[starlord]

Currently macave is checking out some leviathans. He was especially enthousiastic about the shiva.

[BadSyntax]

Well I had an opportunity and the time today (while the maids clean I get locked in my spare room with the cats, who HATE vacuums) and did some scanning

First of all I scanned everything color @ 600dpi, cept for a few of the line arts which I scanned as grayscale.

My scanner isn't high tech, its an old brother mfc5100c that's been out of toner for like 2 years, but still had a functioning scanner.

Anyway, I scanned in all the profile views of the 14 grav tanks that had the profiles in all the products, as well as the size comparison.  I also scanned the leviathan *counters* that came with the 2nd edition (I have the 1st edition box counters too, but they are well worn!) and they came out pretty decent.  On the back they had line art versions and I scanned those in both B&W and grayscale.

I tried to get em as lined up as I could, but its obvious some of the tanks are a few degrees off   I also tried to clean them up and dropped all the excess.

BUT, like all old pre-computer printed drawings, they use that stupid dot fill method, where when you look at them up close there are thousands of tiny dots instead of an actual color, so they need SERIOUS help to look great, in addition many times those dots were off a few mm, so the borders around the outside of the tanks is quite jagged and shouldn't be

I didn't upload the counters themselves from either game, as they are like 75mb each and honestly quite worthless for any computer conversion.

Its a 125mb download, and if anybody cleans up the images or does models I'd *really* like to see em

I did notice there are a couple top views of like 6-10 fighters in some of the interceptor scenario books (fire eagles, medusa sqdn, etc) but they are just all black.  Also, the ship briefing has side views of ALL the ships, though no top views except for the core 10 or so ships unfortunately  

http://www.goodsects.com/CenturionLeviathan.zip

I'll re-update my entire centurion folder (I made lots of changes due to interest recently) in a day or two.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I'll re-update my entire centurion folder (I made lots of changes due to interest recently) in a day or two.

      Cool man, thanks. Yeah I noticed the core ships have top and side views ut they lack the front back etcetera which would make things much easier in general.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Oh darn, you don't have the box counters edition. Oh well . . . Leviathan was a person can still use it for some idea of colour scheme for texturing.

[starlord]

Thank you so much: I think we've got everything me possibly need as far as info and docs are concerned now.
I'll send the tank pics to macave to see what he thinks of them.

regards.

mike.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Thank you so much: I think we've got everything me possibly need as far as info and docs are concerned now.
I'll send the tank pics to macave to see what he thinks of them.

     Eh, tanks should be a low, low, low priority compared to fighters and capital ships.

[starlord]

True enough. Right now, it seems macave is working on the leviathans. I'll dig up my bee after my exams.

[BadSyntax]

Guess ya'll went and got me interested in renegade legion again


2d engine is done, and will handle thousands of ships/fighters and theoritically infinite play areas:
http://www.goodsects.com/Leviathan.bmp

Now for the easy stuff, the back end code (well the armor widowing will take a day maybe)

Then the interface, which will take days

Then the mission code, days...

Then network code, days to weeks...

Now to find the days   (If I had like 2 weeks I could finish it all, but I dont get that much vacation and am trying to work on another project to keep me from having to work!)

I updated my huge centurion file, http://www.goodsects.com/Centurion - its around 1.4GB, sorry for the size, its also got the full ISO for Battle for Jacob's Star in there.

I'd be very curious to see Interceptor become playable, though I would think writing a 3D space engine (Using something like TrueVision3D and VB) would be easier than modding an existing one that will never be exactly what you need.

Bad Syntax

[starlord]

Actually, this MOD will aim at being a blend of centurion/interceptor/leviathan elements while following a plot (from the point of view of a pilot).

Thanks for the data anyways, it's much appreciated.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The goodsects link doesn't seem to be working.

As for the other ideas, I dunno . . . personally, not sure how involved I'll ever be in this but if I do get involved, I don't know much about modding but I know even less about programming. Freespace2 has a few limitations, but they're being pushed all the time as new code is introduced. But might be worth checking out . . .


You should mention your plans for a 2d Leviathan game on the yahoo group, I'm sure people would love to check it out.

[BadSyntax]

Whoops!  Forgot the .zip in the URL:

Use this one:
http://www.goodsects.com/Centurion.rar

Actually, I don't need any help at all doing all the programming for a game such as this, my limitation is graphics.

Basically, the ships/fighters for anything space related.

Ground stuff is even harder, if I had good tanks and terrain I could make it in 2D fairly easily.

3D on the other hand, while the base code isn't that much harder, I am not very good at making all the cool effects like missiles arcing through the sky, laser beams, or explosions, but using TV/VB.NET I can do the other stuff pretty well.

My problem with mods that completely change the universe of the original game, is that they never really feel "complete" and always feel more of a "hack".  Take the battletech mod for C&C Generals for example, *excellent* mod, but it really doesn't capture battletech very well (though I'd love to have all the models!).

The dropteam game could pretty easily do centurion, but I found the engine quite lacking as far as interface went and at times was jerky enough to be annoyingly unplayable (and the rest of the time it was like 60fps, go figure)

I would think the best interceptor mod would be one of the wing commander games, but I don't think those were ever moddable.  WC3 was the last game that got me really "riled up", though some like COD4 came kinda close.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Well, it's interesting to note that Wing Commander has been modded to FS2 (WC:Saga). Not sure if you've given that a try and to see whether it "captured" the universe or not.

I dunno, I think the main thing right now for any MOD is simply creating assets (ie 3d models of the fighters and ships). That's what's most important. If someone decides to switch game engines down the road they should be workable in either environment.

[Jake2447]

Whoops!  Forgot the .zip in the URL:

Use this one:
http://www.goodsects.com/Centurion.zip

Actually, I don't need any help at all doing all the programming for a game such as this, my limitation is graphics.

Basically, the ships/fighters for anything space related.

Ground stuff is even harder, if I had good tanks and terrain I could make it in 2D fairly easily.

3D on the other hand, while the base code isn't that much harder, I am not very good at making all the cool effects like missiles arcing through the sky, laser beams, or explosions, but using TV/VB.NET I can do the other stuff pretty well.

My problem with mods that completely change the universe of the original game, is that they never really feel "complete" and always feel more of a "hack".  Take the battletech mod for C&C Generals for example, *excellent* mod, but it really doesn't capture battletech very well (though I'd love to have all the models!).

The dropteam game could pretty easily do centurion, but I found the engine quite lacking as far as interface went and at times was jerky enough to be annoyingly unplayable (and the rest of the time it was like 60fps, go figure)

I would think the best interceptor mod would be one of the wing commander games, but I don't think those were ever moddable.  WC3 was the last game that got me really "riled up", though some like COD4 came kinda close.

the FS2 engine is surprisingly moddable, and with a community like HLP, you'll always find someone who can help
the BtRL and WC:Sage mods are excellent coversions to those universes

alos, i agree COD4 is a great game

[Backslash]

My problem with mods that completely change the universe of the original game, is that they never really feel "complete" and always feel more of a "hack".  Take the battletech mod for C&C Generals for example, *excellent* mod, but it really doesn't capture battletech very well (though I'd love to have all the models!).

I mostly agree.  Fortunately, the difference between them and us, however, is we have the source code.  With the right talent, this can go way beyond mere 'modding'.

Some people say it's comparatively easy to program a game engine and get it up and running.  I say... well if you can, go for it and let us know how it turns out.  Unfortunately this has happened a lot... some coder goes off to reinvent the wheel "and do it right this time".  90% of the time major progress is made, but by the time the engine is perhaps halfway done, the coder runs out of steam (or hits a RL hurdle), and the rest of the interested community, seeing nothing they can yet use, eventually lose interest.

So yeah, I believe you could code up an engine that got 3d rendering and collision detection working properly.  That sounds like a feasible one-man job.  But then you gotta factor in:
* AI (this one's huge)
* sound
* networking (getting easier nowdays, but still)
* tools for asset creation/conversion
* mission scripting and parsing (important!)
In fact, the last two combined with weapon/ship/object stats boil down to THE most important things to the engine.  If this isn't accessible to the public, the engine will be forgotten (outside of the really dedicated).  I guarantee Freespace would be NOWHERE if it weren't for the ease of table editing...

The beauty of having THIS engine here and now is we can try things out NOW, and add more as we go.  Even someone who can't do art to save his life (like me ) can look at a simple table (made of text!) and go "Hmm, let's see what happens if I make this ship go 100m/s instead of 50?" "Oooh, what happens if I give that beam a refire rate of 0.5?" and so on.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Regarding Armour Values:

    I think I've discovered a solution to the problem of uneven armour values.
    What I think will probably work, is to basically model a four or six part subsystem shell covering the fighter. Make the shell invisible, and make it a destroyable subsystem (so the geo will disappear) and have the no-carryover damage flag so that basically, when the subsystem is hit the hull doesn't take damage. Basically, it will be a second "shield" except made of subsystems instead. Then once the subsystem is destroyed, the piece of geo dissapears, and the ship's hull itself can be hit (which in general would probably be fairly weak).
    Only problem I foresee is that there might be a lot of subsystems to keep track of (similar to how capital ships get far too many subsystems). And that, the armour would show up as subsystem damage rather than in a diagram unless the HUD could be jury rigged to do something else. But basically it would work as desired. Actually hell the hull value shows up the same, so whatever who cares. . . .

So after a rough beating you might have:
Subsystem Damage:
Armour Front - 32%
Armour Port - 60%
Armour Aft - 0%

    Problem is, those subsystems would also have to be told not to regenerate. Which is fine, since I think the whole subsystem regeneration thing is native to FS2 only and I'm pretty sure the no-self-fix can be made default. Also, with regards to disabling fighters, I'm not sure if the armour would have to be shot down first or not. But not sure how important disabling craft is for the game anyway. . . . I'm sure it can be accomodated in some fashion. Might be a problem though if the player takes out the ship too quickly once the armour is down.


   One other thing I'm thinking is that the fighters would probably need a top and bottom armour value. Though one could get away with simply the sides . . .if a top/bottom is used I'd just go with giving it the lowest value on the fighter. (so if a fighter has 50/30/30/40 armour (F/L/R/A) the top bottom would be 30/30)

[starlord]

a few words: Campaign 1, CTWP, cone lasers, capture immediately!

[Akalabeth Angel]

a few words: Campaign 1, CTWP, cone lasers, capture immediately!

     Eh, one problem is that the thing about RL is that it's so dependent upon the damage template for dealing armour. It's a cool device for a boardgame but probably not very implementable in the game. But weapons like the cone laser, Laser/EPC, etcetera all depend a lot on the template in order to be "cool". Even weapons like the EPC/NPC will probably be hard to do . . the NPC does more damage at long range than close range, how can that be done? Every other weapon does more damage at short range than long range, currently there's no way to accomodate this as far as I know.

[Backslash]

Whoa, what are cone lasers?  What would they look like?  How MUCH of a cone?

Funny you should mention doing more damage at long range than close range... I've been working on fixing the Attenuation setting for beams to work inversely as well.  ...course that might not help if the NPC acts more like a projectile.  Hmm, perhaps I could implement that too.

Good ideas about the armor.  I'll do some thinking about how to jury rig the HUD for such a situation, if possible.  You are correct that the self repair can be turned off.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Whoa, what are cone lasers?  What would they look like?  How MUCH of a cone?

      Not as exciting as you think. One thing to know first, Renegade Legion boardgames work off the principle that the armour of a unit is represented by a box with 10 columns and a variable number of rows. So a ship with 50 armour would have a 5 by 10 box representing the armour.  Now, different weapons affect the armour in different ways. A Mass Driver Cannon for example, gouges out a crater so it would effectively mark off 5 boxes off the top row, 3 off the second, and maybe 1 off the third if you get my meaning.
      Lasers, of the normal variety, typically only affect one column. So a laser that does 8 damage that hit an undamaged 50 armour ship would deal 5 damage to one column of armour and the remaining 3 would penetrate to the internal components.

      Cone Lasers are supposed to be on a different frequency, so rather than just make a small but deep hole in the armour, they refract around and bounce their damage all over the place one they've penetrated armour. What effectively happens, is that the laser deals a "reverse cone" of damage with maybe 1 point of damage on the top, and a widening hole beneath it. But in terms of visual effects, it would look largely the same. Now what's the point of that? Well, if on that 5 by 10 group of boxes, you can seperate some boxes from the larger chunk then at the end of the turn, they float away. So if a cone laser hits, and makes sort of a pyramid/cone shape and then a normal laser drills a whole which touches the base of that cone or pyramid, then the group of armour above it becomes "widowed" and floats away.

     So yeah, basically some weapons deal damage, and some weapons deal damage in an odd way to facilitate the removal of armour from a target without actually damaging that armour. The Cone Laser is one of them.


EDIT - I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be implementable in the game without some MAJOR MAJOR coding going on representing an optional but entirely new way of dealing and receiving damage. (ie impossible)

[starlord]

In that case, we'll have to "simplify" the damage values of those cannons (If necessary, we'll stray slightly away from cannon).

This idea backslash mentionned for the NPC looks good (since the Npc is a beam). Is it operational? Has it been tested?