Topic: Star Fleet Command 2 conversion mod

[DeathKricket]

For all thoese interested i will be doing thease post as i go along. first id like to start with the conversion im working on. I picked up a project by Intersteller Machine converting SFC 2 to a non space game and its based on "Flying battleship blimps" refered to as aeronef. This will be a almost total conversion replaceing maps, ships, weapons just to name a few. I have a few models but if any one would like to help out with the models and textures feel free to post here and leme know and well go from there as if i made them all from scratch it would take forever. The mod is currently about 3% done as so far i have finished the sky box back grounds which the game engine has a few problems with trying to keep them level with the game plane, but for the most part the sky is finished. Next i will talk about ships, Ship stacking is undoable right now and maybe its just my PC but the AI seems to have a problem flying the ships. When the game starts any AI ship (even with no enemy on the map) will start to move to the set formation and instead of settleing down to the plane will float away,to a much higher plane, and if there are multiple ships they will just keep stacking up and up. I have tryed a little with messing with the size of the ships and later i will go more in depth and resize them and the sky box's. I have retextured the weapons to be traditional solid projectile's, weapons in use at this time are as follows, AMD, photon,missile, disruptor,and theres one more im forgetting.next i will start working on the fighters and more models, is safe to say im about 20 models short for makeing all the race's for a small version of the mod. Below are the early screen shots of a few of the models and sky box's, sorry none for weapons yet, more to come tommorow. If any one has any thing to add or suggest feel free to post and leme know your thoughts.

[DeathKricket]

Some updated pics with a test mok battle,the ships use no shields as they wouldnt have that tech im sure,all the ships have heavy armour and can take a very good beating, however their hard points cant so its kinda like a real battleship, the ship can take heavy damage but the guns on it can be destroyed easy...ER. You will have to look close to see the projectile's, still haveing a problem turning them black.

[intermech]

Looks like a good start. I am not sure what you are planning to do about planets, but it might be interesting to replace them with mountains, tornadoes, or thunderheads. Just a thought.

[Mackie]

hey, heres your post from my model thread:

Very nice, and i see you have some aroenef looking air ships on page 1, i picked up on intersteller machine's air ship conversion mod for SFC 2(with his permision and help), if you want to help with the models or idea's that would be awsome.(just PM me) My progress on the over all mod will be updated (almost) daily with the problems i run into and how to get around them etc in the starfleet command mods tab under main.

and heres my reply: yeah why not i suppose i could try
illl try to whip up a few ships, any specific sorts of ships in mind?

[DeathKricket]

HMM mountians would be cool but that would be hard to drop them far enough in the map so they wouldnt look like their floating but ill see what i can do. Update: After completely redoing the ship list the game gives me runtime errors and crashes, only way i find around that is to make some airships the CA class as by default the game picks the CA class and if nons there it will crash. Iv also been working on a few models last night and have a supper battleship done and some escort fighters, will post when i get them textured. Also on the agenda today is a re texture of the control panel for federation to change it from blue to silver.

[intermech]

Wow, sounds like you have made lots of progress!

I am very interested to see the changed control panel!

[DeathKricket]

Update: on a good note turned the target sites silver and reprogramed the control consol and what not but failed to turn it to silver, if its the file im pretty sure it is its in BFT format which i havent a clue what to open that with, compiled 1 race's worh of ships and put them on ship list(most of them still need texture jobs) i do keep haveing the problem of when ever i do changes i get random draw related crashes and have to redo them about 5 times befor i do or dont do something that causes the crashes.

[intermech]

I seem to remember there are certain things you cannot change in the shiplist. I think that you cannot remove certain ships, if not all. Random crashes may be occurring from the game looking for certain ships to use. I think that the skirmishes run a weighted randomizer to select just which spec to use. If the random result turns out to be a ship spec that is missing, or that one particular column is changed, you will probably get your crash. I forget which column that you should not change, it is one of the columns with the FCA, etc. designations and I think it is in the first five or so columns. But this is getting out of my area of expertise.

This thread addressed some shiplist related problems: http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163369363.msg1122741881.html#msg1122741881
Rod O'Neal is still active in the community, he may be able to help you sort out some of the crashes.

You may find this an interesting technique to adapt the ESG Lance to fire projectiles: http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163336775.msg1122426516.html
I will have to see if I can find the file uses, it looks like the old link is broken.

[DeathKricket]

So far i figured out that you can remove all the ships off the spec list but one from each class, givin in the game you dont select that stock ship, i have been expirementing with make all the nef's have a CA hull and that seems to be working, however in the game even though you remove all the clases you can still select say battleships and view them even though there are no specs for them, i found a way last night to rewrite the file that tells the game what to say and have on the menu's so today i might dabble with it and rewrite it to be what i want, so far the only things iv been able to rewrite is the weapon names,self destruct message to a funny er one and a few little things like that.

[marstone]

i found a way last night to rewrite the file that tells the game what to say and have on the menu's so today i might dabble with it and rewrite it to be what i want, so far the only things iv been able to rewrite is the weapon names,self destruct message to a funny er one and a few little things like that.

Ahh, someone found the strings directory.  That does contain almost all the text from the UI screens.  You can change what is said, the font used, and size of font from those files.  The X, y references in that file are tweaks to move the words around alittle to make it look better.  It is a fun place to play.

[marstone]

IM thanks for posting that old thread, it was from before I got to working on things here.  It dovetails with some questions I was asked earlier.  Does anyone remember what happened when you used the PhotF?  I would figure from the actions of fighter weapons that is should have been a single shot per time in the mount (I figure if you put four on a hardpoint it would fire one off each time you fired that hardpoint up to four times, is that correct?)

But since the game engine turned on the hardpoint, it knows anough to try and find a UI for the weapon. Hmmmm.  More to think on.

Thanks again IM, it gives me a few things to think on.

[DeathKricket]

  project has been set back due to a hard drive loss and a shoe and a mop, will resume when i get eveything back up.

[intermech]

[3 of 4]

this looked like a really interesting mod , did you ever get your work back?