Moe

Since the old thread had reached about 450 posts, I thought I'd open a new one.

This is the discussion thread for the underwater mod. The original thread can be found here.

This mod is a total conversion for Homeworld 2 and will be set underwater, as the name indicates.

The mods temp webpage contains most of the suggestions that are going to be implemented into the mod and can be found here.

Comments, suggestions and (constructive) criticism are always welcome!
If you wish to become a part of the mod team, PM
Sp3ctre.

thesamonthemoon

Well, for people who haven't posted before, reading 443 posts can be a bit daunting, either that or they don't read all the posts, and repeat things that other people have already said.

Moe

Precisely. As for the names list, i thought you might add them to the website and also have them in the forum. But its not that important...
BTW nice job bringing the ships section up to date.

Sp3ctre

As zobet suggested, I was able to put huge blue dustclouds into the map. The result is nice, will post some screenshots later, when i'll find a non-horrible temporary texture for the ground

Now the small question time: is possible to make a ship totally unselectable and unseen (except for the mesh) in the SM?

---
I Think that, if sam don't has problems, this weekend we can release the v0.15 that will include about 3-4-5 custom ships, terrains, shkval torpedoes (and a new menu background image :heyhey: )




ok, now read only if you want to kill your happiness:

Some problems are rising while i'm trying to putting canyons or large walls: the ships should "enter" into the HOD's bounding box and fly trough the empty space, but must stop when they reach the polygons. Well, everything happens except this. I don't know very much about pathfinding, avoidance, collisions eccc... but should be possible (?)

thesamonthemoon

I dont know much about collision detection either, but maybe it's possible if you make the canyon consist of three meshes (the walls and the floor).

:sci:

Bonnet

Actually, that would make it worse, collison AI takes the box of the two objects, and makes sure they wont touch + some margin. So you would have insure that what ever you wnat to fly though there has room for it collison box, plus the other objects.
The best method might be to have the canton composed of small strips.

pipakin

BTW. the engine will not allow a model to enter into another's bounding box PERIOD

Unless you use a dock/latch path.

for canyons you would have to make the walls and floor seperate:




-Philip "Pip" Kin

thesamonthemoon

AARGGGHHHhhh...... This is driving me insane.

No matter what I do, the FX (the bullet) I'm using for the Escort Frigates anti-missile pt defense thing doesn't display! Right now I'm trying to use an unmodified FX that works perfectly on another weapon, but no! Nothing!

*End Rant*

Anyone know why this weapon won't display? (and by this, I meant that the bullet does damage but isn't visable) :



Everything looks ok to me...

Sp3ctre

:yech: so to create any tipe of ground shape, i can use only "flat" grounds, then i should rotate and position them around to obtain something....

Moe

Erm.. ok.. so i hope you guys get that cleared up so we can continue on-topic.

Sam, Spectre, have you guys looked into this deploy-for-shooting thing? Is it possible at all?

Cs_Saj

Reding letter......ahhh....oh...what the........better...stop.....before...its....two...late.........slamms...his...head...into...the...wall.....now...im....fine

have you picked a name for the mod jet.
Becuse i really wanne know what is will be.

can post some new pictures of the modells youre gone have or post a link to a site that has them.



Ps......Delphy this is not a spam post........

pipakin

Yeah, the bacis idea is to stick to rectangular shapes and rotate and translate them around (sorry for the ambiguity there, but I don't actually know hoe the engine handles the pathing and such, but I know it looks at the bbox and not the mesh itself

-Philip "Pip" Kin

thesamonthemoon

Delphy - Any replies by you on our thread is an honor as far as I'm concerned (regardless of what they are about). Erm... Ok, do delete them... *Shrugs*

And yes the deploy for shooting thing is possible, and shouldn't be too difficult (especialy with the new HW2_MadState.pdf that came with the RDN tools update).

Unfortunately, due to tons of work, I can't really do any moding until next wednesday (one week from today). But as I said in an earlier post, once wednesday comes, I can devote all my time (except when I sleep) to HW moding.

It seems that the name Crush Depth is liked by lots of people.
If we do decide to use crush depth, should it be a subtitle? It seems to me that we have three options:

Crush Depth
Homeworld: Crush Depth
Homeworld2: Crush Depth

Bob McDob

That's ... actually a model based on Star Blazers I threw in at random Anyway, since the point of that was to help determine a style for the ships, I guess it worked.

Moe

These ships look like orca whales, especially with the coloring. Cool!

Unicron

I don't know if its possible to import geo' into HW2 to act as a "ground". One way would be to add a geo' as a megalith. Each megalith 20km in diameter, 5-6 ground-geo's. That way there would be a ground with a collision model. Destroyed ships could be scripted to sink and fall on the ground.

Missions could be created with several "ground-heights" by moving the ground-geo'liths up or down.

However, here is a test ground which could work in HW2.

Moe

That would look really cool. Do you know how to implement those geoliths?

Unicron

Whoops, I just noticed that the screen is 1,24mb big

Unicron

Yes, on the same way as you would add models in .obj format. It would be like adding 5 Balcora Gate Megaliths next to eachother and do SW-Death Star bombing runs.

Those Geoliths would be placed at a given height to "mark" the bottom of the map. The limit it 20km in diameter for one object, which means we would have to add 4 Geoliths next to eachother to create a ground.

Something like this:

-- --
| | | |
-- --
-- --
| | | |
-- --


**Geolith = Geometry Megalith

Sp3ctre

Ground in Homewold is SURE, That's what im working on in these days. Here's a Preview:





My only fears are the HUGE poly count and the collisions...

P.S. Could you send me that texture in the "1,25 mb" render?

Unicron

Its to rocky IMO. It looks more like a giant asteroid than a underwaterworld.

Is it the finished model ? Try to add some life to it, to much rocks. I would show some screenshots of my Geoliths but I don't use Maya 3 and can't import them.

You can dl the texture here

Cs_Saj

you know the ocen floor is realy rocky

Moe

unicron, what happens when you focus the camera on a ship just above the ground and rotate it? Will you look through the ground? Cuz that would look kinda stupid...

Sp3ctre

Yes it's one of the problems. Effectively this should be avoided by the camera/ground collision, but for now we can't do anything.

However, I made the ground to be focusable, but unselectable

The rocky texture was temporary, I could also add a black texture with "LOL" written on it. I was displaying the method, you should know that before adding vegetation and fx the terrain must be created

Sean Mirrsen

Actually, the camera in HW2 is quite annoingly proficient at evading other objects. Like, if you focused your camera on a corvette, and moved it away, so that it came near another corvette, it would either instantly skip through the corv, or bump into it until you moved it away.

The5thElephant

I actually think that looks pretty good except for the fact that I'm wondering how you will make it look like it goes on beyond view? Will you just make the background look like it is continuing from the terrain?

thesamonthemoon

Sp3ctre - Your terrain is a bit rocky. I was thinking of something more like the one Unicorn made. It might have fewer polys that way...

My favorite name choices:

Crimson Tide
The Tides of War
Crimson Depths
Crush Depth

Have you decied on your favorites yet Sp3cre? Moe? zbobet2012?

komninosm

Good work guys. With homeworld physics a water mod is perfect realism.
Please try to aim for balance in ships than coolness factor.
And I'd like some sand too

Bonnet

The Tides of War is simple and clever, I like it.

Bob McDob

Here, you might like this thing I slapped up:

Moe

Bob - the underside looks too much like an inflatable raft. The bridge section and engines, however, look really cool.

Sp3ctre

Bob- I don't like the "blobby" hull, but the bridge is cool, try to rebuild all with less curves

About the names: Hmm I like also Tides of war, but i'm not 100% convinced
I like also HW2: Europa and something like depth or Abyss.

I also would like some sand , I repeat that these are temp textures
However there wouldn't be a lot of sand at these depths...

Cs_Saj

hurray

Hw2:europa

was my idea

Ammon Ra

LOL!

So where are the glowing, UW-flying aliens???

ShinKenDo

Wat engine they use Hyper cavitisem or normal screw

so for me i like the old, slow, noisi, screw things with lots of bubles came out

way not using screws for normal manuvering and HYPCAV like Hyperspeace?

it would be nice if Cap-ships first open the mechanisem for HYPCAV ( like Shealdfregate) and then rotate to the direction,
and wuuuusch flow away (looks licke Warpspead in deep)

thesamonthemoon

ShinKenDo - Err.. Despite spelling mistakes, I think I see what you are saying. In response: we have decided that supercavitation will be availible only to certain ships (fighters and one cap ship). Supercav will be the ships main drive.

Also, good news: I think I may have discovered how to sufficiently increase the view distance on the bubbles. Update soon.

Update: Maybe not... I thought I had something... but turns out I didn't...

In other news, the Escort is doing some really crazy things. When I take away the missile (which is default for the Vgr_assaultfrigate) the ship seems to loose it's will to live... It's hilarious. When I change it's main weapon, it no longer fires any weapons.

Now it's back to work on it... :hide:

Update 2: I may have found the problem. Next update soon.

Update 3: Problem solved. Now I fix up a few things last thigs with the Escort (including the anti-missile weapon not showing up thing) and then this version will be complete.

Moe

Another name I liked from the names thread was HW2: Deep rising.

I tried to get the Hig destie to fire its torps MLRS-style, but it didnt work.. it just fired in pairs of two. note: I only used the destroyer cuz it was the first unit with torps in the data directory, just to try it out. Still working on that.

Sp3ctre

Good! If you can work also on these things our work will be a lot faster

P.S. Added the "models" section in the site

Moe

I will, but I got a couple of exams coming up, so I wont be able to spend a lot of time on it. I should have more time after the 20th.

Sp3ctre

ok, don't worry :tooth:


I fonud on my HD a new model, wich i made a few months ago but never known what is it, what size and what race belongs to






Reminds me a Star Wars TIE fighter. The central gun could be a rotating autocannon, or maybe the vortex shaped bars around it rotates and the cannon fires a kind of energy wep

Moe

Looks cool, but I have no idea what its supposed to do... maybe we could have a sort of turret that latches to the ground, you can use it to defend your res ops. It could look a little like this, instead of those four sails it would have four grapplers to hook to the ground, and then engage targets with its autocannon.

About the name.. how about a poll thread with the most popular ideas? Sam, since you have the list, would you create it?

thesamonthemoon

Which names should I put on the poll? There are so many... I can't put them all on...

Oh, also: all my finals are done the day after tommorow. So I'll be back to moding soon.

Sp3ctre

You can put the most liked names:
Deep Rising, Europa, Crush Depth, Tides of War...

thesamonthemoon

Alright I'll compile a list.

About the Escort Frigate: I'm putting it on hold.

In the time I've spent trying to get it to shoot right, and trying to get the bullets to display, I probably could have scripted two or three more ships.

Sp3ctre, you can expect a new version with the Interceptors later today.

Edit - The best liked names are already on your list:

Deep Rising
Europa
Crush Depth
The Tides of War

Should we start a new voting thread?

Moe

Sure, just put those 4 in plus an option "other, see my post below"

thesamonthemoon

Ok, the poll has been posted.

Edit - Sp3ctre, I'm ready to send the new stuff (including interceptors) your way. Expect an e-mail shortly after this edit.

Edit 2 - E-mail sent.

Sp3ctre

ok i'll check the news. In these flat days I worked on the fishie's bc model. I received the Cs_saj's one but i'm rebuilding ALL because the models is very messed up. Expect little variations and a poly loss of at least 50% (from the original 6000+)

Sp3ctre

Received.
Here are my opinions: why the fishies interceptor are a lot more powerful than the humans? It should be the opposite: the humans' inties fires slowly, ok, but their damage must be high. The fishies should fire more often and do less damage. consider also that we shouldn't use always 5 ships per group.
I was thinking also about that the faacsf use 1 beam, the interceptor 2 small beams

Zero-9

Just a thought, wont you need to make the texture of the floor surface extremely large and detailed, or map it using alot of large textures, otherwise the floor will look stretched and horrible.