[Nuke]

ok, this is nuts. you have been warned.

my current obsession with descent made me thing, why is there still not a descent mod for freespace. pyro models have been converted by other modders, i have robots in cob format, i have a half-completed pyro gx model. whats missiong? levels. anyway i was playing the descent mod for doom 3 and i got an idea. what of all those quake levels i never finished? i used deep exploration to convert them to cob and then ran em through pcs to get a pof. it converted fine, the problem was that quake levels ues of textures. nearly a hundred textures. so i figure i can bake the textures in max 8. my question is, how do i accomplish that?

[Nuke]

btw, concept proven:


this map is from the airquake mod for classic quake, it seamed apropriate because it has few enough textures to convert to pof without baking and i thought it would be cool to fly my pyro through it baking would be required to convert existing maps. however i think levels can very easily be created by quake level editing software, but using descent textures. because quake maps use simple pimatives they convert fairly well with deep exploration. the main problem is textures, as you can see, there is so much tiling that you cant even make out surfaces as being txtured. thats probibly because this map was huge, so texture detail was sacrificed to increase game speed in quake. if you do a level for freespace (or should i say descent). in addition quake maps, being simple, use lots of textures. freespace to the best of my knoledge will only handel up to 18 textures. for a ship thats probibly too many but for a level it should be acceptable. that map uses between 15 and 17 textures. now you could design a level and use textures as liberally as you like, and then bake it down later. or you could design a level using less than 18 textures.

[Unknown Target]

Wow, pretty cool The only problem I can see, though, is lighting. Wouldn't interior maps be completely dark, or at least, not shiny?

[Nuke]

indeed, with no lightmapping support the levels would look dull, even compaired to descent 1. you could probibly fake it with fancy use of shine maps, glow maps and sun placment

[Roanoke]

I've been playing with the idea of using UT2004 style maps in FS myself....

[Mongoose]

That. Freakin'.  Owns.

Now, if we can just get horizontal/vertical sliding assignable to controls, add in the trichording speed boost, get some floating powerups in there, and allow one's ship to fly backwards, I think we'll be set.

(Yes, I know half of that is probably impossible. No, I don't care. )

[NGTM-1R]

That. Freakin'.  Owns.

Now, if we can just get horizontal/vertical sliding assignable to controls, add in the trichording speed boost, get some floating powerups in there, and allow one's ship to fly backwards, I think we'll be set.

AFAIK, most of that's actually doable. The only one I can think of that poses real problems is the backwards thing, not because the engine doesn't support it, but because I'm not sure if a player ship can be made to.

[Nuke]

you can go backwards but you have to pull back on the throttle and hit z, that is assuming you gave your ship a reverse thrust value
you probibly could do shield and energy powerups as well as energy centers with sexps. you cold do weapon powerups too, but you wouldnt receive them till next mission. what id like to see is more weapons banks, so that the pyro could accomidate all the descent weapons that we know and love.

[AqueousShadow]

you cold do weapon powerups too, but you wouldnt receive them till next mission.

Why not? Can't you force change the weapon on the ship when you get weapon powerups? If you can get multiple banks, then you'd set them all to empty and when the appropriate power up is picked up, the empty bank will force change, no?

[Nuke]

a weapon change sexp has been asked for and rejected many times now.

anyway i made a new map from scratch using qoole, which i converted to cob and then pof. i did a quick uv fix and got the textures to apear correctly. now its just a matter of replacing theese crappy quake textures with some slightly more modern descent 3 textures.

you could probibly get better levels by just modeling them out in truespace, but im not gonna put any effort into making whole levels unless i know it will all work.

[karajorma]

If you don't need many ships for this you could always make up a ships table with lots of versions of the same ship which differ only in the default and allowed weapon banks and then just use the change-model SEXP whenever a powerup is picked up

[Nuke]

we are allowed 3 banks. the typical pyro has  4 point bank for lasers, a two point bank for plasma cannons, a single point for gatling guns omega cannon and the spreadfire guins. youse the split bank feature so you can mount the right weapons to the right mount. or you can tweak the code to support 10 banks and a "no primary link" ship flag

[Mongoose]

AFAIK, most of that's actually doable. The only one I can think of that poses real problems is the backwards thing, not because the engine doesn't support it, but because I'm not sure if a player ship can be made to.

I could see how sliding/trichording would be do-able, since Shivan ships exhibit that capability in-game, and there's also the presence of the Descent-style physics cheat code.  Getting it assigned to my joystick's hat switch seems like it could be another story, though.

For anyone who doesn't know, the trichord speed boost occurs when you're chording (sliding) in more than one direction and tilting your ship in the direction of travel.  It allows you to move at about 1.4 times the normal speed when bichording and about 1.7 when trichording.  It was originally a bug in the first Descent's code but, after being widely used by pilots as an essential strategy, it was included in the two subsequent games.  I can't really see how something like that could be pulled off in this engine, though my knowledge of modding is admittedly basic.  It's definitely not something that would be necessary, just a nice touch if at all possible.

Reverse thrusting at the same speed as forward would obviously be heavily preferred, if at all possible, since it's an integral part of the whole 6DOF gameplay style.  It sounds as though it might be too involved, though, and if it is, I'd be willing to give it up for the sake of a Descent mod.   Nuke, if you do manage to get this thing rolling, I have a whole forum's worth of people who'd be thrilled to beta-test it.

karajorma, that's a pretty cool idea about switching ship models. If this were to go through, there would be only four types of playable ship models: the Pyro-GX from D1/2, and the Phoenix, Magnum, and Pyro-GL from D3.  (The Black Pyro in D3 is basically a version of the Pyro-GX.)  Add to that any robot models that would be included, and the rest would be left for multiple ship models.  The only issue I could see would be the ability to switch weapons at will; in all three Descent games, this was done by pressing the 1-0 keys once or twice.  Would SEXPs or scripting be able to handle something like that?

[Nuke]

a descent mod, as much as id like to do one still takes a back seat to my other mod. fortunately theres so much stuff on the net as far as models. all the d3 ships were already converted, theres a number of high poly pyros out there, the descent network should still have all the descent 2 robots (in cob format) hosted.  i have my own pyro that im working on (its actually one of my older models, i finished it but never managed to get it skinned right now im adding more detail to it). so most of the data needed for a mod is already available. i think the biggest challenge is the ai, it wasnt designed to manuver in close quarters and im not sure how much tweaking we could do to that without code changes. we would also need a submodel animation trigger for doors so that they open when they are shot or aproached, the later could be done with a submodel animation sexp trigger. matcens could be done with a new warpin effect. theres lots of stuff we can do and some we cant. but i wouldnt do it unless it was a team effort.

[aldo_14]

What ever happened to Venom/Nicos Descent mod models?

[karajorma]

karajorma, that's a pretty cool idea about switching ship models. If this were to go through, there would be only four types of playable ship models: the Pyro-GX from D1/2, and the Phoenix, Magnum, and Pyro-GL from D3.  (The Black Pyro in D3 is basically a version of the Pyro-GX.)  Add to that any robot models that would be included, and the rest would be left for multiple ship models.

You'd also need models for each level though. Still worst comes to worst you could use an inferno build and lose multiplayer if need be.

The only issue I could see would be the ability to switch weapons at will; in all three Descent games, this was done by pressing the 1-0 keys once or twice.  Would SEXPs or scripting be able to handle something like that?

If you can find a suitable unbound key then yes. It would require some pretty complicated SEXPing if you want more than two weapons but it's definitely possible (I know cause I've done something similar but even more complex ).
 If you try to use the wrong keys though you're entering a serious world of pain as the key-reset SEXP is still incredibly buggy when it comes to repeating events. The 1-4 keys will cause you some serious problems if you try to use them. I submitted the bug to mantis a long time ago but it's not been worked on AFAIK.

[aldo_14]

Can you control the AI in some way using paths?  Like have the main body an invisible object following a path, and the visible body a turret that will rotate to face the player and fire, etc, but not  cause it to deviate too much and splat into the walls.

[Nuke]

who would want to set them up. its hard enough to get the ships in the level. to set up pathhs, inside an object in fred would be trickey as hell.

[Roanoke]

What ever happened to Venom/Nicos Descent mod models?

didn't Raven take over the mod hence the "DMod Reborn" title ?

[Mehrpack]

hi,
really nice 

a few weeks ago i have think, mhh so a descent-like mission will be a nice suprise in a campain, with a blow up at the end and find the way for the exit *ggg*.
and bad mad robots or shivans.

Mehrpack