[Alpha_Monkey]

I personally feel that those cockpits are about twice as big as they should be, the scout looks like about as big as an A-wing, maybe smaller still.

Other than that, though, it's all very impressive. I'd especially like to see a hi-poly capital ship, like an assault frig or a destroyer.

Ya got a website set up for this mod that we can gaze at?

[FlareBaffled]

Once I finish the main mesh for the Mothership, I will turn my attention back to the smaller ships until I have a small pack of fighters to release as a 'dogfight' pack.

Then I will start work on the basic frigate, the resource collector and corvettes ( if I don't do them for the pack ). The basic frigate makes the basis of a whole series of units, so I plan to make it a fairly modular construction.

No website as yet..... maybe when things have moved along a bit further.

[Scooby_Doo]

Say Flare would you like the assault frigate?  I started HTLing a couple years ago and got bored.

Detailing is based on the original textures

[FlareBaffled]

Scooby..I might get back to you on that when I get around to the Taiidan stuff... for now, though, I got all the mesh I can handle to UV and paint!!!!

[FlareBaffled]

This is the redesign of the cockpit for the Scout. I prefer this...and I think the cockpit has come out nicer too. I have made it more 'chunky' but have modified the 'basic' design by extending the cockpit glass down a little to give some visibility. I think it is truer to the original, and also fits with how I think it should have looked!

[Unknown Target]

Looks good except for the little extended bit down the front IMO anyway, you don't have to listen to me, lol.

[FlareBaffled]

Lol... the little 'extended' piece was intended to help the pilot see where he was shooting. It can easily be filled in if you reckon it would improve the look.

edit... I have compromised slightly... the bottom glass panel has been filled in, which gives the nose a more solid look. There is still a slight bit of glasswork there to aid vision..which I like...so I am keeping it

Next on the building blocks is the heavy fighter

[Unknown Target]

You worry too much about pilot visibility - just move the eyepoint a little higher and more forward than normal, and you're set

[FlareBaffled]

Light Interceptor is finally finished ... apart from some minor tweaking of the eyepoint. As this shot shows...it needs moving back a fraction, and ovre a bit to get it perfectly centred.


From the outside, she looks like this:



With that work done, I have started to build the Heavy Interceptor. I will be using the same basic cockpit, and most of the nose structure...so I had  bit of a headstart!


Going to continue building this one later...but I think I have done enough for one day

[FlareBaffled]

well...ok...perhaps I can do a little teensy weensy bit more....

So I started this little ship. No prizes for guessing what this one is!

[FlareBaffled]

More progress, and some major breakthroughs. With a bit of outside help, I found out how to make the nebulae trails appear on demand, and have made soe coloured ones to boot! I also completed a couple of extra vessels:


This is the Kushan proximity sensor. It's just sensors and an engine.... so it dodn't take long to build!

With some additional help, I was pointed in the right direction to control which coloured engine glows were used ( again, this is defined in the ship table now ) so I can colour match both trails and engine glow.


Finally, on todays list of progress, we have a new vessel in the fleet. Equipped with an experimental cloaking device, these Kushan fighters are pictured here undergoing weapons tests.

[FlareBaffled]

Ladies and Gentlemen...I have a problem....

I have completed work on the heavy and light Defenders for the Kushan fleet, which will also be player flyable. I can't decide, though, how best to set up the guns. If I stick to the true 'Homeworld' approach, these are gimballed, and effetively operate as turrets with  limited arc of fire. I can do this...but for a player flyable craft, the guns would be AI controlled. You would direct the ship to allow the guns to bear..but you would have no control over the actual target fired on.

The alternative is to make them fixed and locked, and operate as normal guns. This would lose some of the elegance of the design, but would make it more controllable. I could live with this more if someone could tell me how I could make the guns retract  and then pop out when the trigger was pulled. Guns and gun arms are seperate pieces on both models, so they can be easily rigged either way.

I can't decide which would be more successful in the game, and what effect it would have on playability if the guns were AI managed. The defenders in HW proper never engage multiple targets as far as I could see in the skirmish HW games I set up to watch them in action.... but I could be wrong there too!

Anyone got any suggestions here?

[Unknown Target]

Maybe make the third gun a firing point and the two side guns turreted?

[redsniper]

Talk to Nuke

[FlareBaffled]

UT.... the half and half approach was something I considered for the Heavy Defender..but the light defender has only 2 guns and no belly gun. this would have to be fully turretted. The more I think about it..the more I think that is how I will make the thing operate.

Other options are going to require SExp stuff or scripting.....or something along those lines. I don't know enough about how all that works to do the thing that way yet. I keep all the basic models in Max format before final conversion, so I can easily go back and alter the mesh to make it work differently later on if need be..but I suspect that the pivot points I will set for turreting will be correct for anything else I may need to do anyway..so the POF file should be almost correct. Might need to change a few names..thats all.  Unless someone can help me to understand how it would work otherwise.

I would need the gun arms to fold out, then the guns to rotate into a straight ahead position, followed by firing. Once the trigger is released, the guns would need to move back in. If I needed a seperate key to deploy the guns, they would have to be prevented from firing until deployed.
1) Press key to deploy guns
2) Allow firing
3) press key to close up guns and block firing again.

[Unknown Target]

The light defender was taken out of the game though...

[Wanderer]

Flying defender would be utterly boring anyway.. semi-mobile fleet defence 'fighter' (closer to a platform) that is too weakly armored to take on a corvette and too slow to cause any trouble to fighters or bombers.. Why wont you just make those into 'non-player' fighters.. That is leave it up to AI to fly with those things.

[FlareBaffled]

The idea is, as far as the mission storyline goes, that pilots start out as part of a defense squadron, and are flying these units early on. Once you survive the first few missions as fleet defence, you can graduate on to fly scouts, fighters and bombers.

It's a way to increase the total number of player flyable units for each side. A lot of the ships in the mod are not player flyable, and would never be so. I want to make as many as I can flyable, so I have included the defender and it's less armed light defender. They may have dropped it from the game... but they left both the mesh and the stats in the BIG file!

This would leave the Kushan flyable list as follows:

Scout - complete and in game
Heavy Interceptor - modelled not UV'd
Heavy Defender - complete awaiting POF
Light Defender - complete awaiting POF
Bomber - not done yet

All the other ships will be AI only, so we do not have a wide selection of flyables to begin with. I trust making the guns turrets will help to make up for the lack of speed

[Wanderer]

There is also the issue which might actually be useful to you with fighter/bomber turrets.. IIRC they shoot only at the targeted enemy.

[FlareBaffled]

Wanderer....if that is right, and once you target an enemy they focus fire on that..then that settles it! I'll build them that way and test to see how the turrets behave. If they work OK like that, I will keep them..but if they don't feel right or behave in a way that lets you feel like you are actually in command of the things, then I will look for a more complex solution to get what I want.

If turrets could be forced to focus only on the targetted vessel....then I could almost justify making flyable corvettes.....