution, that worked out pretty well, I think.
/edit:
Replaced the icons with cleaner ortographic versions ;)
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Random thought: Could those be used for briefings in a normal FS campaign?
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Feel free to use them, if you wish to.
... or do you mean, if it's technically possible to get them to show in a FS briefing? If so, then I don't know - I'm not a Freespace modder. ;)
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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 ;)
Now THERE is an idea! A Freespace2 RTS! I'm curious as to whether or not our beautiful models would be able to import into a recent version of C&C or (in the future) SC2. I could actually see that working; there are 3 races full of models and, with a bit of creative license, could come together as a beautiful and relatively balanced RTS. Only issue then is balancing the gameplay. Hell; that might be reason enough for a company to buy the FS IP. There are plenty of new RTS's out that look great but lack creative or well-styled races.
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Btw, are there any finished or almost finished HTL meshes and textures for FS2 ships, that aren't already in the 3.6.10 mediavps? Some ships like the Colossus, Demon or Hatshepsut could need an update and if there's already a detailed mesh around, I'd like to use that instead of the current mediavp version. ;)
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The Hattie's coming along, but isn't ready to go yet. I think Ragingloli's taking a bit of a break from modeling right now.
Either Galemp or Ragingloli is working on the HTL Colossus, and there's also work on the HTL Hades going on somewhere as well.
Trashman was working on the Demon somewhere back, though it seems his model wasn't very popular in some regards. He also has a beta of the Colossus Mk.II out in the open, though it appears to be a design departure from the standard ship.
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VA's working on the HTL Hades, if I remember correctly.
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Two new images finally showing the Shivans ingame:
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_shivans_appear.jpg) (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution/images/shivans-make-their-first-appearance1)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_shivans_appear2.jpg) (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution/images/shivans-make-their-first-appearance)
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Wait that Cain...
Where did you get that? :o
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By asking nicely? :)
It's c914's WIP Cain (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=64780.0).
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So, it is actually finished :eek2:
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AFAIK it's not yet ready for FS2 ingame use, but you're gonna need to ask c914 for details, I guess. For Nexus I only needed the actual 3d mesh and textures, which seemed finished, so I simply asked him nicely to let me use his Cain. I'm thankful he allowed that, as now I don't have to rely on the current low-poly Cain in the mediavps. :)
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Ahem. There is no Cain in the mediavps. That's why it's low-poly.
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Well, there is the retail Cain with the renamed textures in the MVPs :P
Well, if its in Nexus, then I think it shouldn't be long before its in FS2 as well :D
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Lookin' good
Nexus always manages to produce some nice pictures, it does the FS ships honor.
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Especially the first picture looks quite intimidating.
Is there any way to keep the exhaust trails (not FS canon, but as you said in the comments on ModDB good for playability), but reduce the size (or it that's impossible completely get rid) of the "flames" that come out of the fighters engines? I know they aren't really flames, but I can't think of the correct word right now.
On the screenshot those are half as long as the actual fighter, which is too much I think.
How will you do the weapon slots? As far as I remember there are only 2 types of slots for normal weapons (light and heavy) along with flak and siegelaser (or however that formation-firied thingy is called in english). Will all the lasers be light and the beams heavy? Or is there a way to turn the siegelaser-slot into a general beam-weapon slot?
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I don't see a problem here. Flak cannons and AAA beams can stay in the flak slot, blobs and other turrets such as Fusion Mortars can be lights, and the beams take up the heavy slots. Although I suppose you could move the Lucifer's beam cannons or the Sath's BFReds into the siege laser slot (yes Norbert, it is called the Siege Laser in English).
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Looking good!
How long til you release something playable?
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How will you do the weapon slots? As far as I remember there are only 2 types of slots for normal weapons (light and heavy) along with flak and siegelaser (or however that formation-firied thingy is called in english). Will all the lasers be light and the beams heavy? Or is there a way to turn the siegelaser-slot into a general beam-weapon slot?
That's something I still need to experiment more with. Nexus generally allows any number of different kinds of weapon slots, but some undocumented limitations are hidden in some default command or AI scripts, which would need some adjustments. For example right now I'm using a "special" weapon slot for beam weapons, which has the side-effect of the player's ships not firing any of them when being ordered to destroy the hull of an enemy ship... only because it's in a slot the game normally doesn't use for this kind of weapon and thus doesn't activate it. At least, that's what I think the reason is ... haven't really investigated the cause of it as I'm still busy with other tasks. There may even be some hardcoded limits, that I'm completely unaware of right now, but I'm kinda optimistic to make it work without any major glitches, eventually.
How long til you release something playable?
I have no idea, really. I'd like to release a demo with only a few ships to get some feedback on gameplay and balancing, which could probably be released in a few weeks time. That being said, I hate releasing unfinished/unpolished stuff and if I actually go ahead releasing a demo, it'd take time away from the full release just to make sure nothing not-release-worthy slips into the demo. Building up anticipation just to kill any further interest with buggy, unfinished stuff and gameplay not being fun is IMHO not a good idea. I'm not sure, if that's really worth the effort right now.
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Flak cannons and AAA beams can stay in the flak slot, blobs and other turrets such as Fusion Mortars can be lights, and the beams take up the heavy slots.
That's the setup that I thought of first too, but there is a bit of a problem with that one.
In Nexus (at least the original) weapons are allowed or forbidden on a ship-to-ship basis. If a light weapon is allowed on that ship, you can fill very single light and heavy weapon slot with it.
For example if all blob turrets and the fusion mortar are light weapons, like you suggest, you could build a fenris that (apart from beams and AAA) is armed exclusively with fusion mortars. Or exclusively with heavy terran turrets.
With beams being in another group, heavy blobs and the mortar being heavy and the other blobs being light weapons, that can be avoided. You could still exchange the heavy blobs with mortars or the other way round, but at least the light blobs will stay light blobs.
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Right now I'm using four different kinds of weapon slots:
fighter weapons (subach, prometheus, etc.)
capital weapons (terran turret, fusion mortar, etc.)
flak weapons (flak, aaa beams, etc.)
beam cannons (BGreen, SRed, etc.)
I'll probably will add a few more slot types depending on how well the game supports this and will probably need to distinguish between light and heavy capital weapons or flak and aaa beams, but like in Freespace's FRED, you'll still be able to create some "unrealistic" weapon setups.
That being said, a regular singleplayer Nexus mod doesn't even allow any weapon customization, so every custom setup would need to be done through my Skirmisher tool or by editing the mission files directly, anyway. I'll include some preconfigured shiptypes sticking to the FS2 canon weapon layouts as much as possible, of course, so the player doesn't need to fiddle with that to get the Freespace look-and-feel.
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Hey, folks... just wanted to confirm that I'm not dead yet and the mod is still underway. I've got a new trailer out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVa_M6-iZws
The first playable version should have been out by now, but unfortunately I needed to push it back a few weeks. January 2011 is now the goal to meet... :(
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nice :D
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beautiful :yes:
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Crap. Will you stop shaming my HW2 mod. This looks awesome.
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Nexus engine is awesome, I wish it was open-source like FSO. :) Nice trailer!
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With a "slight" delay now comes the first public release of "Freespace: Evolution". 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 (http://arparso.de/nexus), 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 (http://www.moddb.com/mods/freespace-evolution/downloads/freespace-evolution-10)
(installer, ca. 190MB compressed, 545MB extracted)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_nebula_01.jpg)
(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/15/14572/thumb_620x2000/fs2nexus_nebula_02.jpg)
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 (http://twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com/twitter-a.png) (http://"http://www.twitter.com/FreespaceEvo")
Have fun! :)
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oh god I love nexus so much :D
This is awesome, nice work.
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You're too fast. I haven't had the time to get Nexus for my new rig yet.
Anyway, I like where this is going. FreeSpace TCs ftw.
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wow, you have a build already done, nice! :yes:
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done gone and renamed yer thread
now i dun renamed it again
now i dun merged your mother****ing double-posts again --Jeff Vader
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Thanks for the renaming! I also changed the first post accordingly, so interested newcomers don't have to browse through the whole thread to find a download link.
You're too fast. I haven't had the time to get Nexus for my new rig yet.
Well, it's on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/6420/), so... ;)
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Definitely not using Steam for this if I can avoid it.
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I made a mess again <3
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Nice, can't wait for the download to finish. :yes:
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Looks cool, and I really like the beams. :nervous:
I don't have Nexus, though, so I can't play it. I'll get it sooner or later, though.
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Badass. Dl'ing now. I'll give you some feedback later tonight.
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Looking forward to it :)
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So I ran through the four missions that were included. Nothing in skirmisher yet. What you have here is really good. You've managed to actually capture the Freespace feel in this little mod, instead of just slapping a Deimos skin on something like some of the early FS RTS mods I played for Nexus and Homeworld. I haven't hit any bugs of any sort, and the Duel level offered a nice test bed for all the ships. The only suggestion that I would make is that you tone down the damage and firing rate on the Blob turrets, since not only do the capship fights go a little too quickly, they're often over before beams even come into play. Also, I dunno whether or not it's hardcoded, but the damage from capital ship explosions is also pretty devastating. During the Nebula fight the Vasudans killed the Moloch when it was right in the middle of their formation, and all three of them as well as the other two Shivan ships immediately detonated. It was extremely pretty though.
All in all, what you've done is awesome, and I would love for you too keep going, maybe get some Destroyers in there too. Excellent work.
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;7 And I have this game too.
Buhhahahaha.
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I ran into a strange situation twice now. The enemy ship (one time Shivan one time Vasudan), is flying away from me. I can only close like 2 meters per second in, untill I get to a bit under 5000 km.
Then the enemy ship opens up with it's blobs, while my ship still doesn't fire. Also the distance stops to diminish and I end up getting blown to bits without a chance to return fire.
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Same thing just happened to me in the Duel mission. Speaking of, are Shivan ships faster then their Terran/Vasudan counterparts? That Lillith was hauling ass.
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Also, I dunno whether or not it's hardcoded, but the damage from capital ship explosions is also pretty devastating. During the Nebula fight the Vasudans killed the Moloch when it was right in the middle of their formation, and all three of them as well as the other two Shivan ships immediately detonated.
Sounds pretty epic :)
But yeah, the damage from exploding ships is quite huge right now. This is not something I've set deliberately, though - the game calculates the amount of damage on its own, so I still need to investigate on what factors influence the amount of damage and if I can do something about it.
I ran into a strange situation twice now. The enemy ship (one time Shivan one time Vasudan), is flying away from me. I can only close like 2 meters per second in, untill I get to a bit under 5000 km.
Any specific mission where this happened? This is basically the default behaviour of the AI ... if it hasn't got any specific orders, it'll try to run away from any threat. If you haven't got the faster ship, you won't have a chance to ever catch up to it.
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I assume this is not standalone, right? :(
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Any specific mission where this happened? This is basically the default behaviour of the AI ... if it hasn't got any specific orders, it'll try to run away from any threat. If you haven't got the faster ship, you won't have a chance to ever catch up to it.
The first time it appeared in the patrol mission against the Behemoth. I made the mistake of investigating with the vigilant instead of only sending a wing, so the Rakshasa wasn't in range when the Deimos came in and the merry chase began. On 2nd try it worked out all right, since I left the Vigilant were it was untill the shivans jumped in.
The second time was in the mission with the hostile Vasudans and Shivans, that also fight each other in the nebula (brutality?). The Vasudans destroyed the Shivans (together with me, I didn't know they were enemies untill they started to fire at me) and then the Aten charged me, while the others flew away, resulting in the problem, with my Aeolus being able to get close enough to be blown to bits, but not close enough to return fire, while the Deimos was just left behind (and the Fenris being dead from Shivan fire).
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I assume this is not standalone, right? :(
Nope, you'll need Nexus to run the mod.
@Norbert:
Thanks for the detailed report! I'll have a look at these missions again to eliminate these problems for future releases :)
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I just grabbed a hold of Nexus. I tried getting into it a while back, but couldn't really manage, so I kind of left it. Now, Freespace + Nexus = Motivation to get into it, since I at least need to know the mechanics of the game before I play the Freespace mod.
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This is sweet. Now someone just needs to transplant the main campaign from FS2 to Nexus.
A winner tagline for that would be: "Be Command! Be Competent!"
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This is sweet. Now someone just needs to transplant the main campaign from FS2 to Nexus.
A winner tagline for that would be: "Be Command! Be Competent!"
This would be an excellent Idea. Also lol.
Hmmm....I should go see how difficult it it to whip up missions in Nexus.
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I guess the easiest missions to remake in Nexus would be the ones from Windmills, since they already are RTS like (coupled with a big dose of psychological evaluation :lol: )
Now, Freespace + Nexus = Motivation to get into it, since I at least need to know the mechanics of the game before I play the Freespace mod.
Evolution plays quite a bit different than Nexus itself. No shields (and thus anti-shield or shield-piercing weapons) and no dedicated anti-subsystem weapons (yet?).
Oh forgot the mention it before, nice work on the independent wings, though the jumpnode picture of the "surrogate mothership" could use some shrinking I think.
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Actually I was going to ask about that. Are all Wings going to be brought in via Subspace? Or are Destroyers going to be capable of launching them from their fighter bays? I've never modded Nexus, so I have no idea how it handles these things.
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There's no reason wings can't be attached to a destroyer or anything else with a fighterbay in Nexus.
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Cool. Like I said, I had no Idea if you could have multiple methods of Fighter Delivery in the game, but apparently it's more flexible than I've been lead to believe.
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Actually, in the original Nexus, fighters HAD to be carried by something, so it is harder to have them come out of nowhere (subspace), than being carried by a destroyer. (I think)
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Yes, but the question is wether it's possible to have two systems for deploying fighters, or wether Arparso had to replace the only mechanic that was there.
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All* he did was set up subspace as another parent ship, he didn't replace any mechanics.
*don't get me wrong it's a great solution
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What Norbert said. But Now that I understand the setup, as well as feel stupid for not realizing it, my question has been answered.
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The fighter spawn really is just a fake ship. It's a very very small 3d model which you can barely see when zooming all the way in. It can't move and only has docking points for fighters. The fighters are more or less docking and undocking in the emptyness of space - I just spawn an animated subspace effect at the docking point's position to make it appear as if they're warping in.
All capital ships currently in the game can spawn fighters this way, so you don't actually need the fake ship for that. It really only serves two purposes:
1) allow for fighters or bombers to operate without the presence of a carrier ship (which isn't possible in vanilla Nexus)
2) the Nexus Skirmisher doesn't support adding fighters or bombers to a specific ship of your fleet, but I still wanted to give the player some control over what fighters and bombers he wants to bring along
Real fighter bays will be possible as well, of course, although it isn't implemented yet for any ship. The Moloch actually should, though, as it's supposed to have fighter bays (unlike the other cruisers and corvettes). Fighter bays will probably work with the help of some white-list of shipclasses... classes not on the list will spawn fighters via subspace (as they all do now) while ships on the list will have regular docking and undocking animations.
PS: Yeah, the subspace icon needs shrinking. ;)
I literally created the icon in the last few minutes before actually uploading the mod... was using some placeholder beforehand, which was much smaller. Guess I just didn't think this through enough :rolleyes:
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Yeah I noticed that it was a fake spawn. Though not that they were docking/undocking.
A well made mod overall. He even implemented their effectiveness! The Lilith pwnd my Deimos before my Deimos could even reach him!
Though maybe you should slow down the fire rate of lasers. The Moloch put out a terrifying volley of laser bolts at the Aeolus.
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This is an absolute blast. Feels very Freespacey!
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wow, excellent job!
Actually I was wondering: Is the contrary also possible? Is it possibly to convert and import nexus ships into the SCP?
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(http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/noahbattleship.jpg)
Admittedly this particular model does crash PCS2 when opening as a POF...
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I always loved that model. Now, I'm wondering...would a Nexus to FS2 mod be even remotely viable? Fighters tend to be situational weapons at best, so unless someone wanted to do it similarly to The Blade Itself, which, IIRC, was stated to be a ***** and a half to FRED....hmmmm.
More on topic, has anyone else been having a strange lockup on the patrol mission if you order the Aeolus to flee from the Rahkshasa?
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wow, those are awesome ships! they would be right at home with us!
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The nexus capships would be very cool in FS, but their fighters are kinda lame...
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in a sense, homeworld fighters are the same no? Would be cool to fly them though!
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Nexus fighters aren't that bad. There are interceptors, gunships, and bombers. Interceptors are great for anti-fighter and anti-missile duty, plus their lasers can take out subsystems once shields are down. Gunships are like assault fighters, okay at anti-fighter duty, but they really shine against larger vessels as their anti-subsystem weapons ignore shields. I've never really used bombers as I've never noticed them being useful.
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This looks awesome. I'm definitely gonna pick up a copy of Nexus just for this mod! :D
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Gunships are like assault fighters, okay at anti-fighter duty, but they really shine against larger vessels as their anti-subsystem weapons ignore shields. I've never really used bombers as I've never noticed them being useful.
If I remember correctly, only the Preatorians ignore shields completely. The other gunships weapons have a chance to pass through shields, so they work on shielded targets, but are much better once the shields go down.
And I agree, a Nexus mod would be nice. It could even be made with capship shields and capship mounted anti-shield weaopns. Though the cataclysmic missile impact would pretty much turn into a total whiteout in FS.
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Praetorians are the only gunships that ignore shields. Which, by default, makes them thousands of times better than every other Gunship class.
I dunno, I'm still having a hard time seeing a Nexus mod from a fighters perspective. It's certainly possible in FSO, but Fighters just don't DO much in Nexus. At least, according to my play style, the only times I used fighters were when it was required for objectives and against the Swarm. Even if you did make such a mod, you would be acting in close support of Capships all the time, there wouldn't a lot room for you to do crazy, Freespace-y fighter antics, and as soon as two capships closed you be spending your entire time dodging their PDS.
That said, watching a Siege Laser up close would be all kinds of awesome.
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Which is somewhat the same in any epic like universe like battlefleet gothic, battletech/aerotech/battlespace or the renegade legion or the honor harrington verse... However, we can mold this up a bit, as evidenced with the homeworld mods...
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This is sweet. Now someone just needs to transplant the main campaign from FS2 to Nexus.
A winner tagline for that would be: "Be Command! Be Competent!"
This would be an excellent Idea. Also lol.
Hmmm....I should go see how difficult it it to whip up missions in Nexus.
This would be WIN. And Arparso got the TC as it is in exactly 13 months, so.....
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Huh... just got a request by some French (?) gaming magazine - they want to put the mod on their cover DVD.
I'm definitely intrigued by the prospect of the mod as well as both Nexus and Freespace getting more attention by the public this way, but I'm not sure about the legal side of this. The mod does include some Freespace assets (remixed weapon sounds, music, voice samples) as well as modified assets from the Freespace Uprade project, which are of course based on the original Freespace models and textures themselves.
A non-profit online mod distribution is one thing, but when things start to mix with commercial profit-based endeavours things tend to go awry...
I figure you lot have more experience with this kind of issue, considering the amount of Freespace mods and campaigns released over the years here on HLP, so I'd like to ask for your opinion on the matter... :blah:
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I have very little more understanding of the situation than you do, but I'd honestly say go for it - just load it with Hard Light plugs.
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Since it's the magazine who makes money with it, they will be the one to get sued if the licens owner decide to do so. Since you don't get any money, I'm pretty sure you're on the save side.
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bump, kind of --
How do I break a Gorg siege laser? I'm playing through the game, and have played the Freespace 2 mod as well. Both are awesome.
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Start messing with the internal ships of the Formation. IIRC they need five to start it, but once it's going only driving off or destroying the inside parts will actually stop the laser. Alternatively, just dont let it form in the first place, which is more that possible.
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bump, kind of --
How do I break a Gorg siege laser? I'm playing through the game, and have played the Freespace 2 mod as well. Both are awesome.
That mission is hard as ****. If you aren't rolling with this setup already, put Crisis Energy Bombs (or whatever your closest equivalent are right now) on the Angelwing, and give everybody else anti-hull weapons.
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The Siege lqser formation is ... random, sometimes, they manage to get in formation very quickly and frag your ass in a minute or so, sometimes they just float around.
Another problem is that they need only one ship to fire the laser, although at a slow rate of fire, meaning that if you are careless, it can destroy the support ship behind your back.
If you want to get the medal (= destroying every gorg ship) : pack a lot of lazors, disable the siege laser (don't destroy it, I think it causes the gorg to withdraw), then everybody's IP drive
If you just want to pass the mission, what battuta said : lot of energy shell/energy torpedoes + gatling guns or whatever tactic you use to blast everyone as fast as possible.
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Everyone who 's got Nexus, download and play this, it is very easy to install, installer does everything, evo provides a much different view of the battle, an admirals point of view, whereas in FS, you 're just a pilot.
Still, there is a lot to be done. More missions is a top priority.
I have yo say "Thank you" for that, since with all the variations inherent with the skirmish editor, there are a lot of battles, skirmishes, dogfights and infinite variations thereof.
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I've played neither Homeworld or Nexus, but have an enough amount of RTS experience to judge that this may really be fun.
So, Homeworld mod or Nexus mod? Suggestions to which I should try out first?
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Might it be possible in the future to welcome more nexus ships under freespace? that noah ship pictured previously is stunning...
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I've played neither Homeworld or Nexus, but have an enough amount of RTS experience to judge that this may really be fun.
So, Homeworld mod or Nexus mod? Suggestions to which I should try out first?
Depends on what you're looking for. Nexus isn't really an RTS, its more of an RTT, though they bill it as a "Tactical Fleet Simulator" to dress it up. It's much more focused where on your tactical acumen than anything else. It's isn't twitch based and there are few gimmicks in the gameplay itself. Basically, you're going to come up with a plan, then spend five minutes watching it happen. It is also one of the prettiest games of all time as well, so thats totally okay.
Homeworld is a bit more on the traditional RTS side, though it still requires careful thought about ship facing and attack vector (unless you're playing the second one.) Homeworld is also very pretty for it's time and has one of the best storylines in gaming bar none, as well as a kickass musical store.
They're both excellent titles, but they're really completely different from one another. I would say give them both a shot. Nexus is easy to find (5 - 10 bucks on Steam,) whereas all three Homeworld titles are becoming a bit hard to find nowadays.
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Though Homeworld does have the advantage of being much more famous, which comes with bigger communities (mods, ect.) and a better chance to find people with or against to play online.
Nexus has two things in common with FS2. Both are great games and both didn't sell well, though in that regard Nexus is even worse off than FS2.
If you need a comparison, I guess Starfleet command gets close to how Nexus plays (especially SFC3, due to the ship customization).
Oh and Nexus runs without a hitch on Windows 7 64bit, even without compatibiliy mode. I didn't try HW2 since getting the new Win, so I can't say anything about that (or HW1 and Cataclysm for that matter).
Homeworld is also very pretty for it's time and has one of the best storylines in gaming bar none,
HW1 and Cataclysm yes, but the HW2 story....
On that matter HW1 definately tops Nexus in regards to the handbook. HW1 has a really nice one, with lots of background stroy. History of the exiles, political system, ship infos, details on the Kithiid (i.e. clans - however the correct spelling goes anyway) and even a little bit about the gameplay :lol: .
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You're right. I really didnt pan Homeworld 2 hard enough in that post. Seriously it's one of those really tragic sequels that isn't bad, it's just average. Which is a slap in the face after how Awesome the original and Cata (though your mileage may vary on that one) were.
All the Homeworld games run fine on Win 7 64 and can be widescreen hacked easily, BTW.
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okay, kill me, but I actually liked HW2. Well, I'll admit, the story was a tad bit weaker, and tactics was of the table almost all of the time except three missions(the one where you search for the Oracle, the vaygr outpost with s**tloads of BC's, and the one where you kick Makan's dreadnaught). Except for these, all the rest are pretty straightforward indeed, maybe a bit too much.
However, I kinda enjoyed it being much more fast paced than the first two, and the auto-gather thing is a life saver.
But yes, HW was a lot better story and tactical wise, although I do have my reserves about Cata, will have to go again through it.
As for Nexus, I really have to play it on hard!
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Any progress on FreeSpace Evolutions? Would love to see some Orions in there...
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Might it be possible in the future to welcome more nexus ships under freespace? that noah ship pictured previously is stunning...
Well that particular model is from Cadius's X3 mod, which has a few Noah ships in it. I've got the Noah destroyer ingame and useable but need to work out how to get the larger ships convertable.
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Might it be possible in the future to welcome more nexus ships under freespace? that noah ship pictured previously is stunning...
Well that particular model is from Cadius's X3 mod, which has a few Noah ships in it. I've got the Noah destroyer ingame and useable but need to work out how to get the larger ships convertable.
If you want to convert the Nexus models to something usable, then my model and texture converters might prove helpful. You can find them linked to in the Nexus Wiki (http://nexusthegame.net/wiki/Modding_Tools) under "file conversion". The model converter converts the LOD0 of a model to Wavefront .obj format, which should be compatible to most 3d modeling apps. The texture converter should be able to convert all textures in "textures\meshes" to .tga, which'll result in you having the color, normal, shine and specular maps the game uses (stored in two texture files and their alpha channels).
Any progress on FreeSpace Evolutions? Would love to see some Orions in there...
They're coming, don't worry ;)
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Why did you say that. I'll have to convert them to HW2 now, and I don't have time ! D:
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I read Nexus looks so good because it uses massive amount of shaders, wonder if FS2O could do the same, the effects are really good and models are a little better than the ones in FS2O, or are exactly the same? they seemed more detailed to me or maybe is the gaseous environment of Nexus that spreads the light through out the gas and makes the environment more illuminated. FS2O graphics are great with .14 RC4 and the shaders released for .14 but IMO Nexus graphics look better, and I hope we can someday get that level of graphics without sacrificing much performance from CPU Cores/GPUs.
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TBH, I found Nexus comparable to the latest FS versions, especially turrets and ship models in general were of somewhat lower quality.
It did have nice shaders, FSO recently implemented a lot of new functionality for them, so it might be possible to reproduce them.
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I just checked the GTC Fenris and is a little different than the ones in Nexus Evolution and it looks great a lot better than the one in FS, I checked Colossus and with .14 and the .14 shaders looks great, well I guess is just a little more shading work and fog in the environment. I can't wait to play with shaders, AA and other GPU stuff to help shape up the shaders of tomorrow :)
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As far as I can tell, the only real differences are a slightly different post-processing setup (Nexus uses a very wide bloom filter, FSO's bloom shader is tuned to stick close to glowing surfaces and not spread things out too far), as well as billboarded anamorphic lensflares and a very good thruster trail effect. Oh, and shadows, of course.
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billboarded anamorphic lensflares
Would be possible to have this in FSO?
For the others:
Bloom shader could most likely be edited by somebody who knows how to do it, might be worth trying BTW.
Shadows are already implemented, though not finalized yet.
Thruster trail effects are a matter of getting a good effect maker, we can have effects of that quality, and some mods already do. Syrk comes to mind. Inferno also has such effects, but they haven't been showcased in their full glory. In general, Jesnec's and Nighteyes' trails.
In fact, I think it could be an interesting idea to make a Nexus mod for FS. I believe that with 3.7 builds (which are not too far away), it could look better than Nexus. :)
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Except Nexus is extremely capital-oriented to the point that a fighter pilot has the life expectancy of a fruit fly once the flak lasers start firing.
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Balance would have to be adjusted, of course. Flak lasers could be made avoidable in a number of ways.
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Except Nexus is extremely capital-oriented to the point that a fighter pilot has the life expectancy of a fruit fly once the flak lasers start firing.
Unless that fighter is a pretorean...
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billboarded anamorphic lensflares
Would be possible to have this in FSO?
For the others:
Bloom shader could most likely be edited by somebody who knows how to do it, might be worth trying BTW.
Thruster trail effects are a matter of getting a good effect maker, we can have effects of that quality, and some mods already do. Syrk comes to mind. Inferno also has such effects, but they haven't been showcased in their full glory. In general, Jesnec's and Nighteyes' trails.
I've been trying to get some of these things to work in FSO, they way glow points are set up in FSO make they ideal to be actual lens flares, so if the modder wants he can add some really big ones on a ships engines as seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oADXodHXS0w&feature=g-upl&context=G2a229f2AUAAAAAAAAAA
they way the lens flares show up can even be adjustem through distance from the ship by editing the mip maps, so they render only when close-mid range distance to the player, and wont render on very far ships)
only problem is they don't actually render as lens flares, meaning they wont render ontop of everything, bringing us back to an old feature request I asked for.
I also don't know how to put trails on ships, I've seen it done on the homeworld 2 mod, IMO on capital ships this can work better then the current way thrusters work, just put there a glow point lens flare, shortish trail and the heat distortion effect and you'r good to go :)
*edit: just edited the bloom shader in notepad to cover a wider area, pretty straight forward, but it seems like I need to use a higher resolution for it as the bloom itself looks low on pixcels, it would also be nice to be able to use one set of bloom to be "tight" like it is in the mediavps, and ontop of it another wider bloom filter that would give a nice color bleed effect on the sorroundings, bloom intensity should be in a table variable instead of the launcher settings...
(http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1343/screen0003a.jpg)
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In the case of the bloom intensity it does change if you raise or lower the value in the Ship Lab, right?
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funny you mention that its the first time I noticed it can be changed like that!
anyway yeah I can still change it through there, but what I was talking about was in the instace where we have 2 bloom shaders working together, then it won't work to have 1 value to determin the intensity of both...
I cranked the intensity all the way up and noticed something strange in the way it rendered the glow, is it supposed to be like this?
(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/9145/screen0005q.jpg)
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That looks like the bloom I used to see before, but the lines are much more extreme.
It shouldn't do that with these (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76904.0) effects if you're not using them now.
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well I updated the shader, its an improvement but still there are many very visible lines
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I am not familiar with the source material for this particular mod, but that ship bares a striking resemblance to a miniature Terran Typhon.
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funny you mention that its the first time I noticed it can be changed like that!
anyway yeah I can still change it through there, but what I was talking about was in the instace where we have 2 bloom shaders working together, then it won't work to have 1 value to determin the intensity of both...
I cranked the intensity all the way up and noticed something strange in the way it rendered the glow, is it supposed to be like this?
(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/9145/screen0005q.jpg)
If you don't know how the bloom effect works, yes, this is expected.