TFL BigBANGtheory

The whole thing felt rushed to me, they did tie stuff up which was good I couldn't help thinking of Hitch Hikerguide to the Galaxy towards the end. One of the more interesting story plots to me was always going to be, what was going to happen when they discovered Earth. There were a number of plausible options and it has to be said the production team choose the cheap to produce option. I'm going to read the Ron Moore interview now (thanks for the link btw), see what his take

Its been discussed a fair ammount amoungst modders and players, IC haven't really come to the table with a strong arguement yet other than commenting on specific examples where it would not be appropriate. The perfect example is the TEC Orbital Defense guass gun with its secondary messon cannon, why not have it firing in two directions at once particularly as the ranges are different. I think the biggest challenge isn't so much updating the graphics engine, its the whole con

[quote]and how hard could it be to ring up siera (creators of hw2) and ask them about turrets lol? if thats the case.. (not being critical) just an idea maybe? has anyone tried modding it themselves?[/quote] For starters I think you mean Relic [e digicons]B)[/e] , but Ironclad are more than capable of doing it you can even find examples on the Internet of the code and calculations required. I have spent quite a bit of time looking into this and no matter which avenue you go d

[quote]I did have to triangulate them for Homeworld 2 but even large amounts of very high poly ships did not impact performance, at least not nearly as much as having a handful of turrets.[/quote] That is because of something called mesh instancing where the ship numbers scale better, the trick with turrets is to have the GPU do some of the calculations as the hardware is better optimised for tasks like vector addition. Anyhow Sins doesn't have proper turrets yet it uses dummy points

There has been some significant changes in Entrenchment that would benefit a B5 mod, I think we have to write off the whole story line business based on comments made during recent interviews with IC. I still believe there needs to be a greater control of child mesh objects to make the mod worth while, others may disagree. I am trying to resolve and experiment with the last of these hurdles for all players and modders really not just a B5 mod. So that's where I am, wha

Frigates probably wouldn't be a good choice for turrets in a modded vanilla game due to the numbers, other units would be better unless of course a mod factored this into the design and restricted the numbers. I am not convinced by the CPU resource drain arguement, granted you would need atleast 2 additional rotational vector/quaternion calculations per turret but the way the graphics pipeline should work is only those objects visible in the viewport should require those additional ca

I used to play a very good board game as a student called Dimplomacy, the game mechanics were very simple but the possibilities endless. What made it such a good gameplay experience was you having to communicate and negotiate with other players on what your intended moves were, but before those moves were executed you had to write down your orders and at that point you could either do as you promised or something completely different. Unlike normal turn-based board games all the

[quote]You know it and I know it. That's the crap they would have had to listen to. Better just to leave it out and let the modders take care of it, as Fraser said.[/quote] More than happy with that approach, atm only IC know if variables and calculations can be done externally and what those variables are. So short of using a disassembler and potentially wasting 100s of hours and still not getting anywhere a few words of advice so that 'modders can take care of it', or atleast start

Yeah you're right it was about that time, as I recall Stardock were filtering the forum info back to IC so they could see some meaningful feedback amoungst the bilge. You had to conciously refrain from posting as there were more flames kicking off than a 70's Vietnamese jungle. [e digicons]X|[/e]

Another excellent interview, I think I may subscribe to GWJ they sound like a cool bunch. I loved the comment about really opinionated forum members being less than level headed as SoaSE was being released [e digicons]:rofl:[/e] so true, was like handbags at dawn for weeks.

- There is an unsupported MAXscript done in the early days, but it has some quirks and problems a pity the creator didn't follow up on it cos he was obviously very skilled in that area. I don't think anyone else in the mod community has been able to follow up on it. If you do a search you'll find it... - Fractal distortion may be possible if you were to write a new shader, the challenge then would be to apply the new shader only to your race of ships. I may be wrong but I believe the

Developers listen to feedback and enable fighter physics, mod community (Manshooter in this case) use it to good effect, great work all round. I am curious to see what it looks like with a large battle fleet, Blair said in a recent interview that it looked chaotic (reffering to their own internal tests I assume not modding work). Would it be possible to see a large frigate battle in action? (or did I miss a post/link further back) On the subject of fire arcs, I am

[quote]What people want ladies and gentlemen is turrets as an option Which basically means instead of picking one thing, they have to do both. So no, it still doesn't make any sense.[/quote] Lets just try it, if the Devs think its a waste of time then let the modding community expend the effort and experiment on their behalf. We'll find out if the CPU/GPU calculations are too much, and if it makes any graphical impact on the game. Drop the whole turret business for

I just read it, a very good interview I thought. Not sure I agree with this part though: Chick: Fair enough. Going back to feedback from the beta tests -- this might be a difficult question because you might not be able to answer it diplomatically -- but what are some of the sillier complaints you get from fans? For instance, I'm just going to throw out a couple that I've heard. I hear people complain that the turrets don't move on the ca

I can see there are some genuine improvements with Entrenchment, thanks for the summary.

I think a better level of graphical realism or presentation is required, I personally would sacrifice the numbers of units and scale of the game for more detail regarding the individual ships and the motion of objects. I would like to see SoaSE scale better on higher-end PC systems, I don't know if Impluse or SDC collects system spec information or posts a questionaire like Steam probably a good idea though... The game is also lacking a proper single player campaign

[quote]Upgrades changing meshes??? Graphical meshes? Yeah, they made it possible for buildings and ships (including capitals) to change appearance after research/upgrades. Like, starbases start with only 1 weapon, but if you do the beams upgrade for the TEC base, big beam turrets appear on its corners.[/quote] I'd pay $30 if those turn out to be proper turrets and proper child objects.

Are there any good video examples we can view please?

They weren't in the Beta Dan, I'll point you in the right direction though ask Tristangooles especially for Vasari 'early prototypes'. I suspect you might have to make them up yourself though IC may want to re-use certain models further down the line and you can't blame them for that.

[quote]I am personally looking for a few of the beta versions of some Advent and Vasari ships if you have them, like the ones on Ironclad's website of the original themes of those races. I can post screen shots if you need them.[/quote] Dude there wasn't any Beta Advent ships unless I've got my facts wrong, I don't believe the Vasari changed much but if you really want like all of them I guess I could zip them up. Best thing to do is PM me the file names you're after.

You also need proper turrets [e digicons]:P[/e] But yes inspite of my obvious derailment, the OP is quite correct and gives a reasonable arguement for the need, parhaps a post-Entenchment patch. The ideal of course would be for players to veiw and accept the map being downloaded to obviously ensure it wasn't a complete stitch up. ... or having read Blairs post [e digicons]X|[/e] perhaps not a patch. (btw you need a smilie to represent a mup

I think just simply carrying out non-military actions to bolster your development and more persistant standing with allies such that they won't suddenly turn against you. Perhaps a scale of reputation that prohibits agressive actions when in a certain band.

The EA Omega is a great example ship and a good test because if you nail the Omega you can proceed with confidence that a good 90% of B5 ships are do-able because... The Omega has: - Lots of gun points (PASS) - An animated central rotating section (PASS, though either the pixel shader or model tangents need work) - Lots of effect points or emitters for lighting (FAIL, hardcode limit could be resolved with Entrenchment) - Lots of

thanks for that any chance of the particle files too please

Basically I would like to see how IC have done the new particle effects and meshes, I guess most importantly whether something like the flak gun on the new hangers is treated as a sub-mesh or child object and moves independantly of the main hanger. It helps understand the new possibilities open to modders with the Entrenchment expansion, for me personally its whether or not I buy Entrenchment off Impulse.