Author Topic: Freespace: New Age v0.2 (Homeworld 2 mod)  (Read 57931 times)

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Offline Liberator

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Have you guys considered tweaking the ships(the big ones mostly) to take advantage of HW2 higher poly limits?

The Typhon looks great as well as the other ships, but have you glow mapped them yet?
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

 

Offline übermetroid

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
hey thats looking really good!  I need to DL this when I get the time....  Got any screen shots of the GTD Orion?
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!!!
*omnious thunder*

That begin said, I'll wait for some more ships before I play, though I give my encouragement for packing GTD Orion in already. Why did FSFC fall, anyways? It looked... acceptably active and sure seemed very protective for a dying mod, last time I checked. [as I'm sure you know:D]

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Liberator - glow maps? we are slowy adding them to ships, but our HODer Phelan is not used to makeing glow maps so this is rather new to him. As for high ploy ships we are considering makeing a high qulity ship pack (basicaly ships in this pack have high res textures and have high poly numbers), however I am not that good at modeling to make the ships high in polys. I know of such models being all ready make for the FS SCP, but I haven't had time to go though all of the stuff for it looking for them. However if you could send them to me at [email protected] then I would be able to speed this side of the project up.

ubermetroid - i'll post pics at the end of this post

Hollewanderer - 0.2 hope to have at lest two times more ships, due in about a month. FSFC failed in HW 2 due the people makeing it seemed to lose intrest, but last I heard they had decided to look into makeing it for the HW 1 SCP, saying how HW 2 was limiting them too much, bs IMO. I tryed to get it going again, we were making progress. But the offical team came back and disregared all that I had done, then a rather large flame war started (which I didn't start). In the end nothing changed, FSFC was still dead as far as HW 2. But I have heard nothing about FSFC for along time, nor do I cear. I have my own mod to work on now.

pics:

GTC Ferris with glow maps

Testing in HW 2 shot, GTD Orion
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline übermetroid

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
ohhhhhhhhhh  Thats pretty!  *goes to download*
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 

Offline übermetroid

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
lol, one day when i get Rico to redo it
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline StratComm

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Why don't you use the high-res art and glowmaps made for the SCP?  It would seem redundant to re-create what we already have readily available.
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Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
ausseming that we can use them. We would then have to apply these to all models, this in its self would take all most as long as to HOD the ships with out high-res art and glowmaps. But I know what you mean, but after seeing some other mods for HW 2 that use such things as high res textures I can say that for most people it would not be a good idea. However for people like me who have a high end system (x800 XT and so on) high res textures are a good idea. But at this current stage we just need to get the ships in game, once that has been done a cutom pack containing high poly and high res textures of ships can be made.
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline StratComm

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Theoretically all you'd have to do is swap out the texture maps (though I am guessing HW2 incorporates textures into the model data) where appropriate.  Really all I'm suggesting is using the glow maps we have available, just so you don't have to do them again.  Not that the actual high-res stuff actually needs to be used.
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It's not much of an excuse for a website, but my stuff can be found here

"Holding the last thread on a page comes with an inherent danger, especially when you are edit-happy with your posts.  For you can easily continue editing in points without ever noticing that someone else could have refuted them." ~Me, on my posting behavior

Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
another thing that we have to consider is size, while it maynot be such a problem for those with ADSL it is for me as I still only have dial up. When we swaped the Athena's texture to a higher res version there was a massive increse in size and it all most dobled the size of the mod. While the mod is still small (only a few mb) it still takes longer for me to upload it.

I'll look into the glow maps, but I am not sure about the compaiblty between HW 2 and FS 1/2/SCP.
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline übermetroid

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
*downloaded and tested the file*

Hey how do you build an Orion?  And I am saddened by the lack of beams......

By the way, to convert the FS files to HW files what are you using?
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 

Offline Liberator

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Based on my very limited understanding of how to mod HW2 it involves about 5 different model formats.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
ubermetroid - play as the hiigarn and you should start with one, building one is not going to be introduced untill we have more ships. There are no beams as that ships weapon config is from the T-V war, there will end up being about 3-4 diffrent configs of Orions in this mod. Unlike FSFC we cover the time periods from the T-V war to the aftermath of Caplla.
Models and textures get extract from the .vp, textures converted via photoshop to .bmp and models opened in Descent Manager MODELVIEW32 and converted to FS 2 format, then useing the .pof to .cob program, then useing another program to converte it to .3ds then I edit the model to remove any bits left over from the "destoryed" mesh of things like turrents. Finaly it gets send to our HODer who then converts it from .3ds to a maya complitable format. He then has to add all the hardpoints, engine glows, convert the textures, add the needed layers to textures, text it in game to see that all hardpoints are working, add the CM, add animions, the list goes on and on.

So basicaly what Liberator said :P
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline Liberator

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
The best thing to do about the textures is to get with Lightspeed, Turambar, DaBrain and who ever else is doing them to get permission and such and use them from the beginning so you don't have to recompile anything later.  Download time will go up a bit, but probably not that much since HW2 uses DDS natively.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

  
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
i am mainly reluctent (excuse spelling) on this issue due mainly to proformace issues with HW 2. All ready the mod is rather CPU heavy, something that I want to fix so this mod can have a high frame rate and still look good, adding high detail ships and textures is only going to put pressure on another componet of peoples computers. This can have bad effects on mods for HW 2, in both the PDS mod and the SW: Warlords mod frame rate is all most disregared completely IMO. For those that put up with this its fine, but I find that alot of people have being turned away by this alone. While I know that we are not trying to sell this mod to everyone that we can, I still do want people who are just able to run HW 2 to still be able to play, while those that have much more powerful computers (like my self) can use a custom model high detail models. I hear alot of people saying that there are not many people that play HW 2 mods with other people so by taking on this streargy we hope to draw more people into playing online with this mod.

Its not really that much of a problem redoing the textures as most of the hard work has been all ready done on the orginal models for the normal release.

I'll get in tuch with the suggested textures (if they don't do it first) with them we have more HODers to take the load of one man, then we can work on the high detail stuff.
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline übermetroid

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Quote
Originally posted by Duelron1001
*snip*



Wow...  Lots of work.
*start to look on net for programs that do all the converting*
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 

Offline Liberator

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Quote
Originally posted by Duelron1001
*stuff*

But consider for a moment, a lot of HW2's texture are frickin' huge!  Many are 2048^2.  By contrast, most of the enhanced textures that LS & Co are putting out are 512^2 and one or two are 1024^2.  This translates to a much lower impact on performance.  The PDS mod is taxing because there is lots of junk on the screen at once with no change in the quality.  You have to remember that the ships you're putting into HW2 have 1/2 to 1/4 the polies of the default HW2 ships.  LOD 1 on the interceptor has almost as many polies as LOD 1 on the Colossus for cryin' out loud.

It's not quantity, it complexity.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

There are only 10 types of people in the world , those that understand binary and those that don't.

 
Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Quote
Originally posted by Liberator

You have to remember that the ships you're putting into HW2 have 1/2 to 1/4 the polies of the default HW2 ships.  LOD 1 on the interceptor has almost as many polies as LOD 1 on the Colossus for cryin' out loud.


Yet in normal HW 2 I get about 60 FPS while with a large battle in FSNA 0.11 beta (pre release) I get 20 FPS, explain that.

HW 2 cheats in a way, when an intercepter fires its primary weapon its not fireing all those bullets that you see fireing, but rather just one bullet with a multi-bullet animation, at the moment in FSNA an Apollo fires all its primary and creates 4 shots per 0.25 of a second, thats alot of fire for just one figher, multiply that by 5 ships per squadren, then by about 15 and we get ~300 shots being fired per second; offcorse that does aussme that all the ships will be fireing all the time, but this is an exaple. Now remember that each one of those shots is its own ship, and depending on the proberblity of the weapon and what it was shoting at will determin weather or not how many shots will home in on it's target. Compare that with the standard intercept's main gun of ~125 shots, you can all ready see in one ship lone that there is a massive diffrence. This all adds upto be alot of load on ones CPU no matter how fast it is, by over stressing the video card as well with high poly ships will not impove the situation.

Also the largest texture that is used on the Hiigarn BC is only 1024x512, the next largest is 128^2. The largest on a Hiigarn Destoryer is only 512^2. Texture size doesn't have the same impact as other things like high numbers of polys. HW 2 can have high numbers of polys as there are very few times that all of those high poly LODs and even being disspayed. You have remember the adverage range that the cammera is from the ships (several kms) and when we then look at the LOD settings for those ships we see that while it appears that the ship doesn't lose any qulity as it zomes out it is in fact losing massive amounts by the time the cammera is zomed out to view the rest of the battle. These I feel are some of the more key diffrences between FS SCP and HW 2., while in SCP you don't have anywhere near the numbers of ships as HW 2 can have, in the above exaple I had 75 Apollos alone, thats just for one player and doesn't count any of the other fighters or those of other players.

Oh your wrrong on the poly count of the intercepter, in the highest LOD (LOD0) the poly count is 600 (LOD3 is only 34, lowest LOD), while Colossus can only manage ~2k. HW 2 can easy have ships with 10k polys, in fact most modelers are told that they can have cap ships with that many, however there are 4 levels of detail in a HW 2 model, how often are going to have that many polys on screen? Only when the cammera is zomed right in on that ship, or if the person that is scripting sets the LOD so that they don't change... one moment I have to change some things on the Orion... anyway I relise that I have controdiked (it kind of looks like the word that I am trying to spell :P) my self about the poly count and texture qulity issuses, but hey I did only to prove your last post wrrong Liberator :P

New excuse for not using SCP high poly ships and textures:

a) to slack to extract them my self (he is something that other people can do, my email is [email protected])

b) we don't even have all the ships in game yet, once that is done then we can stuff arround with high qulity stuff

c) our HODer only has a GF MX 440 in his computer and I want this mod to have ~ the same frame rate as HW 2 would normaly have on his computer, as it currently stands this is not so

d) download size, for people on dial up its a pain in the ass every time we release a new verion (hey i only have dial up)
$quot;If a battle don't have lotsa dead aliens, big spaceships and tons loot, it ain't worth fighing.$quot;
- Duelron1001 - Freelancer Commander

Leader of the Freespace: A New Age HW 2 TC mod

 

Offline StratComm

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Fs Mod For Homeworld 2 Is Alive Again!!!!
Are you remapping the larger ships?  Those things sometimes use upward of a dozen maps, and I'd imagine Homeworld 2 doesn't like that any more than HTL FS2 does.  If you're just using fighters and no one's shooting, is it as bad as when there's an Orion onscreen, does it still slow down badly? (fixing the shots to be multi-bullet single shots will help a lot I'm sure when it comes to combat)  That could easily be a problem.
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Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM