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 #401 from Sins Forums Top
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).ck!
I formally request a work together agreement... :p

I don't feel like making an entire mod by myself or with my own team, and would much rather see a very well done one completed by experienced modders like the OP's of this thread. I just wanna help, yo! True, I do want to do the borg eventually, for my own enjoyment :HOT: , but that's a long way aways for me. I would like to join/augment this team, but no one 'cept Annatar has given me any information... sigh. whatever. for now, it's back to ModTool.

Ezraeil
Reply #402 from Sins Forums Top
My concern here is that the SoA2 team, as of yet, seems somewhat reluctant to release any of their work for us to try (which I totally understand), I just really enjoy playing with your ships in the interum & I hope working together doesnt mean that you stop releasing what you've done.

But even if it did, you guys, all of you, are doing some AMAZING stuff here & have every right to as restrictive or unrestrictive with your work as you want to be & you have certainly made a die-hard fan out of me!  :CONGRAT: 

Good luck to all of you....

Adm. Cobbs
Star Control: Origins
Reply #403 from Sins Forums Top
My concern here is that the SoA2 team, as of yet, seems somewhat reluctant to release any of their work for us to try


I don't think you'll find any major mod team that releases bits and pieces of their work on a regular basis. A release is a release.
Reply #404 from Sins Forums Top
I get that, in fact I said that in the the last post "(Which I totally understand)"

I think you missed what I was trying to say, but its cool... :p 
Reply #405 from Sins Forums Top
i downloaded the homeworld mod, pretty cool... can't wait for this mod... the only thing I wish could be changed is how the ships attack in sins, they just stand still and shoot, it would look alot better if they moved when they were fighting.
Reply #406 from Sins Forums Top
ye maybe the way fighters move but allot slower
Reply #407 from Sins Forums Top
My concern here is that the SoA2 team, as of yet, seems somewhat reluctant to release any of their work for us to try (which I totally understand), I just really enjoy playing with your ships in the interum & I hope working together doesnt mean that you stop releasing what you've done.But even if it did, you guys, all of you, are doing some AMAZING stuff here & have every right to as restrictive or unrestrictive with your work as you want to be & you have certainly made a die-hard fan out of me!   Good luck to all of you....Adm. Cobbs


The way it works is stuff is done by different people, and it's all bits and pieces until it fits together in the end :P We have a few guys working on models and trying to figure out how to best get some of our existing models imported. We have another guy working on particle effects, another guy working on music/sounds, and yet another on codemonkeying/playing around with abilities and stuff :P

There wouldn't be anything complete to release at this point, save perhaps one finished ship if we combine everything we've got right now :P
Reply #408 from Sins Forums Top
If we figure out the problems we're having with getting ships to look right ingame, we MAY release a mini-mod of sorts to wet peoples appetites. Don't hold me to this, i'm just saying it's a possibility. Would probably contain only a couple of ships in total.
Reply #409 from Sins Forums Top
Let me apologize,

I wasnt trying to imply that the SoA2 team should do anything differently then planned, just that EzraeilBeatus had released some of his work & that I hope he continued to do so.

It was not my intention offend or upset anyone & I am sorry if I did.
Reply #410 from Sins Forums Top
I don't think anyone was offended ;) It's just that our progress doesn't quite work the same way :)
Reply #411 from Sins Forums Top
And i think i saw a collection Trek music somewhere....Good Luck!

I got the music if anyone is interested. I have not been able to find the sound effects resources yet however.
Reply #412 from Sins Forums Top
I did its ont the other forum as well but here is the link:WWW Link

Has St Button,weapon & Music sounds. not perfect but enough to get by till SoA2.... :p 
Reply #413 from Sins Forums Top
I've got some pretty good sound effects I've found on line. You can test them out when I release my next update later this weekend...
Reply #414 from Sins Forums Top
I dont use the 3rd party .mesh exporter for max because it crashes for me in 3dsmax 6. I mesh in max, then export to 3ds, and then import into XSI. I then re-apply the materials and textures in accordance with the modding documentation. Tristan has pointed out my mistake with the tangents, and i will correct those mistakes and retry the import. As far as i know it doesnt matter how the tangent maps are done, or what projections they are. As long as the areas where you want sharp edges are different colors.

I am all for sharing info. Except that i am not at liberty to share our models until we have something to release. There are too many people, and too much work involved in making them to just arbitrarily give them away. Yes most will be re-issues from our older mods. Refitted to work with sins, but some ships will be brand new meshes (like damn near the entire breen faction).

Reply #415 from Sins Forums Top
Stress do you do anything on top of the default Export to .3DS settings in Max? I tried doing that myself but it was crashing XSI when importing the .3DS
Reply #416 from Sins Forums Top
Another issue we are currently having, is despite setting up the tangents properly for the weapons, we end up with phasers shooting their own hulls for no apparent reason.

On another note: Is it possible to make selected ships like the Defiant Class and Birds of Prey, use more "Fighter movement" than Capitol ship movement? We've tried getting the Centaur Class to work as a Fighter, but it crashes the game as is. Any ideas how to fix the two issues I've listed?
Reply #417 from Sins Forums Top
I know the Sacrifice of Angels 2 team arent releaseing their models and such, but still, could we get some screen shots on what we may see? Im very excited about this, also Ezraeil awesome job, keep up the screen shots, they keep me hype. Anyways, i troll the forums at work, and love to see progess reports, but pictures are awesome hehe.
Reply #418 from Sins Forums Top
^Oh I know. Whenever I am bored at work or school I check to see if there are any new posts on this thread and the other one. In my experience there have been a lot of mods for other games that sounded awesome that never came to be unfortunately. Love seeing screenshots of this mods progress! Helps me keep the faith that it will actually come out one day. Err... no pressure though.  ;) 
Reply #419 from Sins Forums Top
Another issue we are currently having, is despite setting up the tangents properly for the weapons, we end up with phasers shooting their own hulls for no apparent reason.
What do you mean exactly? The only problem i've found with the phasers is that if your hardpoints are inside the mesh, the game will feel free to fire from the inside out any part of the ship, as long as it's in the direction the null is pointing. i.e. a null is just below the surface of the mesh, and the game will fire through the top of the saucer and the bottom of the saucer, depending on where it's target is. The beam still originates at the null, but it kinda looks like it's slicing through the hull. To remedy this I just placed the null directly above the point where the phaser banks are, and the beams restrain themselves to the upper portion of the hull. That might be what you are referring to, or it might not be, I can't really be sure ;) .
As to this

Is it possible to make selected ships like the Defiant Class and Birds of Prey, use more "Fighter movement" than Capitol ship movement? We've tried getting the Centaur Class to work as a Fighter, but it crashes the game as is.
It seems like I've tried everything I can think of, but I'm no code monkey, so I wouldn't take that to mean all possibilities have been exhausted. I really want to figure this out too, and probably won't release a defiant model until I get the behavior right. It would just be a travesty seeing the defiant sit in place and become a turret... I think there was some talk in the thread or on the site for the Dawn of Victory mod that they were making some progress separating fighter behavior from a fighter. I may have misread/misunderstood, but I think I will investigate this further, possibly PM that team and see if they have anything. I also think it would be cool to do a little modeling for that mod on the side... ;p . If I find out anything, you guys will be the first to know.



I know the Sacrifice of Angels 2 team arent releaseing their models and such, but still, could we get some screen shots on what we may see? Im very excited about this, also Ezraeil awesome job, keep up the screen shots, they keep me hype.
It's a heck of a lot easier for me to put up screens than it is for them. My 'team' consists of basically me and admiral cobbs. They've got an entire team crunching numbers, monkeying codes, bumping maps, and the like, and I can totally see that although progress may be being made, it may not look like that to the outside world. Where as I'm kinda trickling stuff out, there's will all come together in one giant black-hole esque condensation of Star Trek goodness. All I have to say is be a little patient, and I'll try and keep quelling your appetite for now...

Till Later,

Ezraeil

Reply #420 from Sins Forums Top
It seems a general consensus that the unit behaviour, including its pathing is part of the entityType listed in their .entity files. As there is no (conventional) way to edit or add new entity types, right now I believe you can't make ships behave like fighters and vice versa. Though if DoV mod team manages to do it I'd be interested to hear how as well!
Reply #421 from Sins Forums Top
Out of curiosity, did Blair and the team track down the issue with the Black Ship Syndrome?
Reply #422 from Sins Forums Top
PMed the DoV team, and they agree with your conclusion that it's just not possible right now to change unit behavior in a way like that...yet. Hopefully when we have access to the full mod tools, it'll be a relatively simple fix, but for now, it seems my grand vision of defiants strafing cardassian fleets will remain but a dream.

sigh

Ezraeil
Reply #424 from Sins Forums Top
Hi everyone,

I recently completed a Constitution Class Star Trek model was having some similar issues that you seem to have encountered in regards to the "black ship syndrome". Am I correct in assuming that this is caused by tangents in 3dsmax? I'm not really familiar with tangent space and was wondering if you have found a fix for this problem. I'm currently using the 1.1 3dsmax exporter that is listed in this forum in another post. Here are some screen shots so you can see what I mean. Any help or explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Also all the models in this thread are really top notch. I love the excelsior model.







Reply #425 from Sins Forums Top
when will this mod come out?

...you didn't read the first post in the thread, did you? Is that too much to ask? I mean, not reading through all 17 pages of the thread I can understand, but the very first one? C'mon.