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IronDukeParticipant
I have just created the project folder for the game. The first thing I do will be to convert the heavy corvette model from .pso to .lwo, open it in Blender, and save it as a .blend. Unity can then read it right off the bat with no conversion of any kind required. It won’t have textures though. I will then apply my flight model to it, and give the thrusters the right values to produce exactly the same performance characteristics as in the original game. Application of the flight model may take a few days.
Edit: Turns out setting up the smoothing angles on the ship model is harder than I thought. The problem with low poly models is that the angle between polys of what should be a curved surface may be large than the angle between polys of what should be a corner, so I have to manually mark a lot of edges as “sharp.” The auto-smooth ain’t gonna cut it.
I have to admire the ingenuity of the modellers of the game; the ship is only 787 tris for 414 verts. For it to look as good as it does shows their skill. And the more I look at the model, the more I can’t help but think that they knew nearly every technique in the book for making the desired shape with almost no geometry.–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantI have just created the project folder for the game. The first thing I do will be to convert the heavy corvette model from .pso to .lwo, open it in Blender, and save it as a .blend. Unity can then read it right off the bat with no conversion of any kind required. It won’t have textures though. I will then apply my flight model to it, and give the thrusters the right values to produce exactly the same performance characteristics as in the original game. Application of the flight model may take a few days.
Edit: Turns out setting up the smoothing angles on the ship model is harder than I thought. The problem with low poly models is that the angle between polys of what should be a curved surface may be large than the angle between polys of what should be a corner, so I have to manually mark a lot of edges as “sharp.” The auto-smooth ain’t gonna cut it.
I have to admire the ingenuity of the modellers of the game; the ship is only 787 tris for 414 verts. For it to look as good as it does shows their skill. And the more I look at the model, the more I can’t help but think that they knew nearly every technique in the book for making the desired shape with almost no geometry.–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantI’ve been reminded of why I never watch unfinished series. Also, I was utterly unprepared for the quantity of blood/gore and adult themes in the show; wish I’d waited ten years or so. While the show was more immersive than some others, I think B5 was almost infinitely better. 🙁
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantI’ve been reminded of why I never watch unfinished series. Also, I was utterly unprepared for the quantity of blood/gore and adult themes in the show; wish I’d waited ten years or so. While the show was more immersive than some others, I think B5 was almost infinitely better. 🙁
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipant:blush:
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipant:blush:
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantHowdy!
Thanks for the encouragement and the warning. As for that script, I’m planning on expanding it in a specific way. I’m going to create a little mod when the remake is complete that will be an activator for the remake. Basically, no playing the remake unless you play the first mission with the activator mod running. Then the installation of the remake will be activated. Also, every time you start the remake, it’ll do a check for a valid EoC installation. Pain in the butt? Yep. 😛 As for Atari, I really doubt they’ll pay any attention. This community is a teensy little cult. For us to become a problem, we’d have to have literally a few thousand downloads of the remake, and that’s probably not happening. Even giving a cease and desist costs them money, and we very likely will never be worth the effort. But thanks for letting me know. 😉 If they ever do contact me, I’ll tread on feet of glass.1. I’m going to completely recreate the story from the vanilla EoC, with all the missions that they cut out, and quite a few of my own. But all the originals will be there. And the story will continue on at the spot where it stops in the vanilla game, after you destroy the accelerator. I’ll invent much more plot, explaining the arrival of the aliens, and tying up every loose end in the I-War universe.
2. Absolutely. Yay Unity engine. :cheer: Besides, I’d die if I couldn’t plug in whatever over-the-top controllers start coming out soon.–IronDuke
Edit: While thinking about the Atari situation, it’s entirely possible that my optimism is born of my foolish, headstrong youthfulness. 😆 Being only 18, I have not had much experience with things. We’ll see if I’m wrong.
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantHowdy!
Thanks for the encouragement and the warning. As for that script, I’m planning on expanding it in a specific way. I’m going to create a little mod when the remake is complete that will be an activator for the remake. Basically, no playing the remake unless you play the first mission with the activator mod running. Then the installation of the remake will be activated. Also, every time you start the remake, it’ll do a check for a valid EoC installation. Pain in the butt? Yep. 😛 As for Atari, I really doubt they’ll pay any attention. This community is a teensy little cult. For us to become a problem, we’d have to have literally a few thousand downloads of the remake, and that’s probably not happening. Even giving a cease and desist costs them money, and we very likely will never be worth the effort. But thanks for letting me know. 😉 If they ever do contact me, I’ll tread on feet of glass.1. I’m going to completely recreate the story from the vanilla EoC, with all the missions that they cut out, and quite a few of my own. But all the originals will be there. And the story will continue on at the spot where it stops in the vanilla game, after you destroy the accelerator. I’ll invent much more plot, explaining the arrival of the aliens, and tying up every loose end in the I-War universe.
2. Absolutely. Yay Unity engine. :cheer: Besides, I’d die if I couldn’t plug in whatever over-the-top controllers start coming out soon.–IronDuke
Edit: While thinking about the Atari situation, it’s entirely possible that my optimism is born of my foolish, headstrong youthfulness. 😆 Being only 18, I have not had much experience with things. We’ll see if I’m wrong.
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantTee hee… Ubermodder… I like that title… 👿
The HUD as it is cannot be scaled. The way it was implemented prohibits that because the functionality simply was not added. There are ways around that, but they’re a ton of work.
-One way is to simply create a zoomed-in version of the HUD textures, at say 512×512 instead of 256×256. The problem there is that I’ve never tried that, so I don’t know for sure if that would even work. But that should cause them to take up more screen space, since instead of being measured in monitor pixels, they’re measured in the pixels of whatever resolution you are running. Really a pain.
-Another way is to code a custom GUI with a slider to adjust size. This would require a thorough knowledge of POG and a ton of time to test it. And things like the ORB might be impossible to replicate. While I know POG, I’ve never yet worked with the GUI and any attempts to do so would take away from the time working on my remake. What I have noticed though is that the GUI is quite sensitive to the gamma setting; maybe you could tinker with that?Sorry I can’t help more. I’ve modded over a dozen games, and always the thing frustrating my efforts is engine limitations. This is the reason I’m going into game development. I want to have nothing stopping me from making whatever I want.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantTee hee… Ubermodder… I like that title… 👿
The HUD as it is cannot be scaled. The way it was implemented prohibits that because the functionality simply was not added. There are ways around that, but they’re a ton of work.
-One way is to simply create a zoomed-in version of the HUD textures, at say 512×512 instead of 256×256. The problem there is that I’ve never tried that, so I don’t know for sure if that would even work. But that should cause them to take up more screen space, since instead of being measured in monitor pixels, they’re measured in the pixels of whatever resolution you are running. Really a pain.
-Another way is to code a custom GUI with a slider to adjust size. This would require a thorough knowledge of POG and a ton of time to test it. And things like the ORB might be impossible to replicate. While I know POG, I’ve never yet worked with the GUI and any attempts to do so would take away from the time working on my remake. What I have noticed though is that the GUI is quite sensitive to the gamma setting; maybe you could tinker with that?Sorry I can’t help more. I’ve modded over a dozen games, and always the thing frustrating my efforts is engine limitations. This is the reason I’m going into game development. I want to have nothing stopping me from making whatever I want.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantUnity is awesome. When two objects collide, Unity will call any functions in scripts attached to them called “OnCollisionEnter.” There’s also “OnCollisionStay” and “OnCollisionExit.” (Possibly I screwed up the names; I’ve only used the first one.) It will pass to those functions, as an optional parameter, a class entitled “Collision.” Collision has a ton of useful variables including: relative impact velocity, the exact position of impact, the normal of the triangle that was hit, and much more. Literally everything I need is already done for me. All I’d have to do is write the damage calculations and give each armor chunk its own collider.
This is why I’m not writing my own engine. 😛
I’m honestly not sure how textures updating in realtime would be implemented in Unity either; I’m not too strong on the art side of the engine. I’m not worrying about that for the moment, since coding the gameplay comes before fancy graphics. That and I’m not good at them. :silly: I’m not entirely certain that I understood every single word you said, although I certainly got the drift.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantUnity is awesome. When two objects collide, Unity will call any functions in scripts attached to them called “OnCollisionEnter.” There’s also “OnCollisionStay” and “OnCollisionExit.” (Possibly I screwed up the names; I’ve only used the first one.) It will pass to those functions, as an optional parameter, a class entitled “Collision.” Collision has a ton of useful variables including: relative impact velocity, the exact position of impact, the normal of the triangle that was hit, and much more. Literally everything I need is already done for me. All I’d have to do is write the damage calculations and give each armor chunk its own collider.
This is why I’m not writing my own engine. 😛
I’m honestly not sure how textures updating in realtime would be implemented in Unity either; I’m not too strong on the art side of the engine. I’m not worrying about that for the moment, since coding the gameplay comes before fancy graphics. That and I’m not good at them. :silly: I’m not entirely certain that I understood every single word you said, although I certainly got the drift.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantI’ve decided what kind of damage model to implement. Seems to have taken me a whole week to work out. 😮
Imagine the War Thunder armor viewer. Increase the number of armor segments by five to get a typical corvette’s armor layout. The internal systems will also be modelled with their own colliders, just like the various systems in a War Thunder tank. A key difference, however, is a large internal structure unintuitively named “Internal Structure” that sprawls through the middle of the ship. It’s basically the same as any other system, except that it has one function. When its health reaches 0, ship = boom. Another difference is that while the armor in WT cannot be destroyed, the armor in my system has a health value. The following paragraphs describe why.
So take a normal PBC shot. When it hits a ship, the angle of impact, the shot’s damage – decrease over distance, and the penetration are examples of factors taken into account. First, there’s a simple penetration check. Armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle are used, as well as the shot’s penetration and speed. The armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle will produce a “resistance” variable. The shot’s penetration and speed will produce a second “penetration” variable. A comparison of these two numbers will follow. If “penetration” is more than 50% (this might get tweaked some) greater than “resistance,” a full penetration occurs. The shot passes straight through the armor. Only a slight amount of damage is inflicted to the armor chunk, with the rest staying on the shot. If “penetration” is between 50% less than and 50% greater than “resistance,” a partial penetration occurs. Say it’s 10% lower than “resistance.” This would make a 40% penetration, so 60% of the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk, and 40% passes through on the shot. Now if “penetration” is less than 50% of “resistance,” then it’s a no-penetration. All the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk.
So what happens as the armor chunk’s health goes down? That affects “resistance,” as I mentioned that the armor health is a factor. I think I’ll simply have it be a multiplier to “resistance,” with 100% health being a 1.0 factor, and 0% health being a 0 factor.
Now what happens when a shot penetrates? As in WT, there are many systems in the ship. Whichever system the shot crosses will receive the damage, with another penetration check – not to see if the shot should go through, but to see how much damage it will do to the system, to allow some weapons to be better disablers. Nice and simple. In fact, if a shot has enough penetration and damage to go straight through the armor chunk, hit a system and bring its health to 0, then it will continue on, hit an armor chunk on the other side, run another penetration check, and if it passes, then go straight through and keep flying. MESON CANNONS ANYBODY?? 👿 Also, I’ll implement the ability for some shots to have an area of effect. Yup, antimatter PBCs will damage multiple systems easily.
Now how about beams and missiles? Beams will operate the same way. Missiles will be similar, the difference being that instead of tracing a line on their impact path to determine what they hit on a penetration, everything within a certain radius of the missile (the blast radius) is damaged.
There are several advantages with this system. First, it allows for tactical gameplay, making it wise to aim for sections of a ship that have already been hit. Also, it makes the game more realistic, which is a good thing, of course. It also allows for a very wide variety of weapon specialties, with some good against lightly armored ships, others against heavy armor. And finally, while the system in the vanilla EoC would take barely an hour to program, this one is not too hard either. It’s simple math.
Let me know what you think of it!
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantI’ve decided what kind of damage model to implement. Seems to have taken me a whole week to work out. 😮
Imagine the War Thunder armor viewer. Increase the number of armor segments by five to get a typical corvette’s armor layout. The internal systems will also be modelled with their own colliders, just like the various systems in a War Thunder tank. A key difference, however, is a large internal structure unintuitively named “Internal Structure” that sprawls through the middle of the ship. It’s basically the same as any other system, except that it has one function. When its health reaches 0, ship = boom. Another difference is that while the armor in WT cannot be destroyed, the armor in my system has a health value. The following paragraphs describe why.
So take a normal PBC shot. When it hits a ship, the angle of impact, the shot’s damage – decrease over distance, and the penetration are examples of factors taken into account. First, there’s a simple penetration check. Armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle are used, as well as the shot’s penetration and speed. The armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle will produce a “resistance” variable. The shot’s penetration and speed will produce a second “penetration” variable. A comparison of these two numbers will follow. If “penetration” is more than 50% (this might get tweaked some) greater than “resistance,” a full penetration occurs. The shot passes straight through the armor. Only a slight amount of damage is inflicted to the armor chunk, with the rest staying on the shot. If “penetration” is between 50% less than and 50% greater than “resistance,” a partial penetration occurs. Say it’s 10% lower than “resistance.” This would make a 40% penetration, so 60% of the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk, and 40% passes through on the shot. Now if “penetration” is less than 50% of “resistance,” then it’s a no-penetration. All the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk.
So what happens as the armor chunk’s health goes down? That affects “resistance,” as I mentioned that the armor health is a factor. I think I’ll simply have it be a multiplier to “resistance,” with 100% health being a 1.0 factor, and 0% health being a 0 factor.
Now what happens when a shot penetrates? As in WT, there are many systems in the ship. Whichever system the shot crosses will receive the damage, with another penetration check – not to see if the shot should go through, but to see how much damage it will do to the system, to allow some weapons to be better disablers. Nice and simple. In fact, if a shot has enough penetration and damage to go straight through the armor chunk, hit a system and bring its health to 0, then it will continue on, hit an armor chunk on the other side, run another penetration check, and if it passes, then go straight through and keep flying. MESON CANNONS ANYBODY?? 👿 Also, I’ll implement the ability for some shots to have an area of effect. Yup, antimatter PBCs will damage multiple systems easily.
Now how about beams and missiles? Beams will operate the same way. Missiles will be similar, the difference being that instead of tracing a line on their impact path to determine what they hit on a penetration, everything within a certain radius of the missile (the blast radius) is damaged.
There are several advantages with this system. First, it allows for tactical gameplay, making it wise to aim for sections of a ship that have already been hit. Also, it makes the game more realistic, which is a good thing, of course. It also allows for a very wide variety of weapon specialties, with some good against lightly armored ships, others against heavy armor. And finally, while the system in the vanilla EoC would take barely an hour to program, this one is not too hard either. It’s simple math.
Let me know what you think of it!
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂IronDukeParticipantSure didn’t. I have more games than I can easily find the time to play. :silly: Just wish they’d have finished developing. We need moar space games.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂 -
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