ManSh00ter ManSh00ter

[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

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[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

Previously known as "The Last Stand"

from Sins Forums

 

 

Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION is an addon project aiming to expand upon the existing universe of the Sins of a Solar Empire, providing original and high-quality content on top of the original game. Aside from the new content, the addon will also include multiplayer-friendly gameplay changes as well as reworked or new visuals/sounds.

ETA: To Be Announced

Planned changes/content will include:

  •  A new playable race, created to the highest quality standards. The Xin are a race of utterly alien origin, and the massive fleets of their living, semi-sentient ships have been ravaging the galaxy for millenia. Countless races have perished under their onslaught - and now TEC, Advent and the Vasari will have to face this terrible enemy and win - or die trying.
    Assume the role of the defenders and try to stem the tide of death and destruction, or take command of the invading armada and destroy the impertinent insects wherever they choose to make their last stand. 
  • Volumetric Explosions & Damage Effects, providing not only greater excitement to your space battles by transforming all explosions and persistent damage effect into true 3D affairs, but also better visual cues as to how the battle is going, enabling you to spot at a first glance the hotspots and even the level of damage on particular ships.
  • Dynamic Battle System, where each ship class' strenghts and uses are not determined only by its stats and abilities, but also by its flight characteristics. Certain ship classes will be able to move during fleet battles, which, coupled with the reworked stats of all ship classes should prevent "cookie-cutter" or "spam" strategies.
  • New Ship Classes for the new faction, ranging from specialist ships such as the Warmaster or Emperor Battlecruiser all the way to Titans acting as mobile superweapons capable of facing down an entire fleet on their own or even destroying an entire gravity well in one powerful surge.
  • Reworked Balancing, aiming to further focus various ship classes on their roles, removing any overlapping advantages which ultimately make one ship type or the other the ship to produce. Changes will also include increased gravity wells as well as greater class difference in turning rates and top speeds in order to further accentualize fleet placement, strategic positioning of forward bases and other such details which a great admiral make.
  • New Planet Types, which will also be visually enhanced, primarily by increasing their size in order to make them a true centerpiece of a given sector. New planet types will provide greater variety without providing game-breaking advantages to players.
  • Enlarged Gravity Wells which, coupled with the dynamic nature of space combat, will challenge players to an even greater level, requiring careful placements of planetary defenses and orbital structures, as well as fleets.
  • Unique Structures for the new faction, ranging from formidable Heavy Defense Batteries to deployable Outposts which will be capable of guarding even sectors around otherwise uninhabitable astronomical bodies such as stars or gas giants.

==MEDIA SECTION==

 

==SCREENSHOTS==

 

==TRAILERS==

DRONE SPOTLIGHT I

A short ingame exposition of the Scout, Assault and Siege drones.

 

 

 

==BACKGROUND LORE==

Pangalactic War Timeline 

Clicking the above link will lead you to the download of a .pdf document detailing the rich and dynamic history of the factions which will play a major role in the Last Stand mod, so if you are into background lore, be sure to check it out!

 

==UNIT INFORMATION==

 Pending.

 

modding
4,165,983 views 1,794 replies
Reply #201 from Sins Forums Top
The ship designs feel a bit "clunky". Not the textures, but the shapes. Parts of the ships are smooth, and then others are cubic. Some of them have a lot of small parts sticking out, which is somewhat unnatural for any kind of ship design (if these things are travelling at light speed, they should be more or less in one solid piece, no?).

I really like all that's being done, but I would just suggest a different approach in designing the ships. The game is a great example; Advent ships are smooth, light, and sleek - TEC ships are dense, rectangular, and blockish - Vasari ships are a mixture between the two; smooth yet sharp, rounded but also blocky.

I think by following a "design code" such as this, the ships will look even more convincing in comparison to the other ships (all from the same race) and their own design. Best of luck with the mod too!
Reply #202 from Sins Forums Top
Well, actually, in space it doesn't matter how many small parts are sticking out - you are thinking in aerodynamical terms, which don't apply here as most of those vessels are not designed for athmospheric travel, and there is no friction factor in space.
Aside from that, its down to personal preference - I for example, being a big fan of Star Wars, find that "lots of bits" feels natural to me - we are talking about incredibly complex machines after all. The approach you are talking about would be more akin to the, for example, Star Trek - where ships are generally sleek, with few hull protrusions and (compared to those of Star Wars) relatively uniform plating. Sins models, since we are at it, actually feel a bit cartoony to me. Especially the Vasari. I like the bug theme, but there could be more detail. Don't get me wrong though - the model craftsmanship is superb.

Naturally, *some* models are in their beta stage. That means that, as time passes they will likely receive updated/fixed versions. Mostly this refers to little fixes such as certain parts being too blocky, as you mentioned, though likely not all of which you might have had in mind since the "cybork" approach means there will be curves in some places and sharp edges in others... and there are certain parts of textures which need fixing for resolution and so on.

In other words, its a feature, not a design flaw. :p
But thank you for the constructive criticism! It's very welcome.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #203 from Sins Forums Top
Everytime i check this threat it's always progressed, models look great as ever mansh00ter, can't wait to test this out :)
Reply #204 from Sins Forums Top
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I really like the look of your ships, It really has a different art look from the rest of the races and looks professional enough that it looks like it's canon.
Reply #205 from Sins Forums Top
...ManSh00ter...if your really an ironclad employee pulling our leg, and this is actually v1.1 of Sins we are seeing, its time to fess up...lol, its THAT good. but anyways, i agree with the aerodynamics of the space craft. in space, no air = no air resistance = cool ships that make no sense being inside of an atmosphere. its for reasons like this that i have never caught onto the existence of real flying saucers....i think to myself....why the hell would those little green homies build 'saucers' (which are a staple of aerodynamic design resembling our airfoil) when they can build cubes, which would be much, much more productive in terms of interior room and would work fine in space???....but i dont want to start a UFO debate on this thread, lol.

anyways, i for one love the looks of the ships i have seen thus far, so keep up the good work. i love the blue lights. blue lights are awesome. I am majoring in Electronics Engineering at my university, i just love decking out everything i build with blue LEDs, lol. they make anything pretty. I think red makes stuff look ugly, but that's just me.

but anyways, i have to be honest, i am rather curious as to how all of these partical effects will look. maybe they will blow me away....no pun intended...

kudos ManSh00ter



Reply #206 from Sins Forums Top
Nah, Bss he isnt an IC employee, he is just the one guy single-handedly beating them to this games expansion pack... in the form of a free mod  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #207 from Sins Forums Top
Haven't read all your pages yet, but based on the initial post, I'd say you probably played EVE Online at some point. If not, you should check it out, you'd enjoy it. :)

Very cool ideas! Best of luck to you!
Reply #208 from Sins Forums Top
Chewybond, I still play it. :) Now that game has some great-looking ships.

Bss08380, yeah, I think blue lights fit best with the whole silver/chrome finish the Xin have. But red lights can look great as well, just with a different color scheme. Some (advanced) concepts I have for the Hegemony ships have red lighting, but their color scheme is much darker, with black and gold dominating.

Speaking of concepts, here is a little snapshot of what I am currently working on:



Thought it would be nifty to show how a work in progress looks at the beginning and then show the end result. ;)

As for particles, I will show them once there are more of them to show. In the meantime, here are some blurry explosions ;)
Reply #209 from Sins Forums Top
ooo can't wait to see that puppy with a skin!
Reply #210 from Sins Forums Top
holy good god, i just watched the explosion video on youtube, wow man, i actually felt like a spaceship was blowing up, lol, which is new for me.

Nah, Bss he isnt an IC employee, he is just the one guy single-handedly beating them to this games expansion pack... in the form of a free mod


as for this comment, i say this: "no kidding," i say with complete honesty, that i hope the actual expansion for this game is as good as this mod! and that is saying a lot. i have been skeptical of mods my whole gaming life, being an affluent Elder Scrolls player. and if and of you have ever played those games on PC, than you know that there are thousands of amazing mods, but none of them live up to what they promise and i typically don't use them.

this mod appears to be different!! can't wait to see the new model, concept looks pretty damn cool.
Reply #211 from Sins Forums Top
Ah yes - its easy to fall into the Enthusiastic Trap when first dreaming up a mod. You get all excited and then people get excited when they read what you intend to do, only for you to realize a bit later that you can't actually do some of the things you said and that is... embarassing.

So to avoid any possible dissapointments, I usually refrain from saying-then-doing, and do it the other way around. That said, there are some cool things you can do with Sins, but one can only hope there will be plenty more when Ironclad releases the full modding suite. I am talking about completely different gameplay stuff, such as units with radically different behaviour than anything currently in game, lifted (or at least expanded) constraints on the number of units per category and so on.

Right now all I said in the project outline stands and is doable - but personally, I would like to do some deeper game-altering modifications, such as introducing dynamic fleet movement for certain ship classes, tweaking unit type behaviour, AI behaviour etc.

Ah, and for explosions, in the spirit of trying to make The Last Stand the best damn looking mod out there (:p), I just introduced a little tweak that I hope will make the explosions look even more voluminous and believable - flotsam. With that, when a ship explodes, in addition to long-lasting chunks of debris (I have increased their lifetime to nearly 15 minutes), there are also numerous smaller objects being expelled from the explosion, simulating a disintegrating hull. These are not actual debris but are a part of the particle system and last only some 30 seconds or so, but should add to the BOOOM! factor considerably. Note that they are specially tailored for this and their poly count is *really* low as not to bog down the system if there's a lot of explosions going around.
I'll post some vids and screens once I am satisfied with the result.
Reply #212 from Sins Forums Top
how about make fighters better...?...
Reply #213 from Sins Forums Top
Incredible work on the mod so far; definitely the one I'm looking forward to the most. One suggestion; on capital ships. Can you make each one's weapons more specific to the individual ship? Because as it stands Kol is the only Capital ship in the game with a unique weapon.
Reply #214 from Sins Forums Top
The explosions are going to rock. i can say that with cirtainty. i await them eagerly. the more complex, the better.

and i do hope that ironclad throws you modding folks a bone and releases the full mod tools. the wide range of modifications that will blossom will be staggering. I, personally, have no idea how to mod games, but cirtainly love them and enjoy a good burst in mod content.

so

For those about to mod. fire. I salute you.
Reply #215 from Sins Forums Top
really nice, can't wait for release.
Reply #216 from Sins Forums Top
Lord_Mordja, the capital ships for the Xin are each going to very different, though you can expect similar roles to what is available now (a frontline combat ship, a drone carrier, a specialized colony capital called the Ark Ship, which can "ressurect" a player from certain defeat if played wisely, and a support capital); each with unique weapons, although keeping in line with the Xin theme, where they use energy weapons allmost exclusively. There are going to be plasma cannons, proton beams, tractor beams, electron flux discharges, plasmid drones, point defense plasma weaponry, shield destabilizers... lots and lots of shooting awaits those who tackle these aliens. ;)

Derek06, as for fighters, where vanilla races are concerned I will see... right now I think fighters are what they should be, bomber killers. Xin equivalents are going to be a little different, the carrier ships will be able to replace them faster and at less cost but they are going to be comparatively weaker in hull (no shields) and also if possible more numerous.

This is where the limitations I talked about earlier come into play - I would love to make Xin drones the sort of a "melee" attack craft, which latches onto the enemy ships and cut them to pieces with their mandibles and plasma cutters. If you watched Matrix, a "squiddie" type of thing. But I doubt that is possible due to the flight mechanics of fighters and bombers. I'll try reducing their attack range to really small values, see where that gets me. Maybe it works. ;)

Annnd, for those of you who liked the explosion effects, check
this out. Its the new and improved blast with Lots Of Small Pieces (tm) flying about.
For those of you who don't mind using Rapidshare and would like to see a video not mucked up by Youtube, you can get it here (about 2Mb in size).

Note: there seems to be a hardcoded limit to the number of particle emitters which doesn't allow more than 10 per effect. So instead of four different chunk types I was forced to use only 2, but I think it looks good anyway.
+1 Loading…
Reply #217 from Sins Forums Top
Looks good, I always thought the vanilla explosions were horrifically tame, my only question, how are you going to make capital ship deaths look better (than that)? :P
Reply #218 from Sins Forums Top
Easily - capital ships are not only going to explode (and its going to be a much more violent explosion than that of a simple drone or a frigate), they are not only going to leave floating corpses of former crew dancing an icy waltz across the eternity, but they are also going to leave break-away sections of themselves as a mute monument to their wasted glory!

*takes a deep breath*

Where was I? Oh yes. Its gonna be kewl. ;) Also, the current "critical hit" effects are also going to be adjusted. When they smoke, it has to be black and billowing. When there is a hull breach, there will be stuff blasting away, sparks (and again, screaming crewmen) flying out. I aim to make it feel like a ship was mortally wounded, and the game engine is perfectly capable of doing that without any significant hit to performance. Hell, with some ships I may even put in special stuff, like escape-pods jetting away seconds before the explosion...

Anyway, all that will be a part of the Last Stand, but I will also release the mentioned effects as a sort of a mini-mod as soon as they are complete.
Reply #219 from Sins Forums Top
ManShOOter - has Ironclad or Brad tried to hire u yet? They should. Keep up the kewl work. You are destined 4 greatness.
Reply #220 from Sins Forums Top
Have you checked out bailknights new explosions? He has done some remarkable things with his graphic mod.
Reply #221 from Sins Forums Top
I have, and since he has done such a superb job I will not be overhauling general effects for the vanilla races - instead I plan to incorporate his work into the Last Stand and make the explosions mini-mod compatible with his graphic overhaul, so that people can use both.

As for explosions themselves, it comes down to personal preference. I think my effects are more "visceral" and realistic - he has stayed true to the style of the vanilla game and enhanced the current explosions so that they don't look as weak as the originals. So it really comes down to which style one prefers.
Reply #222 from Sins Forums Top
Easily - capital ships are not only going to explode (and its going to be a much more violent explosion than that of a simple drone or a frigate), they are not only going to leave floating corpses of former crew dancing an icy waltz across the eternity, but they are also going to leave break-away sections of themselves as a mute monument to their wasted glory!*takes a deep breath*Where was I? Oh yes. Its gonna be kewl. Also, the current "critical hit" effects are also going to be adjusted. When they smoke, it has to be black and billowing. When there is a hull breach, there will be stuff blasting away, sparks (and again, screaming crewmen) flying out. I aim to make it feel like a ship was mortally wounded, and the game engine is perfectly capable of doing that without any significant hit to performance. Hell, with some ships I may even put in special stuff, like escape-pods jetting away seconds before the explosion...Anyway, all that will be a part of the Last Stand, but I will also release the mentioned effects as a sort of a mini-mod as soon as they are complete.

Wow, I truly hope it all works as well as you seem to suggest. I shan't sound too excited until I see it, but I sincerely hope it works as I imagine it. I truly believe you are making the next generation of this game, nothing else comes remotely close; if it works as I imagine, it will blow the vanilla game out of the water.
Question, is it possible to make these hull remnants cause damage as they explode out should ships be sitting too close, ala the destruction of the Pegasus in Battlestar Galactica? I can find you a video if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Reply #223 from Sins Forums Top
So it really comes down to which style one prefers.


these are space ships. these are space ships with reactors strong and efficient enough to send it into lightspeed time and time again. the engines use anti-matter to do crazy stuff. so, if one of these ships gets shot too many times by a few too many lasers, i expect it to go freaking BOOOOOOOOM!!!! as all sorts of things in the reactor cores in the engines go critical and unimaginable, almost impossible reactions begine to happen as the anti-matter collapses in whatever way it can.

this would not just break a ship into a couple parts and have a little *bang*. its gonna explode like there's no tomorrow, killing everone on board, and demolishing the ship, sending it floating all over the place, hitting other ships, crashing onto planets, etc. the sheer speed of some of this debris (since there is nothing to slow it down) could seriously damage ships its path.

so, what i am basically saying, is that your explosions are more befitting of a space battle since they are more brutal, violent and concussive.
Reply #224 from Sins Forums Top
Mansh00ter, I have one thing to day that expresses my thoughts on this mod: I would not at all be suprised if you secretly had a team of highly experienced modders, or IC employees, or something, working with you. the fact that you have managed to produce this kind of content in such a short period of time is amazing, as is the mod.

However, I have one question. Are you still planning to have the Hegemony and the Remnant, as you mentioned earlier in the thread, and if so, will we be able to have each race as a separate mod, so our cravings can be appeased sooner?
Reply #225 from Sins Forums Top
Korgan0, glad you like my work. And the speed of it. ;)

As for the Remnant and Hegemony, yes, I am planning on having them in the final version of the mod. That said, I plan to have the Last Stand have three "stand-alone" versions, with the initial iteration called "The Last Stand: First Contact" where the Xin will make their debut, along with the core assets such as reworked gameplay mechanics (regarding such things as gravity well sizes, static defenses, mines etc.), new art (for vanilla races this will mostly be the new explosions and debris system), incorporated mods such as Uzii's planets and Bailknight's reworked effects (except explosions).
After that I will move on to the second stage, which will add the Remnant, and then finally the Hegemony, at which time the mod will be in its complete and final form.

In the interim, I am working on a mini-mod in parallel with the main stuff, which will be released Soon(tm), will hopefully enhance greatly that "blood and glory" feeling to your Sins games and will be compatible (in fact I would reccomed using it in tandem) with Bailknight's effects mod.

Bss08380, yeah, that's my reasoning behind the explosion design. Splash damage I am not sure about, I know it exists in the game already but will have to see how it is executed. The hardcoded limits currently cramp my style somewhat so I have to budget virtually everything, from abilities to effects. Still, I am satisfied with how the mod is progressing, there haven't been any insurmountable problems so far (I even realized I can add a synced sub-explosion to circumvent that 10 particle emmiters per effect limit, so the final version of the new explosions will have the full 4 variations of flotsam instead of just two).