Fleet Operations Light

posted on February 5th, 2011, 10:59 pm

Just release Beta 2 and call it Fleet Ops Lite.   There were fewer polygons on all the models and warp-ins were buildable back then, so half the work has already been done!

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:10 pm

And Borg didn't have modules either, and no ranks, and... you know what... that's everything, isn't it? 

posted on February 5th, 2011, 11:11 pm

Weren't team colors an optional extra back then?

posted on February 6th, 2011, 2:45 am

Just release Beta 2 and call it Fleet Ops Lite.   There were fewer polygons on all the models and warp-ins were buildable back then, so half the work has already been done!

That's cheating!

posted on February 6th, 2011, 9:58 am

And Borg didn't have modules either, and no ranks, and... you know what... that's everything, isn't it? 

yup, thats pretty much back to vanilla a2 lol.

posted on February 6th, 2011, 3:51 pm

The original idea of a Light FO was spawn from some members(like myself) telling others that everything in stock would work perfectly in FO.  From there, it was suggested that somebody take FO, get rid of everything but the game coding itself, and then add back all the stock odf's  models bitmaps and have it play exactly as it did in stock, with all the improvements in the background so modders could choose to add whatever they wanted of the FO code, starting from stock instead of FO.

I don't see this as being that hard, and If I didn't have a mod of my own, I would do it.  I"m pretty sure it all still works in FO, minus a few specials, so just start with models and odf's add bitmaps wireframes, and just spend time focusing on the weapons which are the least likely to work.

Again doesn't seem that difficult.  This was not originally because people didn't like FO, or didn't have harddrive space to play it, but because modders who use stock a2 were unable to easily mod FO, and wanted to directly convert their own mods to FO, and then upgrade them with other things.

posted on February 6th, 2011, 4:06 pm

The Borg will still build their ships with the assembly node with the exception of the adaptor which will be built at the adaption matrix.

Because of the rank removal, I'll compensate for the ships never being taken off of the warp-in slots by making some of the warp-in vessels buildable on Level 2+ chassis.  Plus, feel free to build up a fleet of Novas!

By the way, because of the rank removal, I decided not to remove the passives.  I will recalculate them manually though because of bugs with the passives being over-calculated.

---

I'm working on a rebalance mod for stock A2 that will be made similar to Fleet-Ops but still keep all of the A2 game play.  But unfortunately, Fleet-Ops has too many A2 features that have been removed so I can't build this for Fleet-Ops, and A2 doesn't have the features that I require for the rebalance pack.

I require all of the Fleet-Ops new ODF commands to complete the mod, but I also require all of the game play mechanics of A2 that Fleet-Ops has hard-coded out.  As a result, I can't complete the rebalance pack without having to make a few workarounds in A2 based on what the patch project has given me.

posted on February 6th, 2011, 10:18 pm

I don't see any reason to reduce the texture resolution right now.  It's the models that are going to need the reduction in resolution.

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 6th, 2011, 10:22 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 10th, 2011, 1:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's the textures that cause the slowdowns, no the polies 

EDIT: I stand corrected - it's the meshes

posted on February 6th, 2011, 10:42 pm

F**K the polies  >:(

posted on February 6th, 2011, 11:53 pm

It's the textures that cause the slowdowns, no the polies 

In my experience, it's the polygons that cause the slowdowns, not the textures.  I can run rFactor at full texture resolution and minimal texture resolution and there are hardly any differences in the framerate.  When I put a full field of cars on the track and they're all on the screen, that's when the framerate starts dropping.  Even with the model resolution at minimal.  Trust me, you want the polygons reduced.

posted on February 6th, 2011, 11:56 pm

You can believe what you want, but next time you experience slowdowns when scrolling over or to Borg units... 

posted on February 6th, 2011, 11:56 pm

Aren't Borg ships 3D and much more complicated than the others?

Almost every mod of A2Files mentions more polies being murder on slower computers, and a poly-reduced version running better on the same ones and working better when in larger numbers.

Considering Armada2 and most other games has different quality settings for textures, they should still have some effect. Not as much, though.

[Anonymous]

posted on February 7th, 2011, 1:02 am

Last edited by Anonymous on February 7th, 2011, 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Polygons are what cause the biggest slowdowns.  And the Borg have too many of them.  Believe what you want, but if you make the Borg ships "flat," even without reducing texture size, you'll notice a huge difference in performance.  Especially as the game goes on and more Borg vessels enter the scene.  The texture resolution will have no affect.

By the way, in rFactor, there is only one texture resolution packaged, but the simulator doesn't render as many pixels in the lower resolutions than it does in the higher resolutions.  Doesn't have any affect on the framerate though.

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 7th, 2011, 1:49 am

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 10th, 2011, 1:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Armada 2 has different requirements than FO - polygon counts in Fleet Ops can go up to 50k (Adm. Zaxxon recently stuck in a 50k unit with no issue), and most units in FO have poly counts between 3-5k, with newer ones between 6-9k. A2 poly counts are typically between 200-2k (which is pushing it, as I recall). Of course poly counts in both FO and A2 will cause issues if you are running a 7 year old computer  .

On the other hand, the current software render is not as improved in FO and thus has issues with textures as I understand it, as well as the explosions and cloaking that cause slowdowns.

EDIT: I stand corrected, its the meshes, not the textures