The Backroads — an alternate route

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): Preliminary station renders:

[RPC]

NICE AP!
I always love seeing new and unique graphics in the game :3

[Atarlost]

The smallest legion one reminds me too much of a spaceship play structure. The torus looks like a candy bracelet. The ribs and windows are wrong for spin gravity and the torus shape makes no sense without spin gravity.

The rest run from okay to gorgeous (apart from me still not liking the Legion paintjob), but it's hard for me to pin the factions down on some of them.

[JohnBWatson]

The top left structure's ring seems a bit flat, and could do without the bordering, the two smaller red ones could use some more texture and detail, and the one resembling a corporate enclave just needs a better color scheme. The rest, however, are excellent. Looking forward to the release.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): Development currently semi-stalled; partly from school, partly from lack of motivation. Ship re-renders are almost done, though. Mostly I’ve been putzing around with random code snippets to see what works, what doesn’t, what really doesn’t, and what doesn’t but might be useful elsewhere. There has also been random SCIENCE inspired from occasional comments on IRC.

 Also, regarding the stations posted above:
» The three yellow/grey stations at the top left are Yatfwan. From left to right: A metropolis/dock facility; an outpost; and a junction with basic docking facilities.
» The three red ones near the top middle are Legion bases, increasing in nastiness from left to right. (And yes, Atarlost, the smallest was adapted from a ship. I did say this is all preliminary work, though. ^.~ )
» The orangish pair below those are Bane, also increasing in nastiness from left to right.
» The grey/blue torus to the left of those is AE. The torus shape might make a bit more sense if I mentioned that they’re experimenting with making functional gates. They’re not quite there yet, but have recycled a few older attempts into stations.
» The rose/grey station on the left edge is a Haetenaro center, with services on par with a Black Market station.
» Below that is a Trinity base. …And if you don’t like Sung Citadels…
» Beneath the Bane stations is a Lambda Agency, where wingmen will be available for hire.
» Ironground runs down the right side with the best defenses and services from them available at the topmost station.

[pixelfck]

I'm impressed by the station art! The only one I feel is slightly less transcendence-like is the bottom left one. The blue-ish bullet on the bottom (Lambda Agency) could use some more random details maybe.

Keep up the wonderful work!

Cheers,
Pixelfck

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): All ship re-renders are done (which I may have mentioned earlier, but can’t be arsed to double-check on before I’ve had caffeine). I have all of the frames compiled into spritelines, and those into spritesheets. I did a fairly thorough overhaul of all of my ship graphic resources last night and have everything more or less neatly arranged and organized. I’ve also incorporated the graphics for AE — New Ships into the resulting library, and at some point am going to be pulling Core (which contains just the NPC ships, not the playerships) out of the mod for insertion into The Backroads as the Avian Enterprises faction (plus the lone Quadri and K3 ships).
 While this wasn’t as big a project for me as it would have been for Wolfy — he has roughly three times as many ships as I do, though I do expect my total to grow a bit further before it’s all said and done — it was still pretty substantial. I’d been dreading it and putting it off for at least a month, even delaying the inevitable by doing some graphic work on a future April Fool’s idea which may or may not be what I’m privately running as The Backroads graphics right now. I knew it had to be done sooner or later. Last night I finally got around to doing it, and now that I’ve gotten that taken care of and don’t have my poor underpowered hardware bogged down with POV-Ray, maybe I can get back into geting some actual code stuff worked on.
 …Oh, and I updated the Ships-to-Scale image sometime last week, too, including a few name changes and labels you don’t have to turn your head sideways to read.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): Starting to do some coding again. Finally. Woo.
 My current project is to make playerships out of three of the Backroads ships: The Haetenaro cargo ship which, like all of Haetenaro, needs some sort of naming scheme, the Lambda Psi, and the Yatfwan Procyon. All of them are going to have some sort of gimmick to them by the time I’m done, and I’m working on those.
 So far, the Psi is almost unplayable — too sluggish a rotationAcceleration with too high a maxRotationRate — which may result in some maneuverability tweaking across all of the Lambda Coalition. Until I get that sorted out, I’m not too worried about a gimmick on it which is fine, since I have no idea what to do with it yet.
 The Procyon has an abysmal maxRotationRate for its size, but so does all of the Yatfwan Accord. It is, at least, playable, though it takes some getting used to the good speed and lousy turning. I will say that, while difficult, it’s loads of fun to get lined up on a Centauri heavy raider right between its CLAW, though. ^.^ As of right now, its gimmick is to automatically show all the stargates on the map. I may expand that to have it show all systems on the galactic map as well.
 Most of my efforts so far have been on the Haetenaro cargo ship. It’s got the most flyable maneuverability stats of any of the three, and by a wide margin. Its armor/shield HUD is decidedly non-standard. The gimmick I’m working on for it is the ability to hack into the computers of shipwrecks or destroyed stations and pilfer credits from them, based on the level of the wreck/station at the moment. That much I already have mostly functional at a baseline 25% chance of success, with the next step being to add in having that chance rise with each success. There’ll also be a chance that the computers on the wreck/station are too damaged to get a successful interface with.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here):

 My current project is to make playerships out of three of the Backroads ships: The Haetenaro cargo ship which, like all of Haetenaro, needs some sort of naming scheme, the Lambda Psi, and the Yatfwan Procyon. All of them are going to have some sort of gimmick to them by the time I’m done, and I’m working on those.

 This is still what I’m working on.

 So far, the Psi is almost unplayable — too sluggish a rotationAcceleration with too high a maxRotationRate — which may result in some maneuverability tweaking across all of the Lambda Coalition. Until I get that sorted out, I’m not too worried about a gimmick on it which is fine, since I have no idea what to do with it yet.

 No progress here yet.

 The Procyon has an abysmal maxRotationRate for its size, but so does all of the Yatfwan Accord. It is, at least, playable, though it takes some getting used to the good speed and lousy turning. I will say that, while difficult, it’s loads of fun to get lined up on a Centauri heavy raider right between its CLAW, though. ^.^ As of right now, its gimmick is to automatically show all the stargates on the map. I may expand that to have it show all systems on the galactic map as well.

 That happened. I may declare the Procyon to be done.

 Most of my efforts so far have been on the Haetenaro cargo ship. It’s got the most flyable maneuverability stats of any of the three, and by a wide margin. Its armor/shield HUD is decidedly non-standard. The gimmick I’m working on for it is the ability to hack into the computers of shipwrecks or destroyed stations and pilfer credits from them, based on the level of the wreck/station at the moment. That much I already have mostly functional at a baseline 25% chance of success, with the next step being to add in having that chance rise with each success. There’ll also be a chance that the computers on the wreck/station are too damaged to get a successful interface with.

 As it currently stands, the Haetenaro cargo ship is done except for its name. The hacking feature is done, barring any bugs I may have missed. The amount gained is based on the wreck’s level — more specifically, level x 100 — with station wrecks giving up to four times as much as shipwrecks. It starts at at a 10% success rate with a guaranteed hack on the first attempt because beginner’s luck, and rises by 0.2% with every successful hack, eventually topping out at 90%. I may tweak the rate of improvement a bit, but it should be good for providing occasional bonus funds early on and an auxiliary source of reliable income later in the game. …I also may have had waaay too much fun putting together a list of hack failure messages, including which ones stop showing up at what success chance percentages… ^.^;

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here):

 So far, the Psi is almost unplayable — too sluggish a rotationAcceleration with too high a maxRotationRate — which may result in some maneuverability tweaking across all of the Lambda Coalition. Until I get that sorted out, I’m not too worried about a gimmick on it which is fine, since I have no idea what to do with it yet.

 No progress here yet.

 Well. That was quick. I got the maneuverability issues sorted out for all of Lambda and came up with a gimmick for the Psi playership: If it has two identical weapons (which must both have the same enhancement and both be enabled), they relocate from the nose to the wings and automatically link their fire. Enhancing one, disabling one, or replacing one with a different weapon will return the weapons to the nose and unlink their fire.
 I have to credit Wolfy and his Velociraptor for the basis of the idea, but I’m rather proud of myself for having only looked at external code twice — PM’s once (just to verify 'always for use with LinkedFireOptions) and Wolfy’s once (which reminded me that a scratch-made list needs to actually to have “list” at the start of it). All in all, though, it turned out to be a lot simpler than I had originally expected when I came up with the idea.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here):

 So far, the Psi is almost unplayable — too sluggish a rotationAcceleration with too high a maxRotationRate — which may result in some maneuverability tweaking across all of the Lambda Coalition. Until I get that sorted out, I’m not too worried about a gimmick on it which is fine, since I have no idea what to do with it yet.

 No progress here yet.

 Well. That was quick. I got the maneuverability issues sorted out for all of Lambda and came up with a gimmick for the Psi playership: If it has two identical weapons (which must both have the same enhancement and both be enabled), they relocate from the nose to the wings and automatically link their fire. Enhancing one, disabling one, or replacing one with a different weapon will return the weapons to the nose and unlink their fire.
 I have to credit Wolfy and his Velociraptor for the basis of the idea, but I’m rather proud of myself for having only looked at external code twice — PM’s once (just to verify 'always for use with LinkedFireOptions) and Wolfy’s once (which reminded me that a scratch-made list needs to actually to have “list” at the start of it). All in all, though, it turned out to be a lot simpler than I had originally expected when I came up with the idea.

 …And then I decided that wasn’t good enough. I bumped its maxWeapons to three instead of two. Using the same requirements, it will link any two identical weapons on the ship. And if all three of them match… well. Anyone for tri-wielding dual Fusionfires?

[JohnBWatson]

Anyone for tri-wielding dual Fusionfires?

I'm a bit afraid of whatever enemy would make that necessary.

Also, isn't the dual FF only possible in Corporate Command?

[AssumedPseudonym]

Anyone for tri-wielding dual Fusionfires?

I'm a bit afraid of whatever enemy would make that necessary. :shock:

Also, isn't the dual FF only possible in Corporate Command?

 It is, yes, but the option would be there for anyone who has Corporate Command. Who said anything about necessary, though? ^.~
 …I probably will put some sort of limitation on just what sorts of weapons can be linked, though. I’m not sure on just how I’ll do it, but one of the first ideas that come to mind are either by mass or by energy use. Possibly both. I don’t think I really need to provide a platform that can upgrade Shrike’s “Fusion Nightmare” setup to “Fusion Nine Circles of Hell.”

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): …Y’know what? Why not. Yveltal_ over on IRC asked for a link to my mods. Rather than just point him at what I have on Xelerus, I decided to create a new link on the spot.
 So here, have a link.
 That right there is basically a copy — completely up-to-date as of this sentence being typed — of everything I currently have. All of it. Besides what’s already on Xelerus, some of it is updates I haven’t gotten to Xelerus yet, some of it is personal testing stuff, and yes, some of it is The Backroads as it currently exists in its decidedly pre-alpha-ish state. I’ll give you a couple of warnings before you go and download it, though:
» If you have anything that uses AE Ships (Core, Eridani, or Tau Ceti), replacing the mods with what I have here will very probably break the save file.
» I’m pretty sure AE Ships (Core) now has a few dependencies on the included AE-000A-Factions.xml (which will eventually become The Backroads).
» Several files have dependencies on Corporate Command — these are noted in the README.
 So yeah. There it is. Feel free to poke at it, try stuff out, tell me what’s broken (because I may have probably missed something somewhere), and et cetera. I’ll probably take this down somewhere around the end of the week, or maybe the end of the month depending on how I feel about it.
 …Well? What are you still reading this for? Go pick a ship and start flying around in it! ^.~

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Update of the (insert random time period here): The sneak peak at what I have going on has been removed. If anyone else wants it, I could be convinced to put it back up for a bit. Also, I put up a minor update on the factions-to-size pic. “Gryphon” is no longer missing a letter, the Anathema was nudged over to the left a few pixels so that its name isn’t right up against the Rho, and the three Haetenaro ships now have less generic names. Beyond that, there’s been little progress. My muse has been a decidedly recalcitrant lately.