That wyrm looks awesome, heh.

Not sure if this was asked earlier, but are you planning on making any of the capital ships like modern day warships, i.e. with point defence, medium, and large armaments? Or are they all going to pretty much have specialized roles like the rest of the races?

I always wanted cap ships to at least have some PD but the only game I've ever seen do that well is Freespace

It isn't. This is the first time I see that thing. Though now I'm glad I dodn't go with the original concept for the Wyrm, because it would look allmost identical.

Xarchon, yes, the Remnant ships in particular will be designed for versatility. Where Xin ship design focuses on durability and few heavy-hitting weapons, the Remnant ships will be designed to be able to tackle any obstacle and "whittle it down" with a torrent of weapons fire. To that effects, allmost all Remnant ships will carry smaller strike craft (even common assault frigate types will be able to deploy one) while capital ships will bristle with both point defense and large caliber guns.

Obviously, every model ever made is derivative of something else. What is with this obsession with equating original models to Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever? Enjoy it on its own merits.

To tell the truth, I actually like that ship design a lot. Trek ships have always looked to me a little short on details, which made them look like plastic toys - only the latest movies have improved somewhat upon that. The above does a nice job of making the ship look alien and rugged. As for simmilarities, since probably both ship concepts have the requirement of a "maw", there you have it. If you browse a few pages back, you can see how close I came to the Doomsday Machine with the original concept drawing of the Wyrm.

Big planets have already been implemented in the mod. All planets are now roughly three times larger, with acordingly expanded gravity wells. This makes for some interesting strategic play, especially when you get Remnant in, who have on average faster ships. Although it will make the gameplay a little slower on account of ships needing more time to traverse a sector.

Take this with a grain of salt - after all, it depends on whether I'm going to have the free time necessary to work on the mod as much as I'd like to - but I am aiming to get an open beta out in July. I will be taking a two-month trip at the end of July and I'd like to get it done before I go so that people don't have to wait for two more months (and that they can catch all the crinks that will probably crop up so that I can iron them out when I get back).

The beta will have all the ship models, structures and research tree done, and also the majority of sounds. Minor game art, such as icons *may* use vanilla stuff, depending on how the other stuff goes.

Wow. Just... wow.

Samurye.

Weird, I thought I replied to you in PM, but I can't find the reply.

Anyway, here it goes again:

You probably cannot do this easily in mod tool since its designed primarily for basic model building and not advanced physics simulation and animation like the regular XSI.

Within regular XSI, you can select your model, then go to NetView (Alt-5 or View->General->NetView), where you can find, under the "Model" tab, an operator named "Shatter". Adjust the number of fragments, crack detail, randomization of fracturing (for best "shatter" effect, check both uniform and pseudoRandom options) etc.

After that, you have to set up your simulation. You have to convert all the fragments into dynamic rigid bodies, adjust their collision so they don't immediately fly apart, and then set up a physics simulation of the blast. I'd use an Attractor daemon with a large positive value (positive values repel instead of attract) and animate its range so that you get a "shockwave" effect shattering buildings in succession.

As I said, this probably cannot be done at all in the mod tool. You could try to do it by hand by using a simple grid object with deformed surface which you can then rotate at various angles and use to "cut up" your model into fragments, but that would probably be way too time consuming, especially when you have multiple buildings.

Also note that physics simulations tend to take a lot of computing power, and the more objects you have flying around, the more time it will take to calculate everything, nevermind the actual rendering. Holywood-type cataclysm effects where you see whole cities blown up tend to take a lot of time to do even with their dedicated render farms, so keep that in mind.

OK, so i was wondering, will this have the huge research files like on Distant Stars?

Sounds like ManSh00ter might need to make an "ASK MANSH00TER" thread just like DANMAN's thread.

Unfortunately, XSI costs. Quite a bit at that, but since its practically the industry standard when it comes to animation its no wonder. Current pricing is, according to the Autodesk store, 2995$. Which is still a few hundred bucks cheaper than 3DSMax.

Btw, its no longer called XSI, but Autodesk Softimage. Oh, and you can download a 30-day trial which has all the bells and whistles working so you can try it out and see if you want to invest into buying a license.

As for future questions, feel free to PM me, or make a thread on the forums, I usually check those out and help out if no one else is around.

Oh and as for the Research trees - since this mod aims to be a sort of an "unofficial expansion" it will mimick the basic game mechanics, which means that the initial release will have research threes of a similar scope to the vanilla game. This may later be changed to allow more steps in certain research areas, but right now the focus is to finish the Episode I and make it viable for multiplayer as well. Drastically changing the way research is done may:

1. slow down the game too much as to make it unsuitable for multiplayer since the game is already a bit slower in pace due to large gravity wells.

2. introduce too many unknown variables to balance out - on top of the Dynamic Battle System and a completely new race this might be a bit too much to balance out on the first go.

Naturally, Episodes II and III will each bring something new to the game, so depending on feedback it may as well be a reworked research or economy system, maybe a new way to handle planet development etc.

Professional software is pretty expensive yeah.

Things like student discounts can get them down to a below a thousand dollars, though.