Slocket

What 3D software will you use to realize it? I just wonder what is out there, and how it is done. I know something barely about DX stuff, but what of other free, or not so free, 3D software? Is OpenGL still around? OGRE? IrrLicht? I think regular DB is slow some say (GDK is faster). So what I did maybe quick and easy, but it may not run worth a stuck pig with hundreds of objects being rendered. Just wondering what real college level programmers use for a 3D software engine. I am still a bit n00b and know just enough C++ to be intermediate level, to real 3D software rendering engines. Thanks, and looking good. These forums have been slow lately, I guess its spring fever.

That is true it took alot of Rebels and Ewoks only because Palpatine anticipated the raid on the Death Star Shield and had Troop regiments waiting there to defend it. So if there was say a few troops on patrol, and they have not been alerted to an impending attack, maybe a group of Spec Op forces with a character to enhance their chances maybe can sneak in a blow a facility up. I would give the troops defending on patrol a chance to detect the infiltraiters, even a bonus to detection and foil the mission if a failed attempt was made prior, and the troop guards are on heightened alert status for a time. I think I would make it so the spec op forces are going to be much more important and must play a decent part in any mission if you want success, and not let your character to get caught. But as for destroying a troop regiment like a facility is a bit over the top. I can see the saboteers gaining access to a facility and then planting high explosive blowing it up then escaping past any troop guards, though they may loose a few 'red shirts' in the process. I think the only way to eliminate troop regiments defending a planet would have to be by direct space bombardment (which could cause collateral damage ruining popularity as is in the game but a higher chance), direct assault with troopers but loses due to planetary shield and laser fire. Or troops getting killed off by uprising due to being unpopular. A random act of violence if the planet does not support very much and has a high garrison requirement. The game does that, but not very much so. One other new way to kill off troopers on a planet would be Blockade Effect. If the system supports one side over the other, maybe that support will grow over time and cause the planet to go into uprising, causing troops to be destroyed by the planets populace. And/or having a blockade over a planet that can not support human life so to speak could starve the troops out and cause a slow attrition detrimental to any defending troops on the ground. Ala Castle Seige like in the old days. That maybe unpopular to the planets civilians (and hurt your popularity), but the enemy military troops would suffer. Just no more character sneaking down to the planet and destroying a whole Dark Trooper regiment by himself. Maybe Vader or Luke could do that as a Jedi, but not a minor character. So the change would be "no Sabotage on a Troop regiment by a minor character." Sabotaging one single facility is more realistic than sabotaging a thousand man army of troop regiment spread out all over the city. That is my reasoning for why a single facility but not an army regiment. The target is a huge multitude for an army regiment, and a single target for the other a facility (blowing up its power core). Characters can enhance greatly the success of sabotage missions upon facility by supporting the spec op forces. (and for your character to get away if foiled). Characters can enhance greatly the assaulting troops (or defending) leading as a General upon a planetary assault.

I can see characters and spec op forces sabotaging a single facility such as a mine, planet laser, shield, construction yard, etc, but how can they take on a whole Troop Regiment? I have a hard time justifying allowing minor characters or spec ops just easily taking out a Troop regiment for a remake. Of course a Jedi could do it. I guess you can say you are destroying their barracks (which is possible of course) but you cannot just kill off hundreds of soldiers across the planet in real life. I wonder if there is a decent gameplay balance around this. I have a decent 2D interface and it goes into a basic 3D battle simulator so far for a very alpha tech demo to see if this Dark Basic engine project is going to run under others computers (resolutions, and Vista/XP it must be Windows ). Thanks for any input. If it causes more trouble gameplay wise than it worth, but I figured if you can get those shields and planetary batteries down, you must use your own troop regiments to attack the defending troops on the ground, plus with space bombardment. The characters can be a General and enhance your attacking troops effectiveness so they can play an important part in the invasion. This is what I want to change it to, so it is a more real and interestingly tougher tactical game. No more "one man Rambo" character taking out four troop regiments on a planet before an invasion.

Thanks Mad78. I really could use a tool like that, and any models would be cool. I would like several models for people to use and have a complete game. I once thought there was a BMP to BIN convertor (New Fighter's Tutorial and Rebellion_Model_Exchange)to fit into the original Rebellion, but this DarkBasic wants it the normal way, and a 'BIN to BMP' convertor would put to use most of the models at this own SWR website download section. I am good at coding the gameplay mechanics to work, but I am not much of an artist. It takes time and some talent to make a mesh model and learn how to texture it. Time I never had, to learn how to do it yet.

I have a need of more .X models. I can try it out in this DB engine and see what it looks like. I have gotten the wire frames from this website to work, bu the bin files for the textures never seem to stick. They will have to textured in a way the data is all together like a normal .X model mesh/texture. I am using 5 full working sweet models I got from Nobel374 and they work great in the engine. I am very close to release a rebellion remake test alpha demo with the 2D interface and have it switch over to the 3D battle engine when attacked. I have not learned how to texture any all wire frame model (just placing one big simple skin over the whole thing). But I do have about 6 models that have the texture jpg and .x mesh together as two files and they do work inside the engine properly. I have those ships attacking each other and a display to show the shield/hull status and recharge rate indicators for damage. Plus pretty nice laser and sound effects with damage spites. It is nothing fancy but placeholders, but that can always be improved. I want to make sure this is going to work on other Windows based OS and screen resolutions, and graphic cards that support DX9. I gathered from the people and showed to work fine in game for the Rebellion Remake. Imperator, Venator (two versions) a higher polygon ISD, a Mon Calamari mc40a (its is called a 80a but it looks like the 40a), Escort Carrier, Bulk Cruiser (Black Sun variant like in the original game), Dreadnaught, TIE Intecepter (only fighter model so far), Acclamator (not in the original Rebellion but it works). Need also a Carrack , medium Transport, Correlian Corvette and gunship "mesh and textured", Star Galleon, all those odd ones nobody seems to use much. I do thank you for any models I can try out to get to work. Compared to the old Rebellion graphics, this space battle aready is LIGHT YEARS ahead in special effect and looks pretty darn good for basic graphics FX. As always it can be improved, the limiting factor is number of ships rendered verse eye candy. Remember EAW had to limit the models in game for graphics/cpu load I think; I want at least 300 capital ships per side and up to 1500~ fighter total for a large battle, so I tend more for gameplay than fancy graphics, but still it looks pretty. I will give a try and post a picture, since I had the whole weekend to catch up on making this project. EDIT: Oh crumbs, that is an old post and the link is dead. I guess I will learn how to texture those .X mesh files form this Rebellion website and add textures that will work with DarkBasic Engine. The texture pics are in .BIN form but I need a .jpg or whatever picture type texture. Is there a backword BIN to JPG convertor?

Hey, that editor is looking nice there DavidAdas. I really never could find a good use to gameplay by going with a 3 D map for the galaxy stars (just complicates and confusing). I played Privateer alot, and never used the 3D map to navigate. I used the 2D map. I suppose they were trying to show how the worm holes connected the galaxy together (3D mapped to 2D). Yes, VinBadir, please share your planetary pictures. They could go with a new rebellion especially as a backdrop for a similated '2D' style plantary assault. As you know, the current Rebellion only gives a summary screen, no 'head to head' battle to watch. It does not have to be a full complicated drawn out 3D for the plantary assault, but it would be really nice to see something going on while the assaulting troops take over the planet. Example, seeing how a plantary LNR laser shoots down a landing Storm Trooper; how the battle roll dice are played out to see if the defender or attacker takes a hit, and maybe show a little animation..how a general increases the troops effectiveness...so there is no more WTF happened after an assualt. Though I wonder if it is that way if you have not discovered that a enemy character is already down on the planet. I have assaulted planets when I did no prior espionage and was losing alot of troops to take it. Then I finially figured out there was an enemy general on the planet -he tried to escape but was caught by my fleet. So that would need to be taken into account...hidden characters on planets.

Pretty good and thoughtful. I am not that familiar with RR, but it seems you have good creative ideas. Maybe give the Republic a troop with more defense but lower stats similiar to the Imperials. Say Wookie or one od those gets a defense of 8 instead of simply 7. Just looking at the cost and maintence.

In the past, I made a comment just like that. There is (for vanilla Rebellion) good arguments for not having that way for gameplay sake at the time. As it is, only advantage hyperdrive gives rebels is the fact their starfighters are already deployed and ready to rock the Empire in a fight while the Empire TIE are still getting out to be deployed. Also limits infinite huge waves of Rebel starfighters leads to imbalance. I thought to give limited range to the Rebel (or Empire's hyperdrive capable such as the Defender) starfighters. Maybe as long as there is room on the escort carrier in a particular sector, then they could conduct raids within that sector's system of planets, but they would have to return to their carrier as a base; and if it is destroyed, they would hyperdrive back to a friendly nearest Rebel planet somewhere else. A non-hyperdrive starfighter could not leave the battle without its escort carrier, and cannot withdraw. They are limited to their escort carrier at that planet, and take time to deploy into space battle. Of course, they are cheap to produce. This would give the Rebels an annoying ability to use 'Hit and Run' tactics against the Empires assets creating economic guerrila warefare sniping away at their fixed production sites. The Empire would know there exist a base of operations somewhere from an escort carrier or such group within that particular sector of planets. And would have to spend valuable military ships to go 'hunting' for them to stop the raids.

I would like to see smuggling and work slowdown also to be kept from the original game. I do like the idea in vanilla Rebellion of a percentage of credits/and or resources being smuggled to the Rebels if the planets loyalty to the Empire is low. This way the Rebels (or I guess the Empire too) can have an income to maintain their ships even though they may not even 'own' a single planet, just the fact that the galaxy may not like an Empire that has very little popular support, thus giving it away to the other side via smuggling. In game, that smuggling can be stopped if you maintain enough military presence around that planet. That is done also in the vanilla Rebellion. In that way, being unpopular and ruling with a heavy hand is going to cost you and tie up military assets. I also like the way resource was produced additionally in original Rebellion. If your are not very popular, the refineries slow down production of refined materials. A silent protest, at worse -slave labor which is never as productive ( I suppose that can be argued considering 'Vader-like" incentives to work hard anyways).

I never have seen that personally happen. Using RebEd is very safe since the stat is directly the data the game reads in before it starts. Maybe if a person tried something wild like a 50% leadership bonus from 'Emperor at Coruscant' and you had the leadership skill way over 255+ due to that, or something else maybe. The enemy should be getting killed during an uprising, not yourself. Maybe it is a fluke? Normally if you get the planet to uprise, that mission is considered finished and the character/ characters should quite the mission. Now since that planet is neutral, your character's must leave and go back to their original Empire controlled planet. If by very bad luck, the Rebel enemy placed a ship or troops in route onto that planet on the same day your mission finished, then they could very well have been caught very easy and injured due that since Covell's espionage and combat stats are very low, and thus your incite mission group would have been detected leaving the planet on that same day. That scenario could happen; the AI will send troops to a planet that is going into rebellion since it needs a higher garrison amount, so you just got unlucky at the last day. If the rebels troops landed on the planet at that same day it turned neutral, then they no longer control the planet and the rebel troops also would be sent back to their original planet on that same turn. So it is an oddity of the turn based game mechanics resolution that can happen, but should be rather rare.

If you use that fixed EXE, you will have no movie cutscenes play. Easy to do also if you can spare some HHD space is to use an emulater, simply make a full image file (Alcohol 120 or MagicISO), then use Daemon Tools to mount the disk image. That way you do not need the precious cd inside the drive. On my system, it would make the cd spin all the time until I did that. 500 Megs Of course, you need the original game disc to make the image file, so this is not piracy. Just a legal no cd work around.

Nice idea for a Mod, I wonder how the AI would play with the changes. Plus that website link has a decent catalogue of star wars stuff, if I could read Polish.

Not if your almost immortal.. what's a few years. That link does have some neat cards that could be used for some more characters to use in game. It is nice to have the art work already finished. I copied some of those cards, I like the one with IG-88 android, Boba Fett, TIE-Scout pic for the encyclopedia for my little version of Rebellion. Yes, I am very much along, I just never posted anything lately. I want to release a nice interface with good stuff as a demo.

Wow! I just seen this post! Yes a year of work, it does take ALOT of work to do a remake. Especially if your doing it for free and by yourself. It looks like you are getting along the way to a finished game. It is a good thing there are alot of peeps on their own projects, because who knows what or which one actually makes it into reality in the end? It looks like DavidAdas you maybe just very well be the one who finially made a Rebellion 2! You got the hard part done, and yes it does take alot of time, but it will be worth it. Maybe George himself will give you a contract to make the real Rebellion 2 for the PC computers. You never know! I really hope you can finish it, and good work my friend! You are our last hope.

You can use "Resource Hacker" to open up Tactical.dll to look inside it. It contains a 301 and 303 folder only, no 302. Is that close? What is it your looking for, or at? Is it 302 for sure? -------------- I see, "agent" editing. That one call ALBRIEF.dll has the verbal data for let say the Alliance agent CP30 speaking during the introduction. I have no idea what format it is in, but that does have the 302 folder. voice data WAV, animation data in 302, the startng frames are in bitmaps folder. I never did figure it out how they get the full animations to be extracted and work.

Yeah, it is the same website with an updated link. The pics are indentical to those original ones inside the dll's using ResHacker to see and extract them. ASFAIK. If one wanted to go through all the work, they could recreate that part of the poster -so to speak.

I still have my poster copy from the original box game. It seems to be quite rare. It is a good source of information to read off of for each character and the ships in game. Maybe Ebay someone sells once in a while. Expensive for an original box. How would one read the poster into a scanner to digitize it? The pics would make nice photos for Reb 2. Here is an updated link to see DATA from the poster by Dr. Slice: http://drslice.com/games/rebellion/capital http://drslice.com/games/rebellion/capital/8

That is a pretty good system. I may add the effect of popularity to mining output. The more popular you are, the more you get. Plus I would make the mines so they can be destroyed through a sabotage mission. So there would be a reason to watch them with troops. Maybe require certain planets make certain parts for ships. Say some planets have Tyberium gas for fuel, some have DuraSteel for the hull component, etc. That way each planet has some personality and uniqueness so they are not all the same vanilla planet. Star Empires. Having a certain planet for Empire or the Rebel will confer a small bonus to production at that planet. EaW. I do like the requirement of maintenance points, so the bigger your fleet, the more it will take to maintain. That way if a person is totally war like and not using diplomacy or missions, they could be counter acted by such. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. So if you are losing via small number of planets or fleet, you still have a chance to win if your planets are well developed -good research level -good mission strategy. Economic game balance to prevent "Tank Rushing".

Static values are read into the game from an external file upon start up. So I am good there. I am only using static arrays. No dynamic arrays. Data is destroyed (cleaned up) when no longer in use. So I guess I am still good to go, I really did not want to retype about 4000 lines of code. It is not the best looking code, but it does work. Thank you and anyone else for the input. I feel better to keep marching on.

I have this coding problem. Maybe. I need to expand my namespace arrays to make for more data. But I am wondering about data and speed of execution after the code is compiled. Does it matter if I stick all the data elements into one huge array, both static and dynamic, and read/write to each element: or, Make one huge array to read in all the static data such as planet and star locations that do not change in game; and make a smaller data array that holds the variables that do change during the game, such as planet loyalty. It would seem the game stores all this stuff in a memory location, so why would it care if adressing it in game is from one huge combination of elements planet.loyalty(n) ; as opposed to one single array just for that planetLoyalty(n)? I assume it does not matter, but as this gets bigger the code, anything that may slow it down might start to show itself. I can save alot of pain in the future; once the game is cycling through thousands of lines of code...it may make a difference.

A new Star Wars movie series coming to TV. 2010 http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/03/09/exclusive-star-wars-live-action-tv-series-casting-underway/

Minimize the Use of the endl Manipulator Many programmers append the endl manipulator after each cout expression, as in: cout << "user login" << endl; cout << "enter your name: " << endl; cin >> name; In the first line, the endl manipulator is added to force a line break. However, it's cheaper in terms of performance to use the '\n' character instead of endl because endl also flushes the stream rather than just adding a line break. Flushing a stream can be a costly operation. The second cout expression too has a redundant endl manipulator because the display must appear on the screen before the cin expression is executed, as cin and cout are tied. The bottom line: avoid using the endl manipulator if you can because it slows down your program. Use \n instead. cout << "The value of x is " << x << ’\n’; cout << "The value of x is " << x << endl; You would think this is the same, but it is not for performance.

I'm glad to see your still working on it. Hopefully the community will get some kind of game before the year is over. This is a big project, not an easy task. I can see why it takes two or three years to develope a game. Especially if your doing for free time.

Wow, this is simply amazing! Plus alot of good information on the ships. I can see you guys really did your homework on this one.

Yes. It is just I had alot of things slowing down since the economy crashed last fall. Sorry for the delay. I had the 2D strategy map mostly finished last Nov 08. I am setting my own little den work area so I have the room to work. The paper work and documentation is the real battle. It is easy to get lost, if I do not keep it organized.