Comments - MatthTheGeek

Many people make mod announcement threads on HLP before even having anything to release - or having actually started their mod for that matter.

Link's dead.

Why didn't you post the release on HLP ?

EDIT: Link's back on. I can get it on FSMods.net if you want a more reliable hosting place.

Not anytime soon, unfortunately. So many ships to convert, so much stuff to balance, so many bugs to fix, so little time... You know how it goes.

6 ship hods, like detailed in the comments here Moddb.com

I've been quite busy on my side, with school and ME3 and all. My hands are less full now, and I think I *might* be able to finalize a capship-only demo for the end of the month. No promises though :)

Credits for the UED Solaris go to Esarai. As with all of the ships used in this mod, I did only the conversion process.

More info on the ship here Hard-light.net

Unfortunately, the technique I use ("ship" faces) don't enable for any kind of animation, since the HW2 .hod format doesn't support animated textures. I also do not plan to use modelled planets, as the skyboxes I convert from FSO already have planets as part of them.

I had to make several faces instead of a single cube object because I had issues with ships spawning outside of the cube instead of where I put them in the map file, despite having removed the CM. I could have tried to find a way to make one-object skyboxes working, but cutting it into 6 faces works just as fine.

As for the rest, I didn't have any issues with shadows (HW2 doesn't cast shadows from ship to ship, only shadows cast by a ship on itself), but I did have issues with lighting when using improved shaders. This was solved by making a new, simplified shader for those face "ships", a feat I thank pecenipicek for.

As Pouk said, usually if you make a skybox, you'll see the seams between the faces. However, my skybox uses a non-standard UV-mapping made using this technique Hard-light.net in order to obtain a seamless skybox. I can provide you with a HW2-compatible example if you wish.

There is no download because it's not anywhere near ready for release yet. It will happen eventually, just be patient.

Nope. This is a skybox I converted from FSO. Basically 6 huge faces "ships" standing some 10k km from the center of the map.

Real HW2 backgrounds can't achieve this level of detail. You are looking at either 2048² or 4096² textures for each face here.

The engagement you see in that vid was directly converted from a standalone BP mission, which point was to show what would happen if all the forces in Sol were to engage directly, and hence why it doesn't actually happen in the story.

Eventually, nearly all forces on both sides are supposed to get wiped out, most of the times resulting in the UEF (ie the guys I was controlling) having the few couple of ships left. As you can see, it is not the case here, which shows that I am not anywhere near done with balancing yet.

Always active. There is only so much I can do with the way HW2 handles effects and thrusters. Needless to say, HW2 might be beautiful, all of this is significantly better-looking under the FSO engine - and more laggy, too.

Is not. Still working on it.

You should play Blue Planet before questioning the loadout. Believe me, it is perfectly balanced for its role and purpose, and it is quite an expensive design to produce. And I don't make the designs, I just convert the ships.

It is indeed heavily inspired from one of the Noah ships from Nexus. The Custos wasn't in War in Heaven Part 1, but will be in Part 2 and has been released early, which is why you're seeing it now. The model was originally made by someone named Cadius for an X3 ship pack. If you want to know more, you'll have to ask Darius from the BP team.

Eventually, all the ships in service during the events of Blue Planet will be converted. That does indeed include the Diomedes.

Better quality here Fr.xfire.com

This is an old shockwave made by Nighteyes, that I prefer to the more recent version I was using previously. Kudos to him, he makes very nice stuff.

Ripped yes, but not from the original Freespace. They're from the MediaVPs. Those are old and I'll remake em at some point (beam glows are too big).

Like said on the top, I don't model and texture stuff, I only convert them for HW2 use. This is one of the old fan-made ships that could use a remodel indeed.

Not yet. I'm shipping back home in a week, so I'll be able to resume my work on this. Stay tuned ;)

Been temporarily moving to other projects until I am back on my computer, in a month. This netbook can't even start HW2.

I've already implemented the BP missiles, it's just that they are too small for you to see them ingame unless you zoom on them. In the video, those missiles are already used.

Well, whatever you want. I'm particularly interested in the thruster effects you have, that I haven't taken the time to implement yet. Given that I am stuck on a netbook that can't run HW2 for 2 months and a half, development has quite slowed down, so having a real HW2 modder like you onboard would help quite a bit. Let's talk about it on IRC or XFire.

To be honest, given the scale of the mod and the speed at which I am currently progressing, I am open to every helping hand I can get. I thought you were still busy perfecting your mod on your end. If you want to lend a hand, feel free to pass by !

I have currently roughly 15 ships ingame, and survival mode working and deathmatch roughly working (AI needs to be worked on). It still isn't, unfortunately, near releasable state, but progress is steady.

You can't yet, it's not released.

Read the summary again. I didn't made any of the models or textures, just converted them from FreeSpace to HW2.

I did, although that one dates from the time my mod was a pure FS2 mod and not a BP mod, I'll probably fix it someday ; quite low on my list of priorities though.

Right you are. I'm trying to alter the stats from BP as little as possible, so I'm really planning to balance with costs, researches and build times.