Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: TexMurphy on June 22, 2004, 08:34:58 am

Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: TexMurphy on June 22, 2004, 08:34:58 am
Hi guys.

Im wondering if you are interested in makin a conversion of WC Saga to Starshatter. Dont know if you guys know about starshatter (//www.starshatter.com) but its one of the best space sims to hit the market in a long time. It will go live this summer and it features full convertion capabilities and a fantastic dynamic campaign engine. Its a millitary space sim that would be just fantastic to model the Kilrathi War on. Players are able to fly both fighter/bomber class ships as well as carriers and cap ships. Combat can be both space and planetary based.

Adding to this it has a fantastic multiplayer mode which is basicly multiplayer scenarios more then multiplayer missions.

So I wonder if you guys are interested in an offspring project for Starshatter.

Tex
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: Tolwyn on June 22, 2004, 10:17:03 am
there was actually a WCSaga mod for Starshatter. It is long dead...

And who will do the work anyway...?
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 22, 2004, 11:29:46 am
Nice idea...if you can get enough people to work on it we can talk about it.
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: TexMurphy on June 23, 2004, 02:52:10 am
Im interested in doing alot of the work.

What Im interested in doing is the Galaxy creation, Dynamic Campaign creation, ship/weapons definitions and ship/weapons ballancing. Though my 3d modeling skills arnt up to par with the rest of you as Im a programer not an artist. I know enough 3d modeling to convert the ships into SS and get em into the game but not build em from scratch.

Tex
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: Moonsword on June 23, 2004, 12:21:32 pm
Check out the WC3D site off a link from the WC CIC (www.wcnews.com), it might have some models you can use.
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: Setekh on June 23, 2004, 06:49:46 pm
Welcome to HLP, Tex. :)

:welcome:
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: Alan Bolte on June 27, 2004, 12:14:58 am
I'll bet you'll be able to get alot more people to help after more people own it than just the twenty copies sold at Origins, Tex. A WC mod certainly would kick ass. I guess if you need it I could do some .def work, but I'm a little spread out time wise so I couldn't join a project or anything. Just thought I'd let you know there's some interest.
Title: WC Saga convertion to Starshatter
Post by: TexMurphy on June 28, 2004, 05:14:25 am
Ive started the work on the WC mod for SS.

Currently Ive currently got 5 ships and 4 gun types running.

The ships are:

Terran
*Arrow
*Excalibur

BW
*Banshee

Kilrathi
*Bloodfang
*Dralthi

The guns are
*Laser
*Ion
*Massdriver
*Tachyon

The ships are atm just "ball park" ballanced, meaning they are in the vicinity of each other but not finally ballanced. I will not be ballancing the ships identical to WC as the goal is to be able to have a ballanced multiplayer battlefiled. WC is ballanced with single player game play as only focus and inorder for multiplayer to work the ballance has to be reworked.

Though this said the ships will have their respective role (Arrow a LF, Excalibur a HF, ect) and they will have the correct guns. What will change is damage absorbtion (SS does not have damage zones the same way as WC), damage output (of guns), velocities and accelerations.

So when looking at the ship characteristics of a Arrow compared to a T-Bolt the arrow has better accel, lower DA, smaller shields. This way it is a light fighter and the T-Bolt is a heavy fighter so it does give the correct feel of the ship, but its not WC stats.

The aim is to have light fighter accelleration (the most important stat of all as its key to manouverability) around 100 m/s/s w/o AB and 130-150 m/s/s on AB. Heavy fighters around 70 m/s/s w/o AB and 90-100 m/s/s on AB.

This is what Im running atm and this is a good ballance to manouverability. Though what does need to still be tweaked is the shield recharge rates and capacitor recharge of the guns. Currently its very hard to finish of ships as the shield recharge is overballanced.

Next step is to ballance this out and after that add missiles.


When I have missiles added I will add about 10 more of the 26 fighter/Bomber ships I have. Adding a ship when I got the ball park set up right takes about 30 min per ship.

Then its carriers. I will add 3 carriers, 1 of each faction. Here I will need to rework the models a bit so this will take more time then the fighters.

After that its cap ship. Here I will need massive model reworks as the models I have atm have their turrets mounted on the ship model and textures that have been exposed to too much fanboism.

This is where I will need help.

By the time I reach this stage there will be a website, forums and downloadable beta versions of the mod.

When it comes to the fiction around the mod will be set around 2675-2681. This time period is a black hole in the timeline which allows for more elaborate fiction and usage of ship classes from both the WC4 and WCProph eras.

Tex