EVE: RTS Mod Alpha 0.2 Released - Sector Gamemode ONLINE!

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

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EVE: RTS (work name)
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It's a mod about EVE Online developed by myself,
featuring ships and other objects directly from the original Game.
Models and Textures were extracted using TriExporter.

Download and Installation info at:

Alpha 2 Version 0.2
http://www.gamefront.com/file-hosting-faq/

Alpha 1 Version 0.13
http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts

Features:
- Ships and other models from the Eve Online Universe
- Amarr playable
- Gamemode Sector Conquest
- Shipwreckages - spawned as effect - collision removed due to pathfinding issues.
- 2 Maps to test the Gameplay

Progress:
- will be updated in September 2012

First Screenshots:
Only HD shots are current work
The rest is a bit older.

Spoiler

09.01.2012 - 11.01.2012

04.01.2012 - 08.01.2012

29.12.2011

4.12.2011 - 22.12.2011

02.12.2011

30.11.2011

28.11.2011

25.11.2011

24.11.2011

21/22.11.2011




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

First (Old) Video:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/20718...24_63_x264_rar
PW: Abaddon

10.12.2011
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21072...on+Demo+HQ.mp4


Credits and so on:
All Ships and most of the used Models are under IP of CCP. I got permission to use their stuff as long, as i'm not trying to make any profit with it.
So, i don't want to spread this Mod all over the internet. You should not upload it yourself or publish somewhere else.
I'm using some modified Scripts and Weapon FX from B5 Mod as well as parts of their Capture Gamerule.
In addition I itegrated the energy cannon FX from HW@ as Blaster Weapon effect.
Last but not least Peppers Shader 2.0 are used.

So, many thanks to:

CCP - for allowing me to use their great stuff (Models/Textures)
www.Ccpgames.com
www.Eveonline.com

Babylon 5 Mod team and Pepper, for effects and Shader 2.0
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...cussion-Thread

HW@ Team for Explosion and weapon effects
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre....2.4.0-TRAILER

Quote from CCP's message 2011.10.05 18:54:00 CCP Wrangler (wich should allow me to use their stuff for the mod.)
..."As long as you don't charge for the mod or otherwise make any profit, and as long as you give us (CCP) credit for the artwork and such, there shouldn't be any problems with this mod."


best regards to all of you

Mr.Thi

[gthompsn]

Glad to see this. Is it a continuation of the EVE mod that went quiet awhile ago?

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

No, I have started my own project.
I'm using the most current EVE models available.

At the moment i'm approaching the 1GB mark.
I think I'll remove Wreckages of Frigates and Destroyers to save Memory.

Uploading is going to be pain.

[gthompsn]

Actually, what about making a separate HOD for the wreckages? EvilleJedi's WarLords mod used multiple hod files...

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

I know, Evil had an unbelieveable amount of stuff in his mod. But he had pretty low textures on his wreckages and may ships that looks similar (Stardestroyers / Moncal cruisers and so on), so it was a good idea making reuseable wreckage.
If you take a look at the screens you'll see that the wreckage i'm using are double sided and have transparent parts all over the hull. Reducing the Resolution will make the small metal parts and grids look inexact and washed out.

But every single ships has it's own Wreckage at the moment ... thats, why i'll remove the frigates. performance is not the Problem until now it's the Upload size and maybe a problem for people with low Video memory.

All the textures are 2048x2048 or 1024x1024 with $diffuse / $glow / $normal textures ... so thats making the Hods pretty big. In addition lod0 Models are 5k+(up to 30k/60k) Polys while lod2 ist about 1k.

Additionally I wanted to actually see what was destroyed in some point in space.

[gthompsn]

But, you could also have some of the more generic wreckage shared across lots of different ships, right? What about having two different download options, one low res/small and the other one your full deal? You can't have as many ships on screen or do as massive battles with the higher res stuff, but that gives players the choice or which one to do.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Hm, I never got any performance problem because of the hipoly or Highttextures. The bottlenex is more or less the Bulletcount on screen or the amount of tracking weapons.

I don't like the generic wrecks i can use at the moment. And I'm not able to make my own, because i lack in time.

But, i think. I'll do a version without the wreckage. If the Mod is done I may make a low version but for now, it's not worth the additional work for me. I want to get it up this year if possible.

In addition the Death effect itself will still leave some "wreckage" for a few seconds as seen on some of the screenshots.


P.S. I can easily have 100-200 big ships on screen if there is no battle going on. - the lods are pretty good.

[MelvinVM]

What models are you using?

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Original Eve models - and yes i asked at CCP ;-)

Btw. Update from Today:

Maelstrom and Cyclone ingame and a few other ships wich were already ingame.

[MelvinVM]

Im still curious how they're accepting you, and they don't accept any other mod work.

Just saying, CCP's got attack ferrets and it would be cool if you could do anything with team coloring, like adding something original over this.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

0o ... There are many mods going on for EVE. Maybe they changed their mind.
I have seen at least a mod for:
Galactic Civilisations
Sins of a solar empire
and X3 Terran conflict (last one directly in one of the eve forums.)

In addition I have a mail wich tells me that I'm allowed to make a mod out of it.

"As long as you don't charge for the mod or otherwise make any profit, and as long as you give us (CCP) credit for the artwork and such, there shouldn't be any problems with this mod. "
from CCP North America

I took me a while to get this answer because no one responded for about a month or so. And I had to write a couple of mails.


And about team colour:
I used it for Amarr and Gallente, but I got the Problem that Shader 2.0 can not support Team colour and transparency at once. So from now i go with default eve colours.
So after finishing Minmatar and Caldari, i'm going to replace Amarr and Gallente Textures to non team colour. So all ships are have original colouring in the end.

[LeviathansWrath]

now thats what i call eve alicous, no pun.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

So, I'll try to get done one by Day. So today: Minmatar Bellicose



Minmatar status now:
Maelstrom
Cyclone
Bellicose

As you may have seen i go top down. I like to add:
Battleships
Battlecruiser
Cruiser
Destroyer
Frigate

If I have done this for every Race I'll start to build the first Package. This way I'll have something like a techdemo out, but it will still lack tactical deep. It will allow me to do propper weapon balancing.

So, tomorrow I'll try to get the Thrasher done. (Done means All markers, Turrets, Navlights, Engines and Textures)

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Ok, well I missed to update the last two days - mainly because I did not manage to finish anything at the weekend.

But today I got the last two Minmatar ships done for the test fleet.
Thrasher and Rifter ingame:



This afternoon I started to work on the Rokh.
If you like you can post favorite caldari setup for the first release. Battlecruiser work will begin tomorrow i think, so not much room :-P ... Ferox or Drake ^^ ?

For those who don't know them:
Drake: http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/i...?type_id=24698
Ferox: http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/i...?type_id=16227

After that i'll need to decide between:
Caracal http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/item.php?type_id=621
and
Moa http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/item.php?type_id=623

Only this two because electronic warfareweapons and utility ships will find their way in later and Caracal and Moa are the only two ships wich have only direct battle benefits by default.

Over the week i'll try to set up something on moddb, but Tanis will always be first place for updates and so on - Mother Tanis, i'll never leave you ;-P

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

8:38
Did not manage to finish any ship yesterday, but I have setup a moddb site.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts

Main reason for work delay was an EVE Client update yesterday. It was about 1.2 GB and included a couple of new textures and models, so i needed to take a look at it :-D

11:56
Edit:
Ok I have done the New Raven ... Rokh is gone as first battleship :-P


Caldari go pretty fast, as most of them do use missile launchers, without turret mesh.

13:43
Edit2:
Fist Caldari Battlecruiser is the Drake: ready and ingame.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

After having some trouble yesterday and the day before with effects i contiued today with a Caldari cruiser: The Caracal
You can also see some a three step screenshow from defaultmodel to wreckage with some debris:



At the moment the Wreckage will stay about a Minute and then leave some final debris for 30 seconds or so. Maybe i'll increase Wreckage to 90 seconds. because even 100 Wreckages at once won't hit performance too much.


I'll also try to find a fix or workaroud for the Light glow bug. Maybe TON_Vipers idea works.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Not really much news today.

But at least one new ship is done. The Merlin:


I'm currently stuck with some effect streamlining and reforming my folderstructure to get a better workflow. In addition I got the feel of sitting in front of you PC the whole day and getting nothing done... -.- You know that feeling ? :-P

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Ok, the Problem with the Lights should be gone. ... at elast for me ^^ ... we'll see if it'll work on other PC's, too. I'm not sure here because it seems to be a timing related problem and I found a timing wich is working. So let's hope it's not variable.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Today I finished the Explosion / Death effect prototype. It's going to be adapted for most of the ships. As most effects are scaled to use "entity" as FX size it should not take very long to port them over.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21072...on+Demo+HQ.mp4 (About 7 MB)

As you may see the "big" Drake leaves a wreckage behind, while the small frigates only have some debris flying around.
All ships bigger then a frigate will have a wreckage wich will stay at least 60 seconds.

I also updated Moddb and uploaded the video, but their flash-format makes it a pretty bad quality.

The Video above is in Full HD

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

After slowdown from effects I was able to finish the last Caldari ship for the alpha-release fleet. The Cormorant - a destroyer class ship.

[Ragnarokx]

No weapon effects yet, right ?

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

^^ ... lets say no effects on the screens yet :-D

No, weapon effects are half done.
Amarr Lasers are more or less done and Gallente Blasters too (taken and modified from B5 and HW@) (Projectiles have a possible effect)
I'm still missing a good effect for the railgun as well as a Good model for Missiles and Torpedos. (If i can't manage to find one in time i#ll use scaled hw 2 torpedos and missiles... :-/

While eve's ships and objects are only awesome in most cases .. they really made the warhead models a bit ugly (only my thoughts)

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Feel the industrial power!



This will be a controlpoint object. It will only generate income for now, but who cares ... it has smoking funnels and dust exhaust fans !!! ^^ Effects for the win!

Edit:
Ok about one hour ... later


If the concept works ... it's so easy to get the stuff ingame :-D

[gthompsn]

Indeed. There are things that I wish would work, but don't. The stuff that DOES work however is pretty nice.

[KeyBored]

This is BEAUTIFULLY done! The ships look amazing! Its really nice to see HW2 looking that spectacular, hell id say its as good as the B5 Mod maybe even prettier! I love the way the ships and stuff look like plasticy metal, youve done a great job on getting the ships specular and gloss balance right!

[chickenpie65]

You should have used Nexus as base, it's closer to EVE as they're both tactical simulators... but then again Nexus died long time ago

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Hehe, thank you. It took me a while to get the normal texture to be handeled good... it not optimal as I ahve some washed out textures on some models, but that seems to be connected to the models normals.-.- ... wich is a problem of CFHodED 4.X .. but i can't use V3 because it's crashing all the time and even if i run it under XP it impossible to import models because they are simply too complex. V3 can't handle so many poly's i think.

At the moment I have a regular workcycle like this:
Extract model and textures
Extract *.red files (some information for colours, navlights, weaponpositions and much more)
Modify every *.obj-file, so it optimised as mcuh as possible for me.
Make a doublesided version of the model for the Wreckage model
Create textures out of the original files. (pretty much copy and pasting them around while using the right filters)
Copy a existing Hodfileand import all stuff and setting up Turrets, Navlights, Markers and whatever
Match Event and shipfile

And ... start again :-P




About Nexus. We'll I have it here at home, but I don't really care about it. It was fun a while, but I don't want to make this a tactical simulator like Nexus.
I was pretty much disappointed what they had finally done with it, after they originally announced it as an imperium galactica III ...
And then the real game only featured a tactical skirmish with a very limited multiplayermode and mod capacity regarding the gamemodes.

I don't want to say that I didn't like Nexus, it had a pretty cool storymode, but it's tactical and I want to make an RTS mod - Mining, lare fleets, big battles - and nexus is made for small skirmishes. No Mining, no building, ... with a maximum of maybe 10-20 ships at once. So it's simply not my genre.

In addition I'm modding Homeworld a long time now. It would take much time to get all the knowhow about Nexus I have for homeworld right now. Ok some knowlage might still be useable, but I don't have time and motivation to take it into account.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Updated Punisher:
Removed teamcolour
New Textures for ship and turrets.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Feel the pain of Christmas slowdown XD ... but hey News

http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts/im...00-armageddons

Finally got a 100vs100 Armageddon stresstest done and it was still playable for such an big engagement.
The candidate for final beam effect did a pretty good job.

[skygunner58203]

Any chance you're looking for beta testers? While I suck at modelling, I can hod very quickly. I'm also good at finding bugs

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Hey :-), no sry not at the moment. But as soon as the first alpha test release is up I'll need every help I can get to hunt down as much bugs as possible.

Btw ... the Pic from Moddb and another update: The Armageddons Texture is redone and all navlights are added now.


Edit: Got this ready - Other window-lights and Navlights

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Retextured Maller and Prophecy

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Today i finished retexturing of Amarr fleet, complete with adding Navlights and fixed explosion markers and engines.



The Coercer was the last missing ship here:


Additionally I made two shots during a test in wich a lone orca got punished

[Qwaar-jet858]

Are you going to include every ship type, i.e maller,omen,aug, so on? and are you going to have them be somewhat accurate, as in maller dosent hurt very badly but is tough, omen is fragile but hurts more, so on?

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

At least ... thats the plan :-P

Maller and Omen is an pretty easy example ... with is more or less working. But for some ships i don't really know, how to make them fullfil their role.

I thought about Locistic ships to improme things like repair / speed / accuracy
ECM ships may get a weapon system that can fire at a single target and disable it as long as it's firing or they may get a area of effect reducing weapon accuracy / speed / whatever.

Carrier and large / capital Civil ships will get a similar role then carriers in hw
While only carriers will be able to start fighters / bombers (if supercarrier), most large, non military ships will be able to call in reinforcements from the size of a frigate to a Battleship.

I think Dreadnought should be harder to get ( maybe from control points / stations / Supercarriers only) and i don't know if I really try to include titans. ... The may find their way in later on.

[Qwaar-jet858]

also how are drones to be implemented, if at all? i was thinking just set them as racial fighters (as in HW fighter wings, and use racial drones, gal gets Hob/HH/Ogre an such) and use the same cap thing that FX does for keeper drones so you can only build one flight of whatever size it can support, i doubt half flights are doable but hey. So if there are logi that means T2 is in? and you may just have to ajust Ewar for homeworld play have them use EMP or somesuch

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

To make it short. T2 variants only if there is no T1 Variant of the model. I'm not going to include redundant models. The only thing that would change is the texture and .. ok ^^ ... well some attributes.

Drones ... hm had them in a few month ago together with titans... but like titans they are a bit special.

Nearly every ship in eve can at least support drones. The problem is ... it would not be very useful to integrate dronebuilding on every ship for hw2.
So only ships with a drone bonus, may get drones. I'm not planing to skript drone limits to single ships.

I just made this diagramm:


Edit:
'*' is only showing that this may get ingame this way. Not sure about Drones, Dreads and Titans.

The Support ships will call in reinforcements ... not really build them. Only Drone Carriers, Carriers and Super Carriers will launch the Drones, Fighters and Bombers.

Dreadnoughts and Titans may get the status of a support, so they can call in smaller shipclasses.

And please forgive the missing 'r' in 'Super Carier' ;-)

[Mantaray]

this looks pretty sweet. i was working with Zatch on the old eve mod back in the day. i dont have any of the materials or time to help out fullscale. but if you need any help i'd be glad to help.
from the looks of it your completely competent so best of luck!

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Thank you for the offer, Mantary.

Today I like to present a concept of the Miningbeam. It took me a few hours and dozens of tests but now it seems to look pretty good. At least in my opinion. :-) So . . . I like to present it to you.

[Babbo]

Just a humble note from myself: this all is very impressing; I'm looking forward to downloading your bytes!

[Mantaray]

aside from the 'why would anyone fly one of those when a retreiver is so much better' XD
the mining beam looks brilliant. i hopped in to eve and visited some belt just to check it out.

[KeyBored]

Nah i imported HUGE models into v3...it just frezees for a bit. it took so long for a 100k poly model to import on my old P4 3.2 / 8600gt haha so I just left it overnight...woke up and then 5 mins later it finished.. not sure how long it took i cant remeber when i started it

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

@Babbo: Thx

@Manatary: ;-) ... you won't get this dilemma. See all three mines classes ingame :-D



@KeyBored: you got a PM. v3 Can't handel it. At least not save big ship models - it will result in a crash.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Update on Asteroids: One ice and one rock asteroid-set ingame: 4 Asteroids ech set.

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

HEy, sorry - not time for a longer post now. But you can take a look here:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Ok bigger update:
Sanshas are ingame:


Yesterday a new Economy system was integrated:


The new / advanced industry works like this:
1.Miners harvest RU and gain a basic income for harvest.
2.Ore is stored
3.If refinery available: convert ore to minerals.
4.Minerals stored.
5.If assembly-array available: convert minerals to income.

Before you ask: It's stored all in your main store, no industrials travel between the Stations.
It would use too much CPU and slow down the gameplay too much i think.

If you reach 1000k ISK your additional money from harvesters will be turned into Ore to prevent ISK (RU) loss


Today I was able to rehod the Refinery and Assembly Array, so the Eco should be useable now.

[KeyBored]

and once again...awesome

[-=[F@LC0]=-]

Heyho: Good News - EVE: RTS V0.13 Alpha released

http://www.moddb.com/mods/eve-rts

Please take a look at the info's on summary page.

Have fun and best Regards
Mr.Thi

[Ice]

all fine keep up the good worke !!!!

[skygunner58203]

Holy crap. tried it before work and i'm very impressed