Major Stress Major Stress

[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

from Sins Forums

Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine

Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year

This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.

The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747

The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473


The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it ;)

While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.

The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.

Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.

The current version of SoA 2 is  0.03b   "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473

0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.

All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.

We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.

I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.

Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.

Status of Demo 0.04  "The actors are in place" 

Will update when i have news.

General Changes:

Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a

May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.

SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.

Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.

Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.

More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.

The Federation:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Klingon Empire

Faction is complete. Only structures left.

The Romulan Star Empire:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Dominion:

Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.

Pirates:

They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.

Planetary Defenders

Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.

Balancing:  Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.

Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04

Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.

In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)

Troop Transport effects.

Planetary invasion animations

Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)

Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.

Future Updates:

SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.

The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.

*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".

SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2

This main header will be updated when i have news to post.





modding
4,110,042 views 1,754 replies
Reply #376 from Sins Forums Top
somewhere in page 1-3 i suggested a way to convert a siege frigate into troop lander and i have seen it used as ideas for other mods. its there somewhere oh so long ago... heh
Reply #377 from Sins Forums Top
I saw that, and yes considering that this is a Dominion War mod, that could work. But to me that's much more a Klingon thing than a Federation thing...besides which it sounds like Major Stress wants to do all the races separately so there should be things that make the federation unique. Culture ships and technologies seem like the thing that can make the Feddies stand out. Leave rape and pillage to the klingons and dominion.
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #378 from Sins Forums Top
silverace99: Excellent suggestion. Using genuine diplomatic crafts to "spread culture" as a means to take over enemy planets would be a great way to go. The amount of culture spread shouldn't be particularly fast. A non-defended planet could get captured this way, but as you say, you could possibly have a stacking-effect by having multiple Norway Classes or other diplomatic craft, such as the Galaxy Class. I also think that it should not be an automatic ability, but rather as mentioned an activated ability.

I'll look into getting this idea added :)

The Klingon use "shock troops" to conquer enemy planets, as seen in one of the DS9 episodes. We'll figure out similar abilities for use on the other factions.

And again:

NO BORG

Possible pirate factions that fit in the Dominion War setting: Orion Syndicate (affiliated with the Orion Pirates), possibly the Ferengi Alliance. They're ships are formidable, however they were fairly neutral during the war.
Reply #379 from Sins Forums Top
Rofl, Darkthunder, I don't think we'll ever stop having to say "no borg" :P
Reply #380 from Sins Forums Top
I had an idea about the Federation planet thing if I may...

I noticed that the "planetary bombs" that are used by ships to bombard a planet can be changed to be the craft that come out of the colony ship when colonizing a planet.

So here is the idea, every little planet bomb launched at the planet looks like a shuttle instead of a large missle and its hit affects are something simple like a blue myst or a peace symbol on the planet instead of a shockwave. It seems like the most simple method to me as all you would have to do is come up with a shuttle-like particle to replace the planets bombs and a new "hit affect"

Just an idea though....
Reply #381 from Sins Forums Top
I think when you get down to it, the problem is no longer that borg are not going to be in the mod, but rather that...
We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. We will add you technological, and modding data to our own...

Woah,....*shakes head vigoriously* sorry, kinda blanked out there for a second. Anyways...carry on the good work guys...
Reply #382 from Sins Forums Top
I am Sovereign!


Unfortunetly this is what the model looks like the majority of the time. i call it "black ship syndrome" I have no clue how to fix it. I am following the mod documentation to the LETTER. Also the hardpoints are not exporting with ConvertXSI.
here is the "black ship syndrome shot. the sun is directly behind the camera. however the model only shines at a certain angle. the rest of the time it is black except for the self illuminated sections.



This Is Excelsioooooor!



Same "Black ship" problems as with the sovvie. The texture seems are my fault and will be fixed.


As you can see even though i have no internet at all where i live, i am busy trying to get ships in game.
Reply #383 from Sins Forums Top
Major Stress, which modelling program do you use? It may be a problem with tangents if you are using 3DSMax, that's the only thing I can think of. As for hardpoints, I know a working procedure for XSI, so if you want it I can post it here. Not really sure how to go about it with other modelling software, though if they don't export its probably a naming convention issue. The converter is rather specific about some things.
Reply #385 from Sins Forums Top
The model's look great major stress :)

and the texture still look good despite of "black ship syndrome" lol.
Reply #386 from Sins Forums Top
dgjklasj !!!!1 f*@%! I JUST started my Excelsior model... And it's out dated. sigh, whatever. I guess it's on to something else...
Unfortunetly this is what the model looks like the majority of the time. i call it "black ship syndrome" I have no clue how to fix it. I am following the mod documentation to the LETTER.

I am having the exact same problem as you. The ships look beautiful and cast realistic shadows...for all of like 100 degrees. The other 260 degrees of rotation in relation to the sun, they're just kinda black, which makes it easy to see the cool lighting effects, I guess. I know it's not something with the tangents, 'cause all I've used is XSI and it looks fine there... Whatever, fantastic job, and I applaude your devotion!

Ezraeil

Oh, P.S., is that the Enterprise refit of the Excelsior, cause if not, I'll just keep working on my model to go alongside the professional one... ;)
Reply #388 from Sins Forums Top
It is the tangent map that is the problem and im working on fixing it. I use 3dsmax 6 to mesh the models. The sovereign is from our "Favor the Bold' mod for bridge commander.

I am also having trouble with the hardpoints not exporting. again i am following the mod docs to the letter. but all weapons fire from center of ship.

perhaps the ones working on the "other" trek mod will share info with us?
Reply #389 from Sins Forums Top
There's another trek mod going down? Shame I don't know about it ;) . I know all of these suggestions are going to sound ridiculously simple and stupid, buuut A) Are you using XSI to place the hardpoints? B) if you are, pay careful attention to the modeling/scaling/rotation history of the ship and hardpoints. It took me an hour to realise that I should NOT freeze the histories of the hardpoints otherwise they just appear the same as the rootpoint and everything happens there. C) I can't tell you how many times I exported the Miranda only to discover that when I did, I forgot to select everything and I just got the model w/o hardpoints. If you are placing hardpoints in 3dsmax, you've got me stumped. Never used it, probably never will, sounds too fancy for me. Fancy things scare me. It's a curse.
Maybe you can help me w/ something... Bump maps. What's the best way to make them, how pronounced should they be on the in-game model, how do decide what should be "bumped" (raised/lowered). I'm using the N-Vidia plugin for photoshop elements to make the bump map. For the other two texture files, I use the Gimp because I can manipulate the individual RGBA channels in it, just in case you're wondering.
Hope I could help you, hope you can help me, hope there's just a lot of help going back and forth...

Ezraeil
Reply #390 from Sins Forums Top
Erm, you can manipulate RGBA channels in Photoshop, and then some, as well. :)

I find that anything between 1.0 and 2.2 on the Nvidia normal map filter works best for ingame bumpmap purposes. 2.2 being real heavy on it, of course - I wouldn't go any higher than that.

As for what should be bumpmapped and what not, usually you want anything that is not meant to be polished to have bumpmapping. Just use common sense - every surface which is not polished has indentations. With Trek ships using matt materials a lot, I would imagine color masks would also come in handy.

Major Stress, do you have the "rootpoint" dummy linked with the rest of the hardpoints? Also, the game seems to be case-sensitive in certain areas, so make sure you named your dummy objects *exactly* as stated in the tutorials here on the forums. There could also be a problem with the unofficial exporter (I am assuming that's what you are using) - I suggest trying to do hardpoints and tangent maps in the XSI mod tool.
Reply #391 from Sins Forums Top
Photoshop elements, unfortunately, as I have found, is like an extremely handicapped version of Photoshop elements when it comes to doing more complex tasks. Like monty python black knight handicapped. It can't separate RGB's or manipulate Alphas, and it took me forever to realize all the tutorials I was looking at were for photoshop, and not elements... but the GIMP seems to work well too.
Reply #392 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, if you guys can do tangents well, can you help me? I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to that area... What should a good tangent map look like? what is a good texture projection to associate with the tangent map?
Would appreciate any help anybody could give!

Ezraeil
Reply #393 from Sins Forums Top
Photoshop elements, unfortunately, as I have found, is like an extremely handicapped version of Photoshop elements.
oops, I meant elements is a handicapped version of REGULAR photoshop...

Reply #394 from Sins Forums Top
Incredible, those models are just incredible, I dont have a clue how you can model like that? Lot of spare time? lol
Reply #395 from Sins Forums Top
Well, in XSI, tangent maps are generated automatically. Just select a model, and go Properties->Tangent. You can (and should) tweak the map to have as few sharp color transitions as possible, it gives better smoothing when it comes to lighting, but that's usually used for high-poly models with lots of curvature; ships usually don't have that problem so you may as well leave it at default if you don't want to bother.

Also. Generate the tangent map when you have UV mapped the model - the process is automatic, you don't have to manually associate projections or anything.
Reply #396 from Sins Forums Top
Stress, what tool are you using to convert to .mesh? if its the tool released for Max, mess around with the Glossyness setting, it will brighten the model up a bit.
Reply #397 from Sins Forums Top
OMG dev.'s helping modders!!!!! :LOL: 

I think I've reached a state of religous fanatisism with this game!!!!

Basically, you ALL ROCK!
Reply #398 from Sins Forums Top

Oops deleted my own post by mistake:P (In case anyone is wondering what Admiral is referring to just above me)

Stress, write [email protected] and I'll hook you up with ftp info so you can send your xsi file and textures. We should be able to track the problem in minutes.

Reply #399 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks Blair, i was going to suggest they pm someone on the dev team for some help. i know you guys want to get the modders set up so you guys can sit back and rest for a bit.

I formally request that Major Stress and Ezralibeatus work out some sort of work share agreement, so you guys dont do the same models, and after there all done each of you get a full set so Major Stress can use the complete set for his Dominion War Mod, and Ezrali can use the full set for a mod with borg, (maybe with some sort of its own story/setting/reason). both of you do quality work, you can learn from each other and others and figure out little problems like you doing, but the main reason... it would allow the models to get done MUCH faster. As the mod team knows, they got alot of work to do once the models are done. So maybe when it comes to the models and data it can be a communal project, if there is someone that wants to tackle making weapon effects for ALL trek weapons...

And i think i saw a collection Trek music somewhere....

Good Luck!
Reply #400 from Sins Forums Top
I am also having trouble with the hardpoints not exporting. again i am following the mod docs to the letter. but all weapons fire from center of ship.


roflmao I just wrote a new topic about the EXACT same problem (before reading this) I am having with my Babylon5 EA Omega Destroyer, all the bloody weapons fire from the center.

Stress I feel your pain.

Are you exporting straight from MAX like me? Maybe its a generic problem with the MAX exporter script if you are.

UPDATE : I found the center weapons firing problem to be the facing or alignment of the dummy objects. Basically if its wrong or the points are missing it seems as if the game defaults to using the center. So check the alignments and try not to stress... PM me if you need more info.