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[Majestic]

Will you be bringing back any of the old looks for ships and stations to the mod? Would be awesome!

No, sorry. I'm really not a modeler. Some of the stuff could really do with fresh models since there's nothing like the Romulan Phoenix, for instance, in FO, but I simply don't have the skills to make them myself.

Why not use @Aad Moerman models. He's basically rebuilt every stock model and you could set up them all to use his art style @Darklight
They're all available on here too I'm pretty certain.

 

[CABAL]

Why not use @Aad Moerman models. He's basically rebuilt every stock model and you could set up them all to use his art style @Darklight
They're all available on here too I'm pretty certain.

I might do that. He does have a very different texturing style than FO, though, and I do want everything to match.

Ideally, I'd have accurate remakes of the A1 ships and stations that aren't included in FO (with the proper orientation for yards and such) and have them match the FO art style, but that seems like a tall order. I can do hardpointing and some texture tweaks, but that's about where my modelling skills end.

 

[Adm_Z]

Have you checked out the 2.0 beta? I don't even know if its still available, but I feel like there were some models there that matched, but didn't make it to the 3.0 release.

Also, you could possibly make a color filter that you use to universally "tweak" Aad's to make them darker and more FO like. But the hallmark aesthetic of FO is the bumpmaps, which are easy to make, but I'm not personally sure how to apply them through milkshape.

 

[Sqweloookle]

And I get the feeling that the FO team will not be releasing their templates to modders who want to keep making and updating mods for FO while they work on NX.

 

[CABAL]

I've got a progress report! Does not include Advanced.

Hull values for all ships and stations have been set to 30. They ranged from 1 to 32 before. 30 seems to be just about the sweet spot for mimicking A1's hull-less system. The hull regen rate is 0.5 for everything, so all ships and stations take one minute to fully regenerate their hull. I'm not entirely sure that scouts can actually destroy each other in one-on-one duels, so that needs some tests. It's still not perfect, but it's a bit better than before.

All classic music and voiceovers have been restored. The old music is back, with volume tweaks to make it audible in the newer system and all the songs for each faction merged into a single file each since A2/FO can't handle multiple music files, for some reason. Ships and stations now use the original Armada 1 voices instead of the A2 and FO voices, adding authenticity.

On a similar note, all ships and stations use the appropriate possibleCraftNames from A1, for that little bit of authenticity.

Lastly, the old officer soft cap system has been restored! (more or less) Starbases now take -20 officers, effectively adding 20 to the cap as in A1. The actual cap doesn't increase, though, so you may find yourself dipping into negative values with some regularity. You'll actually start at -14 out of +120, for instance, with the default officer cap.

Things that still need to be done:

Officer upgrades for starbases. (and pre-upgraded starbases for the AI since this will have to be replaceweapon based)

Finish removing the latinum cost from ships and stations and remove infinite_latinum.odf and related files.

Rework tooltips to account for new system. Also, replace the officer star with faction specific icons to match resource display.

Convert a number of special weapons (not sure how many right now, at least the Klingon Commando Team for certain) to cannonimp+uniphas/unitorp weapons to properly recreate A1 behavior.

Restore remaining missing sound effects.

Restore remaining missing visual effects.

Make some more maps.

Add NPC factions.

Lastly, the AI seems to be trying to build their first mining station at the infinite moon on The Very First Map, which is holding things up. Need to figure out why.

 

[Majestic]

I might do that. He does have a very different texturing style than FO, though, and I do want everything to match.

Ideally, I'd have accurate remakes of the A1 ships and stations that aren't included in FO (with the proper orientation for yards and such) and have them match the FO art style, but that seems like a tall order. I can do hardpointing and some texture tweaks, but that's about where my modelling skills end.

Most of their texturing style has to do with bump maps and used shadows and bumps on their actual textures to give them a more 3d look. You can probably get it close doing texture edits to Aads textures. Just take a bit of time to get the steps right in photoshop so you can tweak all the textures.

 

[Sqweloookle]

Nice update, can't wait for the download!

I did notice the AI did go for the infinite moon but I send a fleet and kill them muahahaha!

I really wish for the Galaxy so I'll probably be playing Advanced more then normal lol
You are putting the Galaxy into Advanced right?

 

[CABAL]

Most of their texturing style has to do with bump maps and used shadows and bumps on their actual textures to give them a more 3d look. You can probably get it close doing texture edits to Aads textures. Just take a bit of time to get the steps right in photoshop so you can tweak all the textures.

And I can also hardpoint in that bloom effect on the engines. I'll dissect a FO ship and see if I can add bumpmaps in MS3D. That's low priority, though. Right now I'm focusing on ODF work.

I really wish for the Galaxy so I'll probably be playing Advanced more then normal lol
You are putting the Galaxy into Advanced right?

I'm going to find something for it to do, sure.

 

[Majestic]

MS3d Can't do bump maps correctly for sod files. For that 3dmax v5 is required. I might have a copy somewhere if you're interested in it mate.

 

[CABAL]

MS3d Can't do bump maps correctly for sod files. For that 3dmax v5 is required. I might have a copy somewhere if you're interested in it mate.

That would be great!

 

[Majestic]

I'll see if I can dig it up. Should be floating around on a portable/backup harddrive somewhere

 

[CABAL]

Anybody know how I would go about making a retro MIDI-style version of the A1 menu music?

 

[CABAL]

Ran into an interesting quirk. I had gotten the crew costs to show up by setting the verbose tooltip delay to 1000 and merging tooltip and verbosetooltip into tooltip, which, as it turns out, can reference DLS like verbosetooltip. FO only hides the crew cost in the verbosetooltip, so the only using the basic tooltip brought back crew costs without that latinumcost workaround. The problem I've found is that when you hover over the weapon icons in the ship display they don't show the basic tooltip at all, waiting for the verbose tooltip. So now I've lost my fancy weapon tooltips.

 

[Sqweloookle]

Aren't all the Verbose tooltips in one file, sprites right? I would imagine so are the Tooltips....
No the tooltips are in the odfs themselves, but the Autotooltips (verbose ones) are in a single file I know it! Which one I'm not sure. --- Ah the Dynamic_Localized_Strings.h file hides the Verbose tooltips Cabal! Though I don't see crewCost.

While going through the Fleet ops files I found these:
# Chain reaction pulsar trail - Fleet Ops mod
# ---------------------------

@emitter crpulsar
type=spray
pixel=(1,1,1)
sprite=empty
expansion_rate=1.0
firing_period=1.0
lifespan=0
velocity=8.0
spread_angle=10.0
@end_emitter

# Chain reaction pulsar trail - Original game
# ---------------------------

@emitter crpulsar
type=spray
pixel=(0.9,0.9,0.2)
sprite=redtrail
expansion_rate=-1.02
firing_period=0.15
lifespan=0.79
velocity=0.01
spread_angle=20
@end_emitter

Since Super Classic's doesn't have a trail maybe that above could restore it?

 

[CABAL]

I can definitely restore the old pulsar trail.

FO hardcoded the verbosetooltips to hide crew cost. I only figured out that was how it worked when I noticed that A2 Classic had crew costs in the tooltips but not verbose tooltips.

 

[Majestic]

The problem I've found is that when you hover over the weapon icons in the ship display they don't show the basic tooltip at all, waiting for the verbose tooltip. So now I've lost my fancy weapon tooltips.

Is it really worth having crew costs at the expense of the weapon tool tips?

 

[CABAL]

Is it really worth having crew costs at the expense of the weapon tool tips?

Well, I thought the old system might have been causing performance issues, but now I'm not sure. And it was only the wireframe weapon tooltips that stopped working; you still get the full tooltips when hovering over the special weapon buttons. I might re-implement it since it doesn't seem to have helped performance, but I'll change the specifics if I do. I don't want that infinite_latinum object anymore.

 

[Blade]

if you use mr vulcans sod importer/exporter scripts any version of 3dmax should work since v5 doesnt work post winXP

in regards to officer cap i cant remember if theres an actual limit in a1 but 1 idea is to increase the cap to a limit and use a fo style pod as a starting unit that uses x amount of officers to get to the normal limit and then starbases and their addons can use negative values wich should release the 'used' officers from that starter pod thing

one thing ive noticed im 3.2.7 i dont seem to have a tech tree
also it crashes in fo4 if you wish i could help you convert to fo 4 as it does have some advantages and kool features if your into a little bit of moddelling and texturing challenge

 

[CABAL]

in regards to officer cap i cant remember if theres an actual limit in a1 but 1 idea is to increase the cap to a limit and use a fo style pod as a starting unit that uses x amount of officers to get to the normal limit and then starbases and their addons can use negative values wich should release the 'used' officers from that starter pod thing

That's an interesting idea. I was just letting the officers used go into the negatives, but a dummy object to drain officers might work, too.

one thing ive noticed im 3.2.7 i dont seem to have a tech tree

I've only set up tech1.tt so far.

also it crashes in fo4 if you wish i could help you convert to fo 4 as it does have some advantages and kool features if your into a little bit of moddelling and texturing challenge

I have a FO4 fork, but I'm hoping to keep it in 3.2.7 if I can. I do like the v4 features, though.

 

[Blade]

sounds good an alternative is to use fleetcaps for officers

 

[CABAL]

sounds good an alternative is to use fleetcaps for officers

The v3 version of fleetcap doesn't support soft caps, though, as far as I know. I'd have to use the XML tech tree version introduced in v4.

 

[Blade]

im pretty sure v3 does allow the increase in caps via negatives

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/odf-commands#Fleetcap-Configuration-Files-removed-in-FO4.0

 

[CABAL]

Oh, I see. I'll have to consider that.

 

[Blade]

so i dunno how much your wanting to do with this mod but if you want you could look at this
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JK9nxI5GCPSJBZfdLhgY9_ySwkZV6cFl/view?usp=sharing

essentially its my proof of concept for a potentially better assimilation and a different way for borg ranking to work
it uses my classic a2 mod as a core but works with fo3.2.7 (the version for fo4 is a lot simpler)

 

[Sqweloookle]

Who is doing FO4?