Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => The Babylon Project => Topic started by: starlord on February 03, 2008, 08:26:11 am
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That's great! and please, don't think that I don't recognise your work as great. i just want to know if at some point the whole babylon 5 timeline can be "converted" in the babylon project. Anyhow: great work!
It seems that the shadow death clowd is going to be the greatest challenge to put in there. However, with the success the gundam MOD demonstrated in making structure "infiltration" possible (a fighter penetrating the structure through a tunnel), I still keep my hopes up: I think that at one point it will be possible. Perhaps in that way, it will be possible to "recreate" the oh-so missed "babylon 5: into the fire" campaign. This would be great.
Anyway, thank you to all the babylon project team for preserving this universe. i simply wish the renegade legion MOD project could attract so much fans... (perhaps one day).
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Our team tried to implement that Shadow Planet Killer but it is spectacularly difficult to realise for two reasons. 1) It's absolutely enormous. 2) It's spherical with intricate detailing. The two combined results in more polygons than you can shake a surface burrowing nuclear missile at. The failiure of our team involved our best 3D modeller and myself both trying to be as creative as possile but the bottom line is the game engine just isn't up to it.
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Bright Idea - Why not make the main part of the Death cloud - the bit you are attacking - a modification of the Luna Surface Model? and make the rest a skybox background?
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Bright Idea - Why not make the main part of the Death cloud - the bit you are attacking - a modification of the Luna Surface Model? and make the rest a skybox background?
Yes obviously. There's your basic premise. Now try matching the geometry to the repeating texture of the sky sphere. What can I say? Maybe we just suck and there's someone more talented out there who can make it work.
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Actually, I remember a test vid of the gundam MOD where that huge fortress was being penetrated by your fighter and it's core being blown. Wouldn't those persons be able to help you?
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Cheat. Don't model the killer itself at all. Just stick the player in a dark nebula and spawn missiles at them. Worked in Into The Fire after all. :D
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That works too. But i would need some structure to do the battle from Call to arms
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Cheat. Don't model the killer itself at all. Just stick the player in a dark nebula and spawn missiles at them. Worked in Into The Fire after all. :D
When I first read this post, that's what I thought! :nod:
hip63 :p
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If you guys want to take a crack at it go ahead. Just don't look in my direction, and don't say I didn't warn you.
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Hmmm-Lots and lots of reskinned (whatever that Terran Drydock Frame from FS Port) With a Karnak Reactor at the centre and something else as the main control-node - just a basic outline....But for good scale the Model should be the size of the Moon surface model, Also when you destroy it, it triggers a Supernova
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OH YEAH!!!!! ;7
I didn't understand however: what seems to be the problem using a skybox?
But great ideas anyway, If the death cloud was in, it would be possible to recreate a "into the fire" campaign. Nobody would be cursing on the unreleased game any more.
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To make a planet killer like in Into The Fire is pretty easy. It's the A Call To Arms one that's hard.
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Why? Wasn't it a shadow planet killer in into the fire? (perhaps vorlon then, as I heard those were smaller).
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Why? Wasn't it a shadow planet killer in into the fire? (perhaps vorlon then, as I heard those were smaller).
both were there I suspect :wtf:
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If Into the Fire is the end of the Vorlon/Shadow Wars, then they were sitting inside the Planet Killer at the high-point, what do you think was throwing all those missiles at Sheridan?
The reason it is easy to do in that particular episode is because you can't see it really, it's just a dark fog, whereas Call to Arms had very definite structural and subsystem details.
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Yep, It might prove tricky. But it would be a great addition to the babylon project.
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Well...My idea for the Death cloud - a Back Nebula + a plate structure. This structure is in 3d, the length and width of the Moon Surface plate. It is always alligned with the Sun in the mission. When it is destroyed, it sets off a series of explosion all around and a supernova
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You could probably do it with detail boxes, since you only actually interact with a tiny faction of the surface, the rest of the model could be made extremely low-detail (since it's hundreds of miles away) and only add the detail to the main part. Of course, even then, it's a really big job, and a hi-poly one too.
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Ok a lot of you are on the rights lines but let me tell you guys exactly how to do it. While I'm explaining this please bare in mind Maverick and I knew exactly how to do it and still couldn't actually do it. Due to the enormous poly counts and extreme difficulty making lots of different things hang together in a seemless way.
Your Shadow planet killer consists of three components.
1) Your dark grey stormy nebula. Which you can apply to missions flown inside the planet killer.
2) An enormous planet sized storm textured outer sphere. Which can we used to enclose the planet killer shrouding it in storm when viewed from a distance.
3) The planet killer geometry. At it's lowest detail level this is a planet sized geosphere which sits inside 2). Each face of the geosphere is textured with the same texture, which gives the regular pattern of nodes and connectors of the Planet Killer without the actual polygons. Gaps in the nodes and connectors are pure green in the texture to make it transparent.
The planet killer's geosphere is split into seperate sections. Many of them. In the lowest level of detail you get one face with a single texture as discussed. Subobject detail levels are used so that as you approach one section you get actual geometry in place of the texture representing the same pattern of nodes and connectors.
The number of polygons the SPK ends up taking up depends very much on how many faces you give your geosphere. But it is difficult to avoid the number becoming huge. Even if you choose to provide geometric versions of only certain parts of the overall sphere. You also have a 100 turret limit to contend with.
Have fun!
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Ipandrews, please don't mind me getting a little overexcited on the shadow killer, it's just your project made me discover what babylon 5 was, and I truly think of it as fascinating. I'm not saying though that you haven't already given it your best, and if you did fail (for now, that is), it is likely I will not succeed (especially since I don't know anything about fredding, yet). But perhaps it could be done, even if it meant to segment the mission in several parts, say:
part 1: you approach the planet killer and "see" it from afar.
Part 2: You are inside the planet killer (you past the sections), there fore you are in the midst (we could eventually organise for atray shots firing from everywhere (without seein the turrets): that would make surviving a certain task.
part 3: the core (unsure how this one looks)...
part 4: you are outside dealing with the rest of the drakh fleet while the killer blows and turns "supernova".
And eventually a few sequences to bridge the gaps.
(of course that's only an idea).
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if you did fail (for now, that is)
Forever. Just so we're under no illusions.
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Why do you even need the planet killer itself? There was so much going on at the same time during that battle. Unless you want the player to fly one of the bluestars then you just have the planet killer as a background planet. Have the player doing something else like protecting some other ships in the fleet. Add a cut scene of the planet killer being destroyed. Next mission try to intercept the shuttles dropping the bio weapon.
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Well, i was planning on doing that for my crusade campaign, with the dialogue from the Victory and Excaliber being comms feeds. from the back ground. But then this thread showed up and i was thinking if someone could model it, then it would be great to do the missions as they are in the film. Oh well, if i wait for that to happen, the campaign will never get done...So i moght as well stick to my original planns.
But could someone do the cuscene for me?
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**** this planet killer nonsense! Does anyone know what Xa'dam (the legendary Shadow base that builds the planet killers as described in Armies of Light and Dark) looks like? I'm sure that'd be a real beast. :p
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again that would be on the Moon Surface Scale, with lots and lots of buildings
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Why the heck are those things so big? Because of this, we can't model them :lol:
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I'll just do it as the moon surface, with lots of shadow vessels and a few league bases sticking out of it.
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Why the heck are those things so big? Because of this, we can't model them :lol:
Yes the Vorlon "big elephant of doom" is a far better design for a planet killer. The SPK is a silly design. I can't think of any reason for it to be planet sized itself. Aside from psychological impact.
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Or make another non cannon shadow planet killer (smaller, of course).
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Starlord you are full of good ideas. Why don't you learn how to model?
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It seems I'll have too at some point for the renegade legion MOD, once I finish my science thesis, that is. besides, I don't think my ideas are that great: they are just proposals, no more.
Or else simply do the LAST part where you blow up the core (skip all the entry and segments stuff). Simply make a core (not very big) in a dark nebula with a few turrets (under 100), get inside and blow up the center. Much like this test mission actually but into a nebula: It would still be very satisfactory. http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=OygmDbTrrr8
This will be the last time I bother you IPandrews, I promise. :nod:
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As an aside, the thing about the SPK is that I get the feeling it 'unfolds' for attack and is normally much smaller, probably as far as mass is concerned, it's not much more than the Mammoth of Doom,
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I always imagined it opening up to swallow the planet like a gigantic planet sized mesh Pacman.
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Yup, that's exactly the image I get, the worlds most deadly mechano set....
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From what I recall, after seeing the "call to arms" episode, it DID open up, no?
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It's never really shown clearly to be honest, so it's mostly guesswork, it certainly seems like the sensible thing to do.
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I thought that after the core was blown up, it would close around the victory (at least, that's the feeling I got from it).
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Yup, in Call to Arms it sort of starts off as a big 'net' that wraps around the planet, so we know it is capable of morphing shape, but we never really see what form it takes for transport :)
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Thats my opinion
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Do we manage to see the core? I mean, what are it's dimensions, etc... Is the "webbing" structure connected to it or just around it?
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Well, the Node that the Victory Rammed looked to be 3-4 Victorys across - just a guess
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Was that node the core of the killer? if so, what made it different from the others? I thought at some point I saw a spherical core inside.
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The node i was refering to was a connector node - joint between 2 struts. The Core node looked to be about 6 Victories diameter
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Wait a minute, it is so huge actually that you could you know just make as a backround like hyperspace and have missions inside it...
That would be... scary.
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That point has already been made, but for Missions like A call to Arms you need some stucture
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Well actually, given the complexity of the mission, i would replace a lot of parts (including the segment node (and the whole infiltration start to be precise)) by cutscenes (perhaps from call to arms itself if nothing legal forbids it). The only part I would make would be the blow up of the central core, which is 6 times victory sized, so it's not unmakeble. (this means we are deep inside and we can't see the segments anymore). In short, very much like this mission from the gundam MOD (http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=OygmDbTrrr8
), only set in a dark nebula and with several turrets (yet below 100 so we don't have problems). I think this should make the mission easier to design and should still prove very satisfactory.
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Eureaka!
A Slight Solution - Import and Reskin the PVI Karnak from FS:P add in Several more Struts/Joints by adding in reskins of the Terran/Vasudan drydock from the port. The Critical node could be several That giant brown Cargo Container placed in a way that thy form an almost square shape, reskinned and Table Hacked and given Turrets.
This can either be one big model or Assembled by Each part in Fred.
2 Rules for this.
1) Missions with this model Always take place in a Black Nebula
2) The Model is always invisible to radar - flashing blip
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It looks good: Is there any way to try it?
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Dunno. Havent tried it yet. Ill try to model it over the weekend
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Otherwise, the only thing I see possible is to do what I said previously: Cheat and complete with animated scenes from "call to arms" at the point where you only have the inner core of the killer (in a dark nebula), which you go in, blow the center (much like that test mission I saw on youtube) then scenes again, battle outside the killer, supernova, you flee, the end! :lol:
I think it would still be very satisfying!
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What does a person need a structure planet killer for anyway? The player flies fighter craft, which in and of themselves wouldn't do a damn thing to the Shadow Cloud. In my opinion anyway, the Shadow Cloud from Into the Fire and A Call to Arms are two different beasts. Really, the League fleet in ItF is surrounded by the cloud and no one notices this huge structure framework?
You can do the mission from ActA, just have the player flying around, doing very little while hordes of ships are blown up all around him and the Victory fires at some point out of sight and suddenly the player wins the mission. That's about how effective the player's going to be in that sort of scenario.
A far more interesting scenario would have the player trying to stop the Drahk ships from releasing the plague while the EA fleet of doom goes and does their business. Because really, what would the player being doing in that scenario which would be of any use to anyone? Even if they're protecting the Victory or its sister ship, just have them flying close escort inside some black nebula. With the occasional slow moving missile to shoot down or some Drahk ships to itnercept or whatever.
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To Save us a f**K load of time in not have to render cutscenes or risk having our pants sued off us by using movie footage. Besides you cant have a "ramming Speed" sequence without having the actuall collision. It lacks the...sweetness. :p I know...I;m a pyromaniac but still
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Yeah: I see. :lol:
Perhaps your method can work more than mine.
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Actually, if you give the player specific goals to accomplish, it CAN make all the difference rather than "if you shoot, you're bound to hit a Drakh ship because there are so many of them."
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How would you see the problem, then, maje?
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What he's trying to tell you is that a player in a small ship can have very little influence on an enormous albeit impressive looking battle. The correct name for this is "Battle of Endor syndrome". The antidote is to give the player an important but accomplishable task to perform as the huge battle unfolds around him. This makes for a mission which is both impressive looking and interesting / challenging to play.
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Oh, so that's what the "battle of endor" syndrome is!
However, I would like to see if terran emperor's solution works under FRED. Keep me updated, will you?
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Well the Karnak idea seems to work so Far. Have altered subsytems...Currently trying to figure out how to merge 2 Pofs pr Cobs into a single model.
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Really, the League fleet in ItF is surrounded by the cloud and no one notices this huge structure framework?
1) They were all in a kind of Trance, seeing Sheridan and Delen talking to the "representatives" of the Vorlons and Shadows, which only ended once they were completely encased by the shadow planet killer.
2) The clouds strukture has to be able to open as far as the target planet is wide (correct word?) in order to completely encase it. Combine that with the poor visibility within the could and it's pretty clear why noone could see any structure parts.
And since the Victories had to fire into the cloud to learn of what the cloud was made up it's a good guess that the parts are protected by some kind of stealth technology.
And just because the Victories could detect them later doesn't mean the leage ships can. After all it's likely that they equiped the Victory class with the same sensor systems the Whitestar has, which is based, at least partly, on Vorlon technology, and thus far superiour to even minbari tech.
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What he's trying to tell you is that a player in a small ship can have very little influence on an enormous albeit impressive looking battle. The correct name for this is "Battle of Endor syndrome". The antidote is to give the player an important but accomplishable task to perform as the huge battle unfolds around him. This makes for a mission which is both impressive looking and interesting / challenging to play.
How about putting him in a Whitestar, effectively making him one of the capships?
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Yeah, except in freespace, you're supposed to fly a fighter. :P
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What he's trying to tell you is that a player in a small ship can have very little influence on an enormous albeit impressive looking battle. The correct name for this is "Battle of Endor syndrome". The antidote is to give the player an important but accomplishable task to perform as the huge battle unfolds around him. This makes for a mission which is both impressive looking and interesting / challenging to play.
My thoughts on this would be to give the player something akin to disarming the Super Star Destroyer or something. That'd keep him pretty busy for long enough to let the battle unfold around him.
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:nervous: :nervous: :nervous:
What super star destroyer?
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Going with the Battle of Endor refrence still. If the Shadow Planetkiller is the Death Star equivalent, ah help me out, what would come close to an SSD? Some kind of decent-sized destroyer.
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A Drakh Mothership would be the Executor SSD. Simply because the BMF is so big and hard to kill. I mean, in RotJ, it was sheer like that the SSD was destroyed
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i agree: drakh mothership comes to mind. but i suppose a lone fighter is going to take a white to disarm it. Or else, destroy those drakh shuttles pouring the shadow virus into our atmosphere.
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not one lone fighter, give him a few squadrons. It'll be like the last mission in Silent Threat, only better. And with an evil ball of doom looming over the battle.
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I am struggeling to get the planetkiller right for FH2261 :blah: is going to be difficult :ick:
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You're putting a shadow planet killer into FH? Ooooh that will be awesome.
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maybe I will have to cut it... :ick: it doesn't really work and does not make a good mission either
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I say, just make the core in a dark nebula: you can cheat your way through and it sorts of keeps the satisfaction of blowing up a shadow killer. :nod:
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My attempt to make this has currently stalled. Blender is giving me difficulties. I may just assemble it by it's components in FRED and take sceenshots. Then ask someone to model it.
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Would be great: Please keep us informed! :nod:
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Currently iam still working to get the positioning of the pieces right, i have two options.
1) Either import the 3 individual models that make up the Big-one, or
2) Get someone to assemble them as directed and merge them into one huge model.
I'm inclined to go with 1) and provide a Base mission, with the thing assembled. Then those who want a SPK mission can build the mission around it
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Would be great! Best of luck!!!