Nexus: Perfect for WC mod?

Nexus is an excellent game, but I don't feel that its appropriate for a WC mod. The only thing I can see fitting in would be a pre-Kilrathi war era mod. In order for it to fit in with Kilrathi War era, you would have to significantly beef up the fighters and bombers abilities, as well as extend the ranges of the mission far beyond what is currently in place, so that the capships themselves come into contact very rarely. Anything before the war with the Kilrathi MIGHT work though.
 
I was thinking of the best one being in the Kilrathi war era.

I believe that just because we did not see heavy cap ship to cap ship fighting in the games, does not mean it did not take place. If I remember correctly they did say something about cap on cap battles somewhere in the game.
 
Actually I take it back. I've been thinking about it and this is entirely possible, and would work great. Change the numbers of fighters and bombers per squadron, which can be done in Tactics.ini, add some kind of missile to the bombers, like the Big Bang Missile, and give it a thirty second charge time, both of which can also be changed in the Tactics.ini file. After that you make your ship models, armed mostly with flak cannons, tweaked for a WC number of fighters, and make the capships start insanely far away from each other. I can change all kinds of stuff in the tactics.ini so let me know if you are going to follow up on this.
 
One problem is that you want your mod played by the most people. The most popular Wing Commander mods are based on Secret Ops (free starter pack), Freespace (legal abandonware) and Flight Commander/Vega Strike (free engine from scratch) because the player needs virtually nothing separate in order to play. The Homeworld, Conquest, Star Trek Armada and other WC mods haven't really gone on to completion.
 
Well, I am not starting a project in this. I was just wondering if someone HAD started this project. I would be willing to help out if someone did start it. The least I could offer is free webhosting, I am very busy with a HL2 mod of my own, but Im sure I could find time to help in other areas.

As for the reasons the others are not doing well I dont know, but I do know that good quality work will be met well, and people will buy games just to play a good mod.
 
RIFT said:
As for the reasons the others are not doing well I dont know, but I do know that good quality work will be met well, and people will buy games just to play a good mod.
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Of course you're right, but that engages a chicken and egg scenario. The most talented and driven mod makers might be inclined to choose one of the types of mods I listed before so their work can be appreciated by the most people. Similarly, the most mod makers wouldn't have experience modding the less popular games, so you'd have less of a chance having the highest quality mods on the least popular platforms. So yeah, if a great mod were made for Nexus, that might bring more great mods, but so far that first great mod seems a bit far off. I'm sure the internal Nexus community will produce some neat things, but right now the penetration of Nexus players here is rather low. One of the most important things for mod teams is for their core people to truly embrace both their engine and their universe, and I don't know of any of them who have tried it yet. There's a lot of games that would be cool to convert to Wing Commander, but the teams attempting to do so never get anywhere, so I'm taking a more practical approach. To get back to the original question, I would say whatever Wing Commander engine is most recent is probably the "perfect" game for Wing Commander mods.
 
But dont you think that depending on low end games (todays games offer much more than the latest WC game) is just brining down the WC community?

I mean, what is the last Wing Commander engine ?
 
RIFT said:
But dont you think that depending on low end games (todays games offer much more than the latest WC game) is just brining down the WC community?

I mean, what is the last Wing Commander engine ?
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Of course you can build a case that using more technically advanced game engines would be cool, but in reality people have tried all kinds of different stuff and that hasn't panned out.

I think it's arguable that newer games "offer much more" than original Wing Commanders, and that's besides the point, since mod makers are adding videos, advanced graphics effects and tons of new stuff originally not envisioned for their source engines. Sure, they might be able to do even more with newer engines, but that doesn't actually happen. Dedicated mod teams mod the games they already are familiar with. I've seen plenty of groups band together to mod every single new space sim that comes and goes, and they've almost all gone nowhere (notable exception is The Reckoning for Freelancer). Mod teams announcing that they're going to create a super cool mod for each new game, and then not delivering, bring down the community. On the contrary, Standoff, Saga, Priv and others, which use "secondary" technology, but have actually produced substantial results, have helped out community grow quite a bit.

Nexus looks like a cool game and all, but I don't realistically see it getting to a playable WC mod point after taking these various factors into consideration.
 
You may be correct in your thinking, but much of this also depends on the friendliness of the game you are modding. Nexus has been out a few short months and there is already a very nice playable ST mod out and more comming.

It looks as if Nexus is VERY mod friendly, a major bonus for any mod.
 
I'll have to agree with Chris here. I work on Reckoning for Freelancer (the "notable exception" he mentioned), and while we've enjoyed a fair bit of popularity amongst the WC community, when it comes right down to it I have to admit that the audience for the mod amongst WC fans is going to be a lot smaller than among Freelancer fans who also enjoy WC. It's not really the way I'd like things to be, but it's the way it is.

I work on Reckoning because I enjoy it, but primarily because of the momentum it's built up over the past two years. At times I've considered branching out into other games more "suitable" for a WC mod (Starshatter, Homeworld 2), and one by one rejected them because of that momentum. Having fellow team members you can depend on, and something that works that you can come home to at the end of the day is a hell of a lot more encouraging than starting something from scratch.
 
Hey Bob I love the Reckoning, moreso than the Privateer Remake in Vega Strike, and had I not already owned FL I would have bought it for the sole purpose of playing the Reckoning. It's a great stress reliever, so keep up the good work. :D
As for other game engines. I think SO is perfect for WC games because it was built for a WC game, and it's free. :) Other space sims have presented the basic idea of interstellar dogfighting with new elements that were never first used in WC games, like the Newtonian physics model for Independence War, or the ability to command a fleet like in ST Armada. Sometimes I just want to play a classic WC game, and I can get that from Standoff or UE or even going to KS. The only thing missing from the Vision engine that I would like to see is an on the fly mission creator, like those used in Janes ATF and US Navy Fighters. If I could just layout my own fighter type and the types I want to fight against, then just go out and fly that would be perfect.
As it stands I get a good fix from The Reckoning, and periodic repeats of the Standoff prologue. :)
The only WC mod I would really like to play that would require a new\different engine would be a FPS mod, maybe with a mix of flight elements too. So hey maybe CNC Renegade would be a better WC engine ;)
 
=P Programming a mission "on the fly" to do what you want isn't hard - even in WCP Pascal. Especially with the addition of the simulator.

It's the complex campaign missions that are difficult to learn.

I have to disagree with most of what's been said in this thread - on both sides of the issue.

There is nothing wrong with the Vision Engine, it's HARDLY outdated with the new modifications that come out everytime another mod (Standoff and UE) are released. Those mods have done MUCH to improve the game and bring it up to "modern" terms.

I think the Vision Engine is near-perfect for a Wing Commander Mod, and I would know (I'm up to my elbows in it's wonderful guts modding it right now).

Nexus, from what I've been reading here, isn't a fighter based game. Which means a WC mod would never work. Now granted, you could change it to be fighter based, but then are you really remaining true to the Nexus Engine, or just re-inventing it to get what you want? And, if you have to re-invent an Engine to get what you want, how can it be perfect?

The Vision Engine doesn't require re-invention, just re-application of old techniques and it performs perfectly. It's cheap because it's free, AND Because it doesn't require people to upgrade their computer to play it (Another reason I will never play Nexus).

IMO the Mods made for the Vision Engine are even better then having another WC Game, they represent dedication on the part of the creators who have a genuine love of Wing Commander. They recreat the original feel better then something like Prophecy (Not that I didn't like Prophecy, mind you, but it sure was a stretch from WC1).

And they're far prettier then Prophecy and SO Ships. If you don't believe me - wait for the upcoming episodes of Standoff.

You can't match any of that with your re-invented Nexus engine.
 
I wasnt implying that we change it to be fighter-based. Rather I would like to keep it as a capship-based game. Controlling your own wing of fighters and escort destroyers, order your fighters to protect yours bombers on a torpedo run against the opposing capship, that sort of thing. I was just pointing out that the fighters stats would have to be improved quite a bit, which is possible, to make it feel like WC.
 
Easier said than done. Where's the homeworld one?

The better the game and the enigne, the harder it is to make models for it.
 
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