Major Stress Major Stress

[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

from Sins Forums

Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine

Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year

This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.

The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747

The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473


The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it ;)

While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.

The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.

Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.

The current version of SoA 2 is  0.03b   "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473

0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.

All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.

We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.

I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.

Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.

Status of Demo 0.04  "The actors are in place" 

Will update when i have news.

General Changes:

Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a

May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.

SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.

Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.

Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.

More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.

The Federation:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Klingon Empire

Faction is complete. Only structures left.

The Romulan Star Empire:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Dominion:

Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.

Pirates:

They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.

Planetary Defenders

Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.

Balancing:  Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.

Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04

Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.

In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)

Troop Transport effects.

Planetary invasion animations

Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)

Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.

Future Updates:

SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.

The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.

*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".

SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2

This main header will be updated when i have news to post.





modding
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Reply #776 from Sins Forums Top
Actually, on the topic of SoA 1, where can I download that anymore? Googling has proved fruitless, and I just reinstalled Homeworld 1.
Reply #777 from Sins Forums Top
You can find SoA 9.5a here
WWW Link

On another note the Galaxy is in game :D Has some smoothing issues where the saucer connects that i cant seem to fix :( She still looks awesome in game tho.

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #778 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Major Stress... Awesome Job unbelievably good. But search your history for inspiration ;). You can get more cannon ships from the old star fleet battles games etc. As far as the brine I don't know I would almost keep them with dominion there never showed there face except under them but then again you have done a lot of work making the stand alone. Look up birth of the federation that had like 5 cap type ships at least for each race. They also had the Ferengi as a combat race. Which I am part of the rare few that loves the Ferengi and would love to be able play them . There is tons of material out there though just search the Archives .. they may not have been "seen" in the Dominion wars.. but just as the Federation uses Miranda and Excelsior class I am sure the other races use old ships too that just didn't happen to be seen.

Well good luck and this mod would like this would make my decade in gaming. Can you mod in story line lol?
Reply #779 from Sins Forums Top
Major i sejnd you 2 Pm`s according to the Music for the Mod, maybe you could just use the Soundtrack from Star-Trek Armada 2. I checked the Game folder and found Music for Romulan, Klingon, Federation and Borg in wave. The Tracks are very nice, as they contain different Movie Tracks from the TNG, DS9 and the Cinema movies.
Though i am unsure about copy rights ... but on the other hand, its just normal music in one file which you could also buy on CDs i guess.
Reply #780 from Sins Forums Top
Several have sent me PMs about music, and sounds. I appreciate the offers for help :) I dont think copy rites will be an issue since many other mods use the same soundtracks.

My main problem is getting it to work in game which so far it hasnt happened. Several files sent ether arent seen by the game, or i am doing something wrong. I put all the ogg's in the mod sound folder. One set of files froze the mod on load. I hope to get sound we dont have to use the main game directory.

I know there is a text file which lists all of the sounds, and music in game. Any file named differently than the vanilla game files will have to be added. Plus there is a limit to how many sound files the game can recognize. All of the files sent to me have vanilla sins names and seem to be meant to replace default sounds.
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Reply #781 from Sins Forums Top
Grrrrr...Makes me angry that no one is creating a stargate mod    me too
End of quote


Um... There is one in the works... check it out https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/177748
Reply #782 from Sins Forums Top
where can i get a copy of HW1 so i can play SoA? I thought it was for HW2 for some reason lol
Reply #783 from Sins Forums Top
Pateince Adama pateince and you cant find
Homewolrd anyomore it's long gone :P
Reply #784 from Sins Forums Top
I am sensing a big SoA revival coming :) Try e-bay, or amazon to find Homeworld. I know it is still being sold. Just search for it. We never did any Trek mod for HW2 just because of the extreme difficulty in modding HW2 back in its early days. Now tools have been released to make it easier, but have no interest in modding HW2. Nor will I in the future.

On another note here is the Galaxy, and Venture refit in a nice fleet formation :) The Venture Refit is an "Elite" unit, and acts just like a sins capital ship with levels, and abilities. Where as the Galaxy has the same starter stats, has 2 less phasers, doesn't gain any levels, and has no abilities yet. What ability's the Galaxy has will be determined later.



As stated on the main header some ships will have both an "Elite", and a "Standard" version. Some ships will be considered "Unique" Like the Defiant, and will have no standard version.

Main header screenshot updated too.
Reply #785 from Sins Forums Top
You know, Stress... you could have just asked for the source mesh.. which has the highest graphics, plus the windows already meshed in... Soa 2 revival huh? how did you know I've been taking peeks at it?
Reply #788 from Sins Forums Top
You know, Stress... you could have just asked for the source mesh.. which has the highest graphics, plus the windows already meshed in... Soa 2 revival huh? how did you know I've been taking peeks at it?
End of quote


Holy S**T! It's Elvis! Hows it going man! :D

I was talking about an original SoA mod revival, and yes i am psychic :p I didnt know there were higher res SoA models from you guys. MSN me when u get the chance. We have much to discuss. For the clueless ones Dolphoenix was the project lead for the original SoA/FTB mods.

Read the main header for any news, and updates. There is no download yet. I have stated there, and many times here that the mod needs to be fixed for the 1.1 patch first. It wont be released until after the 1.1 patch is released, and then only as a ship demo. The full mod will come MUCH later. There is much work to be done, and i am the ONLY one doing it right now unless i get some more volunteers in the modeling, and scripting dept.
Reply #789 from Sins Forums Top
Awesome, I'll be reliving the glory days of Star Trek modding in no time. Fantastic work on the Galaxy, too - I've been waiting a long time to see some screens of that baby in-game (honestly I'm surprised it took so long!).
Reply #790 from Sins Forums Top
Nice looking models, glad to hear you're back from your business trip! Can't wait to see some more works!
Reply #791 from Sins Forums Top
Ask and ye shall receive.




1st test run of the Defiant. No she doesnt cloak nor will she yet. There is a major stumbling block with her which i was aware of, but needed to see in action (or in this case lack of action). She doesnt maneuver. For the other ships it is no big deal, but i cant see the defiant just standing still to be shot at. Ill need to work on this some more. Oh the Miranda model was updated as well :)
Reply #792 from Sins Forums Top
Gorgeous. Making me want to finish the patch for Ironclad so we can see your mod inaction....
Reply #793 from Sins Forums Top
freaking awesome Stress! :CONGRAT:
Reply #795 from Sins Forums Top
same here
Reply #796 from Sins Forums Top
The test of the Defiant as an "Elite" unit was a failure. I used a capital ship entity as a foundation for her, and it performed miserably. She was intended to go into the "heavy cruiser" slot (for the high research prereq), and thats where its looking like she will be. I still need to run some tests using other entity foundations. I want her as a "unique" unit. As in you can build only one. However that seems impossible to do. So ill have to make it very expensive both resource, and logistics wise. The weapons perform as i expected, but i need to find a way to make her MOVE around. If i make it a "fighter" then a whole new host of problems will come up. We may have to live with the stand up, and fight mechanic of sins.

I updated the main header with what is needed to make the "Canon Demo" release for those that wish to help.
Reply #797 from Sins Forums Top
i can remenber an episode where worf commanded a defiant in one of the movies.
it would be awesome if u could make the sounds when u command/click the defiant sound like worf, there should be more than enoung episodes to cut his voice out of.

also i was wondering if u were planning to give each capitol ship an individual/unique ability forcing players to use them and deversifing their fleets.

like one that can colonize, one that enhances fighters, or firepower or shields.
if u'd have like 5 different "nessicery" buffs/powers for each capitol ship and each race?

if u need me to cut out these sound i'd be more than happy to!
I cant help with modeling or scriptin and such but i got most star trek movies on dvd and i's be happy to cut you some "audio" for the sounds.
Reply #798 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Stress, I'm not sure how much you are into coding, but I wonder if some of the fighter's programming could be put into the Defiant, making her more mobile during battles.

Just a thought.
Reply #799 from Sins Forums Top
44rs, have you heard of Copyright Infringment?

the mod itself is ok, but if you use Worf's voice in this mod, Paramount will Be suing Major Stress for his weight in gold
Reply #800 from Sins Forums Top
I am not using any voice overs yet, and when i do they will be from voice actors i pick from volunteers of the mod community. I may do some of my own voice acting. I think i would make a good Klingon :p

I put together a quick sample video of some in game test fighting. Fraps only lets you record 30 seconds at a time so im not going to win any academy awards for this ;) You will hear some of the theme music i am using to for the federation (barely). Only the Ambassador, Galaxy/Venture, Excelsior, and Centaur are seen. I love the part where the galaxy charges in to save the miranda's ass's

I know rapidshare sucks but i do know of anything better to use that isnt spyware ridden. Heres the link
WWW Link