Lost Empires

[RPC]

Can I suggest the Enhanced Encounters mod?

[Keedo420]

I cannot seem to find that one. I searched on Xelerus for both "enhanced" and "encounters" but did not see it.

[RPC]

I meant as a name for the mod, derp XD

[Keedo420]

Silly me. But in my defense, I'm almost certain I remember seeing a mod that was meant to enhance encounters. Maybe I was thinking of Dynamic Systems or something. Your suggestion has been added to the poll. This of course caused the results to be reset, but only two people other than myself had voted so far, but that's OK I'll remember what they voted for.

OK, so for today's progress report....I finally have the remaining graphics for all of the planet types and am in the process of adding them to the mod. Additionally, I have converted two more ships. However, these were not from N3mes1s's ship graphics, but were ones that I decided I simply had to have.

First off, from Star Wars, is the Venator-class Star Destroyer which does not look out of place being accompanied by a wing of X-wing fighters....


And second is, in my opinion, the coolest looking ship EVER!! From Babylon 5, The Shadow Battle Crab. It was a bitch to convert with all of its blackness, but I simply had to have it!! I'll be converting the Scout and Fighter as well eventually.

[RPC]

Yeah, I found it and it's called "encounter expansion". I don't think we should name it similarly- it may cause problems.
Try Galactic Raiders: Dawn of a New Age instead.

[Keedo420]

Personally, I'm leaning towards X-Verse for several reasons. First is my inspiration for the name. It is my intention to make this mod something resembling a 4x game....hence X-Verse. Second, it is meant to be an alternate uniVerse.... And third, I like the way it sounds.

Well anyway, here's another screenshot of the Venator, but this time it is escorted by a wing of newly converted TIE Interceptors.


Also, I went back and redid the Omega-class Destroyer. It looks a little better now I think. Here are both screenshots for comparison:
The original:

And the new version:


One final thing I should mention is that I have started designing some of the major factions that will be present in this mod now that I have a decent amount of ships to divide amongst them. First up is the Federation Of Non-Aligned Worlds. They will have mostly Star Trek ships. Second is the Colonial Alliance. They will feature some Earth Alliance ships from Babylon 5, Rebel Alliance ships from Star Wars, and Colonial ships from Battlestar Galactica. Then there will be the Galactic Empire - mostly Imperial ships from Star Wars, but some Imperial-looking ships from Transcendence as well. There will also be the Cylons, the Shadows, the Borg, and the Blight. Well, that is all I have to say for today.

[Keedo420]

I converted a few more fighters over the past couple of days as well as my first Romulan ship, so I put them all into one screenshot. On the left are the TIE Fighters and slightly redone TIE Interceptors (I think I need to smooth out the wings a bit still) and on the right are the TIE Bombers and the Viper Mk7s (from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica). In the center of course is the Romulan Bird-Of-Prey (Enterpise-style, not TOS). I think it needs to be smaller.


Also, I've started working on the topolgy again. Well, that's it for today's progress report.

[alterecco]

I love the fighters! Are they 40 facing or 20 facing? Would be sweet to make a playable mod pack out of them.

[shanejfilomena]

i like this.

[Keedo420]

I love the fighters! Are they 40 facing or 20 facing? Would be sweet to make a playable mod pack out of them.

For now I am just doing them at 20 facings. At least until I have the first version of the mod released. I will eventually go back and do some at 40 facings, especially the capital ships. The fighters spend a lot of combat time out of sight since they are faster than the player ship and will continue to chase an enemy until it is destroyed unless you specifically order them to return to formation, so their facings aren't as important. The player ships though will definitely benefit (at least visually) from 40 facings. And I have actually been considering releasing them as stand-alone mods (or perhaps as an add-on to FAD's Light Carrier Playership mod since that is the base code I am using for the carriers/fighters in my mod) or a ship-pack mod since it will still be quite some time before I have a releasable version of this mod.

i like this.

I'm glad you like it. I'll try to keep regular progress reports when I have something substantial to post. Today for instance all I really have to say is "I did more work on the topology". I wouldn't normally post just that, but since this is already a pretty long post, I figure why not?

[Keedo420]

Well, I appear to have fixed a problem with the game crashing when going through the stargate to certain systems. It seems that the game gets confused if two systems have the same name. In my original work on the topology I had modified the random generation of systems to include 21 possible names - 3 for each type of random system (EarthSpaceStandard, for example). However, I had copied the entries for the first node to the subsequent nodes to save time and never finished editing the names for the subsequent nodes. So when I would go ingame to test the connections between systems, occasionally the game would crash. At first I thought it was related to the chance for each system not totalling up to 100, but it kept happening so I started paying attention to the names of the systems I was gating to when it would crash and it always seemed to be the system names that were not unique to each node. So after the work of giving individual names to each potential system (21 possible names for every node (currently still at 30) took a long time) was finally finished last night, the crashes seem to have stopped. The names I decided on were BASED on actual star names, though I did take a few liberties in order to fill up space. I took the base constellation names (taken from a probably incomplete list of actual star names, as well as from a list of Star Trek systems) and added greek letters for each name (Theta Horologii, Alpha Ceti, Delta Onias, etc...). The only letters I missed were Rho and Phi, but the topology is far from complete so I still have a chance to throw those in there. When I get around to adding in the non-random systems, those will use alternate names for real stars (Fomalhaut, Rigel, Sirius, etc...) as well as names from sci-fi (Dagobah, Arrakis, Risa, Z'ha'Dum, etc...).

[Keedo420]

I have to retype this since the system timed out on me and logged me out before I finished. Grrr.....

Well, I've converted a number of new ships including some which I am keeping secret for now since I don't have any screenshots ready yet. Consider this a teaser. On another note, I've modified how projectile weapons work. They will now require ammo (like the smartcannon), but the smaller ones (such as the recoilless cannon) will use little to no power. Larger projectile weapons (such as rail guns) however will use a significantly higher amount of power though still less than comparable energy weapons. I have also designed a new method for constant-fire beam weapons. By setting the fire rate to 1 and giving it a vapor trail, it takes on the appearance of a solid beam and does constant damage to stationary targets (and those that remain in the line of fire) and strafes any target passing through the beam. By lowering the damage to 1d1 (for the weakest ones) it prevents the weapon from being too overpowered. Since accuracy is less important with these types of weapons, they will use noticeably more power than other energy weapons to compensate, though I have not settled on exact numbers yet. I've used this method to create a fairly accurate-looking Phaser for the Federation ships. To accomplish this, I gave the weapon a red particle beam type with a yellow vapor trail. Type 1 Phasers do 1d1 and have a beam intensity of 1, Type 2 Phasers do 1d2 and have a beam intensity of 2, and so on. Phaser Banks (like on the Constitution-class) are directional, while Phaser Arrays (like on the Galaxy-class) are omnidirectional. I will be using this same method to create other beam weapons (such as those seen in Babylon 5). I will have screenshots of the new weapons soon along with the screens of the new ships.

Well I guess that's all for now.

EDIT: Since no one has responded to this yet, I'm going to just go ahead and post the screenshots here instead of making a new post.

These first two screenshots show the (slight) difference between the look of the Type 1 Phaser and the Type 2 Phaser. The first shot is the Klingon Vorcha-class cruiser from Star Trek firing the Type 1. Yes, I know they use Disruptors instead of Phasers, but I haven't made the Klingon weapons yet. I'm very happy with the Vorcha. I got the image from a rotating gif and had to do some image manipulation to eliminate some ugliness. It's still 2D like all of my conversions, but I think it looks very good. The second shot is the Galaxy-class firing the Type 2.


Next up is the Imperial-class Star Destroyer. I don't think it is a perfect top-down view, but you have no idea how hard it was to even find this image.


And here we have the Shadow Scout from Babylon 5.


Now in this one, we have two new things... The new Blight Colony (left) and the Blight Hiveship (middle, I think I need to adjust the contrast on it), which is actually a Borg vessel called the Arctic Destroyer (though I don't recall ever seeing it in an episode of any series), but its design goes quite well with the Blight Drone (lower-right).


And finally, we have the FIRST of many ships from the Wing Commander series of games. I present to you the Snakeir-class Carrier. I wish I had been able to get a screenshot of the Dralthi-class fighter, but I had some problems with its rotation, so it'll have to wait for another day.

[Keedo420]

Here are 4 new screenshots, featuring 6 new ships, for your viewing pleasure...

First up is another screenie of the Shadow Battlecrab from Babylon 5, but this time it is escorted by a wing of Shadow Fighters.


Next up is the Republic Frigate from Star Wars...


Third, we have the Fralthra-class Cruiser from Wing Commander, escorted by a wing of Dralthi-class Fighter.


And finally, at last, we have the Borg Cube from Star Trek, escorted by a wing of Borg Interceptors. You might think because it is just a square that it would be easy to convert. You would be wrong.


And as an added bonus, here are the two pics I have chosen for my cover and prologue images....
Cover (Space War Collab by *qaz2008 & ~Krzyzowiec):


Prologue (Space by ~Avater):

[Keedo420]

Well it seems I have been busy. Here are 5 more screenshots for your viewing pleasure...

First, we have another shot of the Borg Cube, but this shot is to show the new Borg Sphere which can be seen on the left.


Second, is a screenshot of the Romulan Valdore-class Cruiser (I may make it a little smaller) accompanied by a Lanora-class scout.


Third, we have the Klingon K'vort-class Frigate accompanied by a Klingon Raptor-class scout (not to be confused with the Colonial Raptor from BSG) and a wing of Klingon Fighters (the Bird-Of-Prey from ST:Enterprise, unconfirmed sources name it the D-4 class).


Fourth, is the Klingon B'rel-class Destroyer (which is really just the K'vort resized since every pic I have seen of the two shows them looking identical).


And finally we have a screenshot that showcases both the Berzerk-class Fleet Escort from BSG and the new buildable Mining Station. This station will spawn Mining Drones that will mine nearby asteroids in a similar fashion to the Ferian Miners. I do not have the code fully working yet. Currently the station spawns the drones, but they just sit there and do nothing. I'll probably take a look at the code for the mining auton. Anyway, here's the screenie.

[Keedo420]

Well, I have managed to get the mining drones working more or less. I used a modified version of Apemant's Mining Auton. One mining drone per level of the mining station will spawn when the station is built (so one drone if you build a level 1 Mining Station). You will eventually have the option of upgrading the station's level. Once a drone has spawned, it will immediately start the mining process by looking for the closest unchecked asteroid and moving to it. I'm changing the miners so that they will continue to mine trace amounts of ore after all asteroids have been checked. And I'm trying to set it up so that once their cargo fills up, they will dock with their home station, deposit all ore in the station's cargo hold, and return to mining. I've got the code in place, but I haven't had the chance to follow them long enough for their cargo holds to fill up. However, I have confirmed that the mining drones are actually collecting mined ore by docking with them and looking in their holds after the collection.

EDIT: OK! So I've got the mining drones working more or less as I want. I have followed them around, watched them shoot the asteroids, watched them dock with mined ore, checked their cargo to confirm it was actually collected, followed them after their cargo holds filled up, watched them dock with the mining station, checked the station cargo hold to make sure they dropped off the ore, and followed them to make sure they went back to mining ore. So far so good. On a related note, I have new graphics for the construction drone and mining drone. I'm also working on creating alternate graphics for the various stations based on the sovereign that built them. Right now I've got a Borg mining station for the Borg sovereign, complete with guard ships, patrol ships, and random encounters, but the player will eventually be able to build the Borg mining station if they choose to play as a Borg. In other words, when the player decides to build, their chosen Culture will determine the appearance of the various buildable stations. More on this later.

EDIT 2:
Borg Mining Station


New Construction Drone:


New Mining Drone (I created this one by splicing together the Construction Drone and the Ferian Miner):