Lost Empires

[Keedo420]

I'm not sure what you mean by viewport, but the Imperator (the largest one) is 340x340 and looks fine to me ingame (though based on comments so far, I may provide alternate ship images/xmls for people who prefer the capital ships to be smaller). Also, keep in mind that the big ships will be relatively rare (you'll rarely encounter more than one Imperator per system, for example, and usually only in an Imperial-controlled system). Here's the screenshots I mentioned yesterday. The first one shows me and my wing of TIE Fighters attacking a pirate base guarded by pirate-controlled X-Wings and TIE Fighters. The second one is just to show a portion of the Rocky Asteroid Belt.


Also, here are the resource files for the new planet types along with the descriptions I based my choices on. The third one is a work in progress and the top two mark the end of the actual Star Control 2 planets. The Slave Shield is not technically a planet and I'm not sure if I will use it, but if I do it'll be as an overlay for certain types of planets like Water Worlds. The rest are planet types I added and were not part of Star Control 2. Some of the planet images were provided by a friend who is working on a Star Control 2 mod for a different game, some of them are modified (or not modified) versions of planets found in the Worlds3, Worlds4, and Worlds5 resources, and some are images I found by searching the internet.


And finally, here are the resource files for the asteroids, to showcase the new asteroid types. In the first one, only the 4th column are new. The others in the first one are just the resized asteroids from vanilla. The third one is a work in progress and more images will be added to it, mostly for variety's sake.


I have slightly altered the sizes for asteroids and planets as follows:
Small Asteroid: 32x32
Medium Asteroid 48x48
Large Asteroid: 64x64
Dwarf Planet/Moon/Asteroid Bases: 96x96
Standard Planet: 128x128
Giant Planet: 144x144
Small Gas Giant: 160x160
Standard Gas Giant: 192x192

EDIT: I finally got around to giving this thread a proper name!

[Keedo420]

I updated the first post (http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... 026#p42026) with a new version of the mod concept and a detailed backstory for the mod. While it may seem long, it is in fact the short version. More details of the plot will eventually be revealed ingame via Data Roms found in shipwrecks and through contact with other survivors. Soon I will add more details about the current and planned features.

[Keedo420]

Did some tweaking of the ship sizes again as well as adding a ton of new ships. Due to the number of new ships, I've started dividing them up into their respective factions. Today I am sharing the size comparison pic for the Galactic Empire. The Imperator, which was previously 320 pixels long has been reduced to 250 and the other large ships were reduced accordingly. The Empire has also received 3 new star destroyers - the Allegiance, Bellator, and Assertor, as well as a Sith Corvette and Sith Fighter (neither of which I can find specific names for...the corvette I believe is a fan creation and not actually a canon ship...I'm still in the process of hunting down its origin). I've also slightly increased the size of the fighters (the TIE Fighter for example was 7x7 pixels but is now 10x10). The new size comparison pic shows each ships length in pixels (not width/wingspan). The Assertor is 350 pixels and I've decided this will be my upper limit for ship size. The only ship that will seem larger is the Borg Cube which, being a cube, will of course be 350 long and 350 wide. I'm probably going to remake the TIE Defender. It just doesn't look right to me. And I'm still not happy with the Victory, Immobilizer 418, and Ardent. If anyone seeing this can find better top-down images for those ships, I'd appreciate it. I also wouldn't mind a clearer version of the Imperator.


As for what else I've been up to, since this is an adventure mod and will be modifying a great deal of vanilla content, I've integrated several other mods (which I consider essential) that would otherwise be incompatible with my mod. So far I've integrated Weapons Extended (which took a very long time ), Cargo Summary, Named Ore, Dynamic Sovereigns, Detailed Ship Config, and AI Ships Follow Playership Through Gates (longest mod title ever? ). I've also integrated Captain's Log, though I'm having a little trouble with that one, probably due it being made for an older version (I'm using 1.08fa currently). And I integrated the Light Carrier Playership mod, though I have modified it considerably for use with all of the different fighters I'm adding. I'm also working on a new fighter/hangar system which will use the Light Carrier Playership code as a base, but fighters will be launched from a new dockscreen accessed from the Ship Interior. When the hangar is installed, the player's ship will have a maximum number of fighters based on the type of hangar installed. A probe launch bay will only be able to launch probes. Shuttle bays will give the ship a maximum of 1 fighter (for game purposes the term "fighter" will include scouts, small shuttles, and of course fighters...probes are essentially missiles so they will not count against maximum fighters). A Fighter Bay will increase the maximum fighters by 3 as well as allow the launching of "wings" (1 lead fighter and 2 escorts). Current Fighters will be a variable to keep track of how many fighters the player currently has. I don't have it all worked out just yet, so I won't say much more about it. I will however say that ship hull blueprints will not be researched but will be found amid the wrecks of ships, stations, and when I get around to doing the dockable planets again, blueprints may be found in ruins. Research will probably be one of the last things I work on, because it is going to be terribly complicated.

[CYRUS KGABO]

Is this baby available for download?if so plz gve me the link to it.

[Keedo420]

I am lightyears away from a playable version. I tend to be rather ambitious in my mod-making, so there are still a lot of things to be done. But I will eventually make a demo version just so interested people can do more than read my progress reports. Speaking of which....

Here is the current size comparison pic for the Federation Of Non-Aligned Worlds. I say CURRENT, because as it turns out, there really are a lot of Federation ships out there. I have a number of other Federation ships I may or may not include (most of which are fan-creations as far as I can tell). The ships in this pic are all (I'm fairly certain...) canon. Though I think some are from the Star Trek reboot universe. And please keep in mind that these are all preliminary images. Many still need to be cleaned up around the edges, and a few could benefit from higher detail versions. The difference in detail is especially noticeable with the Constitution (which is highly detailed) and the Constitution II (which seems a little blurry).

Well, that is all for today...

[Atarlost]

Can you maybe host your images somewhere other than imageshack? Two flash popups and an unknown number of blocked javascript popups is way too much to see the full size image.

[Keedo420]

Yeah, they've added a lot of crap since I originally signed up with them a couple of years ago. I'm just so used to imageshack I've never really bothered looking for another host. I'm not sure when the pop-ups started, but it was relatively recently. I'll look into another host when I have time. I could always post the full images here, but considering their size I'm guessing that wouldn't be a good idea. Anyway, in the meantime, here's two more comparison pics, the Kilrathi Empire and........PIRATES!!! Yes, the images aren't as high quality as the Federation or Imperial ships, but with the exception of the three Black Sun pirate fighters, these are all from the Wing Commander series of games and hi-res versions of these ships are to the best of my knowledge, non-existant. Still I don't think they look too bad. As far as the pirates go, I am not finished with them. I have a lot more pirate ships I am considering using, but they are not from the Wing Commander games, which is what I'm focusing on atm. Next I intend to tackle the Confederation ships such as the Bengal-class carrier and all of the fighters that go with it. They'll probably end up being part of the Colonial Alliance. But I digress..... Getting back to the pirates, while they have mostly red highlights in this pic, I am probably going to end up making different-colored versions of at least the capital ships for each pirate clan (of which there are currently five).


Of course, if anyone can find higher-res versions of the Kilrathi capital ships, I'd appreciate links to the images.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I could find no size data for any of the pirate ships with the sole exception of ONE of the Black Sun ships, so I was forced to make educated guesses. In the case of the three capital ships, I merely left them the size they already were in the original images. As for the fighters, I based their sizes on whether they were classified as light fighters, medium fighters, or heavy fighters and made them 10-12, 16-18, or 20-24 respectively.

[Keedo420]

Not a lot of time left for this post, but I updated the first post with a list of the current factions. All of which I have at least some ships for.

[Keedo420]

OK, I found a new image host that should be good enough for my needs and not bomb you with pop-ups. I've updated the first post (http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... 026#p42026) with the size comparison pics I already posted, including an updated Pirate Size Comparison. I also added two more size comparisons - the Klingon Empire and the Syreen. Those of you that remember the Syreen from Star Control, will remember them having only one ship in that game (like all the other races), but I have greatly expanded their fleet. Their classic Penetrator is in this mod a heavy fighter which I slightly recolored to match their newer ships. And like the Penetrator, most of their ship names are sexual euphamisms. As for the Klingons.... I was not expecting to end up with so many ships!! Some are very similar in appearance to others with only slight differences in detail, so I may end up eliminating some of them if I run out of ways to make them different from each other. The Romulans, Cardassians, and surprisingly enough, the Gorn also ended up with more ships than I expected, but I have yet to make their size comparisons. Well, that is all for today.

[Keedo420]

Well, not a lot to report this time. I took a little time off from working on this mod after I upgraded my computer so I could play around with it a bit. I can once again play Morrowind so I've restarted my old mod project for that game, but I've not abandoned this one. What I have for you today is the size comparison for the Romulans and an updated comparison of the Syreen. The Syreen have some more ships now and I've renamed some of the ships. Coming up with sexual euphamisms that aren't too blatant and make some sort of sense as ship names is becoming increasingly difficult as their fleet expands. As for the Romulans, most of their ship names come from the FASA Starship Tactical Simulator rpg though U had to make up one or two when a name or alphanumerical designation was not available. Likewise, a few of the ships did not have length listed so I was forced to guess on some of them. I also had to adjust the contrast on some of them as well, but overall I think they look decent enough. I still have a few more Romulan ships to add (such as the Scimitar from Nemesis), but I am more or less done with them for now. Check out the first post (http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... 026#p42026) to see them.

On a side note, the new image host does still have pop-ups (I've only notice one per image so far), but it's not nearly as bad as imageshack was. If anyone knows of a free image host that has NO pop-ups at all AND has the option of thumbnail links in forum posts, please let me know.

[Keedo420]

I've added the Colonial Alliance size comparison to the first post. They ended up with WAY more ships than I originally expected (almost 4 times the number of capital ships as the Sith Empire). So I may end up splitting them into two separate factions. Also, I should note that these are merely the planned ships. I have not actually gone through the process of requesting permission for the use of various images (though I most definitely will before I start doing the facings) so it is entirely possible that some of them will be eliminated from the lineup. Now those of you who actually view the size comparison may notice a few duplicate names (such as the Raptor and Thunderbolt from the Wing Commander games and the Raptor from Battlestar Galactica and Thunderbolt from Babylon 5). *shrug* Oh well. Great minds think alike? But if I do split up the Alliance into two factions, the duplicate names will probably be separated as well.

[Keedo420]

Today I bring you the Civilian Size Comparison and an updated Sith Empire.


The Sith Empire now has 4 new capital ships including the Altor Fleet Supply Craft which is essentially a mobile drydock, and 1 new fighter - the Sith Infiltrator. I could find no size data on the Infiltrator, but I do have an interior map of it which shows that it is definitely smaller than the YT-1300 (which is roughly 34 meters according to Wookipedia) so I sized it as a heavy fighter. The civilian capital ships are mostly freighters and transports but there are a few armed ships (such as the CR-90). There are also a large number of light, medium, and heavy civilian fighters from various sources (mostly Wing Commander and Star Wars). Doing the Civilian Size Comparison caused me to rethink the way I will be doing the fighters/hangar bays. I've decided that hangar bays should be able to store/launch any type of ship provided the carrier has enough cargo space. This decision is based on several reasons. 1) In Star Wars: A New Hope, we clearly see Princess Leia's CR-90 being pulled into the star destroyer's hangar bay. 2) In an episode of Battlestar Galactica, a number of Vipers were hidden inside freighters for a surprise attack. 3) Because!!

So, how am I going to make it work? Well, I'm looking into making ship "items" that are added to the ship's cargo when a craft enters the hangar and are removed when they are launched. Simple concept, but how easy it will be to code remains to be seen. I have not gotten to that part yet.

[Keedo420]

OK, so I split up the ships of the Alliance, moving the Wing Commander and Babylon 5 ships to the Insterstellar Confederacy. I should have done it that way from the start since the Terran Confederation is from Wing Commander and the Interstellar Alliance is from Babylon 5. I also moved the SDF-1 and VF-5000B to the IC. However, to make up for the loss, the Alliance has gained a few new ships including the V-19 Torrent which I moved from the civilian ships (it should have been part of the Alliance anyway). Additionally, I removed the Vulture and Hyena droid fighters from the civilian ships. They also should not have been there. They will be used by the Trade Union and Cylon Empire. Well, here is the Interstellar Confederacy Size Comparison.

[Keedo420]

Added the Draconian Marauder from Buck Rogers to the pirate ships. Also made size comparisons for the Cylons and Centauri. The cylons are a bit lacking in variety at the moment, but I'm hoping to add more capital ships to them eventually. Not much else to report today.

[shanejfilomena]

May Tribbles invest your cargo hold

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