Slocket

Wow, this is nice. Here is a capital ship from Noble713 translation work from the EvilleJedi's mods for Homeworld 2. DB is so picky, but with a little mesh rotation and scaling...is this what it should look like? The ambient light and other things can be adjusted. Home Again - Imperator http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8461/imperator2db6.jpg

Yes a good point, the Strike has 60 over 40 only for its front ion cannons, plus longer range and tractor beam to get in the fight quicker. I see that the Vic II has the same ion cannons for its port and starboard, but has double at 80 turbo lasers over the Strike. So if a Vic II can get itself close enough to turn a broadside, it is quite more powerful. It would seem that the Strike should be much faster to get into the fighter and nail the enemy before they could flee it would seem in theory. Maybe if the Strike was speed up more, and lower its cost; then it would play its role as a quick cheap but heavy hitting front line ship to get in there and get the first hits off. What do you think about the OP position on those Rebel Bulk Cruisers? Do you think it is a balance issue with the alliances better fighters in the begin phase of the game? Bulk Cruisers do seem 'worthless' on paper stats. I take interest in this, since I am still trying to make a remake, it would be nice to balance a few things out for default values. If I ever finish it.

I would have to agree. 30 to construct Bulk Cruiser and 44 for the Alliance Dreadnought. Being 50% cheaper is its only saving grace. It has almost the same maintance cost, with only half the guns. It does get a tractor beam, but big deal. Oh, it is twice as fast sublight 6 compare to Dreadnaught's 3. I definetly find the Imperial Carracks much better in the early game. In groups it can really tear things up. So that is what the Alliance gets in place of the Carrack Cruiser's equivelant for the Empire. I suppose it should out gun a Carrack one to one, but a Carrack Cruiser is more versital with lasers and some turbos. With its higher damage control rating and maneuvering speed, I can blow an Alliance Bulk Cruiser away toe to toe with some fancy maneuvering against the AI. Though it has the same speed as the Alliance Bulk Cruiser. I think it was meant to counter the Carrack Cruiser. If it had a higher damage control rating, then it would make the Bulk Cruiser more worth while. EDIT: Maybe for balance change, the Carrack Cruiser should cost more ( presently 26) or have a higher maintenance. To me, I think it is way too good of a ship early on, and is always good in group attacks throughout the game. Or lower its damage control rating from 30 to something lower. With the Bulk Cruiser only at 5, it seems that is where the Carrack really shines. It can fix itself pretty fast in game in tactical battles. I guess they figure the superior Alliance fighters would support the Bulk Cruisers and make up for the Empires punny TIE fighters. Combined arms may be the balance. Another ship that does not seem to live up to its name is the Imperial Strike Cruisers. The list says it is to be built fast and cheap sacrificing hull and shields durability. But for the cost, it does not live up to its role. Check out its stats compared to a Victory II Star Destroyer, and tell me how for the same cost, the Strike Cruiser is "a good deal".

Yes. Here is a nice read from gamefaq about the whole game. http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/198776/19754 --------- iii) Leia Organa Her Heritage: Once Luke has an encounter with Vader and learns about his heritage, he can then tell Leia about their heritage. The way Luke tells her is exactly like how he discovers potential jedi candidates. It's supposed to happen when they're on a mission together, but just being near each other seems to work just as well and just as often. Leia can then immediately use the Force and she gets a stats boost. ---------- It also seems that as Darth_Rob says, Luke must be either a certain rank of Jedi, or after the misson to Dagobah (which automatically causes Luke to gain growth in his Jedi level).

THX Noble713, I would be interested. I sent you an PM, but I do not know if the PM system works. I can play the movies on WMP 9, I should check it out by upgrading to WMP 11. Using XP. I downloaded the Warlords Mod. I need an extractor to look into the .big file. It seems that FinalBIG version 0.4 does not work. At any rate, it seems you did already convert much over to .X format. That is good! I could not get a decent automatic convertor software to do it. If you know how to convert the files over by manually, that is alot of work you did. Those turbolaser are just plain basic primitive cylinders I threw in there as a place holder. Indeed, thin out at the ends like a needle and more skinny would look nice. I used Milkshape to create via export .X, and those models seem to work fine in DarkBasic's engine. Though DB is rather picky about the .X format to be exact. I could not get the models from scifi.com to work inside it. The ones in the pictures are from this website for use in the original Rebellion game. Though the original textures will not work, so for now a simple overall basic covering I am using. I would need to make a new UV texture maps.

Yes, I have some test being done. Maybe it is just arthrisis or carpal tunnel. I guess if you type enough, it happens. Thanks for the sentiments. I guess getting older is not so fun sometimes. I am presently re-write the code for several ships at once. I need to think how it will be with multiple ships, which equals "Good logical documentation and Naming Scheme" , something of a discipline of book keeping I need to do to keep thing orginized. Plus making functions to call to simplify reading and calling repeated routines. Then I can worry about getting more nice textered models into the battle engine. My it really is alot of work, even using as simple engine as DB. I can imagine the work DavidAdis and his team are doing, and Moribundis. To do it correctly for all OS is a big under taking. I can understand why devs really get pee ood at software piracy! It is work. One thing I wonder about is what exactly should the tractor beam do in game. Should it be more effective than just slowing down a ship? Such as decreasing the targets firing rate? A longer reach to catch one ship at a time better? I also wanted to experiment later with adding the port and forward side guns do make a difference in the firing arcs, with damage similiar to those old Starfleet Battle games. Nothing too fancy, but more than the original game, would make the tactical battle more "tactical". Ships with more Hull will have more hits by chance than to its guns and recharge rates. Maybe add a warp core for that lucky shot that powers the ship. Adding a crew such as fleet or imperial regiments for pilotimg the ship and storm troopers to guard the ship. By adding a simple but representative ground battle phase viewer only, the ship in real time could bomb the planet and assault with ships and fleet troop ships. While ground batteries firing upon the invading task force. Would be nice than just a summary page as it is now.

I get up just before sunset, then I go bed before the sun comes up for dawn. Talk about a night owl, that I am. That sun light is strong, makes think of work and now I can sit back and sleep all day! Not that there is much to do in this boring town, I live in.

I used accutrans from above to load the ISD model. I then saved as into folder both direct X formats. Inside that is the isdbump.x with the jpg and bmp pictures for textures, but for some reason Dark Basic will not load the .X model in either format. DB does not give a reason, it compiles OK, but then a run time error upon EXE is started. I wonder if DB can handle this. Maybe I wil try this other program. It seems that 3ds format is a more modern, compact format for size using jpg and such for smaller memory size. I wonder if Direct X format, the only thing DB will handle even though they claim it will accept 3ds (the website then retracts that statement), is .X data file and BMP only. So if I convert those jpg into BMP...I do not know. Another program convert3ds will do it but only the mesh comes out, it has to be bmp maps. maybe DB is not very good for handling the superior 3ds format. It would have been nice to see a high detailed textured model in the game using only 1.9 megs of memory. Then again, the original game mission statement was not to be a fancy RTS space shooter, really more of a stragedy game with a half decent 3D battle engine to watch the ship duke it out. I will keep trying. I need sorely to rewrite and originize my code. I fell into the trap of not doing proper documentation and object oriented class names to keep track of multiple ships, sub systems, turbolaser fire bolts. It is a bit of a mess.

Sorry, nothing yet. I took a vacation. I am having some problems with my finger nerves from type 2 diabetis. I had to slow down off my computer. Hopefully I will get back to it next month.

Sub human that fell through a dimensional time warp. Or a hill billy on steroids that never shaved. Those Greys are sure sloppy letting their lab monkeys get loose on Earth.

yeh, 10,000 ships is a bit overkill. It turns the night monitor into a very bright GREEN color.

THX. I will check it out. I been thinking about maybe using those free higher polygon ships. I want fewer, but very tough ships. I think for gameplay; military is important but not overbearing. Missions, characters, special forces, esponiagne sobatoge and diplomacy missions really are important. Plus an improved ground and planet defense. Hopefully I can make a basic invasion assault similator to watch (something that was not in the original game). I want the ships to have more complex systems and firing arcs similiar to Starfleet Battles board game, or Starfleet Command computer game. This way having a more complex ship you do not want them to get destroyed so easy. More tactical decision in battle. I think 100 or 200 capital ships in battle per side for a galaxy of 200 planets (maybe a few sectors more) is plenty. Using about 1000 or 2000 fighters.

Thanks for the information. I never knew exactly that website. The models were made using a free copy of Milkshape converted to X format. The models I have for now are from this very website. The texture maps are in a bin form and I do not know how to get the UV map thingy to work. I guess each triangle would have to be re-mapped back onto the mesh. The engine is a easy to use DarkBasic Pro. But with all easy to use stuff, it has has some annoying limitations and bugs. It can be written into C++ , then compiled with MS VC 2008 Express edtion free. I sould do that, since most of what I wrote is your basic IF statements, and Timers. OpenAL and OpenGL would have been nice, and they are not that hard touse, but I have no expertise at those freeware tools. I believe just by getting a basic functional game working, then I can go back and convert the code over to something most people are familiar with. I am going about this in a backward way for development. I can make this rather simple complete game working using the DarkBasic engine. It is quick and fast (but dirty and a bit wonky to work with) it teaches me something about game design and what works and what does not work -a big picture understanding. After that education, I was studying the use of OpenAL for sound , buffers, 3D , the libraries, a more robust and controlled enviroment (plus OpenGl and a more flexable render engine, LUA for modding scripts and data, then convert interpreter engineEXE to C++). I wish sometimes it was 25 years ago when computers really were around, I would have majored in Computer Science instead. But of course any help in the future is welcome...I was busy doing a few other thing IRL right now. My code for DarkBasic looks just like something you would find in BASIC. DarkBasic Pro does allow for it to be written in VC++ and compiled that way to be much faster. It is showcased on MS website. The code I wrote using the DB syntax is not very readable in a sense. I need to clean it up (replacing "object number 3000" with "capitalShipNumber.health"). EDIT: those model are very nice. Are they free? Does the authors wish to get recognizition for their work? Can they bve comverted into Direct X model format? DB will only use X format, unfortunately, not 3DS straight off. Maybe inport the model into say Studio Max then export it into Direct X output? Thanks

Not bad for an idea. It would be nice to add more capability to the rebel's superior fighters to do limited, hit and run raids on the Empire -similar to the old game "X-Wing". The Rebels would have that hit and run tactic at the beginning to mid game just to keep the Empire off its toes, wondering what planet that came from. The Rebels could have a few escort carriers hiding a system or two away; and send raiding parties to take out their infrastructure (mines and refineries) which the Empire's massive 'low cost' fleet rely heavily on for maintainance. While the rebel fighters are more costly to build, but they have a lower maintainance cost.

I did read that novel "The Stand" back in junior high school. At that time, the last chapter was censored. The book was very good compared to the movie. Well, maybe I am the oldest...I watched that on an old black and white television when I was quite young. It was partially on my birthday later this month IIRC.

Will the audio overflow its buffers? I hope the engine can handle multiple sounds, in a way similiar to the model loading. I was reading some OpenAL sound tutorials and they talk about how to load in sounds into temporary buffers in memory to be played; until the max of the sound card is reached. (other commands does sound exist test, is it playing, all co-ordinated into a maximum mix of sounds in a queue). I think there are checks that can be made to how much a sound card can take, maybe also for a video card, since everyone's computer is set up different. It would solve and adjust for cards and video cards that may not be up to it. Something more to check. I think I can just load up of bunch of sounds and see what happens. A mix of maybe 16 sounds or a horrible screaching sound of 10,000 turbolaser firing.

That is good news! I am eager to see what it may look like. It is alot of work to make a game, I am curious to see how others are doing it. I assume your group is using the more proper, and complicated for me, code language. I wonder what it looks like in a real code language. What I am using is basically Basic and not very powerful. But please share your work, as far as it goes. You maybe be the one that actually gets this/ or a version of Rebellion finished before next year. That would be a nice Christmas present.

Maybe make them have to have a carrier to go into battle, but a rebel hyperdrive capable ship can warp away to safety or survive a battle even if its mother escort ship was destroyed. I had that happen winning a fight, but lost since no escort survived. Thus it could be used as a small advantage to rebel fighters, that they do not have to land into escort to leave a battle, or if they are just on planet patrol defense, they can hyerdrive away to the nearest planet. A "limited" hyperdrive jump ability. The imperial fighters would not have that ability. Not a huge deal, but a small advantage. Imperial fighters must have an escort to move between planets, or run away from a fight on planet patrol. As now, you can transport TIE fighters and such with no hyperdrive between planets with no problem. They need to be placed onto a carrier or freighter for transport. I would let the Rebel fighters have more freedom with planet transfer, and hyperspace escape. But a Regular battle, they would need the Alliance escort ships. hmmm...

I wish I could right now, but do not worry; I have a very nice in game Death Star that shoots a multipoint laser beam that hits a planet in game and blows it up with smoke and ring particles, just like in the movie. I am not finished with it yet, but it is a real kicker. In this remake, you will see the Death Star slowly get closer to the planet, and it will fire on enemy ships, and then you can blow the planet up if you win the fight (or/and a timer countdown in range); but of course if the Rebels have fighters, they get at least one shot at the Death Star Run; and more Runs if they have and maintain fighter superiority. Then the Death Star goes 'Boom!' That all will be in real time in game, not the movie clip (I am afraid LA may get upset if I pass around their movie cuts from the original Rebellion). Of course, you can always add them back in using your movies off the disk.

You know, something puzzle me about the fighters in game. If the Rebels fighters have hyperdrives, then why do we need to build an Alliance Escort Carrier to carry them? It seems to me that carrier should be dropped from the game. What do you think? And yeh, the AI is unfourtanely, very narrow minded in its approach to building fighters. The latest and greatest. It does seem to like to build up a mix of fighters and bombers. X and Y wings; then later A-wings and B-wings. As research allows.

I was looking for a quick flash type explosion similiar to the original game while the shield is still up. In reality, they are just placeholders until a finished game. I have random sprites for a finished game, I have not done the Hull hit sprites (larger to let you know your in trouble), nor Torpedo impact sprites (really nasty big hits). So they will get bigger as your ship is blown away. Capped by a final impressive explosion (with maybe a fading death clone object that last for a while). The nice thing is you can modify them in the seperate folder that goes along with the EXE quite easy as it ever gets. They are 2-D plane '3D objects' with a transparent sprite billboarded normal vector to the camera. Easy cheap and quick. A finished game, people can modify them with what they like. By changing the sync rate from 60 to 30, the flash will last longer. In game, the YouTube video quality is so bad. The flashes effect really do look cool in quick sucession from multiple hits from several attacks, like 4 on 1. Soon enough, I can release a demo of the battle engine so you can see it more clearly. Have you looked at the FRAP's movie download? It is alot better, but I am still looking for a real video quality software capture program that is decent (and free!).

A good idea, those links will be helpful, I need alot of names! Good news! By using a 'Clone' command I reduced the application system memory back down close to the normal 50 (few ships) to 70 meg system RAM (for 10,000 ships) instead of 1000 meg RAM hog. The only real limitation now is my old video card limit of 400 million triangles per second. I aslo changed the frame rate to SYNC 30. So really it is not the CPU nor the system RAM, just how many triangle 'polys' need to be made and most cards today should blow mine away. I will keep as an idea some medium amd low res models to use, if it needs to be. Substitute low poly model for far away between frame sync would get to 100,000 I think (they become practically dots on the screen). Here is truely 10,000 ships at full detail. 10,000 B.C. http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/751/10kvsdux3.png

Sorry for the double post. OK, I guess I understand the problem as was pointed out by Moribundus and Evaders99. The regular commands from DarkBasic Pro does not reference (point to) the loaded original specific model such as the VSD.x. I have at about 70 kb and loading 10,000 times into seperate memory locations in an unique instance of each object is not the way to go. It hogs up RAM extremely fast. I want a solid 60 Frames Per Second. 30 minimum. I would have to limit the number of ships (not fighters so much) per side and make them more strategic in the 3D battle -you can still have thousands in your empire, but only so many to fight in the battle engine, calling in re-inforcements like they did in EAW. The game should be about strategy and saving your valuable capital ships, not a RTS slug fest, which negates for gameplay the whole reason for diplomacy, troops, and agent missions. Why bother? with ship repairs and detail damage and such. Use the 'Big Stick' approach is too RTS. I do believe obviously the engine I am using is not the greatest, but... I think I found some solutions. Reading more into the manual, I can convert what I wrote into your basic VC++ and use custom made DLL that I can make to do what I want it to do at low level. Then compile it using MS free 2008 Visual Express. Nice idea and ability. Another solution is my now learned knowledge, there are advanced command techniques already built into the DB Pro engine. I can use MEMBLOCK commands. I've seen this reading other programming game books. By using these, I can copy the original model mesh into a memory block in RAM, then reference that specific MESH and IMAGE, TEXTURE from that 'one' small memory spot location. Thus achieving what Moribundus and Evaders99 pointed out. I hope it works. I do thank you gentlemen for steering me into the correct direction, and hopefully I can solve this ship limit issue before I continue on. Else I would be forced into a limit on the ship battles. Or use a better engine!

If you got that many ships, that is one big battle. Opps! I found out that I goofed. That is only 1000 ships. I also made them move, so the cpu can do the cycles. I made it to 3000 before my old video card says 500 meg limit and/or the system memory says 1 gig RAM. So the limit of my ATI 9800 XT 256 vram and 1 gig RAM is at its limit. So others may get to 10,000. It is either my video card, system RAM, or the engine.. Maybe if I make, DarthTex said and in original game, different LOD models for far distance away to show nice model close, then medium, then low poly model. I wonder if that has to be done in the engine or I must program what model to load in, and discard. I am learning the hard way. We are the Clones... http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7172/3kvsdla0.th.png Still. That is alot of ships!

You know, I just did a load test. You guys are correct! These ships have a low polygon model with a half decent (though not finished blank placeholder) texture. About 256 kb total. I rendered 1000 VSD ships (though they are not moving so no cpu cycle there). The Windows task managers says the game engine PF memory usage increased from 50 meg to 130 megs. So I do not think it will be a problem for that as you say, my hard limit is a total of 65,000 objects (images are separate). That is good news. Here is a picture. Just for laughs I added in a line from the movie "300". DarkBasic may not be a great engine, but for simple render stuff, I think it can handle it! 1000 ships will blot out the Sun... http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/4535/10kvsdpp5.png EDIT: actually that is 1000 ships. Uses 100 meg system ram. I can only go to 3000. system ram says 1 gig.