nordwindranger

didn't some gent just post a rebed like program that he had written using .net? It sounded like it had a lot of potential, but I've been working on my own project recently and havent checked it out.

sorry it took so long for me to reply, i was ambushed by final exams. Thats an interesting idea, I'll have to give it a try. The other thing I've been toying around with is increasing laser speeds. Currently my lasers are between Rebellion's super slow speed, and the super fast lasers in EvilleJedi's excellent Warlords mod. I'm giving some serious thought to coding in the ability for a ship to target more than one enemy at a time, but I guess I'm not convinced that there would be any benifits. Lets take the classic "Thrawn" scenario. An isd is attacked by 3 assault frigates (we'll make them Nebulon b frigates). currently as the game is coded, the isd will detect all three targets, select the first one and attack it until it's disabled. It will then attack the next one and so on. If the isd split its shots between two targets would that be seen as stupid or smart? It would certainly look cooler, but wheres the limit? if I allow ships to target multiple enemies, the ships firepower might become so diluted that it is practically ineffective. it suddenly occurs to me that i need to have some sort of point based ranking system for ships so that the ai can decide when to concentrate its firepower. perhaps this gives a little peak into the difficulties of even rudimentary ai programming

hmm I think it originated on this site. there used to be an older program swre or something. i think rebed is a kind of sequel to swre.

As far as the whole Lucas Arts copyright buisness goes... I've heard that Lucas Arts is actually pretty cool about their intellectual property. If you look around the web there is a ton of Star Wars fan stuff (admittedly not many games, but games are really hard to make). I've always thought that as long as you acknowledge Lucas Arts as the owner of the Star Wars intellectual property, and make sure to emphasize that the game is not for profit, and your not associated with Lucas Arts, I think they will be cool about it. In this way the Star Wars fan base is protected, and can thrive. Thats at least the idea under which I started my game, In Defense of the Empire. If I end up releasing it for free download one day, and Lucas Arts tells me to take it down, I will. It is after all their idea. Of course your looking more along the lines of making a game, selling it, and then making a Star Wars mod. The problem with that is that your going to have to actually come up with your own story, character, ships... because if you made a game that basicly isnt a game until you add in a Star Wars mod, well I think the Lucas Arts lawyers would finally be able to earn their keep. I guess all im saying is that the mod approach really only works for main stream games that have been out for awhile (that werent secretly meant as star wars games in the first place). But Im a pessimist, and if you still want to try and give it a go, don't let me hold ya back. Personally I'll just stick with making a fan-game and then (hopefully) releasing it for free.

sorry it took so long to get back to you guys, I was bogged down with final exams. Vector err Slocket (did you used to be vector?), If your interested in learning a new ".net" language, I highly reccomend c#. I'm using c# and directx9 for my star wars project, and I've been pretty happy with it. I've only been programming in c# for about a year now, and I think it was pretty easy to get a hang of. C# seems to be the way that Microsoft is headed, and if you plan on using direct x in the future I strongly urge you to learn c# of visual basic. I've got a strong suspicion that visual basic is going to start to dissapear. In fact I beleieve that the XNA framework (new directx framework that allows developers to write games for the xbox) is currently only available for c# programmers (i think?? dont quote me on that). I've heard that managed languages like c# are slow compared to C++, but I haven't seen anything to cause concern. If you want, I will post some more screenshots from my game that show the frames per second. Currently Im getting around 200 frames per second with five star destroyers on screen firing countless numbers of lasers at eachother. My project uses the high level shader language, and the ship models are rendered with per-pixel lighting (shader model 2.0). If you wanted to drop some of the fancy lighting I'm sure it would do even better. The key to getting into c# and dx9 programming is going on amazon and getting a couple books on the topic. I've got a library of 6 or so game programming books that ive been relying on. In fact recent I've been spending a lot of time with my AI book (but i guess you really dont need any help there, id love to talk ai with ya sometime).

Huzzah Huzzah!

you've got a lot of confidence gotta website? I take it your new to dx game programming feel free to shoot me some questions about anything really. I'd be happy to share what I know

--note-- the following little bit is about my not for profit star wars fan game "In Defence of the Empire". although its not really meant as rebellion2, i think it might still kinda fit in this forum --/note-- consider this.. (in my game) a star destroyer has 60 turbolasers a mon cal MC80 has 48 turbolasers a nebulon b cruiser has 12 turbolasers now lets say (in my simplified version of the sw universe) that each ship fires one laser "shot" for each gun, and fires each shot one at a time. After it fires a number of shots equal to the number of turbolasers it has, it waits four seconds (to simulate the recharging of its guns) and then starts the process over again. lets also assume that the power of a turbolaser shot from a star destroyer is the same as the power of a shot coming from any other ship. sound's fine right? thats what I thought when i wrote the firing code in my game engine. it does a nice job of keeping the screen from getting congested with hundreds of laser bolts, while doing a solid job of depicting ship to ship combat. I found out that I had a problem when i threw in a little bit of code to actually count how many total shots each ship was taking. the results were as follows: in one minute: nebulon b: 120 shots MC80: 180 shots Star Destroyer: 183 shots in 3 minutes: nebulon b: 292 shots MC80: 438 shots Star Destroyer: 450 shots for a ship with only 12 turbolasers, the nebulon b is doing really well (no wonder they were so popular in rebellion!) the problem is that 12 shots takes significantly less time to fire then 60 shots. this is only slightly offset by the fact that ships that have less shots to fire spend more time recharging. There are a couple things that ive been considering to deal with this problem 1. have more than one shot fired at once. the problem with this is that my game is for the most part a tactical fleet simulator, and the screen would get filled up with shots really quick. Not to mention firing 60 shots at once looks unbelievably ridiculous (imagine a green halo of shots launching from your sd) 2. have shots from different ships be different strengths. this is already actually coded, i just have to come up with values to assign, but its pretty hard to figure out how strong each individual shot should be 3. ask the swrebellion community for opinions--which is where you come in! as always feel free to check out my website for some pictures and boring explanations http://nordwindranger.com/mimages.aspx

hmm ive always thought africa, but i just heard that some parts of Africa are actually struggly with obesity because of all the food aid (hmm dont hear that too often) -----off topic----- DarthTex, that picture is frickin hilarious!

hmm a lot of us have it installed on xp with out any problem. do you have all of your microsoft updates? http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

does this mean that "Legacy of War" is being abandoned? I'm willing to offer my services, although my models are so bad that they could probably kill small children. In fact I'm pretty bad at skinning as well. Also I'm pretty tied up with my own game. However if your really desperate, feel free to give me a holler examples of my work- http://nordwindranger.com/mimages.aspx

I haven't read the other thread, but I can definitely reccomend two products: Microsoft Defender Antispyware http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=435bfce7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d&displaylang=en ZoneAlarm firewall http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=US&lang=en&lid=nav_za

If you guys are looking for free site hosting, you should check out http://officelive.microsoft.com/ You can get a free "office live basics" website from microsoft. The only downside is that you have to use their templates, and online site builder. if you want an example, checkout my "office live basics" website: http://www.nordwindranger.com

I broke a bone in my hand, quite badly in fact (you can still see the lump from where it healed crooked). this was most likely due to heavy consumption of whiskey.. Then their was cinco de may (err mayo? maio? whatever) when i got drunk and did a faceplant onto a concrete garage floor, but thankfully only broke my pride and my lip. More recently I fractured my wrist (err i believe thats what happened to it) while punching my friends rock hard abs while drunk off my a** Now that I think about it about 95% of my injuries have been drinking related. mmm beer

nope, the fighters will be displayed individually, but they will be scale (and therefore quite small).

Sounds pretty cool, but actually the main reason Im doing this (besides my love of Star Wars) is to sharpen up my game programming skills Also Im dead set on a fully "real time" game. (not to mention most of the "display" part of the engine is already coded). I would get a video out, but it doesnt compile at the moment, because im in the middle of coding some stuff for "alliances"

thanks for the suggestions guys now that im done with college for the day, heres the further explanation as promised: my idea for the game was to make something like of like "Il2 combat flight simulator" but for Star Destroyer captains. In other words, the game will (hopefully) attempt to be a realistic attempt to simulate what it would be like to be in command of a star destroyer. So far I've been spending most of my time hashing out the engine for the game (im writing it virtually from scratch). Currently ships, alliances, fleets, planets, and basic ai are all implemented. I was thinking about what the player would actually do in the game today, and realized that I wasn't sure just what exactly a star destroyer commander does... Heres are some of the things that are definitely going to be modeled 1. launching shuttles (lambda) to capture ships/ deploy garrisons 2. launching/retrieving fighters (i havent even started thinking about fighters yet, they are a long ways in the future) 3. scanning merchant ships to determine if they are pirate ships/rebs 4. taking part in larger fleet exercises with the rest of the Imperial Remnant (perhaps zsinjs fleet if hes around) 5. defence of key shipyards (bilbringi kuat fondor) 6. tractor beams 7. ion cannon disabling of ships and boarding 8. hyperspace usage 9. retreat and possible escape pod usage. what im worried about is that there will be nothing for the player to do. For example, he shows up at a planet with his star destroyer. The planet is guarded by 3 nebulon bs and a corvette. the ships immediately begin to fire at eachother. After a shortwhile his ship blows up. game over. it would be like watching a movie (or playing EAW lol), because obviously his ship is going to choose to fire, and theres nothing else for him to do but watch. I need (relatively simple) ways of making battles a tactical ordeal and not simply a one dimensional slugfest. DarthTex and Taco's ideas are definitely along the right line. I'll work on further updating my website with some ship info and stuff

*uses e-necromancy skill to resurrect forum* hey guys as some of you might know, im working on a little Star Wars fangame in my freetime. The idea for the game is that your a Star destroyer captain during the thrawn era. In the near future I am going to be working on coding some player input, and so I need some ideas of what kind of decisions a star destroyer captain might have to make. I specific Im thinking about what kind of tactics I could incorporate, like launching all of the fighters versus leaving them protected in the bays until anti-fighter frigates were destroyed, or maybe should more energy be put to shields or weapons. whoops (im running out of time). I'll have to clarify this a little later if your interested.. check out my website: http://nordwindranger.com/midoe.aspx for some updates on my progress

*applause* good stuff. I like your style, very comtemplative

cool. I was super-happy to find that the site was back up. Even though i dont have homeworld 2 (unfortunately) I still love reading about the progress on the mod. I was on there yesterday, and all I can say is that his (the teams) models really put mine to shame. He's got some absolutely amazing art. (goes back to hiding under a table and working with his butt-ugly "programmer art" star destroyer")

yeah it didnt work for me the first time either its supposed to be: http://www.geocities.com/errantone/SWRdataEditor-Beta1.2.zip I was going to post the new link, but for some reason erratones link worked the second time i tried it. weird

cool. I'll have to check it out

For the real hard systems, I usually use vader, with a good agent (maybe niles ferrier?) as a decoy. If that doesnt work, try and assasinate the general on the planet, or sabotage some of the troops on the planet first. If none of the above works, just deny the planets resources to the enemy by planting a fleet in orbit permanently. This is also a good way of suckering smaller enemy fleets into a trap

my pc is special to me because of the all of the hardware that ive put into it. my computer started its life as a dell resale computer. I soon stripped everything useful out of it, and have been rebuilding it ever since. my current build is: processor: p4 2.8 ghz ram: 1 gig ddr400 pc3200 mushkin ram audio: soundblaster live 24bit card video: ati x1300 card with 512 meg of onboard ddr3 hyper memory black and silver case. speakers: logitech 5.1 system specialized software: gamespace 1.6 (3d modeling) firefox paint.net (really good free paint and editing program) Im useing a logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo. Im using the spruce style from the windows classic themes selection (win xp pro)

sounds pretty interesting. did you take out all of the later ships, like the ssd and imp2 ?