WC4 Mod For Homeworld 2 In The Works (June 5, 2006)

[Lilja]

Purchased Homeworld Remastered during the Steam winter sale, and this was the first mod I tried. Wow! Works fine with the latest update (I'm on Win10).

I bought HWRM solely for this mod. Think I have played 3 or 4 of the missions.

I like the idea of convoys bringing in resources, it would add another aspect to the game, keeping convoys safe and jump points secure.

 

[L.I.F.]

@TowelMovement: OK, you should have received through PM the code you need to work on AI. Thank you and... good luck!

 

[TowelMovement]

@TowelMovement: OK, you should have received through PM the code you need to work on AI. Thank you and... good luck!

Received, thank you! First glance at the code looks fairly comprehensible to me, and your instructions seem thorough. I'll find a couple of hours in the next few days to play around, and see what I can see!

 

[L.I.F.]

Received, thank you! First glance at the code looks fairly comprehensible to me, and your instructions seem thorough. I'll find a couple of hours in the next few days to play around, and see what I can see!

OK, PM me if you have specific questions. But otherwise, yep, if you managed to get a slightly more interesting AI working, one that used the various assets of the Confed, that would be freaking awesome! For some game mechanics like ammunition and fuel, though, no need to worry, the behaviour is already scripted in the units themselves.

 

[L.I.F.]

So, to take some work off from @DefianceIndustries in the texturing department, I've done the textures for the Border Worlds destroyer, with two variants, rusty and non-rusty.

Which one do you people prefer? I'll try to do the same for the frigate and the cruiser this week-end.

 

[L.I.F.]

The Border Worlds' cruiser texture:

EDIT: the Caernaven is also done, in its BW colours and its Pirate skin (also from Saga) for the Black Lance.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

Thanks! Texturing is the bane of my existence. I prefer the non-rusty textures myself, there's a fine line between making a ship look care-worn, and making it look like a rattling death trap. Also if you want the UBW militia roundrel instead of the UBW political entity insignia, I can send you one. let me know. We kind of have a mixed bag right now on what ships have which insignia - we should address that at some point.

 

[L.I.F.]

Thanks! Texturing is the bane of my existence. I prefer the non-rusty textures myself, there's a fine line between making a ship look care-worn, and making it look like a rattling death trap. Also if you want the UBW militia roundrel instead of the UBW political entity insignia, I can send you one. let me know. We kind of have a mixed bag right now on what ships have which insignia - we should address that at some point.

Well, TBH, I chose the one in the pics above because it's less... politically-charged than the other. Especially as I am working in a German lab right now and that insignia is pretty much the very definition of NSFW here. ^_^; As for the rust stuff, if you want, I can try to get intermediate versions. For the rest of texturing, I don't think I'll be of much help right now beyond what I did there, AKA modifying existing textures for identical meshes.

 

[L.I.F.]

New tests done, new gameplay fix: I will remove the "Aegis" script that made all capital ships from the Confederation and Kilrathi faction abandon what they do to target enemy missiles. This script will remain on escort ships such as corvettes and frigates, but will no longer be present on larger ones. OTOH, I added a better priority for all other units of these two factions so that they still target missiles, but without going their own way and disobeying orders.

By the way, that test, while it ended early with a connexion issue, had a pretty epic moment when the TCS Victory, having located a Kilrathi light carrier and escorts, remembered Captain Kirk's words and used the third dimension effectively. Eight Longbow, fifteen Hellcat and fifteen Excalibur took off from above the enemy Dubav as it was chasing the Arrow recon flight. The Excalibur flights, under cloak, took position near the Kilrathi carrier group, which had all its fighters from Darket to Vaktoth launched. Meanwhile, the Longbow attack force was closing in, escorted by Hellcat.

The Kilrathi player saw the incoming bombers and sent his fighters to intercept as they were closing torpedo range. The Excalibur chose that moment to attack, as they were behind the Kilrathi fighters. A massive furball ensued, with the Kilrathi distracted at the critical moment and sixteen torpedoes were fired. A quarter of them got shot down by the Kilrathi gunners.

The rest hit home.



That's what I dreamed of being able to do in a game for a decade. This was exactly as glorious as I hoped.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

Well, TBH, I chose the one in the pics above because it's less... politically-charged than the other

Fair enough. I'll hold off on sending that to you then.

 

[L.I.F.]

Fair enough. I'll hold off on sending that to you then.

No prob. It's very unlikely anything would happen, but I would still not like European players to get in trouble with colleagues or such because of that particular insigna.

Still *thinks about that torpedo run from the previous post* awesome. Seriously, the tension of discovering that Dubav group near my base and my cruiser task force, doing a magnum launch with the TCS Victory and leaving my precious carrier defenceless far from any kind of reinforcement and with the enemy between it and the base, getting the ambush in place and springing it... I don't think I've had this much fun with Homeworld 2 in ages. We will SERIOUSLY need to organize some big games among Wingnuts when the Border Worlds and Black Lance are finished. By the way, I opened a Steam Group for people who have the mod so we can look for players: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/HWRM_FC

But, really, if you haven't done it yet, try a multi Confederation VS Kilrathi and you're going to see what the whole thing is really about, moreso than in any solo mission I could write.

 

[Quarto]

The biggest problem with the Border Worlds textures presented above is the inconsistency across different ship types. There's the dark, almost Kilrathi-looking cruiser and destroyer on the one hand, and on the other, the bright-clean, almost (too) white Intrepid.

Edit: Oh, and regarding the insignia. The thing about that swastika-like insignia, is that originally it was supposed to be just the Intrepid's individual insignia. You know, the "evil I". It's purely by lazy texturing that it became more common, when the Intrepid model was reused as the BWS Tango, without the Intrepid's unique insignia being removed. We've also used it in various ways in UE, but all things considered, it probably would have been better to revert to it being a unique Intrepid thing, and then come up with a simplified roundel for other ships.

 

[L.I.F.]

The biggest problem with the Border Worlds textures presented above is the inconsistency across different ship types. There's the dark, almost Kilrathi-looking cruiser and destroyer on the one hand, and on the other, the bright-clean, almost (too) white Intrepid.

Edit: Oh, and regarding the insignia. The thing about that swastika-like insignia, is that originally it was supposed to be just the Intrepid's individual insignia. You know, the "evil I". It's purely by lazy texturing that it became more common, when the Intrepid model was reused as the BWS Tango, without the Intrepid's unique insignia being removed. We've also used it in various ways in UE, but all things considered, it probably would have been better to revert to it being a unique Intrepid thing, and then come up with a simplified roundel for other ships.

About the inconsistencies, as indicated to Defiance, I can tinker with the textures. Getting them brighter or darker is thankfully infinitely simpler than creating them in the first place. Same thing for the rust effect. Makes me think, BTW, that I might check if I can make the Kilrathi ships brighter...

 

[L.I.F.]

@Quarto @DefianceIndustries

Here is a comparison side by side of the Kilrathi Bhantkara-class heavy carrier with the original texture and a lighter version I just did. I'm going to work on a set of alternative textures for all Kilrathi capital ships and make them brighter if it's better for the faction:

Though, the original texture could be used if a solo mission requires to get a really old Kilrathi ship...

 

[Quarto]

I would suggest a compromise solution: use the lighter, cleaner version, but put some darker patches (of uneven darkness) on it as well, to give it some indications of wear. Otherwise, it seems like the choice is between textures from the scrapyard and textures from the shipyard .

 

[L.I.F.]

I'll see what I can do, though it's going to be a bid harder to make it smooth.

 

[Whiplash]

Personally I much prefer the lighter textures, the one on the right seems a bit busy.

 

[David Wade]

New tests done, new gameplay fix: I will remove the "Aegis" script that made all capital ships from the Confederation and Kilrathi faction abandon what they do to target enemy missiles. This script will remain on escort ships such as corvettes and frigates, but will no longer be present on larger ones. OTOH, I added a better priority for all other units of these two factions so that they still target missiles, but without going their own way and disobeying orders.

By the way, that test, while it ended early with a connexion issue, had a pretty epic moment when the TCS Victory, having located a Kilrathi light carrier and escorts, remembered Captain Kirk's words and used the third dimension effectively. Eight Longbow, fifteen Hellcat and fifteen Excalibur took off from above the enemy Dubav as it was chasing the Arrow recon flight. The Excalibur flights, under cloak, took position near the Kilrathi carrier group, which had all its fighters from Darket to Vaktoth launched. Meanwhile, the Longbow attack force was closing in, escorted by Hellcat.

The Kilrathi player saw the incoming bombers and sent his fighters to intercept as they were closing torpedo range. The Excalibur chose that moment to attack, as they were behind the Kilrathi fighters. A massive furball ensued, with the Kilrathi distracted at the critical moment and sixteen torpedoes were fired. A quarter of them got shot down by the Kilrathi gunners.

The rest hit home.



That's what I dreamed of being able to do in a game for a decade. This was exactly as glorious as I hoped.

As my gunny would say pictures or it didn't happen. In this case a video would be an amazing treat I have been dreaming about doing that kind of attack for a long time.

 

[David Wade]

Question on the squadron sizes why are the fighters in triples instead if flights if four sobthey could split into wing elements and cover each other better just asking

 

[L.I.F.]

As my gunny would say pictures or it didn't happen. In this case a video would be an amazing treat I have been dreaming about doing that kind of attack for a long time.

Well, you will have to take my word for it, but you can ask goldfish_boy on Steam about that, it's the guy I was playing agzinst when I could do that. TBH, he apparently had other cruiser task forces homing in for my base on another vector at the same moment when we lost sync so that carrier destruction would not have been absolutely decisive, but still...

This was nothing more than the mod's game mechanics taking place in just the right conditions to accidentally make an almost perfect experience for me.

Question on the squadron sizes why are the fighters in triples instead if flights if four sobthey could split into wing elements and cover each other better just asking

The way dogfights are happening ingame, I do not see really how I could script the fighters to divide neatly into two pairs of two covering themselves (the attack patterns are, like everything else, programmed into some files). And given the regenerating properties of the fighters, having four fighters in a flight would make the fights a lot longer than they do right now and break the pace of the game, while two fighters would make the units too fragile in my mind.