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

[L.I.F.]

I've had a lot of stuff IRL with my thesis and the computers breaking down. Anyway, updated the mod to fix the engine glow problem for the Kilrathi ships, and trying to find a workaround for the biiiiiig problem for Confed ships: the size of the models. I'm facing >100 k faces models, while the editor doesn't take anything beyond 65535. X_X

 

[L.I.F.]

[TF2 Spy]Gentlemen.[/TF2 Spy]

Powered by the free market and the paying mod initiative (just kidding, that mod will never, ever, ever be paying, screw that idiocy), I hereby announce a fucking great news! I've found a way to bypass the size limitation for the models, and while I'm still tinkering with it, the first results are clear: IT WORKS!

I've got a fully functional model of the Lexington heavy carrier ingame. I still have to get the textures and everything else, but the roadblock has just been demolished. Which means that I can confidently say that the Kilrathi Dreadnought and all the Confed Fleet are now within reach, though with a lot of work needed. But they are possible!

Discover what is probably the biggest model to have been integrated in Homeworld 2. Not the most beautiful or the most outwards-detailed, but a massive model with a superb interior hangar with more than 81 k faces where everyone else was limited to 65535. I took some random textures I had for other units because the test was just to see if it would work at all without a CTD.

Behold!

Dreanought, here we come!

 

[Deathsnake]

GZ. Nice work.


So now try to get the new Hull-E Star Citizen Transporter into the Game

I don't know how many polys this Monster have.... 3-4 Million? I think more Oo

Only 379m Long

PS: here is the Little Brother Hull-D with 209m

 

[L.I.F.]

GZ. Nice work.


So now try to get the new Hull-E Star Citizen Transporter into the Game

I don't know how many polys this Monster have.... 3-4 Million? I think more Oo

Only 379m Long

Do you have the model? Just asking, because if you do with the textures and if it's not in a too obscure format, I think I could do it.

Of course, the mod would end up being bigger than Homeworld Remastered and it would involve hundreds of units coming from a game where barely two dozen units require a state-of-the-art gaming computer.

If I start such an endeavour, the EULA will have you renounce any and all legal recourse for events such as:
- your computer burning up,
- your family being bankrupted by the electricity bill,
- your country being devastated by the blackout of the millenium,
- a micro black hole appearing in your GPU,
- a 0.2 FPS framerate,
- you being snatched by aliens who think you stole one of their computer games.

 

[Deathsnake]

Just a joke

The Lexington Model was around 1200m as I remember - so 3 times bigger then the Hull D.

 

[Dundradal]

I can't wait until this semester is over and I have more time to play Homeworld and other games instead of grading awful papers!

This looks amazing! Keep adding ships!!! I'd love it if we could get all the models in to recreate the Battle of Terra!

 

[Quarto]

I can't wait until this semester is over and I have more time to play Homeworld and other games instead of grading awful papers!

Do your students also do that thing where they plagiarise somebody else's paper, and then act all surprised after you haul them up for it? Yeesh. I obviously can't say anything detailed about it in a public forum, but it's definitely been one of those semesters.

Oh, well. They're in "good" company, I guess. I read... last year, or two years ago, about US soldiers caught cheating in the exams required for service in nuclear weapons facilities. Probably that's a bit more of a problem than cheating when learning about video games .

 

[ChrisReid]

Do your students also do that thing where they plagiarise somebody else's paper, and then act all surprised after you haul them up for it? Yeesh. I obviously can't say anything detailed about it in a public forum, but it's definitely been one of those semesters.

Man, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard Dundradal complain about his students plagiarizing...

 

[Dundradal]

Do your students also do that thing where they plagiarise somebody else's paper, and then act all surprised after you haul them up for it? Yeesh. I obviously can't say anything detailed about it in a public forum, but it's definitely been one of those semesters.

Not to keep driving off topic, but this semester was pretty good compared to others. I had a funny incident today (see my Facebook page for it, Quarto) where a student thought it was fine to use a children's book for a college page. It was in the library after all!

Man, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard Dundradal complain about his students plagiarizing...

There wouldn't be too many left in circulation, that's for sure!

 

[L.I.F.]

I can't wait until this semester is over and I have more time to play Homeworld and other games instead of grading awful papers!

This looks amazing! Keep adding ships!!! I'd love it if we could get all the models in to recreate the Battle of Terra!

Heh. Anyone sends me textured models and I'll try to add them ingame. In due time, though.

The development planning is as follow:

Current version 2.02: Kilrathi working faction, with research and construction tree debugged.
Planned version 2.5: Hvar'Kann available as a super-unit, Zartoth electronic mindfuckery correctly implemented, Kilrathi voices working ingame.
Planned version 3.0: WC Saga Confederation models added to the game, option to select WC3-era Confed or WC4-era from the skirmish menu.
Planned version 4.0: Integration of updated models and textures for Border Worlds and Black Lance units, almost everything smoothed to the Saga-level of detail.

This will obviously take months at the very least, especially as I'm in my final year of PhD now. One can dream in the future of some campaign missions. Though it would be damn hard to make.

 

[Dundradal]

Keep up the good work! I always wanted to try this mod when it originally came out but didn't have Homeworld or a decent PC at the time. Now I've got both, but not much time as well. Always damn something!

 

[ravelin]

Sweet work LIF.

If poly limits are no longer an issue, does that mean Klavs models might be back on the table?

Do you mind sharing how you got around the limitation?

 

[L.I.F.]

Sweet work LIF.

If poly limits are no longer an issue, does that mean Klavs models might be back on the table?

Do you mind sharing how you got around the limitation?

The trick was actually quite simple: use the software called 3D Exploration to convert the files to .3ds format, then open them with Blender, to then make several copies, and in each copy, delete enough objects to get below the limit, save them again while taking care of not messing with the texture information, then use 3D Exploration again to convert the files into the .obj format you will need for the CFHod 4.0. At this point, if you didn't mess up and 3D Exploration confirms that each of your sub-files still has the texture library attached, then you can import each of the meshes separately in CFHod 4.0, fit them with textures and make the ship with the different meshes, just like I had the Kilrathi ships made of several meshes (the turrets plus the WC Saga mesh).

All the softwares there are free normally. CFHod and Blender are definitely free and 3D Exploration has a 30-day demo. I actually tried to pay afterwards for it since it is simply fantastic as it converts most 3D files to any other type, but the website has been down for a good decade. However, let's just say the internet can provide and leave it at that.

 

[L.I.F.]

OK, just a bit of warning here: I just managed to get the models for individual Confed turrets, and I should be able to get them ingame properly. The warning is that it means I will try to get the same improvement for Kilrathi ships, and it will mean both an increase in size for the models due to the higher quality and... all the files being modified for the update when it will come. It will probably won't come before 3.0 except probably for the Hvar'Kann, since I have to start that one from scratch and will use it as a testbed for Kilrathi turrets.

Edit:

 

[L.I.F.]

And here is the new release of Wing Commander Armada... err, I mean, the Lex is here, in all her glory:

Edit: and now the new turrets are working, including the missile one, which is going to be some pain in the *** for enemy fighters.

 

[Whistler]

And here is the new release of Wing Commander Armada... err, I mean, the Lex is here, in all her glory:

Edit: and now the new turrets are working, including the missile one, which is going to be some pain in the *** for enemy fighters.

Hmm...although the Lexington-class appears in Armada it never shows the launch and retrieval system. That was only shown in the Super Wing Commander version of Tiger's Claw but it shows landing through the side bays and the launch tubes running parallel to the hull and shooting out the sides near the bow.

Is this not considered canon enough or is the hangar bay supposed to be a single long deck in the vein of Yorktowns?

 

[L.I.F.]

Hmm...although the Lexington-class appears in Armada it never shows the launch and retrieval system. That was only shown in the Super Wing Commander version of Tiger's Claw but it shows landing through the side bays and the launch tubes running parallel to the hull and shooting out the sides near the bow.

Is this not considered canon enough or is the hangar bay supposed to be a single long deck in the vein of Yorktowns?

I'm using the Wing Commander Saga stuff, so we'll have a nice long deck for fighters and bombers, and I will add on the side bays a docking port for ressource collectors, as it was supposed to be self-sufficient (it will be the only carrier ingame with this kind of capability). Though for fun, I could set it up to recover bombers through the large deck and fighters on the side, but it would be a bit ugly as the fighters would then go through the 3D model to do so.

 

[L.I.F.]

OK... I might have sorta got heavy-handed with the Lex. The ship is now fully-functional as far as the model itself goes (so, outside external builds like subsystems and fighter/bomber construction) and, well... it weights more than 40 Mo. And I have several capital ships to put ingame. And I have the Behemoth. And the Blackmane Starbase.

Oh my.

 

[Deathsnake]

The Lexington Class is a new design to have the Counterpart for the Kilrathi Heavy one.

http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conv...les/Confederation_Lexington_Heavy_Carrier.htm
The Armada one is like a prototype and the later Version is bigger and have more fighters then the Concordia class and the same as the Confederation Class Learning from the Hakaga Class - multiple launchbays

 

[L.I.F.]

The Lexington Class is a new design to have the Counterpart for the Kilrathi Heavy one.

http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conv...les/Confederation_Lexington_Heavy_Carrier.htm
The Armada one is like a prototype and the later Version is bigger and have more fighters then the Concordia class and the same as the Confederation Class Learning from the Hakaga Class - multiple launchbays

Well, if you want to take a look at it, I'm updating the mod right now, and anyone with a .big extractor can grab the files for the Lex. She's not available ingame, though, so you'll have to give her to yourself in the starting fleets if you want to play with her before the 3.0 version.

A question, though: where do some of the models shown on that website come from? I'm thinking about the Snakeir, for example.

Edit: Ugh. I've tried using the "splitting" method to get the Hvar'Kann to work, and while I can open its model in the HOD editor now, I got a bug when trying to save. Still no good...

Double Edit: seems that I spoke too soon. Just had to split even more to reduce the size of the sub-models.