we are doing some maintenance to the main server, so things may be intermittent, I will be locking the forums so we don’t lose anything and so the backup goes nicely, when we come back up I will be updating a lot of the software to supposedly better versions. This won’t impact the mod for Sins or HW2 at all other than availability of news and downloads.
Comments OffTags: News
Having some issues with my computer after coming back from vacation, no data lost, but have to reimage the machine, so time lost. when that is done I hope to get some progress out and release a point update for both sins and HW2
THere is slow but steady progress on the SOGE mod, many of the issue I have been having are due to the model exporter and crashes with vessels on the Alliance side. I may release in the meantime a limited alliance side with fixes and suggestions from the previous version soon.
grab the really beta initial test release here
Discuss it in the forum Here
post bugs on the mantis tracker Here
installation should be as simple as extracting the folder to your mod directory and enabling it ingame (its in “C:\Documents and Settings\
SOGE
quick update on the status of the mod
if all goes well by the end of the week the first release version will be posted. It looks like it will be around 70mb (mostly texture data for the ships) there are some definite graphical issues because of both the art pipeline and lack of knowledge about the engine.
it will be empire ONLY and missing a few ships, but have the majority hard pointed and for the most part playable with weapons and stats. the main sins races are untouched and I do not plan on ‘updating’ the stock races myself.
icons, UI images, research, abilities WILL NOT be present in this version.
what I want people to evaluate is the game pacing and combat pacing as well as general balance of ships vs cost and vs each other. (shield mitigation and armor really are not easy to compensate for because of how they work.)
there have been two primary sources of delay in getting this out. 1) documentation on the model pipeline and how to successfully export ships from XSI (this is mostly solved or at least to a acceptable level) This resulted in a delay from release until mid april
2) the tremendous difficutly in finding crash bugs that don’t have logs. I have had to add one item at a time using an 8 player AI free for all test and run it for 20 minutes to verify that it doesn’t crash and properly uses the units.
both of these things have been very frustrating (and I still have a few outstanding issues)
GALSIM
I’m pleased to announce that the EvR sim is being reconstructed by the original author with a new front end as GalSim. check out the forum for it here and the game download here (it’s in an early beta, but if you are into turn based management games the original EvR was great.) SWR is going to put some server resources behind it as well.
First update is for the Sins mod, Currently squashing bugs, but have a playable Imperial Faction with a good selection of vessels
the things that won’t make the intial release are the updated UI and research trees as well as abilities for the ships. I am still having some graphical issues as well so the quality of the output is not as good as I hoped
on the Homeworld 2 side of things CnlPepper and Supernova have been doing some great work with shaders so I hope to leverage these in an upcoming release. Check it out here on the relic forums
I did an interview for Shift-q RTS podcast, head over to their site and check it out and listen to me bore you with lengthy babbling on the RTS genre
Also some progress on the Sins front, check it out in the gallery
Sorry for the lack of updates, progress is continuing on both the HW2 and Sins mod
Sins is currently being held up by art pipeline issues, essentially just getting the models to correctly export from XSI. Realistically once that is functional there is a lot of file editing, but it should be good for a test release
thread on stardock here http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/149136 or go to the forums on the site here
for HW2 Warlords
You may have noticed a few new ships or textured ships in the gallery, my hope is to release a bug fixed version of warlords with some of the old ships ships updated so they are functional (no guarantees about a specific list)
I also hope to have a kotor release sometime this summer, a lot of the ships are in progress so It’s jst a matter of finishing them
the bug fixes should address most of the playability and loading issue.
linking to a previous press release since I am lazy. Fun to remember it.
So started on a Sins of a Solar Empire mod http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/. In this case I hope to be leading it, but getting help. Luckily a lot of the art assets from HW2 convert relatively painlessly (especially the newer ones) and most of the work will be game play oriented (imagine that, a mod that has all of its content done before it is announced! AND before the game is out!)
I am accepting applications for help. A lot of it will be model conversion, rigging, 2D art and coding, apply in the Sins section of the forums
Here is an initial shot of some import tests, more are in the gallery.
So how will this change the warlords mod for HW2? I don’t think that much. HW2 still provides a much tighter combat platform and is scaling quite well with newer computers, so I am going to continue to promise updates! (the truth is I am pretty close to getting a gameplay and code update out, just need to work on some more things. the other big thing that is done is a completely redone sound scheme that should fix any level issues with the ingame sounds.) The important thing is that any graphical content that is in HW2 can be put in Sins and vice versa so as far as ships go it’s a very minor change. In fact HW2 requires a lot more work!
