Akula_pff

yep, theirs another thread somewhere around here that I wrote explaining the ALO format

I have to comment on this one: Personally I think that the battles in EAW are some of the best space action that I have seen in a game, far more realist looking then a lot of the homeworld screens I've seen. Yes, you might claim that full 3D is better but frankly I find it can be hard to keep up with and depending on the camera angle and engine less realistic then EAW. Furthermore, who said that you needed 3D for a great game, look at Star Fleet Command and the game its based on Star Fleet Battles(www.starfleetgames.com). The only comment I will make regarding EAW and space is that it seems whomever brings the greater fire power to the table wins, but I think that is realistic to Star Wars. Especially, sense its possible to defeat a large space fleet with a large group of rebel fighters.

I've played with the idea, but first I want to do a model converter. Keep in mind that Petro may not release an editor for the maps or a convert for 6 months.

Certainly troop support units which don't have long range weapons have as much of a place as tanks?

Its not quite as bad as you think, while it is a tree structure most of it can be copied for a given ship or object class. The vertex's roughly corespond to the FVF format in DirectX so you can actually copy the vertex's and texture info into a preexistant tree shell and have it work.

Yea, I do, and every single unit on that list is in the demo or can be enabled with a quick XML change.

The more I have played the demo the more apparent it has become that their is a lack of ground units to command. The unit classes in the game represent only a fraction of the unit classes in the Star Wars universe and I think their is definitely room for the following 3 classes. Furthermore, I feel that the slow pace of the ground troops causes the game to loose some of its Star Wars feel. Star Wars draws its combat style from several human conflicts(WW2, 17-18th century naval warfare) and I feel these unit classes are essential to keep that style. Repeater Troopers-This guy is your machine gun emplacement, he doesn't move around that much, is hard to setup but is great for defence and for attacking concentrated groups of troops. The machine gun was one of the key inventions that defined combat since the U.S. Civil War. This is the e-web and medium repeating blasters from Hoth. Troop Transport Speeders- These carry your troops to the battle, they get them their quicker then walking and hold them safe inside until your tanks have eliminated the heaver units. Helps define the pace of action. We have seen these numerous times in the Star Wars universe, aka MTT's/AT-OT's. "Strike Mechs"- This is your AT-PT, AT-RT, or Gien and Flash Speeders this unit is lighter then a tank but faster, designed to support your infantry where the tanks can't go.

So I have been spending a little time looking at the model format and thinking about how someone might build a converter to go from say ALO to .X files. Unfortunately, I really don't have the time it takes to build a program like that right now, but if someone does heres what you would have to do. FIRST the ALO model format looks roughly like this 1. Some names and info on pointers to other objects that this mesh might require??? 2. The DirectX(.fx) effects file to apply to the mesh, this is not the same as the animation effects file(.ala) 3. Emissive, Diffuse, Specular, shininess, and colorization of the mesh, UVoffset 4. Basetexture name 5. Normaltexture name 6. An array of alD3dVert's the actual type of alD3dVert is specified by the name(NOTE this maybe a custom FVF vertex format created by them) Repeat 2-6 for any damaged(BUT NOT DESTROYED) versions of the model. SECOND load the file into your program that references the DirectX SDK, and create a mesh with the Vertices's in the array THIRD call on your mesh object SaveMeshAsX which will save the mesh to a .X file which can then be modified in Maya or a similar program. The reverse is equally as easy all you have to do is start with the D3D mesh lock the vertex buffer and unload them into an array with parts 1-5 in it. Hope the helps!!!

It "might" be possible to make our own maps, but we have to understand the format and the model format as well.

Bryant- your Gmail account bumped my .Zip file with the exe hack. I'll try the Yahoo one, and msn.

I would assume thats Antillies ship???

You don't need to recompress,the game perfers the folders over the compressed files.

Ok look for it in your email, will see what Petro says.

So if you use the extractor program on the Model.med and texture.meg files you will get all the extracted models and files in the game. Then its just a simple matter of adding them into the appropriete shipunits.xml file and adding a couple of TGA's. The issue then comes up as to what file format the models are in, I went ahead and tried to open it up with some of the tools in the DirectX SDK without success, but if some figures out what file format they are in post it here. Edit to change title

That sounds fine, I'm going to PM him now. In the mean time does anybody want to host the zip file of my sweaw.exe?? If you do please post here so everyone can enjoy this.