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

Dyret said:
Nightmare was AFAIK meant to be an extra challenging difficulty for experienced pilot's, just as rookie was a difficulty that allowed those with rather poor abilities to play throught the game. Basing stats on "modified" difficulty doesn't seem like such a good idea.

What, do you want a mod where the enemy's counterpart to the players ship will always have higher stats, because that was how they made an option to make the *space sim* challenging to the more skilled players?
I thought that on nightmare level enemies were given the same amount of afterburners, shields, etc. to be on par with your fighter? I could be wrong and please correct me if someone knows for sure, but I thought nightmare was supposed to be the *official* stats of the fighters?
 
Perhaps. I've always assumed that "Ace", as the default would be the "canon" setting. I'm sure someone knows for sure.
 
The AI in Homeworld 2 is notoriously cheap. I've had scenarios where I've destroyed an entire fleet - but not given the credit for the win. Two hours of searching later, I'd find a shipyard protected by a bunch of cap ships! It's happened more than once, too.

I wouldn't worry too much about the skill level for the game.
 
LeHah said:
The AI in Homeworld 2 is notoriously cheap. I've had scenarios where I've destroyed an entire fleet - but not given the credit for the win. Two hours of searching later, I'd find a shipyard protected by a bunch of cap ships! It's happened more than once, too.

I wouldn't worry too much about the skill level for the game.
In Homeworld 2 it's usually standard procedure to hyper out highly-damaged cap-ships from the front line. But I've never had to search for long to find the enemy's remaining ships, perhaps you didn't use probes?
 
Lt.Death100 said:
In Homeworld 2 it's usually standard procedure to hyper out highly-damaged cap-ships from the front line. But I've never had to search for long to find the enemy's remaining ships, perhaps you didn't use probes?
Just use the sensor ping.
 
Lt.Death100 said:
But I've never had to search for long to find the enemy's remaining ships, perhaps you didn't use probes?

Well, the enemy faction was in one far off point on the map - and then I found the straggler fleet in the center of the map, half way down and slightly off to the side. Probes mustve just missed it
 
LeHah said:
Well, the enemy faction was in one far off point on the map - and then I found the straggler fleet in the center of the map, half way down and slightly off to the side. Probes mustve just missed it
Most of the time when that happens I'll place the probes in a grid pattern with their sensor ranges overlapping. Catches em every time! :)
 
Lt.Death100 said:
Most of the time when that happens I'll place the probes in a grid pattern with their sensor ranges overlapping. Catches em every time! :)

I'm not sure how great that works given the three dimensional nature of the game :)
 
LeHah said:
I'm not sure how great that works given the three dimensional nature of the game :)

The AI seems to be to stupid to make use of all three, though... except when hunting resources.
 
Dyret said:
The AI seems to be to stupid to make use of all three, though... except when hunting resources.

Really? Ive never had the AI really attack me from all sides at once, but I can remember an enemy AI attacking me from above on many occasions
 
This should address some of Mjr. Whoopass questions:

Fighter Velocity
Regarding the speed dynamics; at the moment I would say that the setup feels quite balanced and realistic while still providing the WC experience. All the fighters are specced according to the known stats and their speed attributes are all relative, so an Excalibur squadron (500kps) can keep pace with an Arrow squadron (520kbps) over short to intermediate range (say 10-15km) although over a longer run the Arrows will begin to put some distance between the Excaliburs, whereas over a ~20km route, some Arrows will catchup to and surpass some Thunderbolts (380kbps) even if the Thuds had a decent head start.


Capship Velocity
The capships are also specced at speeds relative to each other and their class type, with destroyers being the fastest, followed by frigates and scout transports, then carriers and cruisers. I know that cruisers are detailed as moving in the 150kps range (max speed) in the WC3/WC4 manuals, but for balance reasons due to their significant firepower and prescence in the mod, their speed was reduced at a early stage in development.

At the moment, the capship speed stats don't reflect accurate metrics (cruisers currently show as having a speed rating of 60 instead of 150), but the in-game metrics are superficial I suspect (need to check with Aaron) with the underlying script attribute actually effecting the ship speed. So the capships are all relative at the moment, but quite a bit slower than the fighters. I believe Aaron mentioned that during his earlier testing, setting the capships to faster speeds detrimentally affected gameplay with them traversing the maps too quickly. Saying this though, I'm sure all of these attributes can and will be tweaked as further testing progresses and after a wider test/release is available.


Fighter Combat
I would also say that fighter combat is also fairly realistic, even at this untweaked stage. The scenes from the gameplay preview probably distort this slightly, as I setup the scenario with a limited UBW force (1x Durango, 1x Cruiser and a couple of fighter wings) versus a fairly overwhelming Confed force to show off the different gameplay facets, so when the fighters engaged they were going in with a 3:1 advantage and a more top-heavy mix of craft, so many of the UBW craft were destroyed in the first salvo or missile launch.

More evenly matched engagements tend to last a fair bit longer, indeed one Arrow squadron could be chasing an enemy scout squadron around the map for 5-10 minutes before eliminating them, assuming they don't turn and engage (the A.I. still needs work!:p ). I should be uploading some more videos hopefully this week focusing on specific actions, such a Longbow torpedo run, capship combat, attacking capship systems (engines, bridge, etc), capship combat with close fighter support, etc so I'll try and showcase some more evenly fought engagements.


Shield Issues
The capships are also in a somewhat intermediatary state, as Aaron is trying to implement a shield system similar to that seen in WC4, but the process is quite involved with a number of issues depending on the method, such as causing lag, having to design new meshes, conflicts with various weapons, etc. At the moment, all of the capships do not have shields, but their hull strength reflects their combined WC hull and shield strength, so torpodoes affect minimal damage.

If the shield system can be implemented, then torpedoes will be very powerful as per the games, with a Longbow squadron able to destroy most capships in a single payload, assuming their torps aren't shot down and the Longbows get close enough. If a shield system can't be implemented then the torpodoes and capship hull strength will be adjusted accordingly to give a realistic dynamic. At this stage these attributes are still in flux while work on a shield fix continues and I will put a short disclaimer in the gameplay videos to highlight this.


Capship AMGs & Sound Fx/Music
The larger capships turrets are AMG's and will fire yellow bursts as per the games. Once Aaron has the fx and sound for them they will be integrated into the mod. Hopefully we should be able to adjust the particle speeds independently to get the WC feel for AMGs and dual-lasers. :) The music was overlayed during editing, but the intention is to integrate it in to the mod as (hopefully dynamic - i.e. victory tune when enemy capship destroyed, etc) gameplay music, as well as other WC voices and sounds.

Cheers,


Bryn
 
Has anyone implemented a dynamic soundtrack with either Homeworld game before?
 
Is it possible to create some kind of command that will synchronize multiple units' arrival at a target? One thing that has always aggrevated me in any RTS was having to manually time my units departures so that the faster units wouldn't show up by themselves and get slaughtered. It would be really nice if there was a command that would make them stay together based on the speed of the slowest unit in the group. This is probably too much to ask for in a mod, but I'm just curious.
 
The regular HW2 has a strike group command that lets you select a whole bunch of ships including fighters, capships, etc. and they assume a formation that travels at the speed of the slowest ship, so I should imagine you would just be able to use that.
 
Magnum said:
The regular HW2 has a strike group command that lets you select a whole bunch of ships including fighters, capships, etc. and they assume a formation that travels at the speed of the slowest ship, so I should imagine you would just be able to use that.

This works in HW1, I believe. Another method is to set the ships to escort your slowest ship, and they will also move at the same pace.
 
I just use the formation commands.
They arn't as complex as HW1 was, but they work out just fine for keeping your ships together. :)
 
LeHah said:
Has anyone implemented a dynamic soundtrack with either Homeworld game before?
Hmm, I'm not sure. I suppose I should have clarified, given that at the moment it's more of a "wouldn't it be cool" feature on my part; I'm not even sure if HW2 is capable of this and will discuss this Aaron when he gets back. The timing is neat, given the recent front page link to the forum discussion involving The Fatman and his pioneering efforts with WC1's dynamic music, followed by LucasArt's iMuse system all those years ago!

At the moment I'm hoping that even if its not possible to dynamically stream the music in-game, that some partial elements will be allowed, so that when an enemy capship is destroyed one of the short WC4 victory clips will be played and so on, although it may be that we won't be able to stop/fadeout the existing music track so they may intermix at that point -- we'll have to see how it goes.

Both the formation commands (capital ship phalanx, fighter screen, etc) escort/guard function set to the slowest ship will work in synchronising your fleet. :)

Cheers,


Bryn
 
The real problem with that dynamic music bit would be to get it to play a losing track when your own capships bite the dust at the same time as your opponent is hearing the winning track, but that's only if we can't get the game to distinguish between if the ship blowing up is your own or another player's ship.

Gonna have to pospone that ingame video a bit on my part. One of my colleagues got sick so I'm working full time for the rest of the week when I was supposed to be on vacation. :(
 
czacen said:
does anyone know where i can find any pics of a jump buoy? Bryn is away for the weekend till tuesday and i forgot to ask him before he left.
thanks in advance.

Sorry this took so long... had to figure out why my wc 4 wasnt working first. So here it is... the wc4 jump buoy:

In game, one light on the top and one one the bottom blink.
 

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