- This mod is no longer active. Instead, TobiWahn_Kenobi is creating another B5 mod that looks very promising. You can find his mod here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/361694
Please let this topic die in peace. -
Since it is pretty outrageous that there isn't a single mod for Sins featuring the Babylon 5 universe, I have begun working on it myself. This mod will be designed for Entrenchment, as a Babylon 5 mod just has to have starbases in my opinion.
Setting:
This mod (at least at this stage) will focus on the early Babylon 5 series, before the formation of the Interstellar Alliance. I always felt that the best part of the series were the earlier ones, with the Shadows being "the unknown hidden threat" and the younger races emboiled in diplomatic manipulations with one another. Think season 2 & 3, with the Centauri being manipulated by the Shadows to wage all-out war with the Narn, The Earth Alliance being frightened into a pact of non-agression with the Centauri while their Babylon-5 Space Station fights a series of skirmishes against Centauri forces, a renegade Minbari Sharlin warcruiser, in other words alot of possible reasons for the different races to fight eachother.
Aims:
- A summer first release, featuring:
- 4 Playable races at first release. These will be:- The Earth Alliance-> The Earth Alliance uses ponderous but very solid ships with impressive armor. Their ships that lack the powerful long range weapons of the other races, which is compensated by powerful although somewhat inaccurate short to medium ranged weaponry.- The Centauri Republic-> The Centauri use fast and highly maneuvrable ships with devastating weaponry. Their ships are however less durable than those of the other races, even though the Centauri experiment with a new type of shielding on some of their ships. Centauri fighters are superior to Narn & Earth Alliance fighters, but they generally deploy less of them as several of their ship classes are not capable of supporting fightercraft.- The Narn Regime-> More ponderous than the ships of the other races, Narn ships are durable and well armored. They favour powerful long range frontal weaponry, with their trademark weapon being the energy-mine launcher. Even though their frontal long range weaponry is impressive, most Narn vessels are undergunned compared to equivalent ship classes of the other races. Narn fighters are comparable to Earth Alliance's Starfuries, but somewhat less maneuvrable.- Minbari Federation-> The most powerful of the young races, their ships are superior in all regards to those of the other races. They are faster, have superior maneuvrability, carry extremely powerful beam weaponry, and are protected by a form of cloak that makes automatic targetting impossible. Oh, and their fighters are superior in every way too.
- At least 5 ship classes per race (plus fighters) for the initial release. Most ship models already exist, but they need to be converted to XSI which is difficult and tedious.
- One starbase per race.
- Sins pirates will be replaced by their B5 counterpart the Raiders.
- Buildings will be for a later release. Except for the Starbases I feel most Sins buildings can easily function as babylon 5 constructions.- Integration with several other mods to change planets, planet bonusses, explosions and other such things to better suit the Babylon universe
- This mod will aim to reflect what you see in the series/movies as best as possible. Most ships will not have shields but use armor that determines their amount of migitation. The best survival a ship has is to not get hit: weapons will have a substantial chance to miss, but when they do hit it will hurt.
- Supply lines that allow you to keep your ships working at their highest potential
- Small to medium-scale conflict. No fleets of hundreds upon hundreds of vessels that insta-zerg everything in their path.
- Loosing ships will matter. Loosing an entire fleet will be a disaster. Knowing when to retreat will be important.
- Meaningful special abilities that resemble the stuff you see in the series/movies. The Centauri Mass Drivers for planetary bombardment for example.
- Fully immersive music, sound and speech.
Plans for the second release include:
- More ships.
- Completely reworked research trees that allow new ships to be researched.
The second release will also introduce the Shadows and the Vorlons as playable factions. Both of these races will have the incredibly powerful ships we know from the series, which will be balanced out by their high cost and possibly other things as well like lack of trade income, or very limited research, but that will be a future concern. Both races will be designed around their respective philosophies "What do you want" and "Who are you".
Since I am currently working on this mod on my own, it is going to take some time before a release. In addition, I do not have much modelling experience, and even though I already have most ship models so far my first attempts to try and convert a LightWave-made Sharlin Class Warcruiser to a Sins compatible XSI format were not an overwhelming succes.
So if anyone with modelling experience is interested in converting/creating models let me know. In addition if anyone knows any good models we can use for this mod let me know.
Regards,
Lord Tareq
I tend to favour medium poly counts on models around 20 - 30k, mainly because decent modern GPU's can cope with 1million+ polys in a scene all this crap about limiting the models to 5-7k is just a way of appeasing owners of older hardware and laptops. I played those types of games in 2003 its 2009 now so lets move on I say.
The Battlecrab came from the X3 community, not the team doing the B5 mod for X3 though. They want to enjoy the fruits of their labours when its ready for release and who can blame them. The HW2 community is much more open to sharing of game assets I would say, I used their jump vortex texture myself once but not their models.
I have had the Omega, Battlecrab and Sharlin in game but nothing else, I kind of stopped when I realised the Omega wasn't going to work as is and wasn't happy with the work around options. Could I send them to you? Well you already have the Sharlin...how about you get your jumpgate working properly first (with dev help if needs be) that would be a very good step forwards and a good sign of things to come.
If you look carefully on the Omega footage you will see I moved the upper and lower turrets to a 45 degree position to compensate for the crazy firing angles (just like the TEC starbase and Advent progenitor). So in that way its different to other Omega models you see but proportionally its about right. Unfortunately you get some very undesirable results where the gun turrets would shoot through the ship hull something you dont see in SoaSE cos they stuck the emitters out on stalks to cope with the hemispherical firing arc. I warn you now the Nova dreadnought will be even more of a puzzle... Thats why I offered up the Sharlin as its weapon emitters fit better with SoaSE.
Thanks alot. I will PM you my address (again?). Please send me your models, as they surely are a great way to learn from you.
I thought about the firing arcs myself. Would be nice to have weapon emitters only produce effects when their respective direction is within the firing arch of the target. The Devs have cut many corners...
Well, I will probably redo the jumpgate someday with a polycount of 20k instead of 6.5k, but for now it seems sufficient. I agree that the low poly count choice was made to allow older hardware and that we should move on. I myself have a Geforce 8800 GTS 640 so this would be my limit (we'll see about that )
Thanks alot
I look forward to seeing your working jumpgate first, dont worry about the poly count or textures that can be addressed later the tricky bit as I'm sure you've worked out by now is getting it to work like a proper jumpgate that is what I am interested in seeing.
Kenobi I may be able to help with images for research and ships if required. Just let me know what you are looking for and I will work on some previews for you. My email is kirbytag@gmail.com
Well... The list is long and awaits cunning hands.
I need icons for :Omega DestroyerHyperionNova DestroyerMarathon advanced CruiserWarlock Advanced DreadnoughtVictory Class DestroyerExplorer Class Vessel
Artemis FrigateApollo Cruiser
Aurora, Badger, Firebolt, Tiger, Thunderbolt starfuries
and much more. I'll send you my list! (As soon as I get home from work )
Thought about dividing the research for minbari into the three casts, seems natural / obvious choice
Thanks!
I thought you had sent me an example in my email, maybe I was wrong - I will try to send you seom samples as soon as possible.
I'm sure I sent you the TGA file with the Jumpgate Icons I made. If you're missing them, just sent me a PM and I will resend them to you. I finished all the stats for Minbari as well, so I will put the things I've done for now up somewhere this week for you all to download and playtest if there is any interest. I welcome any suggestions for balancing, but I would mostly keep the stats fixed an rather adjust the price / slotcount for balancing.
Earthforce have many ships - from cheap and weak to strong and expensive. The idea (no rsearch implemented yet - therefore it's only an idea) is to have EA progress from weak to stronger ships with advanced tech while Minbari start with impressive ships, but have no cheap counterparts that build fast though they get them at the end of their techtree. So Minbari have the advantage of stronger ships in the beginning while EA can build much more ships in the same timeframe for cheap (well, at least in comparison to the Minbari)
For now, I haven't converted any modules (except the EA Hangar structure - need to do the minbari one as well) or the starbases. I would like to have different starbases for different purposes - one Military outpost, one diplomatic station, one trade hub, one space colony as well as the jumpgate (yes, its available as starbase as well as a module)
For now there no abilities except the jumppoint ability and I kept the carrier specific abilities (need to enable them for the minbari morshin carrier as well). If someone wants to experiment - we need the beam from Crusade (Excalibur - Victory class destroyer) which should render the Destroyer immovable and highly vulnerable (No movement, no hyperspacejump, no abilities, no weapons firing, no shield ( = intercepting technology) ) for a few ?minutes? after firing.
Well, thats it for now.
PLAYTEST! YES!
Kenobi, will you be making the EA "starbases" of a "Babylon" nature? ^^
Since we're limited to one, I think thats a yes.
dam, everyone thing sounds good. Gl and hope to try it out soon
I think 120 Seconds should do the trick.
Sorry not to have released the playtest this weekend, but I had to attend a few parties (friends of mine left for france - they'll live there now and we - me and my gf - will miss them greatly) so I had not the time I would have wished for to clear things up and release for you. Hope to get it together in the next couple of days.
I will also have a rough draft of an military outpost ( = a starbase) ready then.
Please be patient, perhaps ajfoster has some icons ready for it as well (but don't hurry ajfoster, good things take time)
And remember: There will be no models included (except the jumpgate) so don't expect any!Good night and sleep well you all. It's already past midnight here and work awaits tomorrow...
Yes, good things take time, great things take longer ^^
Well worth the wait for a good B5 mod imho. I've looked at the .tga file you sent me, and I will start to look at how the damn thing works, my first goal is to create a template.
Sorry to ask, but I do not understand what you mean - "limited to one". One starbase type per race? thats not true! We can have more than one starbase. In fact I already have a military outpost and the jumpgate as starbases for EA (except I only have the model for the jumpgate for now...)
Okay Folks...
Here's the link. Please remember, this is just a test version for Minbari and Earth alliance WITHOUT models. Might not even work. I'm using SOASE Entrenchment 1.03 which is a requirement. Not all strings (texts) are corrected, research is not implemented except for the jumpgate / jumppoint engine.
No models, graphics, changes except:
Jumpgatemodel and effects (when loading a safegame, to reactivate the jumpgateeffect turn jumpgate off and on)Beam colors and graphics modifiedStats and names for all EA and Minbari shipsStats for Military outposts (EA and Minbari)
There is a long road ahead of us, and with some support (thanks ajfoster) we should get at least somewhere
PS.: I'd also want the beam to ignore the shields (interceptor technology) to only do hull damage. Must take a look at that when I get home.
http://www.filefront.com/14140749/Babylon5.zip
If you like it, some Karma might be appropriate...
With that said I have the color template ready.
If you don't mind, I chose Blue for EA, Green for the Minbari, Red for the Narn, and Purple for the Centauri. At the moment the templat is only for the buttons when they aren't clicked. However, I am looking at whether we should change the theme of the buttons later on. For now I will stick to the Sins theme.
Thanks alot! Looking forward to seeing your work!
Peachy! Really looking forward to seeing B5 ships! Excellent to see this mod progressing! Thank you!
Nice jumpgate effect, information and stat changes. What are your next plans with this mod?
Well, ajfoster and me decided to start finishing the EA and Minbari before doing anything else. I already started designing Minbari research trees in UML and will try to finish this till the end of the week. Then I will need someone to implement this research, so if you feel able to do so, I would appreciate it
As of now I have brought the first model ingame, but while testing I sort of ran out of memory (2GB, Win7RC) and the dialogboxes were very annoing (could no longer play the amient loop sound...)
Still, if you got more mem or a less demanding OS, give it a try. The textures had to be made for testing, which means I hadn't had much time for them (after all, weekends only tend to last 2 days, and there are so many annoying real life duties to fullfill) so they do not look like the original. Still, I think for testing it will be sufficient.
http://www.filefront.com/14180723/Babylon5ForSoaSE.rar
PS.: Can someone confirm or deny that even under win7 64bit SOASE still has a 2GB limit? If I've already run into this wall, I don't know how to add even more...
PPS.: @TFL BigBANGtheoryThe model is not 20k but rather 40k, because it has 22k polys, but they are mostly quads, so it's roughly 40k. which means this seems to be more than the upper limit if we want to stay within 2gb of mem. So we will probably need completely redone models with a max of 7k - 15k for caps and much much lower for fighters and even frigates. Also I used a 4096x4096 texture, which I will probably redo as a 2x2k tex to see if the ram usage is more resonable then.
Cheers!
Very nice to see the Sharlin in Sins, looks great! I've been waiting to play B5 races/ships in Sins for a very long time!
It's a great start ... thanks for spending your time and energy with this mod.
I'm looking forward to your next releases!
Very good idea with B-5 mod! I too try make mod for "Babylon-5" - but mod "Dilgar war" Earth Alliance+LONAW vs. Dilgar Empire. Create model in 3d Max not big problem ( i.e ship EA), but i too bad work with Fotoshop.
You have a couple of options, either trace the hi-poly Sharlin to get the basic shape and redo the model or texture the hi-poly model and then just remove all the detail leaving the basic shell. You should be able to hit 15k tri-polys without too much trouble.
I will think about making them anew, though I'm not sure if I will go through with this. At heart I'm a Programmer (C++, Java) and Photoshopper. I Have Cinema4D which I use professionally as well, but I mostly ( only ) do artistic work, so I'm not too experienced making game models. Let's see how this turns out. Probably would be more reasonable to rely on someone else for the models (I can bring them ingame, no problem) and UV textures.
Well, if you have suitable EA models (see my mention of polycount) and want to share them, we (ajfoster and me) are capable of photoshop
In the end we could as well add the Dilgar to the mod... What are you using as a basis for the stats?
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
