[prometh]

While I see progress on many unknown ships and "uglies", it makes me wonder whether anyone has made any Death Star models. Both versions are a very important part of the Star Wars universe.

[Something]

The Death Stars. Famous, yes. Important, not necessarily.  They are only important if they are needed. The Star Wars 'verse is much bigger than the Death Stars.

[prometh]

The Death Stars are more important than a ZY-Wing, no?

[Something]

In stories already told. I have little desire of flying a Death Star including campaign, as I know it would inevitably lead to a Battle of Yavin/Endor finale and I'd blow the thing up. Again. The official games did this more often than not and personally, I've grown weary of doing it.

It's time to move on from that and play something new and fresh. About the Uglies, I view them to be as important as the Death Stars in that they help build the star wars 'verse and in fact do a better job of world building than Death Stars. Death Stars are a single point in the canon of Star Wars, whereas there is an entire galaxy out there that can be created and explored and open to anyone to build on.

[prometh]

The only time we've ever been able to play a Death Star run with full space sim controls was in the original X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance. The Rogue Squadron games were arcade style.

[MatthTheGeek]

Also, those things are way too big to be more than background props. Skyboxes do that better, unless you want to do trench runs, in which case you only model the trench.

[zookeeper]

As cool as a Death Star would be, I think it'd be a pretty massive and prominent project meaning that if there was one floating around here somewhere, everyone would know about it already. Unless of course someone intentionally didn't want everyone to know about it, in which case someone could have a Death Star but they still wouldn't admit to it now.

Just trying to keep a little optimism here.

[prometh]

They managed it all in X-Wing, man.. it's surely possible

[zookeeper]

Sure, it's possible. Still, it's not like whatever you see in X-wing isn't incredibly primitive, so doing something that'd otherwise match the visual quality of FotG would require a heck of a lot of work and all sorts of bizarre trickery. The engine's not exactly built to support things like that out-of-the-box.

[Hobbie]

To build a Death Star to the level of quality everything else is being built, and to scale (because not having it to scale is for wusses), it would eat the FS2 engine and superlaser the remains. It's a LOT of data.

[prometh]

it would eat the FS2 engine and superlaser the remains.

LOL

That's too bad, though.. it's been my dream to play such with modern graphics. Rogue Squadron games come close, but they're too arcade'y for my fantasy.

[Mongoose]

I remember someone (Omni?)  making a trench run video ages ago, more as a detail box proof-of-concept than anything else, but that wasn't exactly up to the visual standard that a legit mod release would need.  You pretty much would need to have it be just a skybox, or at the very best model a (relatively) small portion of it as terrain.

(I will say this though: even though it's an arcade style, given its age, Rogue Squadron 2 holds up extremely well graphically.)

[headdie]

using detail box/spheres you could probably keep the rendering load down, especially while in the trench, would still be a massive undertaking though

[prometh]

What if the FCP team merged in a flight sim engine? Could be used for both the Death Star and planetary missions

[Trivial Psychic]

Omni's error with the Death Star and the trench run, was that he mistakenly believed that the trench was the equator groove and as such his model was too small by comparison.  That said, it WAS a proof-of-concept, as Mongoose pointed out, for detail boxes and it succeeded in that respect.

[chief1983]

What if the FCP team merged in a flight sim engine? Could be used for both the Death Star and planetary missions

A google search of these very forums will probably show you numerous times when merging in other engines has been proposed in the past, and what follows is usually a long technical explanation of why not, so I won't bother to repeat any of those explanations here.

[Dragon]

Sure, it's possible. Still, it's not like whatever you see in X-wing isn't incredibly primitive, so doing something that'd otherwise match the visual quality of FotG would require a heck of a lot of work and all sorts of bizarre trickery. The engine's not exactly built to support things like that out-of-the-box.

Well, I once tested a proof-of-concept version you made. Not an entirely flawless implementation, and could use a better model set, but I liked how it ran. I might still have it, actually.

Indeed, the biggest problem is getting a FoTG-quality Death Star. I once toyed with an idea of an AU campaign involving multiple superbomber raids (not by Rebels, it introduced a few new players into the war) against DSII's important points, like hangars, superlaser and Emperor's tower. The mission concept turned out to be completely unfeasible due to sheer size of the thing. Even just basing the player off Death Star (which I also wanted to do) would be rather hard to do well. If I ever return to the idea, I'll probably end up splitting the DSII's role between Executor and Eclipse, with anything involving DSII happening in the background/behind the scenes. FS engine isn't just suited for objects that big, especially if they're supposed to interact with the rest of the game. Inferno did have a huge Earth in back in retail, but it was just a prop, and you weren't getting close to it.

[assasing123]

i m bad for liking battle of endors? they are the equivalent of space LOTR battles...

[General Battuta]

You're only bad if you like the bad ones (which is most but not all of them).

[Luis Dias]

I love BoE's. To say "you can only like non-bad BoE's" is unnecessary. Just as I hate bad convoy missions or bad strike missions or whatever, bad BoE's are... bad!