PROJECT UPDATEI am back again after a long absence but like I said five years ago, I may be lost but I am never gone. The thing is I am not as young as I wish to be. In two years time, I will be sixty. However, age will not stop me doing my only hobby - FS2 Modding. I may not be as fast as before but I still get things done during my offline time. This is what I did...
Originally, The Blue Guardian was intended only as a second campaign, a tiny additional VP file, TBG-Missions.vp with a file size of approximately 2mb. But as I did the actual Fredding and mission editing, the mod evolved and it needed more assets. So I have to build them. Downloaded some models and modified them to suit the missions. At present, I added 2 Destroyers, 2 transports, 2 space stations, 1 bad-ass Shivan sentry beam cannon, 4 miscellaneous objects and 17 weapon classes. Plus 4 completed mission of Act 2 ready for testing. All that in the month of February. The resources have grown to the size of 700mb. Because of this, the sequel will now be in a separate folder. A separate mod that is dependent on the Reboot Mod and MediaVP 2014. It is safe to say that this is a major project.
This march was dedicated for Alpha Testing (bug hunting) and Beta testing (feedback, balancing and improvements). I have a team of testers, my neighbors who are computer games addicts. Most of them had tested the Reboot. I monitor them closely during the testing sessions.
I also added some gameplay features in the missions like random behaviors. Example if you attempt to disable an enemy cruiser, it will direct more fighters to defend it or it will try to evade or even escape. And there is more than one way to prevent them from jumping out. These enemy warships will also react on what subsystem you try to destroy. There is also a quicker way to neutralize (destroying or disarming) bigger ships.
Here are some pictures...
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The space station, GTI Messina. This model is perfect. I modified the textures and edited the POF model. I needed a communication station that connects the known systems into a unified network through subspace. Even in Gamma Draconis, the comm station can link up with Delta Serpentis. While ship travel needed a node tunnel between systems, communication signals do not need this. the tachyon waves will radiate in the subspace dimension and will be picked up by these comm stations.
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The GVT Petra, an armed transport. This model is the cruiser Imhotep which is bristling with weapon turrets. So I have edit it and removed the excess weapons. I needed transports that are bigger than the ones in MediaAVP and in the Reboot. There may be some additions in the future.
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GTT Nautilus is actually a model with a length of 1,900 meters, intended as a corvette in the mod Exile. I reduced it to a 500-meter size as a heavily armed transport.
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The Rigelian Ships. It took me more than a year to find them. I edited the models, added more turrets, and fixed the game-crashing issue of the D'Deridex---the parent model has nothing in it. By the way, I renamed them from being Arcturians. Why? In my research, I found out that Arcturus (Alpha Bootis) is pretty close to our solar system, closer than Altair and Vega and fairly close to Gamma Draconis. In the story, these enigmatic aliens should be a thousand light-years away. The super giant Rigel (constellation Orion) is just as far. Hence, the change.
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The 4th mission in Act 1. This takes place in the Nebula. As you can see, I can not kick the habit of placing squadrons of hostile fighters. Although, I did tone it down in the first few missions of Act 2. You will notice in this image or if you edit my missions, that I actually organized the mission events because I tend to lose my focus and forget things. And it is an advantage for anyone who wants to modify them or improve them even.
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...And I still have my crazy, over-compulsive tendencies in mission editing. I had reached the 400 ship/object limit in this one. Well, it should because this is the finale of Act 1. Mind you, I still balance things and considering PC performance. The performance in this one is 35 to 65 FPS with medium-end PC, the specs of my computer. This is also the reason why I don't use Hi-poly models, save for a few.
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Before starting to build a mission. I make a summary of it. Incorporating the written material made by CT27, making notes for the mission events, the many possibilities that can happen taking into account the player actions (this aspect makes it really complicated). Practically, before I do anything at all, I lay in my bed, close my eyes and run a little private space battle movie in my head---including the voice-acting. I am totally immersed.
Here is a couple of videos...
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This is the 3rd mission in Act 2, just a rough draft. The first contact with the Rigelians. This video showcase the weapons, speeds, and their arrival/departure method which is "warping in" using FTL and not "jumping in" from subspace. This encounter confirmed the rumors in the Reboot about the GTCv Avenger. If you read the tech entry, it said about a rumor that the Avengers and Boreas are not of Terran or Vasudan origin.
I know you guys will say that this is a Startrek knock-off. Well, I will not deny that. What can I say? I am a die-hard "trekkie" from the 70's until now. And... I made a dumb move by using the Romulan Valdore model for the GTCv Avenger in the Reboot. I wonder why I did that? Oh well, it's too late now so why not go all the way.
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This is a test mission when I was creating the weapons for the Rigelians which is base on "tracking energy projectile" weapons --- again, the similarity to Photon torpedoes of Startrek. I was also testing and tweaking the "proper" movements of these ships making their waypoints without deccelerating between points in a path. It is pretty messy in mission coding but I finally got the proper effect---Well, close to what I really have in mind.
