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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 02:15:10 pm

Title: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 02:15:10 pm

Tachyon: The Fringe.

Released unfinished, in most respects.  Broken, buggy, and full of problems from A to Z.

However, it's players have always loved, and perhaps adored it's flight model.  It was fast, quirky, and gave you manueverability options at a speed that could, literally, make you dizzy.

Given Novalogic's legendary lack of support for this title, I'm looking to ask a few questions, with an aim toward potentially converting Tachyon's models into the Freespace engine.  Even if we were to get the code for tach, ala Allegiance/Freespace, it's so buggy that I don't know if it would even be worth trying to fix.   In fact, every modder I've talked to for Tachyon has told me that it would be practically useless to bother trying to get the code.  It's that bad.

So, with that in mind:

1.  Is it true that you can put Descent-like multi-axis thrust on ships?  The lateral/reverse thrust in Tachyon is the basic foundation underlying why a game so horrible lasted so long as a multiplayer game.

2.  Is it true that there is a slide-like function in Freespace's code?  (Hold a button, and stay at the same speed/course indefinitely?)

3.  Is it possible to create bases with turrets, or just ships?

There's a few questions to start with.  I'll very, very, likely have more as I dig further into it, but there's a few to begin.

I love the base wars concept in Tachyon's multiplayer, although, of course, an arena-style combat setting is much, much easier. 

I know that doing a full conversion mod isn't an easy task.  Don't worry about warning me of that.  Trust me, I know.    I'm more interested in whether it's possible to do some of the things I asked above, before I worry about logistics.

So, would a conversion from Tachyon to Freespace be theoretically possible?

I always liked Freespace.  Don't get me wrong.  I "grew up" in Tachyon as a pilot, however, and I've always liked their flight style the best.

I'm a vet of a cool few dozen space sims, so I suppose I'd be called a space sim junkie.  It's just been a frustrating ordeal, thinking aobut what such and such game *could* have been. 

Anyway, let me know what you think.  I appreciate your consideration, and I'll listen avidly to what you have to say.

~ RK

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: WMCoolmon on September 10, 2006, 02:27:54 pm

1) Yes

2) More or less

3) What's a base? Any ship (whether or not it moves) can have turrets in Freespace. This includes installations in the original game (Freespace/2)

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Getter Robo G on September 10, 2006, 02:30:34 pm

Anything is possible... But like me, you are going to hit a very big wall..

AFAIK their is no way to get at the model files, never mind convert them for a general format for prepping into FS2...

Bases on turrets or fghters? what could that possibly mean?

you can Have TURRETS on Starbases & Fighters, if THAT's what you are trying to ask..

edit: [WM you posted faster than me darn it :D]

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 02:32:37 pm

Very cool.  That's what I thought I'd read, and it piqued my interest, when looking through the forum archives here.

I'm only thinking multiplayer, at the present time.  Single player missions may be beyond any scope I need ot worry about, presently.  I'm semi-familiar with Tachyon's code, and I'm pretty sure I can get the ship stats.  I already have the models. 

It sounds promising, that's for sure.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Getter Robo G on September 10, 2006, 02:37:23 pm

Excellent....

  Now out of burning curiousity, how the hairy heck did you extract them from the .dat file? My KA utility that is designed for those files failed. Note, for years I searched for Tachyon mod sites or utilities with no luck.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 03:09:19 pm

First, the ships are in .pak files.   You have to, first, extract the entire tachyon.pff file.  Then, you have to extract every .pak file, to get the models. 

Anyway, that's how you do it.  PM me, and I'll shoot you links to the tools.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 05:47:53 pm

On second thought, I took some time and extracted all the .pak files.  I'm archiving them now, and should have them available for download soon.

They extract as .obj files, incidentally.  I'll let you know when I have them up.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Vengence on September 10, 2006, 07:04:01 pm

Hehe, this is what I love. Tachyon was one of my favorites. Too bad I couldn't play online.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Getter Robo G on September 10, 2006, 07:18:37 pm

WOW! That's awesome... I never could get beyond the .dat main file. does that include sounds ofr all teh great Bruce one-liners? "I think I hear your Mama calling!",  :lol:

That's ok don't send anything, I'll wait for your mod to finish. (bows)... Plus I am buried in stuff (help!)  :lol:

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Ferret on September 10, 2006, 07:42:12 pm

I love Tachyon and I must say this is a pretty awesome idea. Wouldn't mind taking a peek at the models myself. :) (Sounds would be awesome too)

Quote

Released unfinished, in most respects.

How, pray tell?

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 10, 2006, 09:55:59 pm

GBR:

The .pff is what you have to crack first.  Next, you have to crack the .pak files, like I said above. 

I'm uploading the models, in two different archive formats, now.  I'll post the link in a bit.

Fetter:

I'll work on sounds next.

Bruce Campbell is, indeed, awesome :D

As for unfinished, NL's lead coder on this game left partway through.  The game was patched together by others on the team, and released with what had been done thus far.  They did a decent job patching it together, all things considered, but they never did much but bail water after that.

Edited:

Removed download link - see #25 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,42168.msg862073.html#msg862073) for new links.

If there's any problems with them, let me know, so I can fix.  thanks!

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Getter Robo G on September 11, 2006, 03:51:23 am

Wow... Been a Long time since I played Tachyon. I just looked through you extracted archive so please take these C&C's with an open mind.


Ordinance: I suggest SOME of them could get better textures, but they all seem to be FINE. No problem, you can convert those missiles right over!  :)

Effects: Dump them! Alter existing FS2 ones or make new ones from scratch.
Same for Planets.

Ships: I could only find a handful, the rest of the files seem to be objects. Serious retexture issues here as they are simply too low res. (think HW1 but lower).

Objects: I found a few interesting ones.

If you got any questions I'll try to answer them, as my skils are limited. But I wish you luck with your project!

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: asyikarea51 on September 11, 2006, 08:33:35 am

Mako + Railgun FTW.  :D

 :lol:

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Vengence on September 11, 2006, 12:44:48 pm

Crap, I just remembered the Demons. Man those guys were tough, but once I got a tractor beam they didn't stand a chance. But it would be good to fly those cool fighters. And yeah, I love those Bruce one liners.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Freespace Freak on September 11, 2006, 02:12:32 pm

Quote

We're gonna hunt us some Skavs, yeehaw!

Heh, I loved that game.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Ferret on September 11, 2006, 05:30:59 pm

Hah I went to play it yesterday, started playing the tutorial and pretty much finished it, then flew into a navbouy and exploded. (Too much Freespace)
So I tried again and got to nearly the same part and Tachyon crashed. XD
So I installed a patch... Then realised I couldn't be bothered.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Getter Robo G on September 11, 2006, 06:46:16 pm

I got as far into it as the second race track and story arc decision... then it crashes. I quit trying after that, but still it was fun back then.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Ferret on September 11, 2006, 07:13:32 pm

I actually finished the Galspan arc when I first got it, but haven't actually been back since.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Darius on September 12, 2006, 03:48:26 am

Go back to it! The Bora arc is excellent.

The pay isn't as good, but you have more missions to make up for it. The story is a lot deeper as well.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Backslash on September 12, 2006, 04:35:55 am

This thread makes me happy :)

Wow, I hadn't realized NovaLogic had such troubles putting the game together.  I am impressed they did as good a job as they did (counting the patch at least), because I know how hard that is.  Funny though; with the patched game, I've hardly ever crashed, and have finished the game twice with both story arcs, no problems (except joystick FF doesn't work anymore).  Maybe I'm just lucky, or have the right (old) hardware? :nervous: But I must echo many people here: it's fun, and worth it.

RazorsKiss: I'm a bit late, but for questions 1 and 2, you may find this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,41803.0.html) interesting reading.  For #2, the slide-like function is called Gliding and is toggled by pushing Alt+G, if the ship supports it (so grab Mike_A36's modular table).  Note that it's currently a toggle, not a when-key-held... but I'll try to implement that someday.  Still, the toggle does work exactly as you describe.

I've been working on improving many aspects of customizing Freespace's physics.  I'll be posting my progress in The Source Code Project forum from time to time.  This Tachyon mod idea is definitely possible, and with the right tweaking of values in the ships table (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl), I bet you can come VERY close to the 'feel' of Tachyon's flight model!  Feel free to ask for tips, and I wish you success! :yes:

Very cool to see your success in extracting the data!  A long time ago, I goofed around with a utility I found, and listened to a lot of the sounds and stuff but had no idea about the file formats of the ships and other stuff.  Here, I'll attach the utility if anyone else wants to mess with it.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: asyikarea51 on September 12, 2006, 04:53:42 am

I never played the Galspan arc.

If only there was a way to cheat-open the supergate back to wherever the main character came from. I wanted him to go back!!! :(  :mad: :mad: :mad:

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 12, 2006, 06:52:23 am

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/code/250555.html

Quote

say ahh Open targeted gate

You owe me £££ big time..

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Ferret on September 12, 2006, 07:10:02 am

I don't remember doing the Galspan missions being this hard, Bora certainly is the more interesting side though.

Spoiler:

As for bugs, it's stopped crashing since I put the patch on, but there's a weird one that happens now and again where my ship will inexplicibly turn 180 degrees instantly. Lolling at that.

Also the mission I was just on where I decided to give it a rest for today, is one where Bora go to attack a Galspan station with thier new armageddon laser toy (cliche name alert) and I exploded for no reason, no one was firing and I wasn't near anything. Very weird.

VVVV Quiet you, didn't we used to have spoiler tags around here? DON'T READ THIS.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 12, 2006, 07:14:22 am

MY spoiler sense is tingling..........

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 12, 2006, 05:42:11 pm

Just noticed: I only extracted .paks G through Z

I need to extract A-G, too... yay :P

There's only one .pak extractor program, and it hasa very clunky interface.... 1200 *more* clicks!

Whoopee!

*sigh*

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: RazorsKiss on September 12, 2006, 10:53:56 pm

Got the rest extracted.  New download links/names!

Models:

http://razorskiss.net/Downloads/tach/tachmodels_AtoG.rar

http://razorskiss.net/Downloads/tach/tachmodels_GtoZ.rar

Whew.  Lots of clicking.

So, needto work on converting them into a usable format, next.  Blargh.

Cap Ships and Bases are all composite models too.  Yay.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 13, 2006, 03:49:46 am

I dunno whehter they use the same compression as Half-Life 1, but run a search for Pak expllorer or look at www.planethalflife.com for pak tools. The interface is easy.

Title: Re: Tachyon: The Fringe Conversion Mod?
Post by: Thor on September 13, 2006, 10:43:30 pm

I misplaced that game awhile back.  I miss it alot.  I hope someone takes up the task of bringing it to freespace.