[Kopakapat]

Hello everyone!

So I'm compeletely new here. I've never done any mods in the past. I've played the FS2 demo a lot when I was a kid and recently bought the game on GOG and finally finished the campain. These days I mostly play EVE Online, but coming games like Elite: Dangerous and EVE Valkyrie did make me think back at FS2.

A while ago, I saw this video of a guy who where making an EVE mod for FS2 http://youtu.be/sbbfHZFYt5s but it seem he didn't continue developement.

So here is my plan: make an EVE Online mod for FS2, in part to get in the hype train for EVE Valkyrie. 

My objectives:

- Create an EVE Online ship pack for FSO;
- Make some missions.

What I've managed so far:

-Exported models and textures from the EVE client with Triexporter [.gr2->.3ds];
-Extracted diffuse maps from EVE files with GIMP [.dds->.dds];
-Textured, re-oriented and re-scales models with Blender [.3ds->.dae];
-Organise models with PCS2 [.dae->.pof];
-Copy/paste and generally messing around in a ship table [.tbm];
-Flying in space with EVE Fighters.

Here are some images of the ships I imported in the game: http://imgur.com/a/ZBgfn#11
I must say I'm impressed on how good these look with the small amount of work I've done.

[Edit] Here are all the fighters and drones, in-game http://imgur.com/a/uyUsP#0

Here are some tutorials I used: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzpPwMASh4pPsFoVtPa3BUE6CBzOTuKv5


What's next?

So now I want to get most of the ships imported and give them some unique stats. Next thing I'm gonna work on is getting capital ships and structures in there.

I don't think I want to mess around with moving turrets, but those would be a really nice adition, since all ships in eve online use them. If anyone has a good tutorial on that, or if someone is interested in doing it, please leave a comment below.

The textures right now are ony the diffuse texture map. In a EVE University tutorial they show how to get all the texture maps using the materials in blender. I tried it (and got a beautiful result in blender) but PCS2 didin't like that. So if any of you have a fix for that or want to take care of it, please leave a comment below as well.

[Droid803]

Not sure if its a good idea to import ships wholesale.

[procdrone]

won't EVE copyrights will be against that?

[headdie]

As the member who suggested Kopakapat become involved here I am going to step in with this.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts

Quote from CCP's message:
2011.10.05 18:54:00 CCP Wrangler
(wich should allow me to use their stuff for the mod.)

"As long as you don't charge for the mod or otherwise make any profit,
and as long as you give us (CCP) credit for the artwork and such,
there shouldn't be any problems with this mod."

It might be worth trying to contact CCP to be sure but based on the above you should be ok

[Kopakapat]

Quote from CCP's message:
2011.10.05 18:54:00 CCP Wrangler
(wich should allow me to use their stuff for the mod.)

"As long as you don't charge for the mod or otherwise make any profit,
and as long as you give us (CCP) credit for the artwork and such,
there shouldn't be any problems with this mod."

I can't find a better written proof of that. It's generally understood that CCP's models are free to use, as long as it's non-commercial. They already are widely used by the EVE community, for example  http://youtu.be/d8Ke1P3m4nU

They also got a lot of their music on soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames that I remember reading that we can use.

Still it would be a good idea to write something like «all the models, textures and music are property of CCP» somewhere in my mod. Where should I put this? In the readme?

[Dragon]

Readme will do for the first demo/alpha release. Once the mod starts shaping up, you might want to check out credits.tbl, and add the attribution to in-game credits screen.

[Nyctaeus]

Does it mean we can use their models in our mods? And not only EVE related? What's with remodelling their models?

[Kopakapat]

@Betrayal, I don't know for sure, we'd have to ask them. But I've seen people use them and modify them in the past, for example:


 

[Nyctaeus]

Could U guys export me one Caldari ship? I need Rokh model. I don't have EVE and don't know how to convert it to more friendly format.

[NeonShivan]

I strongly suggest asking CCP for permission regardless if you haven't already to prevent any legal issues from popping up later into the mod development. It never hurts to be safe.

[Kopakapat]

@Betrayal, what format do you want? I could get it for you, but the easiest way is to grab this .stl file they made for 3D printing http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:151170/#files.
You don't need to buy eve to get the models, you can download the client at http://community.eveonline.com/support/download/, grab triexporter and start extracting. You can play with the trial account, or not even have an account I guess. You can have the files anyway.

@BTA, yeah thank I'll ask if I can have a written permission on the EVE forums.

[Nyctaeus]

I need something that I can import into Blender. OBJ is preferable.

[Kopakapat]

There you go. I included the texture files with it.

[attachment kidnapped by pirates]

[Kopakapat]

Here's a video of all the drones and fighters in-game.  http://youtu.be/8_G3tIfjQf0

[Vengence]

I didn't continue work on the mod as it was mainly a testing ground for me to mess with SCP features such as multi-axis turrets, shaders, flyable capital ships, weapon trails, importing obscenely large scene objects (it failed). I generally stopped as I learned what I needed from it, plus was waiting on other SCP features to pop in.

Here's the current files but chances are it's loaded with a bunch of pork and loaf from me messing around:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dl9ucndo2j4nmxn/EVEModFiles.zip

[Nyctaeus]

Thanks a lot for the export. Good luck with Your mod. I'm waiting for more updates

[chief1983]

There's a user here, Nu11u5, who has looked into this in the past.  He's a college friend of mine.  Be sure to send him a PM, he might be available to offer some assistance.  He always wanted to get EVE into Freespace but by himself it was always too daunting a task.  He'd probably be more than willing to help other motivated people and share his experiences with the model converting, thoughts on game balancing, etc.  He definitely spent a lot time considering the possibilities.

[Kopakapat]

@Vengence, thanks a lot for the files! I'll see what I can learn from those. Thanks a lot for making this mod and the youtube video, that gave me the idea of doing it.

@Betrayal, Stay subscribed to this tread and you'll have updates as I progress. 

@chief1983, thanks I'll send him a message. I myself don't want to be too overwelmed by this project (as engineering school demands a lot of time) so if I can recruit some people to do some stuff that would be nice!

[Nu11u5]

Seems I picked the right year and month to check out the good old HLP forums again.  Seriously, I wouldn't be here if I didn't read about FS2 being on sale on Steam somewhere else.

It was quite a while ago when I dabbled with the idea of making an FSO campaign for the Eve universe (over 5 years, actually).  I had some ideas, a few ship models imported into the engine, and started looking into properly turreting and tabling them when I lost motivation.  The project would have been the first mod attempt I'd undertaken, and unfortunately it didn't get off the ground much at all.

A few things have changed since then:

The big one is the upcoming game 'Eve Valkyrie' that CCP is making, that will put players in immersive dogfighting battles with optional VR headsets and some nifty motion-sense mechanics.  Word is that Valkyrie won't have a story based campaign and will be 100% multiplayer.

CCP prefers to be consulted on large fan projects so they can give official approval to use their IP and avoid potential legal issues in the future.  There hasn't been any issue in the past, but with Valkyrie on the horizon that may cause them to reconsider their normally generous stance on IP use for a game in the same genre.

A campaign based game would certainly get a bit of attention, though, since Valkyrie has been criticized for lacking a story mode.

The other thing that has changed are the source files for the Eve assets.  Let's assuming permission to use them was given (rather than rebuilding them from scratch).  CCP has redesigned the models for the game assets several times since I've last looked at them.  The texture format is all new, and the object files that define the materials, lighting, and animations are in a new (and proprietary, as always) format as well.  Still, I've seen other groups use the assets in some capacity in video productions (such as TheEVEouttakes on YouTube) so there is a way to work with them.

The good news is that CCP also redesigned the way turret models work!  Before they were assembled piece-meal by the engine.  Now they are complete objects with animations and can be located in the game resources.

Plus, the models have been gorgeously updated since 2009!



My work flow before was to export the models and textures from the resource files using a programs called "TriExporter" (models export as .3ds).  Use GIMP to swap some channels around in the texture files to convert from CCPs texture system to a standard format.  Import everything into Blender.  Realign the textures and fix some poly normals.  Export as .obj.

I can't say what still works and what has changed since then.  It looks like there are some tutorials still maintained online for working with Eve's asset files, but they may be outdated.


I won't commit to assisting with your project yet, but I'll give my input if you'll have it.  Unfortunately, I don't have anything left over to share with you from when I attempted to start my Eve mod.

[Kopakapat]

I've been away from that mod because of school and the little time I have I send it actually gaming. =P

I've had an answer from EVE Online's customer Support telling me that «This would strictly be against CCP copyright rules» they told me to e-mail [email protected] for permission buth they didn't answer. That is of course a huge setback, and probably mean I'll just import the models I want to explore myself in the FSO engine.

The texture files did change and I only managed to get black and white textures with youtube tutorials. I could indeed mess with them in gimp to make them better, but I am no artist and don't really want to put time in mingeling with textures.

I'm also not sure if I want to get into turrets, that seem complicated.

Also, about Valkyrie, I tough I've read the Oculus will be mandatory to play the game. =(