Star Wars space mod? - Page 3

Star Wars space mod?

Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.

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Caydr
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Post by Caydr »

Dragon45 wrote:No SW starfighter in a space mod should be mroe than 300 polygons or so
I've demonstrated that this is clearly false. The added wing details will in fact make the model look better on a closeup, and let's face it, people are GOING to go for close-ups! Whether you're talking about polygons or triangles, 300 is what I'd consider an incredibly stingy limit. Just the fact alone that Spring uses non-software rendering increases OTA polygon limits tenfold.

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500 ships X 4500 triangles per = 2,250,000 triangles onscreen plus terrain @ 5 FPS w/ no shadows. That's 2 and a quarter million triangles while maintaining five frames per second... so let's say 500,000 triangles to remain playable and pretty, and 100,000 to remain playable, pretty, and with advanced lighting (shadows enabled) and a rig as old as mine.

The above was done prior to model optimization, which may have improved performance by anywhere from 10 to 50 percent.

To then say that 300 triangles on a single unit is going overboard is ridiculous. You could fit 300+ 300-triangles units onscreen at one time without a significant slowdown with all features enabled. I guess that might be OK, but how likely is it that a battle will escalate to that size and remain so for more than a few seconds? I guess it really depends on the sort of battles you're going for. If you want senseless numbers of units being randomly thrown at each other with no thought involved, better keep it as low as possible. If you want strategic thinking, I highly doubt that more than 100 ships will ever be onscreen at one time, even during the largest battles.

Image

above is 100 x 4500 triangles = 450,000, advanced lighting off. Until advanced lighting code is improved, I think that 30 FPS in an above situation with it enabled is an unrealistic thing to aim for on mainstream setups.
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AF
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Post by AF »

That and also spring makes models less detailed as you zoom out, so extreme detail will be shown at close ups but ti will be simplified as you zoom out. Maybe not to as great an extent now as it will in the future, since most of it now is dependant solely on how far away it is from the camera.
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

I'm going for Star Wars scale; fleets of dozens, even 100+ large capital ships and perhaps a thousand or two fighters. Anyway, I think I've got it down. My system starts lagging once there are roughly 1,000-2,000 of these little fighters around. Plus the Corellian Corvette is about 1,000 faces.

Anyway, I tried to make a "space" map. 0 gravity, everything black... it;s actually pretty cool. Immobilised units will slowly drift through space as opposed to nose-diving into the ground. Kinda disorienting though as I didnt know up from down. Here's a screeny:

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Those smoketrails (the smaller ones) are proton torpedos. I may remove the smoketrail.

I have a question if anyone can answer.. I remember in TAFF, there was something done to the ships that made them not land but rather hover in the air (well, in space). Is those possible in Spring? It looks silly seeing fighters and ships stop, and then float downwards, and then stop again resting there.
Gnomre
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Post by Gnomre »

This is something (keyword something... I lost count) like 700 TIE Fighters/Interceptors vs. 300 or so X-Wings/Y-Wings and 5 Corvettes

Yeah, that's because the X-Wings have the proton torpedoes, which track. The lasers you have don't do shit, I'm sorry to say :P

I'll upload the fixed fighters for both sides (with lasers that can actually aim) and PM you the link. It's just script and tdf changes.

As for the constant hovering thing, I don't think that works in Spring. It was something about the initial move orders defined in the FBI... if it works in FF for spring, then I guess I'm wrong, and you know where to look now :P
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

Actually the lasers work fine. The Corvettes are far too strong. They can take like 100 TIEs single-handedly, ATM.. currently trying to get it right. IMO a squadron of 5 TIE Bombers should be enough to take out a Corvette.. right?

Anyway, DIE CORVETTE! (its adrift)

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Dragon45
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Post by Dragon45 »

Yeah.

Like i said, play SWTAWIS to find out how unit-unit balance shold be. lord knows i spent a lot of time on that.


If you have HW2, Warlords has good balance.


And if you can get firearcs working according to canon, tactical manuvering will greatly change gameply... hitting ISD from behind, for example, is way more effective than hitting it from front or top.
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zwzsg
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Post by zwzsg »

SpikedHelmet wrote:I have a question if anyone can answer.. I remember in TAFF, there was something done to the ships that made them not land but rather hover in the air (well, in space). Is those possible in Spring? It looks silly seeing fighters and ships stop, and then float downwards, and then stop again resting there.
In the units FBI:
Change:
DefaultMissionType=VTOL_standby;
Into:
DefaultMissionType=standby;


Then the ships won't land after carrying out an order. The only way to make them land will be to use the STOP button. If you want to be really tricky, you could also use canstop=0; so there is no STOP buttton anymore.

Also, this was how TA works, I aren't sure about Spring.
Gnomre
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Post by Gnomre »

Canstop definitely doesn't work in Spring. All units have stop regardless of the button.
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

I still have some models left over from my time at SWTA:WIS, which I'd be hapy to share, but some are all quite old, when I was new to modelling, so they might not be too great:

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Correllian Corvette, 530 faces.

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Hapan Nova Battle Cruiser, 100 faces. Not a particularly stunning model.

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Mining Colony (the tiny little cubes were meant to be vehicles that would scurry around the colony, and the things in the bottom right corner were meant to pump up and down. Bottom left is a landing pad)

Plus I have the star destroyer model from the images I linked earlier, which I modelled far more recently, and so is much better quality.
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

Give.
raikitsune
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Post by raikitsune »

SpikedHelmet wrote:Give.
:lol: spiked wants those models.
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

Just the ISD. I already have a Corvette, I don't care about the Hapans and there won't be any buildings. :P
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

Thanks Gnome!!

Image


:DDDDDD
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

Very spiffy.

Why don't you see if you can implement some sort of shield system using something along the lines of the repulsors?

I know that lasers have some physical issues with repulsing (perhaps not with gravity=0?), but a number of people have been campaigning to have a laser reflection tag be introduced (SWTA not being the least).
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AF
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Post by AF »

I thought you didnt have shields in Starwars? Only a selection of droids and specialised objects have gotten shields, and the only time I've ever sene them in space is in fighter bays
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Maelstrom
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Post by Maelstrom »

What about that whole 40 minute side trip down to the Ewoks to disable the sheild around the Deathstar? And how when an X-Wing is about to crash into the (super?)Stardestroyer's cockpit, the admiral dude shouts for shields to be raised? Or the Roller Droid things in ep. 1? I could go on, but i forgot the other ones.
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

There are shields in Star Wars, but they're not like Star Trek shields.

Also I noticed the repulsor weapons were housed in the two spheres ontop of the bridge tower. THOSE AREN'T SHIELD GENERATORS!

Seems to me, shields in Star Wars seem to be some sort of hull iradiation as opposed to a big "bubble"; like in Episode 1 where there was clearly a tight-hull-hugging shield-type of thing going on that deflected blaster shots and droid bodies. And the case where the Millenium Falcon was able to stick onto the hull of the Star Destroyer in TESB. If SW shields were "bubbles" that wouldn't happen; but if the deflective energy is emitted only a small space from the hull, it would almost seem like there wasn't a shield at all...

ie, TESB, Falcon being chased by the Star Destroyer, it takes a direct hit from a turbolaser on the hind-quarters. The Falcon is obviously "affected" by the hit, as the shot pushes the Falcon forward but it doesn't seem to do any damage. Then there's mentionings of "if we take another hit like that we're done for". It would also seem that the deflectors will either completely deflect the entire energy of the shot (ie, destroyer droids' deflecting blaster bolts completely; Anakin's fighter) or diffuse/absorb the energy if it is too great to simply be deflected. Which is why you see other Naboo fighters being hit by the larger weapons on the Droid fighters and not deflecting them.

It also might be a case of shields being able to deflect blasters but not lasers. I don't remember ever seeing laser shots being deflected; just blaster shots. Blasters and lasers may be entirely two different types of weapons and shields react differently to each, or like I said it may be that the deflectors will absorb stronger energy and simply deflect smaller. In any case, I don't know what these Spring repulsing weapons are but IMO they wouldn't fit, especially if they make weapons bounce off.
SpikedHelmet
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Post by SpikedHelmet »

Oh,also, I'm having trouble with the weapons and specifically their colour.. as you can see from the screeny the green turbolaser blasts arent uniformly the same colour. There are some bright green a la Star Wars but there are other teal/green-blue coloured shots. I dont know why this is happening. All Imperial laser weapons have the same color (100) in their weapon files.. but there are two instances of them acting differently. The secondary turbolasers on the Star Destroyer are the teal ones. TIE weapons are even wierder. They start out as blue, turn teal, and then full green as they dissipate. And YES I have made sure there is only color=100; and no color2 tags.
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Maelstrom
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Post by Maelstrom »

Dont ask how i know this, but...

Blaster weapons in starwars are Plasma held together by a magnetic feild of some description. Lasers are just lazers.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Or in other cases ion weapons, all accelerated particle cannons of some sort.

Th deathstar didnt have shields, the shields inplace where from a hgue shield compelx on the moons surface.

I didnt say Starwars doesnt have shield technology, I'm just saying I've never seen it employed in the way startrek has it with onboard shield generators. I've only ever seen such technology used on mustafa to shield against lava, on the droideka, and to keep in the atmosphere in fighter bays/docking places......

Even then the droideka shields where only sufficient to deflect basic rifle fire, and didnt even cover the bottoms of the droids if you look closely, anything from a fighter or anythign larger than a handheld weapon could destroy the droid, and it ahd to be stationary to work..

Also not all weapons in starwars are alsma or ion based. Look at episode 3 at the sheer miriad of weapons, the shots inside the seperatist ships point more towards them simply beign projectiles like we use today but much more powerful. Afterrall if you look at some modern weapons systems fire at night you dont see smoke or missile the most prominent feature instead looks more like a streak of light.

Eitherway you're best classification of starwars energy weapons is particle cannons (lasers, neutron guns, ion cannons etc...), plasma weapons just give a hgue potential for bgi threads over wether they're even possible.
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