New Expansion!!! Light of the Spire

[keith.lamothe]

All the textures are in the RuntimeData/Images folder; surely you've looked there

[Zeba]

All the textures are in the RuntimeData/Images folder; surely you've looked there

Actually no. And thats due to not really having alot of free time atm past an hour or so here and there.

But more specifically are the actual 'script' files that govern the nature of the gfx editable? So say I wanted to add in some more complexity along with ship specific explosions is this possible user side? If yes then I will totally find some time to figure out how to edit them and start work on a gfx mod as I had a great time back in the day working on one for homeworld that the B5 community relied on for many of its mods. 

[keith.lamothe]

The explosions are just a sequence of frames, iirc, and all the frames are in the folders of that name.  I think if you add more frames (or take some out) it will handle it gracefully.  Only one way to find out, though

Chris is really the one who handles how the code uses the graphic assets, I only know a bit of it.

[Zeba]

KK.

I'll dig around a bit later and see what kind of trouble I can get into and put any further questions into the Correct™ subforum. 

[x4000]

If you take away frames, the animation gets pink squares.  If you add them, it ignores them completely.  If you resize them, they may show up offcenter.  If they're not power of two, the game will get really laggy and won't display them at all.  If they're not perfectly square, that wouldn't work for all clients.  There isn't a way to adjust the animation timing or looping or anything either, or to add new animations.

All that said, the actual png files that are used at the moment certainly are directly editable, and we've had a number of player-created graphics mods, some of which eventually became part of the main game itself, others of which did not.  So it's definitely doable.

[Zeba]

Oh. I thought you guys had moved on to 'live' made on the fly particle effects with the unity engine.

Wow. Well it certainly looked like live particles instead of a set png generated animation. This both makes it absurdly easy to make new ones and absurdly hard for me personally as I'm a crappy texture artist.  ;p

All my work on the homeworld gfx mods was at the lua level by scripting together different particle effects and building up a nice ship death explosion or hit effect etc etc at the code level using previously made textures and meshes..

Still though I'll pop them into the gimp and mess about to see what I can come up with.

[Admiral]

After careful reflection I have determined what the next expansion must be. Really, it's obvious.

Joining Unity, the newly-added Unreal engine allows for a First-Person Starship experience like no other game. Fly a Mk 1 Fighter through huge enemy fleets of 10,000+! Watch as all your companion fighters are picked off one by one by Core Fighters. Marvel as the 3D head tracking - using only a standard webcam - lets you see how far behind you left the rest of your fleet as you barrel in on that Ion Cannon Mk V.

But don't worry - if your fighter gets destroyed - and it will - your vision will go blindingly white before fading to black while your neural circuits reboot back into your ordinary body at home base. Nothing bad could happen during those 10 seconds. Really. Cause, by then, your Siege Starship will be ready to command, first person, and its Captain was just wired with remote telepresence wetware...

Cheers!

[keith.lamothe]

After careful reflection I have determined what the next expansion must be. Really, it's obvious.

Joining Unity, the newly-added Unreal engine allows for a First-Person Starship experience like no other game. Fly a Mk 1 Fighter through huge enemy fleets of 10,000+! Watch as all your companion fighters are picked off one by one by Core Fighters. Marvel as the 3D head tracking - using only a standard webcam - lets you see how far behind you left the rest of your fleet as you barrel in on that Ion Cannon Mk V.

But don't worry - if your fighter gets destroyed - and it will - your vision will go blindingly white before fading to black while your neural circuits reboot back into your ordinary body at home base. Nothing bad could happen during those 10 seconds. Really. Cause, by then, your Siege Starship will be ready to command, first person, and its Captain was just wired with remote telepresence wetware...

Cheers!

Well, obviously that' just a silly dream.  There are no Core Fighters.

[Lancefighter]

nono, I read that as 'i think its time to introduce mk5 fighters' 

[KingIsaacLinksr]

*laughs*.  You silly people, its not mark 5 fighters, Chris is going to skip core fighters and go straight for Tech 6: God Mode.     The fighter is equipped with nukes and every time one dies, it explodes, wiping out all forces on a planet.  If no forces exist, it turns into a T2 Nuke blast, wiping out planets in 2-planet radius.  This leads to many shenanigans and lots of AI progress. 

King

[keith.lamothe]

The code's enum name for the Ion V is "ForegroundObjectType.IonCannonVI".

[Echo35]

*laughs*.  You silly people, its not mark 5 fighters, Chris is going to skip core fighters and go straight for Tech 6: God Mode.     The fighter is equipped with nukes and every time one dies, it explodes, wiping out all forces on a planet.  If no forces exist, it turns into a T2 Nuke blast, wiping out planets in 2-planet radius.  This leads to many shenanigans and lots of AI progress. 

King

Portable Nuclear Command mode!