Star Trek Legacy engine in FO

posted on March 12th, 2013, 10:25 pm

I've been thinking. I remember going through the ship files for Star Trek Legacy, and I noticed that the game uses ODFs, just like Armada. (and FO)

Would it be possible to use the graphical abilities of Legacy to power FO, giving the ships/stations/etc. better texturing abilities. The ships might look better, and make the physics more realistic.

Just a thought.

posted on March 13th, 2013, 1:52 am

Using the Legacy engine for the graphics may be wasted at this point. It only uses pixel shader 1.4, so there wouldn't be huge advances there, and the performance of the A2 engine has been drastically improved by the FO devs possibly making that part a non-issue as well. And considering what the devs have done so far, they could probably plug better shaders into the A2 engine anyway.

On the practicality side, Legacy is more like Bridge Commander than Armada which would necessitate a complete rewrite of the AI and interface, in addition to restoring removed features such as ship yards and re-implementing most of the upgrades that the FO devs made to the A2 engine already. It would also likely increase the system requirements slightly, but since it only requires a 2.66GHz single core processor that probably wouldn't affect too many people, but you never know. More importantly, everybody would have to buy Legacy disks as Legacy isn't freeware and probably won't be in the near future.

In short, it could work, but it would be a huge pain in the ass for little gain.

posted on March 13th, 2013, 4:56 am

@Destroyer92: From what I've heard, Star Trek Legacy was built on the A2 Engine and was adapted to look different. At least that's what I've picked up on from its developers.

posted on March 15th, 2013, 9:48 pm

Exactly, it is the same engine.

Legacy=Armada=Battlezone

posted on March 16th, 2013, 12:17 am

If its the same engine then why bother, as already stated the devs have done some pretty amazing things with the engine the way it is, and as nicer more detaild textures would be coom, from the prespective most people play in you prolly wont notice those differences. And to be honest, some of the newer textures are pretty awesome looking, look at some of the Romulan ships, theres already alot of detail in there.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 2:16 am

Legacy is not the same engine as A2, and A2 is not the same engine as Battlezone. The same toolset was used to build parts of all three, but none of them share very much in common.

It's neither desired nor currently possible to port Legacy's features to Fleet Ops - we'll be including an enhanced graphics module down the line.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 2:32 am

@Dominius_Noctis: You are mistaken about Star Trek Legacy, I have watched videos that came with a mod for Legacy called the Ultimate Universe Mod and the creators if that mod talked with a person that created Legacy p, knew all about its problems and its engine and be if the things he said was it used Armada II's engine. I'll see if I can upload those videos as evidence to the contrary for everyone to se, or people can download the mod here and see for themselves:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ultimate-universe
Note: I don't remember the exact version, but ip these videos are titled UU_Interview and there's a total of about 4 of them and they are in the animations folder.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 3:30 am

Yes, the interviews with Derek Chester - he was one of the writers for the story, not involved in development of the engine.

I've talked with Ian Davis a fair amount about Legacy, A2, A1, his design process, and the history of each of the engines and am reasonably comfortable that if Legacy shared more than its toolset with A2 we'd have explored those possibilities.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 4:24 am

If that was/is the case, how come other sources besides Legacy's creators say its A2's engine. I'd like to see evidence to the contrary that its only part of the A2 engine only because all I've heard, seen, and read say its the full engine.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 10:24 am

If that was/is the case, how come other sources besides Legacy's creators say its A2's engine. I'd like to see evidence to the contrary that its only part of the A2 engine only because all I've heard, seen, and read say its the full engine.

wow, how can you not see the irony of this? if you want some evidence, drop some of your own.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 5:16 pm

Myles: My evidence for it is number one from the videos I mentioned and from MadDoc Software and Bethesda Softworks, the creators and Programmers of Star Trek Legacy. They say they got the engine from Activision and adapted it for Legacy, getting rid of the A2 GUI, building setup and such. I honestly don't understand it to explain it. They are my sources though, I may have read it online or heard it elsewhere but knowing how it was related to A2 is why I bought it.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 7:27 pm

The Legacy engine is a derivative of the A2 engine. The Neverwinter Nights engine was adapted for Knights of the Old Republic in a very similar manner. Neither the KOTOR engine nor the Legacy engine are the same as the engines from their predecessors, but are basically built on top of them, recycling certain parts while getting rid of others.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 7:31 pm

Logical cabal, in a way kind of like I said in my post. I think it's easy to see what they recycled (used again) and got rid of.

posted on March 16th, 2013, 9:01 pm

Myles: My evidence for it is number one from the videos I mentioned

Seen that video in the past. it's not strong evidence, dom hit the nail on the head, the guy is a writer, he doesn't get much authority on the technical side of legacy.

from MadDoc Software and Bethesda Softworks, the creators and Programmers of Star Trek Legacy. They say <stuff>

that's not evidence. when did they say these things, where did they say them, who from these organisations said them? quote exactly what was said. you haven't provided evidence.

oh btw who do you think dom's source Dr Ian Davis is? He's a Doctor, not quite sure if he's really Mad, though. look at the top of RTS_CFG.h for "The Mad Dr I".

posted on March 16th, 2013, 9:21 pm

Oh, partially Myles, you're right but the file you quoted, check in Star Trek Legacy and also in STA2, they are the exact same file, even dated: "By the Mad Dr. I 4/98" both the Legacy and A2 files say the exact same thing. I believe they are exactly the files used in STA2 and adapted for Legacy.

I can't keep searching for information just because "you" want it, it's online and if you want it, you should look for it yourself.