Simple Mini-Mod: Fun with Debris

[Bakuras]

UPDATE:
Version 0.3A now available!
(Fixes major problem with Resource Collector AI! Thanks Retroboy!)
Files and Documentation can be obtained here:
Zip Format:
Debris, Collision, and Fleet Mini-Mod (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.zip)
Self-Extracting EXE format:
Debris, Collision, and Fleet Mini-Mod (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.exe)



This tiny little modification to a few .ship files can add so much more enjoyment to the game! By setting fighters to spawn a single piece of debris when they die, battles take on much more meaning. Suddenly, that empty patch of space you had committed your forces to is now a silent testament to the horrors of war; a virtual space graveyard as the remains of your valiant pilots and frigate crew lie strewn all over a trecherous debris field!
The imagery is great!

Just add this line to any .ship to get a single piece of debris to spawn(note: they will unfortunately give out more resources than the original was worth, but in the no-resourcing games that I've been creating it hasn't been a problem)

SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml05",1,0.01,60,10,30,75,35,25,65,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)

And for larger ships, like frigates, I added this line:


SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Lrg01",1,0.05,60,30,150,25,35,125,65,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)
SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml01",1,0.01,80,125,60,75,125,80,65,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)
SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml02",1,0.01,25,0,-125,50,80,35,120,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)
SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml03",1,0.01,60,95,200,50,15,200,20,125,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)
SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml04",1,0.01,10,60,-300,25,35,80,65,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)
SpawnSalvageOnDeath(NewShipType,"Slv_Chunk_Sml05",1,0.01,60,10,30,75,35,25,65,75,0,0,0,60,0,0,0,50)


More appropriate remains for larger ships. Once we get mod tools from Relic, I plan on creating debris that actually looks like the ship which spawned it in various wrecked states!

For now though, just take a look at the horrible devestation caused by 5 minutes of continuous battle between 120 fighter squadrons(including the vagyr 7-AC squads, that was 720 fighters!) and 80 modified for anti-frigate duty Vagyr and Hiigaraan Assault frigates!

A few minutes after first contact between the two massive fleets:

http://www.strange-earth.com/AAASpaceBattle3.jpg

Casaulties begin to mount...

http://www.strange-earth.com/AAASpaceBattle2.jpg

Amidst the wreckage(modified to do damage if something hits it by upping the collision values of everything), two groups of Assault Frigates lock on and desperately battle for supremacy!

http://www.strange-earth.com/AAASpaceBattle1.jpg

The Victorious Assault Frigate group chasing down the remnants of the enemy.

http://www.strange-earth.com/AAASpaceFleet1.jpg

But the price of victory was high....

http://www.strange-earth.com/AAASpaceAftermath.jpg

Neat huh? This goes without saying, but you might not want to try this on a low end machine. I didn't get any crashes and the only slowdown I experienced was at the start when both the massive fleets were being viewed in the same screen, but once the screams of the dying began echoing throughout space(if space had sound at least...) and my ships were signifigantly lessened, slowdown was nowhere to be found. Still though, I'm sure this is a resource hog!

Oh, and I also had Alex Drakes Dynamic Fighter Mini-Mod installed for extra epic battles! Fighters would crash into ships a lot in in-advertant kamikazes so beware if you up the collision values! One of my carriers died instantly when 2 groups of Vagyr Assault Craft simaltaneously decided to try and plow right through it. Is this the gateway to bringing some version of Kamikaze back? :kami:

At any rate, you can get Alex Drake's excellent Dynamic Fighter Mini-mod here (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18156&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

Have fun! :)

[Thought]

Wow! Great idea :)

[malignus]

Whoa. That is nice... :up: :up: Two thumbs up!

[yian]

Crazy! I love it!

[jpaugh78]

Could you tell us what you did exactly to the collision values....so we could duplicate this....or maybe post this mod?

[Retroboy]

That's great - love the screenshots, which show it off to great effect!

Well done.

-- Retro

[Bakuras]

Thanks for all the accolades guys! :king:

I went ahead and created a little mini-mod in the tradition of Alex Drake's Dynamic Fighters mini-mod in case anyone wanted to take this for a spin without editing the files themselves. Full documentation on exactly what I did was included in case you want to take a look. The work involved was miniscule at best, but the rewards you reap are quite tangible!

Anyways, here's the mini-mod in .zip format:

Debris, Collision, and Fleet Mini Mod (http://strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.zip)

Here are the same files in self-extracting .exe format:

Debris, Collision, and Fleet Mini Mod (http://strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.exe)

Needless to say, please read the included readme file for a full description of all the changes, as well on installation instructions(though if you've installed one mod, you've installed them all!)

Be aware that these files will over-write other mods, so make sure to back up all the mod files in your data directory before installing!

I included the original massive fleets pictured above as a second set of fleet files within the 'Starting Fleets' directory. I didn't make it the default fleet because I realize that many people do not possess a machine that can handle all that chaos on screen without massive slowdown. If your machine is up to snuff, simply rename vagyr00.lua and hiigaran00.lua to something else; likewise, rename vagyr01.lua and hiigaran01.lua to vagyr00.lua and hiigaran00.lua respectively.

Be forewarned:
I have an AMD Athlon XP 2.2 ghz machine with 512 mb DDR ram and a Radeon 9500 and I still experienced some slowdown at the begining of the battle once both fleets met!(it dissapeared once the two fleets signifigantly decimated eachother though) My machine is by no means top of the line, but it isn't any slouch either.

This goes without saying, but make sure to turn NLIPS and Shadows off before playing!

Please let me know how it works for you! This is my first shot at Homeworld 2 modding!

On a side note, if anyone notices any imbalances, please post your thoughts so I can try and fix them. As of now, I'm working on getting the AI to actively attack the player, but I can't find the right file :)

Have fun!


EDIT:

-A note on collision values-

It's really simple. While perusing the various files for AI settings, I came across this line in 'tuning.lua' right after the mine laying info:


CollisionInfo = {
kamikazeDamageMultiplier = 7,
normalCollisionDamageMultiplier = 0,


By upping the normalCollisionDamageMutliplier to 7, you can create "accidental" kamikazies. This happens most often when opposing fighters ram eachother(EXTREMELY entertaining to watch!), but very often they'll also hit carriers and, sometimes, even frigates.

The only abuse of this that I've noticed so far is that you can deliberately ram a frigate into a carrier and cause massive damage. Apparently the amount of damage caused is related to the amount of hp the colliding unit has. So in this case, the frigate will be totally overwhelmed by the carrier and explode, but the carrier will survive.(albeit extremely damaged)

It is quite hard to force a frigate to ram another ship, but if you keep at it you can send an entire strike force on a suicide run. Frigates rarely collide with other ships on accident for some reason, but it does happen.

Unfortunately, I can't find an attack pattern in the 'scripts' folder which causes the attacker to ram into the enemy, but I'm working on it! Guided missles here we come! :)

[theBlind]

Ok, I just did some slowdown testing, since I´m on a rather low-end maching graphics wise.
My system:
Athlon XP 2000+
512 MB DDR 333
Asus A7V333
Samsung HD 80 GB, 7200, 2MB, in use also by win2k
Win2k Pro
GeForce 2 256 (I told you low end...)
Two applications running in background, CPU usage ~10%, HD usage

Setup: Hiigarans vs Vagyr, fighting at Vagyr start location (skirmish, Hostilities End map) 64 Interceptors each, vagyr carrier + shipyard close but not engaged, 6 vagyr res collectors as well.
I have my hiig inties to break into 2s, 5 ships per squad; my vagyrs into 3s, 9 ships per squad = 320 + 576 = 896 fighters total, fighter vs fighter attack is dogfight for both.


What I´ve noticed:
- HW automatically scales back polygon count on the models to up fps
- 64 vagyr AC kick 64 hiig inties into the rear badly in this setup :skull: (only did one test-run, could be luck)
- slowdown could be felt during setup phase when watching one of two swarms
- consequently, the game went to a slide-show when watching the actual furball
- when watching the actual debris-field alone (worth ~ 225000+ RUs, 350 each = ~640+ pieces) I noticed no slowdown. I did notice a slowdown when activating the movement disc and many height indicators were drawn for the field.

Conclusion: This modification should not be a too bad performance hit, especially on normal unitcap games. But it can become one in drawn out games, maybe one could make special debris with a limited lifetime around 30 min or so.

[Bakuras]

Thanks for the info!

Unfortunately, I've also noticed that the Vagyr AC's wipe the floor with Hiigaran intie's nearly every time when all other things are equal. I'm working on a fix now for fleet versus fleet battles. Since there is no building or resourcing going on, the balances that help scale back the Vagyr Assault Craft are not in place here.

In the Debris mini-mod, I gave the hiigaran Interceptors slightly more hitpoints in order to allow them to last longer(I upped them to 180 hp while I put Vagyr Assault Craft at 150) The purpose of this was to have more interesting fire fights without the small fries dying out 5 minutes into the engagement(makes a quick debris field though!).

Unfortunately, it did little to solve the problem... however, if you micromanage your intie squadrons and bring your higher speed escort carriers along to the fight, they end up totally overpowering the Vagyr AC's. I am extremely pleased that the escort carriers can play such a pivotal role in engagements. I hope I can teach the AI to do this, but it would be even better if the fighters did it by themselves once they get to a certain health point! Probably the realm of code mods(which we won't be able to do yet), but I'm going to try...

My next step in modifying strike craft will be to give all fighters a slow-reload anti-fighter missle and anti-cap ship missle. That way, fighter dominance will be twice as important and the door is open to dedicated interceptors versus all-around 'heavy fighters'.

I'll be experimenting with this :)



On the subject of polygon counts, we can likely increase performance if we lower the polygon counts of debris to mere pixels at certain ranges. I'm extremely pleased to hear that it was working fine on your machine, but I'm hoping for even better performance!

Did you have NLIPS on? When I watched the 700 or so fighters duke it out by themselves I didn't have any slowdown on my machine(it's when the frigates joined the fight that things started getting shaky for a few moments)

I never had my framerate drop to slideshow levels, but the more we can optimize graphical scaling at certain ranges, the better performance we'll get! :)

EDIT:
Try this out with the Dynamic Fighter Mini Mod! The Battles look great!

[jpaugh78]

Thanks Man......definately going to play this when I get home!

[Stress Puppy]

Excellent work on the debris field. could make for some interesting "total annihilation-ish" resource scavenging games :D

I do agree that on low end machines this could get very ugly real quick. (i get occasional slide shows on my athlon xp1900, 512ddr266, radion 8500 in vanilla hw2) Perhaps a time limit for debris to exist is appropriate.

[theBlind]

There´s a little more info necessary it seems - stuff I forgot to mention.

I didn´t download your mod but did the modifications myself quickly - so I have no idea how your other ships are working, sorry.

My inties are a little (~10%) slower and less manouverable than the vagyr ones but have 50% more health (45 vs. 30)
Also, since I had forgotten to mess enough with the startingfleet, my inties were upgraded fully, while the CPu had no upgrade to beign with, but could have researched some.

NLIPS are on, but since I only have a GF2, slideshows with ~900 fighters are inavoidable, imho.

[Bakuras]

Oh no, I already realized that you had modified it yourself, but you provided some valuable information none the less! Once I can figure out what the parameters in the debris entries mean, we can likely tweak debris so that it doesn't cause as much slowdown....

Either way, it looks like the biggest drain was from the fighters themselves! I can't believe the game moved at all with NLIPS on at 900 fighters! O_O;;;;;

UPDATE:
It looks like Homeworld 2 only scales back polygon counts if you have the option selected in the video/gameplay options. It seems like I turned it off. Didn't affect my framerate so I suppose having it off is a good thing?

[theBlind]

I think we misread each other here.
With NLIPS on I mean that the small stuff is not scaled up to stay visible, but is instead left at "realistic" proportions.

[Bakuras]

I thought that when NLIPS were turned on it scaled everything up, while turning it off gives you the 'realistic' proportions?

[FinalCat]

Thanks for the info. Very usefull, with is i was able to make a buildable Cruise missile, which is cool.

[Bakuras]

No kidding? I've been looking for ways to get ships to crash into enemy ships on purpose all day! How did you get the cruise missle to make contact with the enemy ship?

[NovaBurn]

holy crap man nice screenshots! now THAT is what i call debris! Definitely downloading and playing this after school!:thumb: :thumb:

I have to see what this looks like coupled with my Defense Field Module...:wowsers:

[Katabrok]

Originally posted by Bakuras
I thought that when NLIPS were turned on it scaled everything up, while turning it off gives you the 'realistic' proportions?

And it's true. NLIPS alter the scale of the little ships so they can be visible when you're looking at ships the size of the mothership. I personaly don't like it, and always run the game with it unchecked.

Cheers, Leo

[theBlind]

Just something I didn´t notice earlier when having collision damage on - anyone played with a VBC for example? Seems missiles do either collision or kamikaze damage in addition to their own damage - and from the way the VBC happily blew off chunks of my HBC, its based on damage done or has a really nasty base.
Recomending damage multiplier = 1 for the time being...

-theBlind

[Bakuras]

Wow, that's interesting news to say the least :hmm:
I was under the impression that the damage dealt from collision was based off of HP! I haven't noticed this problem with the modified concussion missle launchers that the Vagyr Assault Frigates fire in the mini-mod though...

Do missles have an HP value that I somehow missed? That would explain why the Concussion missles don't seem to be affected as it stands to reason that the Vagyr Battlecruiser's missles have higher HP than a lowly concussion missle. Either way, if I was to keep the collision value at anything other than zero, the obvious solution is to lower the damage appropriately for missles based on their HP value multiplied by the Collision Damage value. I was planning on lowering the Collision Damage value anyways, so this is excellent info! Thanks!

On a side note, version .2 should be ready by the end of the day. Those of you which have used .1 let me know how it worked out for you!

[theBlind]

NewShipType.maxhealth=40
Is the line that seems to govern missile HP
Thing is, thats the same for both the vgr_ heavy and the vgr_smallmissile.

EDIT: Now that I´ve done some test runs, I must say that I was wrong earlier - I didn´t notice any changes with 1 or 10 in both multipliers.

[Retroboy]

This is really cool stuff, with a lot of potential.

Some thoughts.

-- Can you find the line that assigns resource recycling value to debris? If so, changing the value of small debris pieces and removing the large debris pieces from the corvette explosions might make resource values more appropriate, and not manufacture resources out of thin air.

-- I can see a mod where you have few (if any) asteroids, but you get all your RU's from defeating the enemy. Would make for some interesting characteristics in the war - you'd bring up a bunch of carriers and scavs INTO the combat and try to clean up as you play. If so, perhaps significantly boosting the scavenger armor value, but reducing the cap number on available utility ships, might change the flavour of the battle.

-- Retro

[Ammon Ra]

holy crap! so much fun :D :thumb:

lovly kamikaze frigates ;) gr8 job.

Now expand this to ALL ships ;) and enable harvesting..creates marvelously intricate battles :)

edit: yep, lovly debris battles :D all ships have debris now, loads of fun, esp to watch carriers enter the fight, and be destroyed by the Bc's that are lingering around ;)

[UFO64]

Originally posted by Retroboy


-- I can see a mod where you have few (if any) asteroids, but you get all your RU's from defeating the enemy. Would make for some interesting characteristics in the war - you'd bring up a bunch of carriers and scavs INTO the combat and try to clean up as you play. If so, perhaps significantly boosting the scavenger armor value, but reducing the cap number on available utility ships, might change the flavour of the battle.

-- Retro


I think you might be saying this, but i wanna say it anyway becuase i think its a cool idea


-Have all players start out with only a basic fleet, and salavgers. There would but no roids on the map, and all ships would drop about 1.1 of their build value when destroyed. This would lead to bigger and bigger battles as the game goes on. It might require some re-balancing of ships, but it would be cool

[Avatar Terminus]

I think you should cut back on the number of debris generated. That's almost too much debris for the ship damage. In real life, the debris would be much more concentrated, and the ships would be identifiable. Maybe in the future, people could make 3d models of each ship destroyed and it would randomly call one of the various "wrecks" of ships... the distribution would be larger chunks towards the center, smaller towards the edge. While I agree, HW2's debris is crappy... this is overkill, man. Cool overkill, but overkill.

[Bakuras]

Avatar Terminus: I agree 100% and I'm way ahead of you. As soon as Relic releases their mod tools I plan on moddling the ships in various wrecked states.

UFO64: Excellent idea! Already working on it, but unfortunately I can't seem to find the file which affects the debris RU value. If anyone should find this, please let me know ASAP. It's not in the spawnsalvageondeath function unfortunately so it must be in the actual slv_chunk files.

Retroboy: Working on it, but can't find the debris RU values in any of the files or function parameters. I spent an hour of testing each parameter in the spawn salvage on death function and no dice(what a waste of valuable time!)

UPDATE:
Stupid me, it was under the resource directory! I don't know why I thought it was in the actual function itself; just have to extract and translate now :) Thank God for Delphy and Thought's tools!

[Forkedman]

I noticed one thing with this that I'm not sure about. With the Hiigaran Battle Cruiser which I unfortunately didn't screen shot at the time. When running your mod, from some angles there is an area of blue that comes out in a triangle from the Battle Cruiser. I have no idea why this is the case.

I'd offer you a screen shot but I've no where to host it at the moment.

[Bakuras]

Really? I haven't come across that yet so I appreciate you letting me know! With the exception of the Hiigaran and Vagyr interceptors, none of the original ships were modified... could it be in reaction to the large amount of debris on screen? Did you modify any other files?

[TyrealMathias]

now THIS mod looks yummy.... just imagine how cool twould be if it were to be coupled with ship-specific deaths.... (noticable ones)

[Avatar Terminus]

thass what i meant, Tyr, you monkey head. TAG, you're it!

[DemonInfinite]

Is it possible to spawn other things upon death,
for example
-damaged fighters form a destroyed carrier
-a radiation field, like the ones on the maps
-damaging explosions from death

[Epsilon 5]

damaging explosions from death

Ahh yes, that brings back memories from IG3 .. lost many ships that way. Issue would be to put a slower death or it would end up being more bad than cool.

[Retroboy]

I've said it elsewhere, but I'll say it again here.

HW2's game mechanics don't really work well with blast damage. The reason is it would make bomber runs on capships a waste of your resources unless you totally micromanage your bomber squadron flight paths when the enemy craft goes critical, and it makes very-long-range torp frigates, destys, or BC's much more appealing. It would reduce bombers to strategic subsystem targeters only, so you could peel them back before sending in the big guns to finish them off.

...but that's mildly O/T. :)

-- Retro

[Bakuras]

No, I find it not O/T at all! It's extremely relevant as I was thinking of trying to do just that, but your comment makes a good point. I don't think it's possible as of yet though as the only thing that can spawn on death is salvage chunks.

On a side note, I'm almost finished translating the Salvage Lua's so expect ship specific debris in version .2 by the end of the week(it's taking far longer than I anticipated to translate these things! Props to Thought for paving the way and giving me some help!) At this point, by "ship specific" I'm reffering to resource value and layout of the debris field(and velocity of the debris from the exploding ship).

On the subject of wrecked ships that resemble the ships they were in life(ie before they got blasted to bits), it looks like Delphy is extremely close to completing the ship editor! If this utility allows us to mod any of the utility files in the game, we're set! :)

Expect a minor update very soon

[Torgo]

I got a problem with it, for some reason I can't get the debris to work, nothing on the fighters nor frigates. And yes I have the -overridebigfile on my shortcut. Bakuras, help would gladly be taken.

[Bakuras]

UPDATE! UPDATE!

Debris Mini-Mod Version 0.3 is now availible!

Download links have been updated, but for the lazy, here you are:

Debris Mini Mod Version 0.3 in ZIP format (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.zip)

Debris Mini Mod Version 0.3 in Self-Extracting EXE format (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.exe)

New for this version:
The new ships were scrapped so that this mini-mod's focus could shift towards optimizing debris from destroyed vessels! All ships were given debris amounts to spawn on death as well as lowered RU amounts for spawned salvage. Thus, no more worries about 500 RU salvage spawning from an interceptor :)

Hey there Torgo, nice to meet you :)
Before I can help you out, I have to know whether you downloaded the modifcation or you modded the .ship files yourself :)

Also, did you check the Newbie Guide to HW Modding (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18633) yet?

[Retroboy]

Thus, no more worries about 500 RU salvage spawning from an interceptor Another approach would have been to make scavengers cost the same RU as a Battlecruiser. :D

Good going, Bakuras. Will be checking this out for sure on the weekend!

-- Retro

[Bakuras]

Oh dear lord! Scavenger Collectors costing that much would be a nightmare if they all got vaporized and you needed more! O_O;;

UPDATE: Version 0.3 Now available! :D Download Links have been updated!

I'm currently working on getting salvage(ie debris) to collide with vessels. No matter what I try, all the ships just seem to move right through all the debris :(
I succeeding in getting the debris to move outward with the force of the explosion which spawns it(very cool for long battles where there is a slowly expanding debris field), but that's not going to mean much if it doesn't at least bounce off vessels that get in the way(or indeed, other debris)

[Retroboy]

Oopsie. Big problem with latest version.

Scavs can't harvest spinning debris. They go into orbit lock around them, trying to latch on.

The mod is gorgeous, but on the 3player map I tried where some debris chunks starts out close to your spawn position, they're already spinning wildly. Every time the scavs close in to harvest them, they get deflected off at superhigh velocity, and the whole thing looks like a big swarm of flies around some chunks of meat. The enemy AI gets trapped trying to harvest them and never builds anything.

-- Retro

[Bakuras]

Thanks for the important info! I'll immediately lower the angular velocity of all debris and up the friction values!

UPDATE: Problem solved. Debris doesn't spin as much or as often, but even at it's highest angular velocity resource collectors can still latch on in no time flat. Thanks Retroboy!

Download links have been updated, but for the lazy:
Zip Format:
Debris Mini Mod Version .3A (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.zip)
Self-Extracting EXE Format:
Debris Mini Mod Version .3A (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.exe)

[arther420]

this is great i was wondering would it be possible to make it so it could spawn radiation or hualks when ships dies instead of resourses

[nickersonm]

HW1 had death and scuttle damage, and it wasn't much of a micro issue there, except for very big ships (like the MS). Perhaps the HW2 ship AI needs to be changed first, though.

Regarding implementation of death and scuttle damage, I believe mecha said (a while back) that it was coded, but currently disabled. So it simply needs to be found and enabled. No need to spawn explosions from dying ships.

- nickersonm

[Bakuras]

As of now, the only thing that Homeworld 2 will let you spawn on death is resources(salvage or asteroids) This is from my own research on the matter. I believe Mecha said something to that effect, but it might be possible to insert something with LUA into gametypes. I'm currently translating deathmatch.lua, but every time I think I'm done, vmmerge lets me know that I did it entirely differently than what it's supposed to be. We'll see I guess!

[blood_angel]

Woah nice.
Though one question. Does debris count as being a 'entity' on the map and is there a max no of entities a HW2 game can have?
Like in Quake3 where you can only have like 7000 or so different things on a map.

So could it be possible that in a long MP game or even a 4v4 game that no one can build any more ships as theres too many entities already?

[The Casualty]

I'm having a bit of a problem installing this. After I unzip everything (using the 3A auto-extrator) I try to copy and change my shotcut but it says that the new target isn't valid. Did I need to get version 3 before 3A or something?

[The Casualty]

nm I think I fixed it...left the space out between the " and -overrideBigfile

[Bakuras]

I've played massive 6 player games with the debris mod on a lan, and let me tell you that it was NOT playable towards the end of the game. The center area just above and below the central radiation belt of terra was a gigantic graveyard. You couldn't see the rest of the level in some spots it was so thick.... in retrospect, I should have taken a screenshot, but I was too busy trying to survive amidst the choppy framerate to notice. As long as you didn't look in the general direction of the debris fields(massive graveyards! Think of the millions who died in the name of our fun!), the framerate was fine, but look towards it...

So no, I don't think there's a max entity count. The game WILL crash, however, if too many ships explode at once, but I don't think that has anything to do with debris. Currently, my number two priority is finding acceptable ways to increase performance without lowering the awe you get while looking at so much debris :)

The only build limits that I've ran into so far are the ones imposed by the unit caps.

[Bonnet]

Well, might there be away to increase the radius that the chunks spread out? This might help because game wont have to render as many polygons most of the time.

[NovaBurn]

I like this idea of debris from all ships, but to actually have the mod playable without sucking the life outa any system below 2.5ghz I would reccommend that debris from fighter be removed. Sure that you would need a heavy duty system for it to work, but not everyone would have one and I don't think it would be a good idea to have 2 versions of a mod floating around just for high and low end systems. I have screen shots of my test thrown together without fighters dropping debris and it works fine, although it might need to be scaled back some, but it gives the same effect as if fighters had dropped. Try it with your version, remove debris from fighters and tell me that you dont get the same awe inspiring battle field sense.

I havent downloaded your latest version of the mod but will and then test it out and see what it is like, i havent in a while.

[Torgo]

Yes i have read it, sorry for not posting, busy recently
the proj mod worked, so i thought this one would too, but guess what, nope

[Bakuras]

Duly noted!
Currently testing for version 0.3b to see if it signifigantly improves performance on low spec machines!

Torgo: Did you remember to delete the mod that you had previously installed before installing the debris mini mod?

[Torgo]

yep
im gonna retry it now, i think i got it fixed, post in a second
edit:
nope still not showing up, turned NLIPs off, got -overridebigfile on, do not know what's wrong

[Bakuras]

delete everything except the Animatics directory and the .BIG files in your data directory. Then re-install. Try taking a screen shot of your homeworld 2 data directory as well and sending it to me: bakuras@strange-earth.com

[CrAcKbRoCk]

Here is a few thoughts..

According to the ship class, randomly generate x amount of chunks appropriate to that group.
When chunks generated give them some random velocity.

Anyways, just a thought...

[Torgo]

well, i cant show you the directory via sc, but heres the order
C:/programfiles/sierra/homeworld2/data/data

[Bakuras]

Crackbrock: Excellent idea. Will try that out to see if it works in LUA. I'm not sure if I can proccess commands from a resource or ship file, but it's worth a shot to find out!

Torgo: There's your problem right there. Re-read the newbie guide: You're only supposed to have one data directory :P Unzip everything to Homeworld 2 and it should put itself right on top of the data directory :)

[Torgo]

what exactly do you mean, on top?

[Bakuras]

Simply unzip your files to your homeworld 2 directory and things should work for you :) By 'on top', that means it will automatically install on top of any old files you have :)

[CrAcKbRoCk]

Originally posted by CrAcKbRoCk
Here is a few thoughts..

According to the ship class, randomly generate x amount of chunks appropriate to that group.
When chunks generated give them some random velocity.

Anyways, just a thought...

Thx Bakuras. Heh, feels silly quoting myslef :tooth:

You could also specify the RU value, of the chunks, according to the ship class too.
I wouldn't let Scouts or Probes generate any debris, and fighters should give next to no RUs...there wouldn't be that much left of a destroyed fighter.
Now, if you wanted to get really fancy add in uniqe chunks for each ship type(not just class). ie: Flak frigates would differ from Ion frigates, etc..
And if you wanted to get really really fancy...
Create uniqe death sequences for each ship type(again, not class) and have a few aspects of the sequence be varible(to give them a random appearence). Futhermore, you could have chunks "falling off" of the ship while it is dying. Also, add a quick check to determine where the fatal blow came from(which side of the ship) and further modify the "boom-sequence" with that..
I could keep going, but I'll stop now, heh.

EDIT: Then again this could all be gibberish. I have no idea how flexible Lua is...

[Bakuras]

Originally posted by CrAcKbRoCk


Thx Bakuras. Heh, feels silly quoting myslef :tooth:

You could also specify the RU value, of the chunks, according to the ship class too.
I wouldn't let Scouts or Probes generate any debris, and fighters should give next to no RUs...there wouldn't be that much left of a destroyed fighter.
Now, if you wanted to get really fancy add in uniqe chunks for each ship type(not just class). ie: Flak frigates would differ from Ion frigates, etc..
And if you wanted to get really really fancy...
Create uniqe death sequences for each ship type(again, not class) and have a few aspects of the sequence be varible(to give them a random appearence). Futhermore, you could have chunks "falling off" of the ship while it is dying. Also, add a quick check to determine where the fatal blow came from(which side of the ship) and further modify the "boom-sequence" with that..
I could keep going, but I'll stop now, heh.

EDIT: Then again this could all be gibberish. I have no idea how flexible Lua is...

Well, as of yet, the only thing I've found which dictates the amount of resources gained is the salvage% line in the tuning.lua file. This, unfortunately, affects all ships; not just the fighter class :( Thus, if I turn the number down, motherships start spawning 0 RU chunks ^_^;; I'm still working on it though; LUA appears to be pretty flexible. Once I figure out all the functions that Homeworld will accept, life will be much easier. Thought has already made a lot of progress in this area, we just need to figure out what the functions do that he's mapped.

As for the unique chunks, way ahead of you there! I've been busy trying to find ways of importing extracted object files from Spooky's HOD Viewer into Maya, but to no avail. I suppose I could try modeling them from the ground up, but they likely would look entirely different from their parent model, unfortunately.(as good as I think I am, I have no illusions about that)

I'll likely start doing better death sequences once the Maya plugins are released. That should make things extremely easy, at least according to Relic. I just hope the documentation is up to snuff :)

[CrAcKbRoCk]

Awesome, I hope you can make it happen. Can
t wait to see the end results

[Bakuras]

Thanks! I can't wait to release the results :)

[pipakin]

FYI Pesimontis, Delphy, myself, and surely others, are currently working on ways to import meshes, with varying success :)

-Philip "Pip" Kin

[Bakuras]

Oh I know; that's why you guys are my heroes. I'm waiting with baited breath.

Odd how I expect more from the community developed tools than the official RDN tools though.... Is "Burned once..." how the saying begins?

[pipakin]

Pes even created actual HOD files from scratch. He's one up on me. I'm just messing with the DOCK, MRKR, and HIER sections. :)

[CrAcKbRoCk]

Another idea for Deris...
This is a minor fluff addon, but now that insertting new models is feasible...you could make a very low polygon person, and use it as a debris chunk, then according to a random chance, and the ship class, it would through a few of those "people" out along with the normal debris. Heh, one problem though, it doesn't exactly make sense for a person to give RUs, does it? :lol:

[Bakuras]

If Homeworld 2 allows for Sprites, I'll draw a few crewmembers up in various dying positions and have them fly out on the ship's destruction.

As for not being worth RU's, haven't you ever seen soylent green?
:devil:

[UFO64]

it would be kind of funny to get like 1 RU or something for 'salvaging' a body hehe

[NovaBurn]

OR have an animation of a guy ejecting from his ship during the death animation, he would be a piece of debris, but who says they have to be salvagable

[ZEROAIMA]

Can some on plz help me i cant get any mods to work my target line is this
"C:\Program Files\Sierra\Homeworld2\Bin\Release\Homeworld2.exe" -overrideBigFile,

and i saved and extracted the mod in the Homeworld 2 Data file can some one plz tell me the correct way to get mods working.

:weep:

[Vision_DK]

Make sure that the folders "scripts" "ships" etc taht are in the archive are sitting directly in the data folder, my arhiving tool (winace) does stupid stuff and creates another folder when I extract .. heh


Also, make sure you are starting the game off of your altered shortcut. You can't just pop the cd in and hit "play homeworld" on the auto run thing if you want the mods to work.

Hope I helped

[Bakuras]

Brave soul, all of our accumalated wisdom and knowledge lies in this tome:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18633

Go forth young warrior! Equipped with your new weapon, do battle against the evils of a non-modded Homeworld 2! Once you have read every word of our sagely advice, you will be unstoppable, nay! You shall be as a God! (Xenogears?)

[LightStar]

I got a look at the screenshots. :wtf2:

WHOA is all I can say about that!

I think I'm going to need to stuff this mod into my H2, and see what happens when stepdad tries fragging me with his 21-battlecruiser fleet (we both have reasonable end machines, and max ship caps when we duke it out...and preference is usually for the LARGE maps....). At the least I'll be far from out of resources by the time the fighting ends.

The last one we did (today's fight, actually), I had a pretty goodsized debris field...that's what you get when you send 18 battlecruisers up against 21 battlecruisers...all Hiigaran. I was almost flat out of resources, and he was wiping out my resource collectors...thank God for debris fields.

I also agree on seeing the fields have debris that look just like the ships. That'd be a WICKED improvement...considering that when I was looking at the screenshots, I could tell the debris was all basically repetition of the same original "debris object."

I don't think I'll see too many slowdown problems--we've been prone to having MASSIVE slugfests on various RTS games since I told him we HAD to have Armada, and he told me he HAD to have Homeworld Cataclysm. :D I'm actually kind of used to slowdowns...which is kinda scary.

[Sebas_V]

well it slowed my machine down til about 1f/s
P4 2.5
1 Gig Ramm
Rad 9700 Pro
maybee it was the custom map ill try.

[LightStar]

Hmm. I have a GEForce4, 1.3 GHz Athalon, 720+ meg RAM....will that kind of mod slow my HW2 play up too much?

And one frame per second? That's....slow. :wtf2: Considering 24-30 fps runs for video and CG graphics (I was a cinema/animation major in college) that's a noticeable difference.

However, I have to wonder if that's realistic to expect on those kinds of high-graphics mods--especially with debris involved, or if it's actually a good thing? (Can you tell I'm a total n00b? LOL.)

Also, anyone know how long to wait for those modding tools from Relic? I'd like to wait till the ship-resembling debris can be put in before installing this one.

[pipakin]

No one knows my freind. They were supposed to be out in "Late October", which I find very unlikely.

[Torgo]

specially since we're around 3-4 days from the end of October..hmm. Halloween kandy ^^, HW2 kandie!

[Sebas_V]

Kharaak Wreck same thing... Wierd.

[Bakuras]

Wow! :argh:

I'm sure that 1 frame per second is an exageration, but still! Your machine's specs wipe the floor with mine o_O;;

What did you have the game settings set to? What about playercounts? Which map were you using?

I have an AMD Athlon 2.4 ghz, 512mb DDR ram, Radeon 9500 videocard, and about 5 gigabytes free on my hard drive for space. The only slow down I came across was when I changed the starting fleets to include some 700 fighters. Slowdown dropped after the fighters were nixed.

Can you perhaps send me an email about what was going on so that I can get to the bottom of the situation? I'd truly appreciate your help in handling performance issues :)

bakuras@strange-earth.com

[LightStar]

Hmm. That reminds me to talk stepdad into hacking the shipcaps for 40-battlecruiser fleets sometime. :devil:

Thanks for reminding me! Mwhahaha.

I wouldn't be surprised if the map in use might also contribute to slowdown. My puter's frozen up on Terah TWICE now, while Imposed Cosmos and Universe (the big Helix one) don't bother it a twitch. Also, there was one with LOTS of dust clouds that made my puter freeze out.

It's not just the ships' rendering and animation we have to worry about--it's also the map's, especially if it's got a lot of floating boulders, dust clouds, and funky background.

Just a thought to consider. (You can see why I want to find an HW2 map editor...) Maybe using different maps will cause less slowdown?

For example, if you get a really open map with very few dust specks, and only one dust cloud, the rendering will be more focused on your ships and debris fields. But when the dust clouds get really thick, you could see issues with the graphics/video card wrestling with rendering that AND all your firefights.

[Bakuras]

As for as I can tell, the biggest contribution to slowdown is the number of players on the map. Using default fleets and 2 players on Terrah nets zero slowdown even with full debris enabled. On top of that, I spent a full game with some of my friends just building ships and sending them to the center of the map to be scuttled in order to create an enourmous debris field. Between two players, it took at least 2 full size fleets worth of debris to drop my frame rate below 80, but when we were doing four players on Terrah, the frame rate dropped as soon as everyone could see eachother.(along with the debris field which is always displayed)

The debris doesn't actually take up that much geometry, plus it's effect on our game performance has only made more than 2 player battles lag behind graphically. I'm already hard at work improving the frame rates by lowering the LOD distances, but it's a lot of fine tuning! Lower it too much, and the entire debris field looks like a bunch of white dots. Leave it too close to what it's already at, and it's too detailed. A very fine balancing act.

I need info! Please email me with instances of your machine slowing down! If you could give me lists of the fleets involved or perhaps two screenshots of the debris field(one in sensors manager and one in tactical view) that would be an enourmous help. If you are able to monitor your frame rate, please let me know how slow it was.

Oh, and I think I already mentioned this, but turn NLIPS and Shadows off before you play!

Just in case you didn't read the readme or I somehow failed to include it :)

[Sebas_V]

Total 4 players.
It begins good and how farther the game progresses the slower it goes its so bad that when i zoom into ahip it is still LOD3 (VERY LOW detail)
My NLIPS are off and shadows are not very well supported by ATI so also OFF.

The abd thing abaout is i dont look at a battle ust my single BC floating somwhere in clear space and its still slow...
Ill try again and post screeny of lods.

[Zero-9]

I get alot of slow down, I have a powerful enough rig, though the graphics are slighty lacking , but I have tested the mod on a r9800 and have similar slow down (2 - 10 FPS)

My guess is there's just to much poly crunching on screen so maybe cut down on debirs and add a life timer of some kind, set the debris to 'dissolve' after say 5 - 10 minutes, depending on the size of the wreck of course

[Sebas_V]

tried again 2p Shield
me vay vs hig (HARD)
result after few minutes play:
http://members.chello.nl/~j.venema8/ss00003.jpg
http://members.chello.nl/~j.venema8/ss00006.jpg
Eventualy i did win (FPS atleast 5 or so at the later part)
The whole screen was full of debris at the end, since the ai brought in wing after wing.

Ow complete settings:
P4 2.5
1 Gig Ram PC2700
Ati Rad 9700 PRO Cat 3.8
Win XP Pro
1280*960 32bit
Full detail
NLIPS OFF (smaller craft)
SHADOWS OFF
DYNAMIC GEOMETRY ON

[Bakuras]

Thanks for the help guys!

I just don't understand how our lesser machines are outperforming here :\

What I was currently working on was a way to keep debris low poly LOD's at the forefront at certain ranges. I'm trying to find a good balance between having the debris field intact and performance issues. The main thing I don't understand though, is that my performance actually increases once their are less ships on the screen(and by association, more debris)

Will post an update soon!

[Retroboy]

Bakuras, it could be they're running at 1280x1024, which chews up absolute SCADS more video memory. The FPS slowdown could be invoked because more memory paging is required.

Experimentation at 800x600 might lead to phenomenally different results.

-- Retro

[Sebas_V]

1280x1024 is WRONG its not 4:3 1280x960 is.
But ill try 1024x768 (i wont go lower!!!)

Btw what vid cards does the rest use ?

EDIT:
Id did get a bit better (or i just destroyed my enemy faster this time)

[NonameXK5]

Would it slow down alot with a
Pentium 4
312mb ram
128mb Radeon 9200
1893mhz
?

[Bakuras]

Ah! Back from test taking and already all kinds of great information is released! The long mythical update to the debris mini-mod will be coming along as soon as I find enough time to pour over all the wonderfull information that Relic gave us! I'm so stoked that they released all that documentation! ^_^

[Taiidan Admiral]

GASPology! This looks so cool!:giggler:

[Kushan_Pilot]

It looks excellent. Is it easily removed? Maybe I missed that part, I'm in a hurry, but good work.

[FirstStop]

Brilliant! Bakuras kudos to you!

But: my game seems to crash randomly while playing CPU opponents with your mod. I can't find out what triggers the crash.

I love the debris, but there's one little problem. ALL debris has a RU value, therfore it receives a waypoint thingie when you issue a move command. When you've had a battle there's a lot of debris and therefore al lot of waypoint thingies.These waypoints irritate me a little and I think the HW engine has a little problem displaying 1000 of them in a small space.

Maybe it is a good idea to let fighters and corvettes spawn debris without RU. Only frigates and up will generate harvesable debris in that way: lots a debris and not to much RU/waypoints.

Anyways: I can't wait until someone comes up with recognisable debris: wrecks of frigates, desty's and so on, yummie yummie!

[Sebas_V]

I agree Firststop maybe then mine wont slow down that much.

[Mikail]

Originally posted by theBlind
- when watching the actual debris-field alone (worth ~ 225000+ RUs, 350 each = ~640+ pieces) I noticed no slowdown. I did notice a slowdown when activating the movement disc and many height indicators were drawn for the field.


Will the movement disc problem be alleviated by making the debris smaller? In this case, one moigt not be able to harvest the resources. I don't really have a problem with this.

-Mikail

[ToxicFrog]

I've been toying with this mod, and it's a lot of fun - I've merged it into the other mods I've been playing with (point defence, dogfight, and some tweaks of my own). A few things I've noticed, though:
* Slowdown. From what I can see in this thread, my system shouldn't be slowing down, but it is. This doesn't seem to be related to rendering the debris, but to tracking it - it runs at the same speed regardless of whether I'm watching it or not, but pausing returns it to full speed even if the camera's right in the middle of a debris field. This seems to me that it's having a hard time updating the positions of all the flying fragments.
* Harvesters. I think that I'm using the most recent version, but when I tried collecting the remains of one of my frigates, the poor little harvesters just orbited the fragments in a rather unusual fashion. I'm going to download[?re-download] the version you've got up and diff it against what I've got now.
I must say, this is much more satisfying than the little bits of debris we had before.
[EDIT]
Yep, I'm using the most recent version. The SpawnSalvageOnDeath() calls match the ones from a clean download exactly. So do the MaxAngularVelocity values and suchlike in the .resource files.
If it helps, the ship in question was either a vgr_heavymissilefrigate or a hgn_assaultfrigate - not sure, things got kind of confusing during that battle.

[Joshy T]

yeah, i have had MAJOR slowdowns on both my machines, its a pain trying to move a fleet when its laggin because it cant track a few 100, 000 bits of debris... my 2 machines are 3.2 with 1024 ram each, one has a 9800 pro and the other a gf4 fx 5900 and it lags hard when the res is 1600x1200, perhaps i should turn the res down?

[Akalamanaia]

To bad theres no maps with planets in em(in O.R.B ya can have em and have asteroids orbit the planet....)..With them ya could make so that all asteroids are pulled towards the planets graviticial pull and start orbiting with possible asteroids if mapper has placed them. Maybe i should convert some planet models and textures from O-R-B. By The Way To Reduce Lag, decrease the number of debris spawned when ship spawns. But it should really be made so that the Fighters make no debris, their to small, after hit with several hits from projectile weapons or plasma or ions i doubt there would be much salvage.

[Miguel]

Where do I extract the stuff to?

[Sumyun]

The download links arent working for me, anyone else having this problem?

[ToxicFrog]

@Miguel: unpack the zip to your Homeworld2 directory. The zip contains a folder, Data, with a bunch of other stuff inside; that folder thus merges with the existing HW2/Data folder.

@Sumyun: Yeah, looks like it's down. It's only 107kb, I can mail it to you easily.
I could also probably UUencode it and post it here, but I think the mods might object to a single 150kb+ post. :)

Anyone have thoughts on the orbiting harvesters issue?

[EDIT]
On further reflection, I've realized that such a small file won't make a noticeable impact on my webspace, and I can keep it there until Bakuras' hosting comes back online.
Bakuras' Debris MiniMod (http://www.funkyhorror.net/~toxicfrog/DebrisMiniMod.zip)

[Slamoid]

I don't think I ever gave my appreciation for this mod. It's simple, and yet so elegant. I love it, and thank you for giving it to the community!

:tooth:

[Caydr]

Just downloaded this for the first time, most impressive :)

A couple suggestions though - some of the smaller debris seems to spin *really* fast. And, I've noticed that a lot of the debris can be worth more than the ships that spawned it. And as a final question... is it possible to make the debris drift a little? And maybe have a random decay so that it disappears after a while?

Thanks for your great work!!

[Caydr]

Hey, does this mod have a site with some general info I can look at?

And, does this mod interfere with or counteract the effects of patch 1.1?

[minikin]

Not sure if this problem is on my end or what, but after a certain amount of play time HW2 will CTD with this mod activated. Logs suggest there's an access violation of some sort. I also notice that these crashes occur only when I send my collectors out to salvage the remains of destroyed ships.

[Cyrogenic]

I took a look into this, and found the problem. It isn't the angular velocity, per say, but rather the "friction" on the angular velocity (denoted by angular friction tag, I believe). I set the max angular velocity to 10 on some of the peices, and they go flying and spinning away, but the collectors cannot pick up the peices unless the angular velocity is 0, otherwise, they have to keep readjusting. But if you set the initial angular velocity to 0, it crashes, so you need a friction. I know it's space and their shouldn't be, but lets pretend. As long as you set the friction to an appropriate value, the peice will stop rotating, and the collectors will pick it up. I modified the files if anyone wants them (the .resource files). I play tested it, and the collectors ALWAYS picked it up, and no crashes.

Cheers!

[X-File]

Hey man, excellent mod. Tried it out today as I found it while at work (I teach, had some spare time and went looking for mods :)). Certainly a must get mod.

[omiwan]

this is nice i cant wait to see a ruined shipyard there thx for your work

[ÜberJumper]

Has this been packed into a *big file yet?

[Mikail]

It would be better if this were a gamerule mod. I'll add it to the wiki as a tutorial, anyway (since it's more of a simple technique than a substantial modification).

[edit] Added to the wiki:

http://hw2.tproc.org/wiki/TutorialFunWithDebris

[Sjeti scientist]

how many times do you have to break a link and re create it. pm me a WORKING link to get this mod please. :)

[Starblade]

I love this mod. Too bad it doesn't work with Homeworld Classic Gaming.

[sonic7]

why dusent the link to dawnlode it work???

[SGT.ANDRUS]

this mod's not working for me how i make it work ingame?

[derelict ship]

could you put up a working link?

[Arch_Phoenix]

Oh yeah I merged Debris and Homeworld Classic Gaming together....Well I added debris myself so it isn't same as orginal mod. But it should keep couple ppl happy. I but link up as soon I get it zipped...I am too lazy to do ".big" packet out of it.

I take no credit what so ever and thank those who made Homeworld Classic Gaming I hope this don't bother you guys for adding a little stuff for yer mod.

[Arch_Phoenix]

OK I will but it up at my schools homepage so I don't really know how long it will be up.
Someone with better host can keep this up little longer.

www.tpu.fi/~t1asalom/Debris_with_homeworld_classic.zip

Oh Yeah If someone could but working link for the orginal debris mod I could merge those together for even better results.

[Alpha_1]

I didn't have time to read all the posts so if this has been mentioned forgive me.

I noticed that people were complaining about 64 hiig wings dying to 64 vay wings. This is as it should be. All things considered a vay fighter is less accurate than a hiig fighter, however this is only a problem in SMALL numbers. Remember a vay wing consists of 7 fighters to the hiig 5. In wing to wing fights a hiig wing wins because it is a lot more accurate. In large numbers vay wins because of overwhelming numbers.

A compliment of 64 hiig wings contains 320 fighters, a compliment of 64 vay wings consists of 448 fighters. With 140% more fighters in the vay compliment you should expect the hiig to lose.

Just wanted to point that out, in case it had not been.

[crazy_joe_noob]

pls pls pls make this downloadable!

[ToxicFrog]

Apologies; I haven't visited this forum in a long time.
Due to a reconfiguration of fh.net, the ~s were no longer needed, and I didn't think to come back here and update the URL.
You can find the mod here (http://www.funkyhorror.net/toxicfrog/DebrisMiniMod.zip).
Note that this does not include Caydr's frictional fix, nor do I have the merged version of the PDS Mod and the Debris Mod (I lost that when I purged my HW2 folder). I may reconstruct and upload that (after rolling in Caydr's fix), and perhaps recreate the 'lite' version I hacked up too - but not right now.
Does anyone know what happened to Bakuras?

[crazy_joe_noob]

ok thank u very very much for the assist!

Double Post

hey the thing wont let me override this target pls help me im so confused

[ToxicFrog]

There's no need to PM me. I don't check the forum very frequently, so I won't be able to respond any quicker to that than I will to your post.
I take it from your comment that you're having trouble altering the shortcut target, but I might as well cover the complete install process...
-Note: the DebrisMod is based on the 1.0 code, not the 1.1. It's fully compatible with 1.1, but any changes made to the ships it alters in 1.1 will likely be undone as long as you're running the mod. Since the decompiled 1.1 LUAs have now been released, I'll probably port it to those sometime soon, unless someone else would care to.
(1) Download and unpack the zipfile, with full paths. You should get a readme and a 'Data' folder, which should in turn contain 'resource', 'script', and 'ship' folders, of which 'resource' and 'ship' have large numbers of subfolders of their own, which contain the actual Lua scripts.
(2) Move the unpacked files into your HW2 directory, overwriting as needed. Assuming you already have the Data folder, the one from the mod should merge with the existing one. If you have other mods installed or have made custom tweaks you want to keep, you should probably either make sure you have their installers someplace safe, or back up your Data folder.
(3) Make a shortcut of the HW2 binary. This is easily accomplished by right-dragging /bin/release/homeworld2.exe and selecting 'create shortcut here' from the popup menu that appears.
(4) Right-click on the shortcut and select 'properties'. Choose the 'Shortcut' tab if it isn't already selected. Feel free to fiddle with name and icon (and please don't fiddle with start-in), but Target is the interesting part here.
First, quote it if it wasn't already. For example, if it reads:
Target: F:\Games\Homeworld\2\bin\release\homeworld2.exe
It should be changed to:
Target: "F:\Games\Homeworld\2\bin\release\homeworld2.exe"
Then, add -overridebigfile to the end:
Target: "F:\Games\Homeworld\2\bin\release\homeworld2.exe" -overridebigfile
Note that it needs to be added after the quotes.
Assuming that everything has gone right, you should now be able to start HW2 with the Debris mod (or any other mods you have installed) using that shortcut.

[crazy_joe_noob]

it does not work it wont let me apply it says that specifide target does not exsits pls help me

Double Post

o and for the pm i was just being thuro i did not mean to anger u many opoligys

[ToxicFrog]

Some things to check, then.
-Ensure that you're using your HW2 path, not mine. I doubt you have it installed in f:\games\homeworld\2\. This is why I recommended creating a new shortcut off of homeworld2.exe. You could also make a copy of the one you habitually use to start the game.
-There's a space before the -overridebigfile. Omit the space and it will fail.
-The doublequotes should surround everything from the start of the line to the closing homeworld2.exe, but not the -overridebigfile.
-you shouldn't actually need to change the path it starts with; just put it in quotes if it isn't already and then add the -overridebigfile flag to the end.

[Mazer Rackham]

=( i cant see screeens and the links for dl are broken

EDIT:
I could add the code lines myself to the .ship if i only knew how to find the file :banghead: :banghead: :bricks:

[Sparks]

None of the download links seem to work... maybe a problem there???

[sudsyman73]

i got a solution to this problem... here's an installer i made and it's the latest version (that i could find) of this wonderful mod... AND it's hosted by me... so the link should always be good...

get it here:
*EDIT* Check My Sig for the Link

or put this in your browser:
*EDIT* Check My Sig for the Link

pm me if you have problems or if you made hte mod and want me to shove-off :duck:

[Wrags]

AND it's hosted by me... so the link should always be good...

dont be so modest

[sudsyman73]

dont be so modest
sorry, i'm merely emphasizing that only one or so of the other links for this mod is still good and that if anybody else needs *little* files like this one hosted i can do that (to the best of my server's ability)... uhh... thanks for the tip? (i think) an dhope you enjoy the installer...

[sudsyman73]

reworked the installer and packaged this wonderful mod into a *.big* file... uhh... hey mod creators! got any complaints? any guidance?

[IcePirate]

Don't sweat it. Add in whatever you want. Script mods are considered similar to "open source" around here (with the exception of user-created original ships and graphics). We don't own the code anyway, under the RDN license. We just get to play with it.

If the modder who made it originally is still around, it's considered good form to contact them and get their permission to use their work. But Bakuras has been gone so long his account has been deleted. ( A real shame - he did good work)

In any case, give credit in the readme for whatever previous work you are building on, and get permission if at all possible.

---> going offline to try it out :)

[sudsyman73]

cool! tell me how it works... i used it to install the mod on my system... uhh... i've noticed no problems as yet... i've added nothing and changed nothing (except the installation thing at the bottom of the readme)... and the only credit to give is already given in the readme! hope it works!

[Omega26]

1 question:

I used sudsyman73's installer and when i start the campaign, the resource controller explodes. Is this suposed to happen?

Omega26

[sudsyman73]

does it? that's odd... i used my installer too and didn't have that problem... wait a sec, you said campaign?? hmm... i didn't make the mod and don't know how it's supposed to work with the single player mode soo... have you tried Player vs. CPU mode? that's mainly what i use it for and it works fine...

heh... foot in mouth... my server is down temporarily while i confer with metrocast about whether i'm allowed to have it... soo by september 4th it WILL be up, and one of these links will work (i'm not sure what port i'll be using when i get the server back online sept 3rd).

EDIT:
server is up again, and there's no sign of it being down soon as i'm moving forward with an online business... soo... here's the link to the modfile!

get it here:
*EDIT* Check My Sig for the Link

[Colfrost]

Could someone please send me the Debris mod to baronfrost@charter.net, I can't find it or get any of the links to work. thanks

[sniperjbc]

The link to the Ultra Debris Mini-MOD v3.0a doesn't work. I would appreciate it if someone that has the mod could poat a new link or send it to me at sniperjbc@yahoo.com. Thanks.

[adamstrange]

Can someone e-mail me the Debris mod?

The link is dead.

[Assassin X]

Im a simple person and all this is really confusing to me. Like for instance i got teh Star Wars mod.

I want this Debris Mod.

So can someone just respond by posting a link to the files i need to download? Cause im like way beyond lost!

[sudsyman73]

*EDIT* Check My Sig for the Link

i dunno how long this link will be good for, but i'll try to keep it up

[adamstrange]

Link is dead :Slap:

[sudsyman73]

see latest post for mod

[Cobrajs12]

www.oddsuds.com Doesnt seem to exist. I would really like this mod but i can't find it anywhere else.

[sudsyman73]

heh, i'm sorry guys... 000k2.com was the host for oddsuds.com... and they went down... right now the file exists only on my other computer which i'm not allowed to turn on because it's a school night... tomorrow night i'll put the file up again... bleh, this is getting annoying... i'm not even the modder! i just found this thread about a year ago and then found the mod and then packaged it in a .big file and a windows installer... heh... you'll have the mod as soon as tomorrow!
email me:
[email removed]

get the mod here: Http://forums.relicnews.com/showpost.php?p=1200755&postcount=161

[daishi5]

Edit: question was already asked, and I just overlooked it. Looking for copy of Mod.

[vanguardian1]

If the mod is under 10 megabytes, I could probably host it with my ISP. :)

Not much, I know, but at least it'd be a reliable place (AT&T's servers)

[sudsyman73]

ok folks, seeing as i have no http host other than my unreliable basement server, and also seeing as the mod's creators have disappeared long ago, i guess i'll be the semi-official (this means i'll take responsiblity) distributor of this mod... i packaged it in a .big file and made an installer for it... so just email me [email removed] when you want it...

EDIT: get the mod here http://forums.relicnews.com/showpost.php?p=1200755&postcount=161

[AlteredFreak]

Have you tired hosting on Fileplanet.com ??

[sudsyman73]

no, i dislike fileplanet with a passion

[Souls85]

can someone please post it or email it to me at souls85(at)gmail.com and Ill host it somewhere

[Silver_Wolf#]

i did something real wierd a while back with spawning debris,instead of spawning debris every ship u lost u got one BC for(and the funny part is i sent like 5 fighter squads and soon there were 25 BC spawned where the fighters used 2 be)

a never ending game=ever ship u blow up u get one back

[dethraivn]

Plz, explain to me what you mean by BC, to do you mean a Battle Cruiser? If you do that would be a gnarly battle.

[Elite_Marksman]

Yes, BC means battle cruiser :iws:

[dethraivn]

To make it better, have every ship that explodes turn into 4 or more intercepters.......

That would eventually turn into a massive dogfight.

[Elite_Marksman]

More like a massive semi-interactive slide show...

[dethraivn]

Lol, true, I still want to download this mod but none of the links work.....

[sudsyman73]

ok, so get the mod by contacting me (oddsuds) at [email removed]... i'm sorry, no, i have no reliable host... so i'm just distributing it by email.. for more info see: http://forums.relicnews.com/showpost.php?p=1200755&postcount=161

[DM_Craft]

Look Harder!

*Link Not Working*

Found on bottem of page 8

[axxizzer]

shucks, guess I'll have to E-Mail you

[vanguardian1]

http://home.att.net/~vanguardian1/Ultra_Debris_Mini-Mod_v1.3A.rar

New download url just for mah fellow Homeworlders. :joy:

I haven't modified the file at all, so shouldn't be any problems (and I don't intend to take it down anytime soon). Thanks to Sudsyman73 for emailing it to me.

Sincerely,
VanGuardian1
van097_@_att.net

(remove underscores to email)

[Bakuras]

Fascinating, which version of this tweak is being hosted? Did anyone add any interesting modifications or find out how to make the debris into ship-shaped pieces? I'm especially interested to learn if anyone has figured out a way to make ships maneuver around any debris they encounter or a way to make the debris do damage to anything it impacts! From what I've seen, HW modding has come a long way since this tiny modification was released!

[sudsyman73]

DOWNLOAD HERE!
Debris Mini-Mod v0.3A by Bakuras

Note: I previously had the mod's version mislabeled. I also previously only provided my installer for the mod. These two mistakes have been fixed. I have only ever had one version of this mod, and that is v0.3A. Sorry for mislabeling it. You can now download bakura's original edited files, the bigfile archive I packaged the mod in, or the installer.

Mod version: v0.3A

Get it here:
http://www.freewebs.com/oddsuds/hw2/

[Glacialis]

Thanks :). IIRC, this was the first mod of HW2. History, if nothing else!

[Bakuras]

I guess I shouldn't have dissapeared so suddenly; I've heard stories of how demanding modding was, but even this tiny little mini-mod threatened to devour all of my study time.

By the way, I believe the Dynamic Fighters Mini-mod, by Alex Drake, was the first mini-mod released as far as I can remember...

[adamstrange]

Why is this mod called Debris, Collision, and Fleet Mini-Mod (http://www.strange-earth.com/DebrisMiniMod.zip) when all it has is debris,no collision and no fleet.

[Bakuras]

Because it includes two alternate starting fleets to play around with for instant action.

The original idea was to throw two massive fleets together in skirmish and see how the near-instant debris cloud evolved.

****

As for the collision, we got it to work for ships and such, but no one ever figured out how to make it work for debris; it just passes through ships as the mini-mod is now. (darn) I'm not sure if newer mods have found out a way to mess with the debris yet, but people have done a lot of amazing stuff with homeworld since I was in junior college. Who would have thought we would ever actually see the day when people managed to import working custom models into the game? The Angels Fall First and Warlords mods have replaced, as far as I can tell, nearly ever ship in the game. Impressive!

I can't tell you how excited I am to find out how far Homeworld 2 modding has come... and that it's still going! A DYRL mod? Can you believe it? Sheer bliss!

[Dyson]

Macross mod is still on progress? I thought devs banished on the shadows... hope to be wrong

[Bakuras]

Quite the opposite actually. From what I understand, progress on the mod has been significant recently. Please understand that the original DYRL mod for the 1st Homeworld took 5 years to complete.

Patience is a virtue!

[sudsyman73]

wow! bakuras! you're back! welcome! you've been gone a long time (and i've never even talked to you), what's been up?

:D i haven't been playing much homeworld lately, but i just put up another link to your mod... if you ever want to take over for hosting, or provide a newer version, or want me to just get lost, just tell me :) (use the email form)
-odd

[Bakuras]

I never imagined that people would be so pleased with such a simple tweak :)

Has anyone managed to enhance it since?

[sudsyman73]

well, to be 100% honest, this thread was long dead when i found it...

i really am not sure how "official" this mod is, did you ever release a version of this mod with the version number i have tagged to it currently? because that is the one that i found it with :)

so, as to whether the mod has been enhanced, ultimately i cannot say... i can only say what i have done with it: i packaged it in a .big file and then in an installer (like many of the mods i was downloading at the time) ... aside from that, i would assume that it is your original and unchanged work...

:)

[Silver_Wolf#]

Sudsy do you love the necromancer from WoW or what?(necroing old links is generaly a bad ideea)

[sudsyman73]

silver wolf, what are you talking about?

[Silver_Wolf#]

Thread necromancy,reviving very old threads that should have been locked down a long time ago.

[sudsyman73]

I'm sorry for trying to keep this mod alive?
I disagree with you mainly because bakuras (the mod's creator) is back, so please stop posting useless comments. :P

[Chrome]

Silver_Wolf# do you have a green Moderator badge like I do?

No?

Then please do not backseat moderate a thread again.

We may go after people for 7-day bumps but only if they do not further the discussion of the thread. Sudsy was responding to Bakuras' question about enhancing the mod. In that case, his bump, being only of a 7 day period, is legitimate.

Now, back to the topic at hand.

[adamstrange]

wHATS A "bump" ?

[sudsyman73]

a useless post (like yours) that causes a thread which has had little activity to be placed at the top of the list of threads (the list of threads is ordered by how recently there was activity in each thread) ...

now back to the minimod...

[sudsyman73]

did bakuras go back into hiding? :(

[Shadowsage]

AAH! Necromancer!!!

:skull:

[sudsyman73]

Ahh! Moron with the maturity of a twelve-year-old made a useless post!

If I ask a question, don't post unless you have an answer. Your post is the kind that ruins perfectly good & productive forums.

[Shadowsage]

where are my manners?
i am sorry, i was pressed of time when i wrote that

what i meant is to ask if i can combine this with other mods somehow?

[sudsyman73]

Yes, you can; but not in the mod's current state.

I packaged it in a bigfile, rather than leaving it as an assortment of directories and such. If you really want to combine it with something else, here's how:
1) Install the mod.
2) Grab debris.big from your homeworld2 directory and put it somewhere you'll remember to find it later.
3) Uninstall the mod (use the uninstaller or add/remove programs).
4) Use one of the many developers' tools out there to extract the homeworld2 bigfile archive "debris.big". You should end up with a data folder containing several subfolders and such which contain the modded game files.
5) Put this new data folder into your homeworld2 directory, it will overwrite any modded files already there, which may break existing mods, and make your game unplayable. Then again, it may not replace anything, it depends on whether you have any mods installed and what mods they are.
6) Run homeworld2 with the -overridebigfile option.

This isn't the recommended practice (which is to only use one mod at a time unless you know what you're doing), but you can try it.

Good luck!

[Bakuras]

Hi guys,

It's not that I'm hiding, it's just that it's very very hard to balance things with keeping up a constant forum presence online.

I'm extremely happy to hear that people are still enjoying this fun little tweak; I know I had a lot of fun taking screens of it. Originally, I wanted to try and figure out a way to make the debris impact and have ships navigate around it, but I eventually became so frustrated with not being able to figure out how to enact those dreams that I moved on to other things, unfortunately.

I eventually came to understand that whatever controls those variables must be part of the game-engine itself and therefore I realized that it is impossible to change those actions without reverse engineering the engine and inserting brand new code which, needless to say, is far beyond anything that I could do. :lonely:

Still, Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are still very close to my heart. Even after such great products like Dawn of War and the forthcoming Company of Heroes, I can't imagine Relic ever putting out a game as magical as the original Homeworld. My ambition was to originally figure out a way to find the time to redo the entire story for Homeworld 2 and perhaps bring it closer to the sense of magic that the original captured (that would perhaps include the aborted dustwars). While technically possible, I realize that getting the magic right is far beyond the capabilities of mere modders... but still I dream.

In the meantime, I am waiting with baited breath for the undoubtedly excellent release of the Macross: Do You Remember Love mod for Homeworld 2. The original was magical even without any sort of story; I would not be exaggerating in the slightest if I said that I check that team's development forums every single day. They've been active since.. well... forever.

Homeworld 2 was such a fantastic game and I hope against hope that modders don't give it up and that Relic finds a way to return to it.

It's really what made Relic great after all!

********

On a side note, I never recall getting past .3 O_o;; I'll take a look at the 1.5 that you are generously hosting and see if I remember it ^_^;;

[sudsyman73]

I mislabeled the mod back when I originally packaged it (a long long time ago). It is still v0.3

Sorry about that :dunce:.

*doublepost

http://forums.relicnews.com/showpost.php?p=1200755&postcount=161 has been updated with different links, different files, and fixed version numbers and suchlike. Enjoy. Thanks for your work bakuras, this mod is a blast to play with.

[Bakuras]

Thanks for the accolade!

Really though, seeing that this simple tweak has made even a few people happy, it makes me want to try doing something else with Homeworld 2. The engine really is beautiful and it makes for some really interesting possibilities insofar as an rts is concerned.

Despite all that, I really wish I could get my hands on what they were doing with DustWars... The HW 2 engine doesn't seem to handle the tiny stations and debris in the game well, let alone the sector-spanning megaliths that we see in the dustwars video. Imagine the amount of cool debris you could get out of one of those exploding!

Regardless, any ideas of what to do with this tweak from here? The way that PDS is able to setup starting fleets depending on the scenario and map is really exciting; I'd love to see what could be done with a sort of "points" system. Debris mod is at its best when you're free to start off with large fleets duking it out methinks.

[adamstrange]

Originally, I wanted to try and figure out a way to make the debris impact and have ships navigate around it Thats what i always wanted to do.

I tried messing around with the salvage to try to make it "SOLID" so that ships would crash into it but it never worked.

Also what i don't like about HW2 is the backgrounds.

Yes they look nice but after awhile it truly gets boring seeing the same ones OVER AND OVER AND OVER......You get the message.

[MadCatChiken]

Great job! Good and fun mod.

[sudsyman73]

Wow. I just got back into homeworld this week. Yeah sure, I've been updating this thread a lot, but I haven't been playing HW2 or modding at all.

This game is amazing as ever. I've been crawling all over this forum finding out what's been going on the past few years and it's amazing this game has spawned such a huge fanbase and mod community.

And now back to the topic at hand. I really really really wish that unfunf's tool existed back when I picked up hosting for the debris mod. It took me a week to figure out how to package the thing in a bigfile, and it was very frustrating to use dos (this was back when I was younger and stupider :square: ). I'll probably be working on a little mod of my own, but I'm going to college this next week and won't be bringing a HW2 capable computer. If I release anything, expect to see it next summer. :D Ah well. Enough of my rubbish.