Star Trek Homeworld 2 mod Beta RELEASED

[herbyguitar]

I thought someone might comment on this. There's a reason the ship looks the way it does. There's a lot of stuff here. And by not being long and sleek it has more maneuverability because there's no mass strung out lengthwise. The atmospheric flight mode is not a problem because the bottom of the ship is very aerodynamic and it is more or less a flying wing. You'll notice in the bottom there are also several small and large vectoring thrusters that are capable of lifting the entire weight of the ship vertical. You'll also notice the thruster outlets at the top and bottom of the very back of the engine. This all takes up internal room. Large wings are not really needed. Look at a harrier. They're kind of bulky looking also... or a stealth fighter. nothing sleek about it.

I first thought about making it longer and more streamline but when I started to design in all the things that I wanted it to carry... engine, warp nacelles, thrusters, cooling baffles, Reactors, injectors, cloak, shields, tractor beam, weapons, "and" atmospheric flight... It got bulky. I wanted a fast, stealthy, maneuverable, strike craft that could avoid being blown to bits by a destroyer. After all, fighters in our MOD are worthless... I'm trying to change that.

Like I said before. design is everything. Has to have a reason. If I had my choice of either a really pretty ship with no thought put into it or a box with guns, I'd choose the box with guns. I could use it to blow up the really pretty ship

[Stargazer]

hehehe, "box with guns" "to blow up the really pretty ship" - reminds me of a Borg Cube...

[casojin]

@herbyguitar
If you have a reason for it, then it's good for me.

[herbyguitar]

@ casojin. You have some very good ideas and I'm hoping that the team is paying attention to you. Thanks very much for your input

Screen shot of B'Rok class fighter. (cloak added)

[casojin]

They look better than I first expected and the engine trail is nice. Never saw multiple trails at once in HW2 before.

[Nathanius]

I've learnt never to doubt our Herby when it comes to a tasteful model

Stargazer! Have you had a look at the blog recently?

[Dasher42]

I'm really glad to see you guys and Charvell came to agreement. I'm Dasher42 and did hardpointing and scripting and effects for Sacrifice of Angels for Homeworld 1 and the related Bridge Commander project Favor the Bold, and I can tell you that Charvell's work was especially well thought out. He differentiated between the B'rel and K'vort classes by doubling up the wingtip cannons for the latter, adjusted windows, did a bunch of things to make the scale-up make sense, and it was a pleasure to reflect his thinking in the ship behavior.

The early days of Homeworld 2 modding weren't very hospitable for artwork and I had to skip out of the scene, but I'm watching your trailers with interest and thinking maybe I should install Homeworld 2 on my Mac.

A thought: when I play SoA in retrospect, I think I made the ship movement too swift and spastic, even for Trek. I've meddled with the BSG conversions for Homeworld by actually making maneuvering more gradual and slow, which means you really need to plan your ship's positions and vectors well. There are times you see Trek ships spin on a dime; my thinking is that you can't have full power to phasers and shields when that happens. In Homeworld 1 the main reason to keep maneuverability high was to have formations assumed without a lot of fuss, especially with the collision sphere tricks we had to use to make Trek ships swoop around despite being imported as frigates, destroyers, and capital ships. Your mileage may vary.

As such you probably want to consult the final release of SOA that we posted and the FtB hardpoints as well. Quite a lot of thought and toolchain scripting went into them.

Good luck!

[Nathanius]

Hi Dasher42, I've seen your work and I have to say thank you for your kind words! Charvell/Herby's contributions been a boon to the mod indeed!

I'm not sure what you mean by FtB hardpoints, or toolchain for that matter. Is it some sort of coding that didn't migrate from HW to HW2? Herby's got a copy of the old SoA HW mod in our reference folder, we do draw on it for inspiration from time to time, although there's a significant departure from SoA with the ability to code more than two races into Homeworld 2.

I'm not sure that the v0.5 mod will work on a Mac, none of the mod team have a Mac to my knowledge so we're not really able to make it Mac friendly...

[Dasher42]

*laugh* For working on both Homeworld and Bridge Commander, I developed Perl and then Python scripts which read the relevant text files and re-did the numbers according to a centralized table that I built, drawing upon the ratios at DITL and tweaking for gameplay. What this meant was that balancing a large number of ships was considerably easier; everything was based on ratios versus the Galaxy class. It also meant that all instances of a type of subsystem were centrally defined; if I decided that Type X phasers needed a new effect or a different firing pattern, the entire fleet would be revised in seconds.

An example ship definition from one of my Python scripts:

ktinga = KlingonShip('ktinga')
ktinga.stats['cost'] = 280
ktinga.stats['crew'] = 510
ktinga.stats['hullIndex'] = 340
ktinga.stats['maneuverIndex'] = 3000 # The turn rate
ktinga.stats['maneuverThrustIndex'] = 2000 # Better thought of as forward/reverse acceleration
ktinga.stats['mass'] = 490000 # This factored into inertia for turn rates
ktinga.stats['maxVelocity'] = 625 # The speed cap
ktinga.stats['rangeIndex'] = 360
ktinga.stats['sensorIndex'] = 450
ktinga.stats['shieldIndex'] = 380
ktinga.SetShields( {'front': 2, 'rear': 1, 'top': 1, 'bottom': 1, 'left': 1, 'right': 1 } ) # I generally believe Klingon ships concentrate firepower and shields up front
ktinga.SetShieldCharge( {'front': 1, 'rear': 1, 'top': 1, 'bottom': 1, 'left': 1, 'right': 1 } )
ktinga.stats['terawatts'] = 8500 # This was a big deal! This generally was interpreted to be the total amount of damage beam/pulse weapons could do in 20 seconds. Of course, this means that this was divided
# across the ship's entire weapons; in Homeworld, this affected the damage of the weapon, in Bridge Commander, the rate of recharge.
ktinga.SetProperty('PulseWeapon', '.', propertyList['KliMk10Disruptor'])
ktinga.SetProperty('TorpedoTube', '.*', propertyList['KliSingleTorpedoTube'])

You can see the results of this kind of editing through most of SOA. If you find a ship with 18323 hit points, that's why. We weren't often picking through individual lines of a file and editing individual values for balancing. Everything was ratios refined through playtesting and broadly applied.

If you want to look at SOA, the release that reflected the culmination of our work is the SOA20081225.zip on moddb.

[herbyguitar]

Dasher! What say you join up with us and make your talents a reality for this project. I know you would be a major asset for us. I'm really tickled to be reading your posts. It's like opening up a window from the past. I've always admired your work and thoughtfulness with ST projects and it would be great to have your input...again

[Dasher42]

Well, what I have is an existing body of work, tables and ratios that I think could be adapted to Homeworld 2 without a lot of fuss, though since I'm running Mac and Linux I'll need some time to set up. The results would give you a leg up on balance based on a very proven background, though things like ship size and behavior matter. While the scripts are my work, though, they got their start with team feedback, so I'd want special thanks to the TrekMods team which included Dolphoenix, ThomasTheCat, Redragon, Stresspuppy, Howedar, Charvell, and Vorlon, however they'd want to be listed.

[casojin]

I have scanned some of my Star Trek drawings and put them on my moddb profile. You guys can check it out.
http://www.moddb.com/members/casojin/images

[Nathanius]

Dasher42, we'd be thrilled to have that input! What do you need? Charvell/Herby or I can PM through the SVN and blog details if you like

--------------------
Thanks Casojin! You know what would be an exceptionally helpful design for us? A resource drop off/refinery ship, about 1.5 to 1.8 times the size of the resource colletors and slow, for each of the races.

It's been something that the HW2 game mechanics demand and alot of fans have been wanting too

[casojin]

I'll draw something when I have free time. I'm happy to help with this.

[herbyguitar]

@ casojin
I have plans to use the Klingon D-5 tanker variant for the resourcer. I realize it's rather large but it is a suitable candidate. Being a retrofit, it will not matter much what era it's in. It can be used through all eras probably. A refinery ship will need to be appropriately scaled to accommodate.

@ Nathanius
Could you PM Dasher and give him what he will need for access to, SourceForge SVN, ModDB DEV, and mod site? He'll have a better idea of where we are in development.

[Nathanius]

Done

Make sure you modernise things on the D-5 like the nacelles to make it look like it's been refitted over time, this also gives us an easy option to reuse the model

[casojin]

I've finished sketching Romulan Mobile Refinery design. It is yet to be named.

[Sastrei]

Hehe, how about Nanclus class. Maybe they decided he hadn't been such a good ambassador after all and was only worthy of getting a refinery named after him.

-Stefan-

[Nathanius]

We're leaning towards stations for the refineries Casojin, you're welcome to submit any ideas along these lines too

[casojin]

Hmmm.....designing a station according to some particular faction is not quiet my expertise but I may be able to come up with something.

[herbyguitar]

Just try and make it look like a distribution hub or terminal. I don't think they're going to be doing a lot of moving.

[Joe 2987]

This mod makes me feel.... inadequate. Good job. I shall now download it.

[EDIT]: After further looking through your stuff, I amend my previous assessment:

Spoiler

OH MY GOD, I LOVE YOU! You have made my dream true! I bow before you!

[herbyguitar]

We're going to update to V0.6 before too long. It will have major changes to many things. V0.5 is starting to look inadequate in comparison.

[herbyguitar]

Nathan, I stole your signature

[Nathanius]

That's ok, I stole it off Sargazer

[Stargazer]

hehe, and I stole it from...
- damn!^^

[Dark Sentinel]

Major offtop:
Guys, can I help you in any way?

[herbyguitar]

I don't know... Can you model "and" texture (or just texture) for HW2 using CnlPepper's shaders? If you can, and the team all agrees, I think we can use you but we need to see a reference.

[Nathanius]

We do need more modellers and texturers, alternatively if you're any good with skinning the UI there's a bit of sample script that i'd like emulated. The Hod-ing and so on has been simplified enough by the new CFHodEd that even I can do it so what we need is more specialised help

[Dark Sentinel]

Can you model "and" texture <...> using CnlPepper's shaders?

Erm. Sorry, no. My PC cannot into CnlPepper's shaders.

[herbyguitar]

What I meant was can you make bump maps?

[Dark Sentinel]

Hm. Haven't I ansvered that 'no'?.. Okay, once more, I can't.

[Nathanius]

You can make bump maps without being able to run the shaders, that's why he was clarifying~

[Nathanius]

G'day All,

There's been a split in the mod team, a long standing disagreement over what is considered appropriate team behaviour boiled over when there were threats of sabotage made.

Herby, Stargazer and myself have started a new mod with the assets that we three have generated or secured permission for (roughly 95% to 98% of the old mod), this new mod is called Star Trek: Continuum and here is the Moddb Page.

PhatBoyGeo has indicated his desire to continue with the Star Trek: Homeworld 2 mod which he is sort of the founder of, we wish him the best of luck despite himself and what he has taken to saying about us. His moddb page can still be found here along with our original playable release.

Please note that the v0.5 release of the Star Trek: Homeworld 2 mod or any hypothetical future release from PhatBoyGeo should not be considered indicative of the quality of the Star Trek: Continuum mod.

[Tarek]

hi guys

great mod

man can't w8 until you finish it :P

if you have a list of ships/stations that need some concept drawing let me know I will be glad to help

----------

guys just a little question...

are you planning on adding the Cardassian faction to the mod ?? cause they are my favorite race and the ships look sick

anyway just a little inquiry :P

[Nathanius]

Hi Tarek,

If you have any concept art that you would like to share with us that would be a good start, send links to them in a PM to myself, herbyguitar and Stargazer.

To tell you the truth we'd not felt the need for a concept artist because Trek had been so thouroughly conceptualised by so many, but we're not going to turn down an ideas man who might be able to help. Can you model and/or texture as well per chance?

As far as the Cardassians are concerned they're not going to appear as a playable race, but there's always other ways they can make a cameo~

[Tarek]

well I can't model or make textures cause I'm a computer noob , but I'm glad your making progress I will keep track and if I have any concepts I will send them through

poor Cardassians though, no one likes them :P

[Nathanius]

Hi Tarek,

Thank you, we're looking forward to see what you come up with. We're hopeful you'll be able to provide a breath of fresh air for some of the less well documented areas of Trek, like the Romulans

Cheers!

[Fox McCloud]

Hi

Just seen your ModDB page

Very impressed by your mod. Well done!

[Nathanius]

Please refer to this thread for Star Trek: Continuum release information, it's pretty much a replication of what's up on Moddb

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...PHA-completed!