Reviving my old Star Trek Mod

from Sins Forums
I have already scrounged through all my old backup CD's for my old WIP models, and have fired up 3dsmax for the 1st time in a few years lol.

Thank you Sins for bringing me out of modding retirement.

For those that don't know what the hell im talking about. I used to go by The Stress Puppy back in the days of Starfleet Command, and Homeworld modding. I created the Star Trek: Innocence, and Wrath, and the Beyond the Final Frontier mods for Homeworld, and HW: Cataclysim. Plus i used to do alot of ship modeling for Starfleet Command.

My last attempt at modding was in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. I helped out the Digital Underground team with the Age of War mod. However that mod failed because of some issues in Nexus that we couldn't work around. Nexus makes a great platform for BSG, and B5, but not Star Trek.

Now here i have in front of me one of the best platforms i have seen in years to do a Trek mod in, and it is still in BETA LOL.

So now i think its time to resurrect my old Trek mod, and port it over to Sins. I will call it "Federation, and Empire" this time. It will be set in the Original Series era with the classic races Federation, Klingon, and Romulans in a good old sandbox skirmish. Irony is the next Trek movie is going to be set in the TOS era as well. Campaigns, and what ships will be in the mod depends on how the beta pans out into a full game, and IF we can remove the jump lanes, and do fully connected maps, or not. I have lots of ideas, but im waiting to see how the game comes together.

Im a modeler not a code monkey, tho i can do wordpad modding as long as i know what does what. I got the models, and textures covered. I just may need help with coding, and FX.

modding
19,749 views 31 replies
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Major Stress I can do some coding. This stuff isn't overly complicated(THANK YOU IRONCLAD! I LOVE YOU!), I can do most of the stuff through trial and error and once its all out I can definitely fudge around with it. I'll go take a look at units then later this week
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I might be considering to actually start modding, at least for this game.

I know something of coding, its just that time constraints have been keeping me mostly away from it.

I know little of Star Trek so I would have to be educated in that too...
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Im not just a Trek fan, im an "original" trek fan. In other words i grew up watching Original Series back in the early 70's, cause that was the only Trek at the time. Now its pretty cheezy to todays standards, but it is still classic. I like some of what they did with the remastered dvd's, but IMO they were a little too conservative.

As i said i got the models covered. Some are already done, but i still have some that i need to finish. Heres some renders of the models i intend to use for the mod. In fact they are the same models i made for the Nexus AoW mod that failed. Might have to remap the UV's to a single texture. Unless sins can use more than 1 color texture per model.

We all know this ship. it will have full bump, and spec maps along with it


Gotta have a Klingon to fight as well


there is much more but ill wait till i can import the models before i give away too much
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Pretty....
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
That will be great to see.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
<3 star trek
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
luckily you wont really have to do much weapon modding as some of the weapons in the game already can be easily used for the different races (kol beam can be easily modded as a starfleet phaser bank and the radiation bomb is close to the klingon's weapon)
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
The weapon graphics seem easy enough to mod. its just a matter of pointing the right weapon effect to the right hardpoint on the ship via scripting. the HW IaW/BTFF mod has its own set of effects that would work perfectly from what ive seen of the files. I'll still wait for the Forge Tools before i do any attemt at changing the fx.

Are there any wav/mp3 to .ogg converters out there by chance?
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
ony is the next Trek movie is going to be set in the TOS era as well

AFAIK Aledgedly...

Also, looking at those graphics, I can hear my moaning allready. You really need some lower graphics as well to pull of a hundred ship fleet.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
wow..that vid def makes me want nexus and that mod

looks alot better than what i have even seen of that new star trek game.....legacy i think it was
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top


Also, looking at those graphics, I can hear my moaning allready. You really need some lower graphics as well to pull of a hundred ship fleet.


Not necessarily, I made the Constitution, and a few other ships in 2004 specifically for Nexus, and i imported it into HW1 to experiment. It is 4032 polys for lod0 and has 2 lod meshes (have to look at the lods again to see the counts i dont remember atm). Further tweaking can be done with lods to ease the load on the game, and puters. The textures are 4x 1024x1024 sheets. Which guess what that equates to... The size of the Kol battleships texture of 2048x2048. I dont think theres going to be an issue running this ship in game The Federation class dreadnought is only a few hundred polys more, and is likely going to be the highest poly ship in the mod. The poly counts in Sins so far look to be in the 1500-2000 range average. Possibly more because there is alot of details meshed on to the current beta ships.

The Klingon D-7 is 1600 polys also with 2 lods (tho it doesnt really need them). and has 5x 512x512 sheets. I made that ship for a potential HW2 mod that never happened. So i used it for HW1... man does it look awfull in HW1 All the detail got washed out because HW1 cant use anything higher than 256 res textures.

I enjoyed helping out with the Age of War mod for nexus its just a shame that games issues shut it down. Legacy was pure crap IMO.

Some people will probobly be thinking why am i doing this in TOS. Well consider this a pioneer mod for a potential TNG mod done by the very same people that did the nexus mod in that video. Im still a part of Digital Underground, and they have an interest in this game

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Are there any wav/mp3 to .ogg converters out there by chance?


Use Audacity. It's free and open source .

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Major Stress, although I am mostly a Star Wars fan, I should be able to help with scripting. I did a lot of work with Homeworld 2, and a bit with Space Empires V (until I realized that game just sucked too much to be worth my time). Anyway, I would be happy to lend a hand.

As for poly and objects counts, I think this engine can handle quite a bit. Also, we are all going to need powerful machines and graphic cards to play the basic game anyway (hehe, I saw a post from a guy complaining his 1.7 Ghz laptop with 504 megs of Ram complaining the beta is too slow on his machine). So if I were you, I would be tweaking my models more for quality, and less for performance. This way, you'll be extending the lifespan of your mod.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I can also do soem coding and scripting, just to put that out there. I'm not exactly the greatest but I will lend my help.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Any, and all help in the coding/scripting area will be greatly appreciated

I do the "taste great-less filling" approach to my models. I try not to go over 2000 polys when modeling for a game like this, but Trek ships as people who model them know are very difficult to do low poly, and make them not look like crap. They are just too curvy. I do every optimization trick in the book i can think of to keep counts as low as possible without sacrificing quality. I expect only a couple ships to go over 4k, and i dont expect people to spam over 100 4k+ ships in any given game. I am using my own system as the benchmark, and i run a 1.8 gig sempron 3100+ with a g-force 6600gt card. If the mod runs smooth on my machine it "should" run ok on any machine with similar, or better specs. Im just shocked the game runs as smooth as it does with many vanilla Sins ships using 2048 res textures.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Game runs smooth on my 2500+ XP and Radeon 9800 non-Pro.

Give em credit for that, I expected it to be alot worse.

Anyways, the mod vid posted looks very nice. I actually own NExus and was very excited about the mods that were in dev. I just wish some of them ahd been released. The day will come when someone makes a decent B5 or ST game, altho it prob wont be in our lifetimes

Good luck with this mod, Ill be following closely and with baited breath on the hopes you release something nice!
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Now i get to display the 1st dedicated model for the sins trek mod. The DY-750 class Leif Ericson transport (Yes, the very same Leif Ericson from stratigic space command designed by Matt Jefferies for all you old timers). The DY-750 was the last of the DY series transports. It continued to inherit design influence from the original DY-100 (notably the bridge conning tower). From there the similarities end. The series goes out in style. Implementing a unique, and very fuel efficient "microwarp" drive, a huge cargo bay, and room to spare for passengers. Ships of this class were very well suited for colonization missions, and to haul vast amounts of cargo (sometimes both at the same time). This ship will replace the Colony frigate, and Trader ship in game just as the DY-100 "wooden" will replace the refinery ship


Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
*mumbles to self* looks like an anime submarine to me

well keep at it man..im a bit interested to see what you can get into the game for star trek.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
The only reason i am using that model is because it was designed by the late Matt Jefferies. The same person who designed the original, and TMP enterprise. It was never ment for Star Trek, but i think it will make a good trek ship. You can see some of its design elements went into the Defiant, and it does borrow from the DY-100 as well. Im in the process of texturing as i type, and imo its coming out better than expected
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
*still thinks it looks like an anime submarine* lol
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Please guys do not e-mail me. I rarely if ever check my e-mail, because the hotmail account i use is nothing more than a spam magnet. If you want to contact me personally use forum PM's, and ill hook u up with my xfire/msn info to communicate with me 1 on 1. This is only for the people that wish to help me out with the mod. TIA
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

Please guys do not e-mail me. I rarely if ever check my e-mail, because the hotmail account i use is nothing more than a spam magnet. If you want to contact me personally use forum PM's, and ill hook u up with my xfire/msn info to communicate with me 1 on 1. This is only for the people that wish to help me out with the mod. TIA


i havent send you any mails though, but theres no PM on this forum