IskatuMesk IskatuMesk

Black Sun: Salvation (Available for viewing)

Black Sun: Salvation (Available for viewing)

This is what I've been working on. View in Original at fullscreen for best effect.

BLACK SUN: SALVATION

(Direct link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSucsRDKvuU )

 

(Old episode 0 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ZmMkdB5eM )

 

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 This project is intended to be used as a medium for recording the Black Sun Episodic videos. Episode 1 is likely to be the last of the episodes, with 0 being the first. The gameplay-related aspects of the project are barebones and only to facilitate the production of video media. The game is too limited for my designs elsewhere.

The project will not be released as a mod. However, SFX work is released as a part of the Black Sun SFX pack. When Episode 1 is finished, the Episode 1 variant of the pack will be available. This SFX pack does not function stand-alone, it is intended to assist developers in fleshing out their projects.

I do not take requests or commission offers.

123,547 views 161 replies
Reply #76 Top

I never planned to make the mod itself public. Only the audio and the video work. Much the same way with projects I made in the last few years. To me, it isn't a waste as long as I can complete episode 1.

Reply #77 Top

To you, maybe not, but to us, it is a waste.

Please give it to us?

 

I am quite aware that you said some time ago that you didn't plan on releasing the mod to the public, and you don't have to; you could give it to me or someone else and we can finish the coding and things for it and release it in your name.

Reply #78 Top

I will consider it, but don't be surprised if I say no. I stopped releasing my work publicly a while ago, and releasing something containing a huge amount of my novel canon material is something I am extremely wary of.

 

In other news, I finished a chunk of explosion particles and am now preparing to make a pass on explosion sound effects.

Reply #79 Top

Whatever.

Good luck with your novel.

 

Your explosions could use a little more variation around side edges and maybe a little less glow.

Reply #80 Top

I agree. I will keep taking passes at them until I am ready to record. But they are good for something to start with. I don't have any caps of the UD explosions currently.

 

/edit

Here is a video demo of some of the explosions, as screenshots really don't do them justice. Like all things shown before Episode 1, they are considered prototypes at best.

 

 

Do note that youtube would have degraded the video quality.

 

In these particles I am trying to capture the colossal scale of events taking place. These explosions are for ships exceeding hundreds of kilometers in length, full of ammunition and other elements that would be sufficient to create a temporary, miniature star. But, at the same time, the sins engine is very limited in what you can do with particles. I would have liked to have more control over how the individual textures look by having access to emissive textures and bloom overlays and such to control how the glow distributes. Otherwise, having only a few textures up at once makes them look very flat and plain. I accepted the lesser of the evils, which was to have a lot of glow instead of not enough glow, but I am constantly tweaking and playing around with them to find the right balance.

These particles are prototypes, maybe a half hour of work for all of the Anahn fireballs combined and a bit more for the UD explosions (the red ones). The UD explosions in particular I am not happy with, as I am currently unsure how to create a shower of glittery black glass yet. I may need to spawn mesh particles.

I have a few ideas on how to break the monotony of the AH moderate effects, which I'll experiment with in due time.

Reply #81 Top

I dont understand, you are dooing all this work and posting it on these boards and you are never going to release anything of it?

Reply #82 Top

I originally intended to make a total conversion but realized it wouldn't work out. So, I'm pressing to create Episode 1 at least. This will be a video about 30 minutes in length, perhaps best thought of a mini movie. I am not skilled enough in 3ds max to do this entirely in CGI so I am still using sins as a basis for my recordings.

I released the Episode 0 sound effects a while ago and will release the Episode 1 sound effects when it is done as well. These are not an independent mod but rather a resource for other modders.

I made it clear from the beginning I did not plan to release the actual mod.

Reply #83 Top

Yes.

It's a pity.

 

Your effects aren't bad.

If you want black glass, then change the effect shader to NotAdditive, it allows you to put in non-alpha changing prioritized textures. PF doesn't display them correctly, so look at them ingame before being too judgmental.

Reply #84 Top

IskatuMesk's vision for his universe is simply beyond the capacities of Sins or any game engine currently in existence. I do not blame him for not wanting it spoiled or corrupted until one does. Further Sins does not get much Machinima, which I think is a real shame, but if we only get one good series of work out of it, I think you are by far the most qualified to create it.

That said, I hope you continue to release any sounds, particles or other things that could be useful to other projects.

Reply #85 Top

Hi IskatuMesk, I've been watching your undertaking is great, your model ships perfectly detailed. I have only one can not understand - it will be a mod or what you doing this for? If you're not going to do the mod why? It came out a great mod for the fans of this game, I even dared to b to say one of the best mods! With respect Santyaga.

Reply #86 Top

It will all make more sense when I am done. Think of the game/mod as merely a front for the real project.

 

 

Reply #89 Top

Thy kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

 

 

In other news, I still cannot get the Bloodstone Battlecruiser's beam ability to utilize both hardpoints. They are both named Ability-0 but only one is used for the attack. Otherwise, I am getting closer and closer to finishing the Anahn portion of Episode 1. I only need to model a few more ships and make a few dozen more sound effects/particles, and then a couple of generic abilities and their related assets. However, as I cannot get a ship to fire two beams for its special ability, I may need to redesign several ships.

 

/e

 

I've also concluded that the max-difficulty AI gets a truly absurd multiplier on its research times. In an effort to segregate generation levels I added a multiplier of, like, 24x to the low research speed (enough to catapult the Kodiak research to 1500 seconds) but they still seem to get researches nearly instantly. It's kind of hilarious, actually, but could be useful in the long run.

I am nearly ready for civil war recordings. The Dreadnaught goes in next, followed by the Razzador. I was going to make a battlestation but I may skip it.

 

/e 2

 

"Field tests of the new battleship began a few hours ago, my Prince. You remember the Patriarch, don't you? You wanted us to push ahead with elemental weaponry, but alas... the core schematics you give us still cannot be replicated so easily. I thought that, until we have perfected fabrication of the Proteus cores, that we should utilize Flame Lance weaponry to its maximum potential while it still makes a difference. Granted, we already have so many Champions to lead our fleets, but perhaps we'll need something more... specialized.

"He is gorgeous, my Prince. His blades cut through Tiran as though it were butter. Smaller than the battlecruiser, yes, but still larger than all Warlord battleships we possess in our research. His shield allows him to jump anywhere... even into a star if he must, and it protects him from the electromagnetic interference from such a locale that unshielded ships would have to deal with. All the better to guide a sword so perfect into the throat of those still foolish enough to challenge your word. It has less cannon than the Champion... many less... but the fusion bolters can pierce the heart of any solar body that draws your ire in a single shot, and require no upkeep! What battleship can boast the longetivity to endure fighting a dozen such classes at once and still be completely operational? Even the Champion has its ammunition restrictions.

"Alas, I did remember my Prince's fondness of redundancy. The penetrator cannons present on the dreadnaught are the first of their kind. Their shells far exceed the three-fourth C boundary standard rails tend to be limited by. A byproduct of the subspace engineering you opened up to us a few decades back. What? Are you not pleased, Adashim? I have not even spoken of the beam weapons yet!

 

... Why do you look at me like that? Do you think it is not enough? What Warlord can stand against the might of the regime now?! With such weapons at our disposal, the very Gods would kneel before us!"

"It is not mere Gods I fear, Haktish."

Reply #90 Top

Recording has begun for the civil war segment. A lot of random bugs, problems, and difficulties are slowing things down. Like...

        muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.100000

... And the sound refusing to play more than once every second+. Yay. I encountered a potentially crippling error earlier, some related to frames, but it magically vanished. As the game likes to have a crash when I change entity values and reload a game before it works 100%, bugfixing is slightly irritating but I can match behavior to errors most of the time, now, barring something retarded like when I changed the hardpoint count on the Razzador from 127 to 123 when I added a Hangar. What the hell is wrong with me?

 

The Chimera MK2 has some weird UV cockadooky going on but I'm not qualified to try to fix it so it'll remain. I was hoping fighter battles would be more... exciting. But, alas, they are terrible. The Anahn race, other than some touchups and sounds I'll get to sometime tomorrow hopefully, is virtually finished. Thank God. Other than abilities I had stocked resources for, which I have all but abandoned now since I couldn't get multi-hardpoint effects to work, I have run out of usable sound effects for cannons and other stuff. I still need some SFX for Flame Lance weaponry but those are so difficult I may just ignore those as well and keep using the placeholder.

I find the sins camera extremely unwieldy, *especially* the zoom, but if I get 10-20 seconds of usable video out of 30 minutes/an hour of recording then I'll get this section done relatively quickly. For the AH vs UD sections I don't need nearly as much flying around I don't think. Setting up battles and angles to be proper is tremendously more difficult than I was hoping, though. I've spent probably about 8 or so hours tonight and I have maybe half a minute of footage that is any good, about two minutes of footage that would have been good if it wasn't for sound effects being "bugged", and a lot of wasted hard drive space.

I sent out an unrelated demo video to internals a while ago and got favorable feedback. So I must be doing something right.

Focus will soon turn to the Undead, and I've began mocking up new Xy ships in my head and considering updates to the old ones. The beloved GoreKhan model of many years ago is going to be fixed up and updated fairly significantly. The World Eater probably won't even resemble the old model. The Glecterror and such are not likely to change a lot. Luckily, none of these ships should ever require 123 bloody hardpoints. *shudders*

/e

 

Ah... I am close to being done with civil war/lost fleet recordings. A small chunk of this project is complete, but an important chunk. Soon... soon I shall be able to show to you the fruits of my work.

Reply #92 Top

I'd still like to eventually play the mod, because it looks cool and fun for that matter.  Great work though.

Reply #93 Top

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 90
muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.100000

... And the sound refusing to play more than once every second+.

Check your soundeffects.soundata file and try increasing the maxNumPlayingSimultaneously line. If its too low sometimes you hit the limit without realizing it.

Also you are using the Developer.exe for all of this right?

Reply #94 Top

I only use the dev exe when I encounter crashes I cannot immediately fix because it resets my settings. I have checked the sounddata file over and over and I have no idea... the max sim playing is 5 like all the other sounds of this nature, but it never plays a bunch and then cuts off, which would allude to the channels getting maxed out... I'm not sure about this one. I'll keep at it.

 

I should probably use the dev exe but out of habit I end up launching the regular one just because of those settings and I hate having to bypass a bunch of random unrelated errors in regards to strings and such every time I want to see changes to a particle or sound.

Reply #95 Top

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 94
I should probably use the dev exe but out of habit I end up launching the regular one just because of those settings and I hate having to bypass a bunch of random unrelated errors in regards to strings and such every time I want to see changes to a particle or sound.

That's odd, usually the Dev only gives one string error and then just ignores the rest. Regardless though, I think you will be much more productive once you learn how to use it, if for no reason than you can change your entity, texture, mesh, string and perhaps even particle files on the go without exiting the program, in addition to other features that will help with your recording, such as disabling damage, spawning ships, disabling AI etc. While its still a bit of a work in progress you may find my guide here useful.

+1 Loading…
Reply #96 Top

Ah. That is a nice guide, I'll read through it. Yes - I used the Supreme Commander dev exe extensively for my modding in that game and it was very useful. I guess I have become too soft through the less demanding games over the years.

 

/edit

 

Argh, the spam of

㄀⸀㠀㐀㐀 maxNumFrames exceeded 5570652. Extra frames ignored.

Is going to make using the dev exe extremely annoying...

 

/e 2

 

Other than that random error this is infinitely more useful for fine tuning particles. Previous to this I was reloading save files manually for every revision...

 

/e 3

Well, I may not use the dev exe for recording due the errorspam (unless I can somehow stop it), but I can definitely fine tune a ton of particles a lot easier. I've tuned everything from beam hits to the Patriarch's fusion bolts. This allows me to work much faster. I wish I had tried this sooner... it will be invaluable when it comes to creating Xy particles and finishing the Undead. Unfortunately, I have discovered that the dev exe does not update to accept new sound effects when you add them in. I was hoping to use it to fine tune a huge amount of new Anahn SFX, but I tend to get those right on the first or second hit so it's not a big deal.

 

I'm curious if I can record a dev game as a replay, then watch it in the normal exe, and set up/record battles that way.

 

/e 4

 

Well, I hope someone has an idea about this one...

 

/e 5

 

Well, that problem is now effecting a second ship, the Hysteria, as well. The irony, as I am starting to go crazy trying to fix it.

Both max and XSI claim the hardpoints are oriented in the right direction, but ingame the right side hardpoints are clearly busted. It seems to think they're pointing left. Well, they aren't. I tried re-orienting them in the .mesh file but it didn't seem to actually do anything.

Reply #97 Top

I'm pretty sure no one sees edits, so here's a bump. I've yet to figure out how to fix that bug and hope someone has an answer. I've accounted for entity files, hardpoint directions, everything I can possibly think of. It's kind of hard to work on a project when everything you do has utterly no impact.

Not to mention that, on the Hysteria, the hardpoints that do work are firing in a slightly incorrect alignment. It's almost like they're reversed. But that makes no sense, because in XSI and max they are oriented correctly. Is ConvertXSI.exe after my soul?

Reply #98 Top

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 96
Argh, the spam of

㄀⸀㠀㐀㐀 maxNumFrames exceeded 5570652. Extra frames ignored.

Is going to make using the dev exe extremely annoying...

I have never seen that before. I would guess it has something to do with your particle effects (clearly its not frames per second, and I don't know what else would use that terminology), but I don't know much about those. Do you get this even with a single ship?

As a last resort you may also be able to manually go to your user file in the settings folder and set ShowErrors to False after previously starting the Dev.exe (it only rewrites the user file after you run regular Sins). The Dev's other functionality should not be affected (other non game breaking errors would also still be recorded in the log).

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 97
I'm curious if I can record a dev game as a replay, then watch it in the normal exe, and set up/record battles that way.

I have not tried, but I would think you could. I've reloaded saved Dev.exe games in normal Sins so I don't know why replays would be any different. 

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 96
Well, that problem is now effecting a second ship, the Hysteria, as well. The irony, as I am starting to go crazy trying to fix it.

Both max and XSI claim the hardpoints are oriented in the right direction, but ingame the right side hardpoints are clearly busted. It seems to think they're pointing left. Well, they aren't. I tried re-orienting them in the .mesh file but it didn't seem to actually do anything.

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 97
Is ConvertXSI.exe after my soul?

Easy way to tell. In the developer.exe go to Entity info and then hit z. All of the mesh points will then show up when you select an entity. The direction should be blue as in XSI. A few other functions in the entity info section may be useful in figuring out exactly what's going wrong with your weapons.

Reply #99 Top

I get that error in the main menu, which makes me think it's a ship. But I also get it on fresh load viewing nothing but default assets in my system. :\

I've removed fighter trails from most fighters, could that be why?

...

 

Huh, there's a new error.

Assert @ c:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\Engine/Render/Mesh/Mesh.cpp(242)

m_Orientation.IsLeftHandAndNormalized()

Something is majorly screwed up. Forum search yields nothing of value...

Well, it's as I figured. Ingame the hardpoints are quite mangled. The question is - how? Why? There must be something I've broken down the pipeline... but in XSI/max the hardpoints are fine. The ship is oriented correctly despite that error... isn't it?

I've been working with this game so long and still feel so utterly clueless when it comes to anything outside of Audition and Max.

 

Reply #100 Top

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 99
I get that error in the main menu, which makes me think it's a ship. But I also get it on fresh load viewing nothing but default assets in my system.

I've removed fighter trails from most fighters, could that be why?

Okay yeah, its has to be something that spawns on the starting "background map". I don't know if you've messed with the galaxysenariodef file much, but if you know how try removing the references to all the planet militia's so no ships spawn. If that stops the error you can then change the templates to spawn ships one at a time to see what's causing it.

I seem to remember people saying something bad happens when you remove the fighter trails, but that probably just comes from some thread I read when I started modding (even before entrenchment), so that may no longer be true anymore.

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 99
Well, it's as I figured. Ingame the hardpoints are quite mangled. The question is - how? Why? There must be something I've broken down the pipeline... but in XSI/max the hardpoints are fine. The ship is oriented correctly despite that error... isn't it?

Have you tried looking at the orientations in the .mesh file itself (opening in notepad)? I have to do that occasionally as some of the models I use I don't have access to the original .xsi file. You should see something like this once you open it up.

...

NumPoints 24
    Point
        DataString "Weapon-0"
        Position [ 10.000000 18.000000 570.000000 ]
        Orientation
             [ 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000 ]

...

If you can get the position values from with max or something you should be able to quickly identify the misaligned points and change the orientation numbers manually. Each of the weapon orientations are as follows (assuming you are looking from the rear of the ship).

Forward
        Orientation
             [ 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000 ]
Back
         Orientation
             [ -1.00000 0.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 1.00000 0.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 0.000000 -1.00000 ]

Left
        Orientation
             [ 0.000000  0.000000 1.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000  1.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ -1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ]
             
Right
        Orientation
             [ 0.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 ]
             [ 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 ]
             [ 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ]

If you can't figure out which weapon points are which, use the dev.exe with the points shown in your screenshot and slightly change the position, then save the mesh. You then know which point you are dealing with depending on which point moved, and can then check if it has the proper orientation "matrix" or not.