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Yeah, I agree, I don't think we should compare HW1 and HWC. They are both great, just different.
And I actually loved the fact that you had a difficulty setting - even if the game is still easily playable on very hard. That's something HW1 and HW2 really lacked of.
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Wow, you must be good, because I seriously doubt I could beat it on that level.even if the game is still easily playable on very hard .
It's easy when you played it multiple time and know how the CPU will reactI always found HWC easier because of the large amount of resources harvestable on nearly all level - large enough to reach the cap limit on the 4th or 5th mission, and rebuild your fleet even after a difficult mission.
Too true; they may become warrior-Kiith by the end of the game, but they stay true to their miner roots throughout...the large amount of resources harvestable on nearly all level
Psssh, why spend resources to build crappy somtaaw ships when you can capture superior taiidani ships? Sure, you could have five somtaaw dreadnoughts... or nearly 20 combined kushan and taiidani destroyers. Five dreadnoughts is ten half-strength ion beams and 30 missile launchers and 20 energy cannons, with an aggregate HP count of 450,000. 20 destroyers is 40 full strength ion beams and somewhere in the 120-160 range of energy cannon. Oh, and around 900,000 HP. Sure, I'm rounding up a bit, but we're still talking about a fleet with twice the hit points and around eight to ten times the DPS...
The bentusi level is kinda hellish though. You definately need to scrap all nonessential ships and build an unholy tide of workers to constantly heal your ships, especially on harder difficulties. Then again, workers are so incredibly broken that not having 24 at all times is wrong. Two heavy cruisers are tag-teaming your destroyer? No problem! Heal it with 24 workers. Took a casualty? Bandbox some workers, bandbox salvage the taiidani destroyer group! First one down to half health gets salvaged while your ships automatically shift fire to another target.
I might as well come out with it; I never played very far into the game without being on Very Easy; at that difficulty the Somtaaw ships are far superior to Taiidan counterparts. But if I ever do play through the campaign again on a more respectable difficulty setting, I'll have to remember that...why spend resources to build crappy somtaaw ships when you can capture superior taiidani ships?
The interesting feature is not that taiidani ships are superior to somtaaw ones (they're not, somtaaw ships are more advanced), but that they take way less support units, so you can gather a fleet of 20 taiidani destroyers for the same SU cost of half or quarter this number of somtaaw desties.
But actually I can easily finish the game on very hard using standard somtaaw ships too
I didn't use many Taiidani ships because, well, they could get infected. :/
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That speaks to the idea of using tons of Destroyers too; no Beast destroyers (except the Naggarok, apparently).I didn't use many Taiidani ships because, well, they could get infected. :/
Actually, the Naggarok's TO icon is "monster ship". Why they chose to make it exactly like the destroyer overlay but bigger is beyond me. And the Taiidani destroyer is an incredibly gorgeous doom-ship and I have NO IDEA how I'm going to update it, it's -that perfect-. Back on the off-topic topic...
The only Taiidani capital ship that is infect-able is the Heavy Cruiser (not the carrier, oddly enough, and not the ion frigate even though they have infected kushan and taiidan ion frigate models in the derelict folder). I always modded Taiidani heavy cruisers to be un-infectable after mission 4, I think it is; there's no reason why a destroyer would be safe when a cruiser isn't if the canon's "naar directive" explanation is legit. Then it gets really bananas; Taiidani HCs take less than half as many SU as Somtaaw dreadnoughts and deal I think three times as much damage per second with as many hit points. Oh, I also made it so the Naggarok doesn't instantly devour taiidani ships; that always struck me as ultra-lame.
There is no better way than this.
What I liked about Cataclysm was that you were not alone out there, in some missions there was an AI to support you. That was something I really missed in HW2 (and HW1). Nonetheless, Cata creates a tight atmosphere, but not the "Alone against all the others"-feeling like in HW1, but more a "United against the creepy aggressor"-feeling. I really enjoyed it, it was hilarious!
I always thought that gathering a fleet of tai desties was a bit cheating - a little overkill isn't it ? I had fun one time finishing the game on very hard with only multibeam frigates - it's perfectly doable by the way
Something else Cataclysm did rather well was making the equivalents of Fleet Command and Fleet Intelligence seem more human. The part where the Kuun-Lan's commanding officer massively flips out at the Bentusi never fails to make me smile, and the occasional faint note of panic audible in their voices when things are starting to get a little hairy always felt far more convincing than the -usually- unnaturally calm voice of Fleet Intelligence.
Random battle chatter worked better in HW1, however; it could have used more than three voice-actors, but it never got repetitive and wasn't quite as hammy.
@MatthCoFreak: That would be on account of multi-beam frigates being utterly awesome, provided you learn to appreciate and harness their quirks.
Last edited by Jake; 5th Jul 09 at 12:49 PM.
"They come...good..."
I swear after that level I was checking under my bed for the beast every night. You guys are right on, what made HW1 and HWC great was how well they painted their environments, especially with the voice acting. I actually felt in danger when my mothership was attacked, but I fear this was lost in HW2. HW1 scared the hell out of me, I was always worried what was lurking behind the next asteroid. HWC scarred the living piss out of me and I couldn't play it in the dark. I was rushing around so much in HW2 that I didn't have time to think, and it felt like "just a game." I think part of that is due to the fact that in HW1 and HWC you got breif periods of respite to harvest, build, and think (and your own imagination is your worst enemy).
WARNING: The above post may contain words, or traces of words.
Actually, you just brought up one of the few weak moments; the fact that the Caal-Shto had been Infected was fairly obvious, at least to me, from the moment its voice communication came in. If it had been just a little more subtle...
Agreed, it was obvious, but it still was scarry. I thought, "Oh God, does this mean the beast reached Hiigara?"
I think part of what made HW1 and HWC great for me was I felt personally connected, that is when attacked, I always felt like I was defending myself, as if the turanic raiders or the beast were comming after me personally, and that made it scarry. In HW2 I just stopped carring how many of my ships got blown up.
The screams of the Taiidani refugees still haunt my sleep.
Last edited by John Galt; 6th Jul 09 at 9:57 AM.
Oh, but that was the best part of it! The first time I played mission 10 (the one with infected Caal-Shto that introduced the Beast Mothership, you know), I was in an unlit room of my basement at like midnight, which was late to me at the time. No one else was awake, and when I beat the mission, the very next thing I did was go to bed. That's the way to experience a scary mission!I couldn't play it in the dark.
MatthCoFreak: There is no overkill, only "open fire" and "I need to reload".
Informal biweekly mod update... I've been busy, but unfortunately not with the mod too much. There's the galactic council ship sketch I posted back before Cataclysm came up, as well as some more work on the Vaygr Heavy Gunship. The older version was far too blocky in my opinion.
You'll note the Heavy Gunship is now set to have three engine modules similar in construction to those of the light gunship, mounted radially like on the larger Vaygr capital ships. Trying to tie together these ship design motifs. The Heavy Gunship has 2 twin 40mm cannon like the defense turrets on a Vaygr Destroyer; this craft was developed as a heavy escort vessel to serve in the Vaygr internecine wars. While still myopic compared to the heavy coilguns on the corvettes of Galactic powers, these 40mm cannon feature better range and penetrating capabilities than the light cannon turrets on the Gunship.
I'm slooooooooooooooooooooowly inching towards done with the texture of the Higaaran resource collector; that'll hopefully be ready before the next biweekly update. Siber's been working on the drone code with some of our other members, but I'm totally out of the loop there.
On the matter of drone code: Icefox is writing new code so we're not just cramming the hive carrier mod into HW@ with some hacks to make it do what we want. So far the result doesn't technically work, but it's still a work in progress. My efforts with the mod have been divided between that and several other things, none of which have made showable headway. So, a pretty uneventful(and late) update on my side.
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Sweet. I'd love to see more of the Drone Frigate - your Grav Well Generator was pretty awesome.
Helladelayed reaction: Wintermute, the drones aren't going to be quite so spectacular as that. Well, I guess maybe when they were bugged and produced a steady infinite supply of drones, whose parade formation eventually extended beyond the bounds of the map. But they won't do that when they're done.
UPDATE(only slightly late):
Not much to say about our mainline efforts. We've got a lot of irons in the fire, which means that no one thing is progressing lightning fast.
Progress is always helped by more hands, and this week marks the exciting return of one Adhira, who has helped us before and whom the currents of like have brought back to our merry band. He has picked up work where he left off on a model, and brought it nicely to completion. I believe the ship itself needs no introduction, especially put next to it's HW1 incarnation.
As always the bottleneck is texturing, but because he's a great guy Adhira is going to try to teach himself to texture with it. More news on that will be offered as it becomes available.
Relatedly, we do have a model sitting around, unwrapped and ready to be textured, but with nobody free to work on it. To that end, if anyone is interested in texturing the republican taiidani scout, I can upload the model and map for you to work on.
Awesome swarmer!!! Kadesh design is so unique. I can't wait to have dozens of these buzzing around tearing the insides out of my ships!
Well, you know I have plenty on my plate already, and I can't guarantee quick progress, but I don't know if I can resist working on a Taiidan ship-- send it to me and I'll work on the texture!
someones making a mod with kadeshi ships that DONT use the hw1 models?! YAY! please make more modernised kadeshi ships; they were my favorite race in the homeworld series
^Same. At long last, Kadeshi Swarmers in this thread! Now it is decided. I will get HW2 when this is completed, specifically for this mod.
Let's sail in this sea of charms
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Originally Posted by Siber
Fuck yea!
Deshi!
Doci: Hey, if you want it, go for it. We got rar files to work, right? Have at it.
Doci: If you want my republic interceptor textures as a reference, I will gladly send them your way!
That thing is great, although it's not how I would see a kadeshi swarmer. It look a little too... mechanized, especially from the rear. I think the kadeshi with more curved lines, but that's only because someone have to critic
While modeling it i noticed that most of the parts you could call "mechanized" were already elements in the original swarmers, but were simply drawn as texture details because of the limited processing possibilities of the time.That thing is great, although it's not how I would see a kadeshi swarmer. It look a little too... mechanized, especially from the rear. I think the kadeshi with more curved lines, but that's only because someone have to critic
Most remember the kadeshi for the pleasant rounded and white coverage, but if you examine the textures closely you will see that between every single white-grey plate rough, greasy and at times even rusty mechanical parts can be seen.
Also, consider the technological advancements the Kadeshi must have achieved, just like every other race...
I know that, and you're right. I didn't said I disliked it, but still, that's not my idea of kadeshi. But in some extend, I think it goes pretty well for a next-gen post-HW1 kadeshi fighter, anyway. Can't wait to see it textured
To Siber: I thought it was .zip's we got to work, but no matter, I got the files!
To Avatar II: Yeah, those textures would be supremely helpful! I'd like to match your style as much as I can, and besides, I might learn a thing or two. It might be a while before I can download them, however, due to slow internet connection.
How.. how do you texture like that? I drove myself nuts just looking at that.
It's not too bad, actually, just looking at it I find it MUCH better than my current system.How.. how do you texture like that?
Um, was there supposed to be a third texture? All I have is one for the engine and one for the hull-- the cockpit seems to call for a third.
Ah, yes. Sorry about that, it was going to reuse the canopy texture from the interceptor, but some mesh changes were made in that area that may invalidate that... for the moment, I'd say don't worry about it.
Alright, no problem.
I wouldn't usually double-post in a thread that's not mine, but I couldn't resist showing the Scout progress:
You guys really gotta let me know how you do your unwrapping-- this system has its quirks, but I really like it! More progress will ensue tomorrow I imagine; revision might also take place, as I've yet to download Avatar's Interceptor textures, which I know will come in handy.
That's quite an impressive beginning, my friend! I may have to steal your engine nozzles, they're quite superior to mine I think! I also have to say the line work around the cockpit is beautiful, but perhaps a bit over-compllicated... though that could be me compensating for making a relatively simple shape. Thanks so much for what you've done so far, it's really inspirational. Please let me know if there's any further way I can help.
Doci7, I think that's very well done! It's actually giving me the motivation i need in the struggle with my first texturing attempt.
doci7, if you dont mind me asking, what program(s) do you use to texture like that? the results are amazing
Oops, doubleposted post! I use photoshop (even if you know a lot about photoshop, it helps immeasurably when you take a class on it), I don't know what was used for UV mapping yet-- I assume Wings 3D. I can't help but wonder whether this was automatically unwrapped by a program or not-- based on the way some shapes are layed-out I wouldn't be surprised if it was auto-unwrapped. If so I might ask that some of my own ships be unwrapped in this fashion-- it speeds things up tremendously!
I like it.
The unwrapping was done in Wings, and is the only way I know how. It'd be neat if someone posted about how they do unwrapping for comparison, but here's basically how it goes down with me.
Wings has an AUV feature, which will automatically unwrap objects. I use this as a starting point, redividing and combining the resulting charts and using the various unwrapping tools that come with Wings to try to get a texture with the maximum continuity between faces possible without introducing significant amounts of distortion in it. This involves a lot of trial and error and fiddling. Once I have all the 'islands' how I want them individually, I move them around the map to try and get the best packing possible, and then scale the whole lot to use as much of the texture sheet as possible without overlap. I generally intentionally leave some wiggle room, though, as texturing almost always reveals some area of the mesh where the unwrapping is less than ideal, and having some breathing room means I can typically fix just those areas without disturbing other parts of the mapping that may have already been textured by that point.
Then I just save out a texture with the edges on it, color it in for easier reference, and hand it off to whoever is texturing it.
Oh snap, Doci, a thought: You'll remember that our interceptor had laser designators next to each of its gun barrels. Perhaps those would look good underneath the muzzles of the scout's guns? Just as a sorta consistency thing...
Auto-unwrap-- it sounds so awesome! I just break up the sides and take pictures of all of them, then remap it manually. It's excruciating.
The problem with the auto-unwrap is that the shaps can be all over the place and it's tedious to place them all - I've also had a hard time trying to scale groups since the faces aren't locked and they overlap each other as you scale them. I have a few methods laid out that I use in this thread.
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=221735
Oh and BTW, I really like that new Kadesh model, it looks great.
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Well, no major progress I suppose, but I have started work on the back of the ship and integrated one detail layer of Avatar's Interceptor texture. I have to admit that after having seen that texture, I feel quite dwarfed-- there is a level of subtle panelage and super-detailed-sub-pixel awesomeness that I quite frankly have no idea how to recreate. But anyway, here's some of the aft work:
And just for the heck of it, here's what the ship would look like if it crossed over to the Dark Side:
This is awesome guys... May i suggest a small difference between the imperial and republican scouts? I know they are both Taiidani, but every country makes its own modifications with modern fighters.
And thank you for including the Kadeshi. They are the coolest race... period.
Oh, I don't think they intended this for an Imperial design-- that was just me having fun with yellow and red paint.
EDIT:
I somehow missed comment that before. Sure, I'll add laser thingies.Oh snap, Doci, a thought: You'll remember that our interceptor had laser designators next to each of its gun barrels. Perhaps those would look good underneath the muzzles of the scout's guns? Just as a sorta consistency thing...
Very nice work guys!
I installed HW2 again on the weekend partly inspired by this thread and had a great time pew-pewing.
*Ignorant Question: Are you guys going to/Is it possible to improve the Ship Painter?
In the HW2 ship painter you have two choices of customizable colors; Base & Stripe.
One of these seems to affect your engine exhaust color. (Can't remember off the top of my head but I think it is the stripe? dzntmtr)
Anyway, my thought is this; is it possible to get that Engine Exhaust displayed in the ship painter too, so one could more accurately choose a nice Exhaust color?
Now as if that isn't asking too much/the impossible, wouldn't a drop-down unit choice selector be nice in the ship painter too?
Like in DoW's Army Painter, you could see how your grunt and your tank would look.
So instead of just a 2D image of an Interceptor to paint up, you can choose any of the different classes of ship available, in glorious rotatable 3D.
Dreaming?
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