Praise And Suggestions

posted on December 10th, 2003, 11:54 pm

I really like the Dominion avatars idea that has been put forward in regards to choosing either Breen or Cards as allies.
Optec, you should check out the Breen Energy Dampener that is in my Shockwave mod.It is not in any other mod and it was made by my freind Captain Future for me only per request.It uses an "emitter" effect that after the torp strikes the target it leaves behind a "visible effect on the ship".This way you can tell which ships have been struck by the weapon.It kind of looks like blue sparkles dancing around your ship as the enregy is drained.
It is armed only on the Breen frigate class in the mod.I have rights and permissions for all the material in Shockwave btw and can give u permisssion to use this.

Inside the odf's you will find the 3rd linked file that refers to all the weapons that are mounted on the weapon sod itself. From there you can tinker with it to suit your style.

posted on December 11th, 2003, 4:46 am

Wow, i didn't know that these subjects would take on a life of there own like they did!

Anyway, I think might be important to note that I gave the Dominion alliance thingy as just an example(although it is my favorite!). It could also apply to other races.

For instance, what if one of the avatars for the Federation is Sisko and he gets an alliance with the Bajorans. Sisko now has the option to build a new station, oh say, The Temple of the Prophets(would it look like a wormhole?). That station now has new techs like the Orb of Time or something. I figure some credits could be in order to get these babies.

You could also make something completely off the wall and make it a part of the story line for the new single player campaigns.

I also just want to say that thinking about the possibilities this mod can have with the talent it already has makes my mouth water.

(Homer voice)...MMMM.....Fleet Ops...

posted on December 11th, 2003, 11:04 am

Optec, you may want to check out the Babylon 5 mod in regards to their new chaos/order tech tree they have.From looking at it, it appears similar to what you want with flops.
At the start of the instant action map your race automatically gets a station called an embassy.From this station you get to choose a "tech tree" basically.By choosing either chaos or order determines what you may have and build.I havent studied it long enough to know more but it is intriuging.
Your idea is a little different from my understanding by choosing the tech from the advanced options tech button.

Just please make this option moddable please!So that others may try new things with beta 3 and 4 and 5 lol.

posted on December 11th, 2003, 11:18 am

well, fleet operations is not ment as a sod, odf and mod pool, but a interesting mod itself
the avatar selection will perhaps be modable.

posted on December 11th, 2003, 11:12 pm

the problem with that is you would still need toe normal version for online play.

posted on December 12th, 2003, 10:57 am

After 2 years I never played online.It's never been important to me.I've always just wanted to see what is possible with A2.Many many barriers have have been broken that people said could never be done with the game engine even the designers of the game said certain things werent possible but people did it.

I would appreciate as many features in FO to be moddable as possible.With all the new races I have, I am fitting them into FO in the same style as the main races to keep them uniform.

posted on December 13th, 2003, 1:13 pm

yeah but does any one listien to the desingers??? lol

posted on December 13th, 2003, 5:49 pm

Id love too see lots of flops mods come out, heh never thought the day would come when a mod would sprout mods...

PS: will flops ever be ported over to other games? like say EF:II or BC or SFC:III?

posted on December 13th, 2003, 10:05 pm

Thats is all true.
One mod can spring many new ideas from many members of the community.

If anyone has really looked closely at Shockwave it was based primarily on Major Paynes Borg Incursion 2 mod.And featured many ships and special weapons from about 20 different mods for A1 and A2.So yes it can happen.
Most of the best special weapons came from my fellow Warlords member Captain Future.

Fleet Operations A2, BI2 A2, Star Wars vs ST A1, Xtreme A1 and others all had many addons and entire mods based upon them over the last 2 1/2 years.

I'm really surprised that Naval Armada was not modded as it was revoltionary itself.
In much the same spirit as Fleet Ops.

The Fleet Ops team would never have the time to finish the mod if they Included every possible race into the game.But there are many races that I would like to see in the same style that FO has done so thats what I do.I have the knowledge and material to make it happen for myself.

BTW, here is a pic of the sparkle effect that is left upon a target by the Breen Energy Dampening weapon I spoke about before.The sreen capture cannot show you how the particles act os just imagine them flashing around the ship very rapidly and you might have an idea.

Attachments

Image3.jpg (5.67 KiB) Viewed 297 times

Image3.jpg (5.67 KiB) Viewed 297 times

[Bubba91873]

posted on December 13th, 2003, 10:07 pm

Last edited by Bubba91873 on December 13th, 2003, 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In addition to the sparkle effect here is the energy draining effect that surrounds the target in addition to the sparkle effect.
Both images are animated ingame.

Attachments

Image5.jpg (10.47 KiB) Viewed 294 times

Image5.jpg (10.47 KiB) Viewed 294 times

posted on December 15th, 2003, 9:31 pm

nice did you make them if so do you think it is possible to make a animated one in ani shop or something???

[Bubba91873]

posted on December 15th, 2003, 11:55 pm

Last edited by Bubba91873 on December 15th, 2003, 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

tga texture files cannot be animated, only the sods that the texture is assigend to is animated.bitmaps might have an animation to them but thats for games like sfc 3 possibly.
Animating textures for A2 has been treid without results by many people so far.

The textures were made by Captain Future as a request for Shockwaves Breen Energy Dampener.

[Optec]

posted on December 16th, 2003, 6:15 am

Last edited by Optec on December 16th, 2003, 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

hm, textures cannot be animated like an avi video for example, but you can make a row of images in a tga file, which will be animated by a modifier in the armada engine.. this is very common for sprites like photon torpedos, but can also be applied to geometry, like the pink ultridium burst effect

posted on December 16th, 2003, 11:04 am

That is true Optec for weapons like torpedos and such.This weapon animation though is in the emitter and the sod itself in regards to Eufnoc's question.

I have seen discussions at Taldren, stgn, afc about any possiblity about making animated textures for ships.To my knowledge the only formats that will support it are gif, jpeg and possibly bitmaps though unlikely.


Btw, the wireframes in FO are top notch! They are going to be b**** though to make new wireframes.Apperently there are 2 seperate wireframes for each model in the game now.One that shows model status and is static to different models and the model image itself wireframe.The first one is in the gui_race file and the other is in the gui_global file.It's kindof complicated.

posted on December 16th, 2003, 12:26 pm

the ultridium burst is no emitter, it's a geometric sprite (a sprite which does not auto rotate to face the camera) and the same way you make an animation for a sprite you can animate textures in geometry look at the unimatrix of flops, the green lights are "animated" geometry textures