In this video I talk about and then demonstrate in-game some of the new particle systems and textures in the works for Black Sun: Retribution. For the first time since the project began tentative beginnings in early 2012 the public will see some of the new work in motion. Those with close eyes may catch sight of some new ships.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/ret_particledemo.mkv

Note that the production video will be encoded with significantly higher CRF than this video. The goal will be to remove those bleeding reds and darks and achieve 1:1 picture.

IskatuMesk, you are truly a master at making those particle effects and meshes. Well, at least in my opinion. They looked great at the end of your video, and I didn't even notice any lag (which was very noticeable in Salvation). Glad that everything is coming together, however slowly.

One question, though - and I apologize if I don't know how to spell the names of the races - the Anahn ships seem to only have one texture that is on every ship on every surface. Will they be like this in the final film or is this another case of work-in-progress? I am just asking because compared to your beautiful particle effects and meshes, it almost feels as though the texturing does not keep up to the same level.

But overall, I am incredibly happy that you are doing this at all. Good luck with those UDK scenes.

I decided not to bother trying to texture stuff in sins for two reasons.

1.) The RAM limit. It plagues every mod and this one is no exception. Due to the sheer amount of content I am adding mesh and particle-wise, I am already getting dangerously close and I have so much more to go. Giving each ship unique textures that would look any good is beyond my ability as a UV'er to do, and beyond the abilities of sins to do. The method I used to texture that AO Juggernaut is way too wasteful for sins.

2.) Texture entry limit. I have to gut the default game of files because the number of files can and will crash the game. I have a lot of files as it is. Unique textures would, again, crash sins because of this.

However I plan to UV and texture much of the UDK material and I hope to get some of the ships that will be in the UDK textured as well.

I am considering employing the same texture scheme to the Anahn that I did the DyiithJhinn to give them better texturing, but some ships I can't convert again because of that stupid vertex checksum error, most notably the Leviathan. This is what stands in my way, not to mention the making of said textures is rather difficult.

Oh well. I'll just stare at all the pretty flying lasers and lightning balls and what-not then. But thank you for the quick reply, IskatuMesk.

I look forward to the night where I can download the entire video, hook my laptop up to the TV, and watch it on the big screen. And tell my family "Remember that game Sins of a Solar Empire? This guy made a movie in it. Oh, and he changed everything to his own universe." And then my little brother would start complaining and eventually head back to his room to play some League of Legends. But I would enjoy that evening. Depending on when in 2014 you finish, I could either be in high school, on summer vacation, or in college.

I look forward to the night I have created something I can finally be proud of. The lack of textures in sins is a hard bullet to bite, but I am confident the project will be able to stand without that. Salvation's problems were more fundamental, with the lack of textures being more of a minor thing. With all of that solved, I am sure it will be seen as insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Well, then I say keep at it until you are proud of it, no matter how long that takes. If you feel burned out, take a break instead of pushing on and losing creative interest and passion. I've had it happen to me - but if I come back and re-evaluate what I have done, make that better, then I can proceed onward with energy once more. I probably don't have to tell you that, though - I think you probably have more experience with this than me.

But willpower is the main thing. And it seems that you have a real drive to keep a very high standard of quality to this video. Even though I don't think that Salvation was complete rubbish, it had a few points that could be worked on that I hadn't even thought of before you brought them up in your videos or on this page. Oh, and by the way, your videos are hilarious. You sound so official on this thread but in your videos it is almost the opposite, but in both cases it sounds like you know what you are doing. I will leave you to it, then.

Yeah the whole official thing is just a face. Anyone who has watched any of my videos, even my developer videos, knows my casting style gets ridiculous. The LP's and compilation videos are the more extreme end of that spectrum.

Willpower is indeed the toughest thing. To conquer this project, I must first conquer myself. Somehow...

Alright, I'd like some specific feedback from anyone who has watched Salvation. Specifically, about the music.

I've received a lot of praise since my early starcraft days about my choices of music. But rarely extremely specific reasons why. I have a very strong understanding of music and I like to think I have a good understanding of cinema. But I also have a really hard time making decisions. I literally spent the entire length of Salvation from the start down to the encode crisis trying to figure out music for the UD sections in Salvation. I wanted to avoid overly cliche stuff but I also struggled with the styles I wanted.

If only my composing skills had actually panned out, huh?

Well, like most people who make mods, I can't really be picky. I have to make use of external sources. Unlike most people who make mods, though, I won't settle for mainstream material, and I also have a library that grows by the day and is currently around 1.5tb. I suspect at least half of this library could be useful in Retribution.

The library also spans a huge amount of genres, which is where my desire for feedback comes in. Although this project is in very early stages as far as actually making any viewable material is concerned (for the private audience, all I currently produce is sins demo footage), I already have an entirely voice acted and laid out composition for the entire movie containing music and timings. Of course, those are all subject to change, and the more I critique it, the more my indecision grows. Thus, I'd like to harvest some information to help me decide where to take this project's music.

1.) Which tracks did you like the most in Salvation, and why?

2.) How would you like to see Retribution's soundtrack evolve from Salvation?

Sounds are just as important as graphics, and both are as important as gameplay. These, along with Computer AI, form the four pillars of my game design. With no gameplay to speak of, however, the elements of our audio escalate in importance. Since I am not an artist, the pressure to compensate for my graphical failures through audio is all the more paramount. I am confident I can rise to the challenge in both SFX and voice acting, but music is a huge wild card.

Each individual track of my final composition will be carefully intermixed, and I suspect the final piece could contain over three hundred individual pieces of music. Every element in the audio must flow together so that the final product could be listened to without any graphics, sfx or voices, and sound like they are all part of a single orchestrated piece. Genres of multiple styles will be tapped into - a large amount of my ambient music comes from instrumental Black Metal, believe it or not, which tends to dip into a variety of unrelated genres including folk and industrial.

The more experimental tracks within Salvation, those I felt represented the world of Throne of Armageddon strongest, such as the Theodor Bastard tracks, were all successful in deployment. Salvation, however, was not even a shadow of what Retribution will become, and the deployment is all the more demanding to be absolutely perfect. I may not be a composer, but I must become a rapmaster if I am to articulate these beats in a coherent and meaningful manner. I will spend potentially over a year perfecting the style and prose I seek to give this project.

The simple fact is, the music I want doesn't really exist. What plays out in my head is something that plainly has never been created before. In order for I to create it I would require an amount of money impossible for me to have ever acquired in the span of ten lifetimes, for I would need talent from across the world. Alas, I am me, and I have nothing, no power, no control. But what I do have is a lot of external assets. How I can weave them will determine the success or failure of my dream. But in order to get to that point, I must decide what best will represent my efforts.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

I sadly only recognized the intro Unicron theme rework from salvation, though I also remember the theme when the Undead was first introduced was awesome. To me mood is the most important thing to me in music for something like this. As most of the shots are of inanimate objects, you're very much relying on the music to set the emotional level of the work.

While their are a couple of things my personal taste might simply dislike, in general I'm pretty open to most styles and genres. If you're trying to convey how sinister the undead are I don't really care if you use some gothic dread choir or dark ambient, as long as the effect is kind of creepy and as terrifying as possible.   I can see if you're serious about thinking this you might really want to have a stylistic consistency to the score, and if you can maintain that while keeping an appropriate mood that's great. But if you have to have more diversity in the score to get the feelings you want I do not think that is a bad thing.

Consistency is a tough thing. I have a lot of things from different genres that can cross over into each other. But I don't really want the end of the movie to be so totally unrelated to the beginning. It will evolve over time, just like the story and world itself, but it should be a natural progression.

I sent a demo video with some example music pieces to a variety of internal viewers. While I'm still waiting on a few to get back to me, the results are fairly well within my predictions. Given their feedback and my overall thoughts on their perspectives, my current composition for the first half of the video is pretty strong. The toughest part is the second half, including the final battles.

Vocal tracks were the biggest "if" in my list. I have a few really good pieces I think can fit with fleet battles. I used one of those, and then a lesser consideration, in the video. The views on those played out like I expected. As we discussed on steam, I definitely agree that such tracks need to be attached to a character to really have any true impact. Not just because of character in general, but also because they mask sound effects a lot more than most tracks.

The vocal tracks I used in Salvation suited very well, though. I believe this was because they were a different genre in general, and thus lower key and flowed well into the mood and setting. Likewise, all of those vocal tracks were different from each other entirely but flowed readily into each other, and musically that section was largely successful.

What I didn't expect from the feedback was the overall tendency towards the Japanese track I had put in. That was, overall, the track people erred to the most in feedback in general. This is a live recording of the one I used for the first Xy section in Salvation, so it's a fair bit different in how it sounds. I have a bunch of these live recordings and of course a bunch of really good OST's, and some anime soundtracks, like Fairy Tail. I think a few tracks from those could work very well if this is the direction people feel fits the most. The challenge is working those into the ambient pieces which tend to be different.

None of this effects the script, but it will effect how I handle cameras, angles, and even the overall prose of the battles. It isn't just about placing a piece of music to battle, but also having the battles play out to suit that piece well. I think this also influenced people's choices.

Hoping to get some more feedback.

Imperator wants to follow this...

This shall be my June update.

I've updated the secondary post in this thread to reflect some more recent additions in the main CC thread. Specifically, I added race descriptions for the Anahn and the Undead. As time goes on, I'll reveal more of the races, their subfactions, and eventually characters.

Although progress has been slow, audio work has begun and some shuffling has been done. My Rebellion was forced to update and I spent half a day researching and then updating the project to match the changes.

In a recent Coffee Hour I explained some of the cinematographic designs I am introducing for Retribution and how those will help separate the composition and production as a whole from the first, disastrous production.

Recording in Sins is tough. The camera fights you every step of the way with its jerky, hateful dance. Touch the mouse wheel once, and you might just fly out of the entire system for no apparent reason, even with zoom to mouse disabled - a perfect shot, ruined instantly. The planet icons don't get axed with the cinema mode or UI hide in Sins, and need to be removed from the source textures completely. These sort of little details are minor, however. For Retribution to succeed where Salvation failed, we need an entirely new approach.

Salvation housed only a tiny handful of Supership-types. The first was the Bloodstone Battlecruiser, the second the Emperor, and the third the Worldeater. The Undead possessed the Crusader, but it was largely unfinished and often got lost in the brawls. Additionally, only one Fortress-type existed - the Khendarva Fortress, who saw use only as a cinematic piece.

Large ships or objects give a focus point to the viewer and the cinema, and can be powerful instruments in helping shape the flow of visual motion. Retribution will be adding many new Superships, Fortress-types, and other large elements to assist in the process of recording.

During the civil war, Anahn Warlords built battlestations as large as planets - some even larger - to house their cloning operations and command. With no planets, and asteroids offering no protection against bombardment, these tremendous fortresses served as their living territory. Mobile fortresses were created as were immobile fortresses, and in certain quadrants these lead to the rise of Mobile Cannons. Shown above is amongst the largest of all Warlord mobile cannons, a fortress-class the size of a moon.

I modeled this over the course of about a half day worth of work from scratch, basing its design on a Chinese homeworld 2 render.

This is one example of a new introduction whose purpose is largely cinematic but, unlike how I handled the Khendarva Fortress, isn't tied to any specific plot mechanism. The Anahn defense will be fleshed out; two battlestations are already ingame and functional, and at least two more will be added. A smaller mobile cannon is also function, and the Royal Family will see breakout ships added to their hero line for added siege dynamic and scale.

Amongst the changes to the existing ships, I brought them more in line with to-canon scaling. Some ships, like the Sonsora and Bishop, were too incorrectly scaled for my liking. Realistic scales are a pipedream in a world with ships as large as planets or larger, so I aim for relativistic scales in which Sins can still operate with.

However, some ships, like the Kerr`Ussan, while be restricted to the UDK only, since they'll be cinematic pieces strictly, and will be hopefully skinned appropriately to their enormously important role.

Because XSI now crashes if I click in a viewport, the process of converting my meshes has become moderately more irritating. Despite this, I have some new revisions to show you.

^ New Xy Gaverrah. Like a frightening number of ships it bears resemblance to a penis. I just assume it's the Lord of Penises uses me as his vessel to spread cheer to the world of men.

^ Updated Worldeater. I am probably still going to redo the claws.

It's playing the catchup game to make up for the last months of relative inactivity. Around 4-5 new ships have been polished, finished, or built to near completion in the last week-week and a half or so. This is the kind of progress we need to get the mantrain moving again.

Here is a small Warlord ship in early stages..

Simple, compact, yet effective and successful in it's intended role. At least, that's what comes to mind when I look at your latest model.

Pretty balls-deep in a production cycle the last couple of weeks. I have, currently... 1, 2, 3... 4... 5 entirely new ships independent of those mentioned above are on the grill in varying stages of production. Between those and the slow and gradual remastering of a bunch of Axel's turrets, the two DyiithJhinn fighters I completed earlier this week and the two previous ships above that were finished earlier this month, plus a revision, my last two weeks have been a slow, gradual crawl back into pacing proper of a project.

Exceedingly low-poly Bane-type turrets, demanded to be so by the increasingly detailed hulls they are destined for...

The acceleration comes thanks to a special someone and some advances in resource relocation. Some of the ships I used in TBJ, back in homeworld 2, were hidden away in my heap of garbage and I pulled them out of the homeworld 2 format today to serve the Prince one last time. Both of these hulls are also Axel's models, but they have some pretty horribly mangled topography, so I effectively need to do double the work to get them ready for my own modeling work. By the time I am done with these they will be massively optimized over their Homeworld 2 origins, and then beefed up in detail and design to reach the standards of my latest work.

Several of the ships in production are Fourth Generation Anahn, and others are second-third generation. With every one of these models completed, I inch closer and closer to the oh-so distant Sins finish line. The hardest part may be the hardpointing, due to the debilitating joint and wrist pain that has held me back for years.

Some models are in limbo, awaiting return when I feel the time is right. Amongst those are 4-5 Myrookk models in varying stages of completion, a fourth-gen Anahn fighter, and two supermassive UDK-only ship meshes.

The race is on, and only Feminists know if I will reach the end in time. Godspeed, Belgium.

Back when this project was a Homeworld 2 TC, I had used one of Axel's freely available models as an Anahn corvette, shown in the left of this screenshot (and also shown in many of the videos that got dumped when the project died).

And now, many years later, I have pulled that ship out of the project files, remastered it, and brought it up to spec with my current work. Amongst the many, many modeling projects I've run through in the last few weeks, this is of the more successful variety.

Since then the Saber's classifications changed a fair bit, becoming a frigate. However, it will still be very small, so I opted for low detail and skipped out on point defense weaponry.

Very nice...

Phew, I'm a busy man. Between Let's Plays, compilations, general daydreaming and a shitton of modeling, running my patriarchy gets tight on schedule and warm in the closet.

There's a mostly finished revision of the Thunderhead, the smallest non-fighter Anahn ship that you might remember the general shape of from Salvation. I gutted the four engine blocks, fixed the missing turret mounts (ergo, I replaced all of the turrets save the Flame Lance PD), gutted the forward Flame lance hardpoints per regulation of specs (a 20km ship can't house that many reactors in second generation... sir), the detail and garbage is just a bonus.

Still turned out way less poly than the original due to subdivision nukage. This was one of my first ships I put in Homeworld 2 that was actually mine. No screenshot of that apparently, but undoubtably you've seen the videos if you gave a shit.

I also revised the Xy BladeKhan's model and did some experimention elsewhere. I've got one more Axel ship to climb aboard the mantrain and then some bat time, some bat channel, I need to hardpoint all this garbage with my crippling wrist and joint pain. This is going to be a fantastic adventure!

If I can keep the pace going marginally strong for the next 2-3 months, I could be knocking down some serious walls in getting the sins portion of this finished. My RUSSIAN CONSORT is making progress in his own works, destined to clash with mine when he finally starts work on character models. At some point all this bodily fluid, vodka, and bear juice will actually produce something demonstrable. Then, and only then, will I think about making a trailer.

In a week I'm 26. Where the hell did my life go? Oh yeah! Nowhere! Fantastic. The best place to go is nowhere.

It just boggles the mind when you say the smallest ship is 20 km in length. Crews of thousands running a ship so large. The stuff you allow us to peek at is just a small morsel. It's like in the Marvel universe, and a Celestial or Galactus for that matter appear, I can see the pure terror a planet dealing with this when such a tremendous force will change all that they know...  

Salvation didn't do any justice at portraying the massive scale of the world. I'm really hoping to resolve that with Retribution.

Today I am 26 years old. I literally started my modding work over 15 years ago, now. There is nothing to celebrate, nothing worth doing. Nothing but continuing my work, and pushing ever harder to complete this legacy before I am no longer able to work at all.

The clock is ticking.

As mentioned in previous posts in other threads, I planned to conduct research in building my own animated texture sheets out of FumeFX. Out of the dozens of games I have painstakingly ripped, I've only managed to reach the conclusion that the kind of resources I desire simply do not exist. I must create them myself, from scratch.

I've recently begun doing just this. Currently, my goals are just to create some fireballs and kinetic impact effects worthy of being used with the high quality material I did find. The road will be long, hard, and undulating, but if I can accomplish the effect I am after, then the project will stand out all the more because of it.

This is the exact same toolset sans Afterburn (which I do have somewhere) used to create the pre-post processed material for Battlestar Galactica and almost every other modern CGI (They use AE/Nuke and Vray to pretty these further). There's no reason I shouldn't be able to do as good or better source material. If anything, the sins particle limits will be massively holding back what I can do. But, maybe with the UDK, I can do more...?

Only time will tell.

Neat fireball.

Have you tried making Sins Large Address Aware?  I don't know if that would work or not, but it might help your modifications to the game.  3 GB is better than 2 GB.

I haven't tried it, but at the moment I'm not looking too bad on RAM. Any time I start getting close to 1.8gb usage I just gut more of the default game. I'd like to gut the planet textures and a chunk of the UI next, which should free quite an amount. I still have a large amount of the default meshes and textures being loaded, the former of which because the game just crashes without them and I can't be assed to change every single ship entity to point to something tiny yet.