You can disable module functionality, but getting it to only target tradeports would be the trick

Found this on youtube. Dunno how old it is tho:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIS5y1MrIko

Its at least 6months old, and as far as I am aware still the highest poly model ever seen in SoaSE.

couldn't the psi enabled races have an ability that can be turned on that would allow damage to be done to the shadow vessel? or perhaps disable the engines and weapons for a certain amount of time?

as for the station itself, well, that sounds like something best suited for entrenchment, atleast based on what I have read. I think the most important part here is to get the feel for each race and then work towards the accuracy. they do have some mini mods and I think most mods are going to adapt to the additional features from each.

I might seem a little confused here, but the Vorlon-hybrid cruiser from crusade was introduced in a call to arms was built by the alliance itself, correct? Unless I am wrong that would make splitting it up to a good vs evil path kind of pointless.

HEY

I would really like to see this go somewhere, tell me what u need or what u have so far, i can do a lot of data and balancing for the mod, the only thing i need is models and i can do the rest my self very quickly, so please, if u guys have models done at leasdt or if any one would like to send me finished models for this mod I would really appreciate it, I know there are a lot of b5 fans out there that would love this

ALL CALL FOR ALL THOSE OUT THERE, we need to make this

Need help with the 3D graphics animation, take a look at this thread for more details https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305381

I can try to assist in anything being done.  I can't do 3d renders, but I can do imaging.

1.  The four major races - Earth Alliance, Minbari, Narn, Centauri

2.  Three capital ships per faction, and it'd be easy to 'make up' some smaller ships.

3.  Earth Alliance ships should be the ones used after the Minbari conflict, but before they began using shadow technology.

4.  In my opinion, capital ships are slower, less maneuverable, but powerful.  Smaller ships, such as the narn heavy  assualt crafts, or whitestars, need to be fast and maneuvarable - if there is a way to make ships move during combat, that'd be amazing, but for now they can't >.<

Also, it was suggested by some people that the Shadow's should act as "pirates" - but randomly attack.

lol i am real sorry but i dont know anything about 3d modeling, the only thing i know if text numbers and words(in other words data entry) how many of the models have been completed for the rest though? is the on thing ur stuck on is that ship? how about weapon fx, u sticking with cannon considering most of them look like b5 weapons fire? by the way i agree with the top poster about what to use, this should focus on the era of right before major shaddow war and the civil war, that way we can do the narn cent war, except for the part about the shaddows, they shouldnt randomly attack because certain people made deals with the shaddows, so the bounty system could emulate this very well

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 polygons for ship hull and pylons, paticluarly around the engine (PASS, models in excess of 20,000 polys will work though haven't been properly play tested)

- It has a hanger bay and atleast one wing of fighters (UNKNOWN, good chance of success though)

- It is big and therefore requires detail to pull off, so it tests your ability to do things like bump maps it is also why the Omega (amoungst other models including some in vanilla SoaSE) need a proper turret animation. Not doing it would be a bit like having a racing game where the wheels don't turn. (FAIL, no working method of turret animation yet)

There is a hint of hope coming with Entrenchment though, the Devs/model designers have seen fit to add a flak defense gun to the hanger defense structures. Now given one of the arguements banded around for not including animated turrets in SoaSE to date was that ships don't move in combat... well of course fighters do move in combat so unless they have added four flak guns to the hanger defense structure then the gun is going to have to move and point at its target. Also because the Starbase models are that much larger again it becomes very noticable when they behave like static objects, others have commented on this but most importantly the designers themselves will have been the first to point it out.

For my own, personal amusement...I'd love to see the Victory Class destroyer in place for me to use.  I've become bored of waiting. 

Any idea when this Mod will be ready to play?

Hard to say really, I don't seem to be making much progress against some issues considered to be show stoppers.

I'll reassess matters after Entrenchment is released, there are some nice additions with Entrenchment I am hoping the Devs have held back some surprise features which enhance the features of the vanilla game.

[quote]There is a hint of hope coming with Entrenchment though, the Devs/model designers have seen fit to add a flak defense gun to the hanger defense structures. Now given one of the arguements banded around for not including animated turrets in SoaSE to date was that ships don't move in combat... well of course fighters do move in combat so unless they have added four flak guns to the hanger defense structure then the gun is going to have to move and point at its target.quote]

I hate to be the one to kill that hope, but that is not the case in Entrenchment... The hanger actually has 6 flak guns, in a position like this: <^>, with another structure like that on the other side, so you get one gun facing right, one left, 2 forwards and 2 backwards. Sadly, they do not rotate. I'd post a picture, but I can't get the stupid thing to work. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news....

On another note, I', trying to create a nice jumppoint effect for sins but are having troubles getting a decent 3D versions of the jumppoint to work. I can't seem to find a way to create a 3D cone grow and shrink. I tried using particle forge and build one up from small elements, it gets close but can't get it to shrink back down, grows to slowly and requires many particles per sec. I don't see how I can use a mesh too, how would the vortex grow and shrink? I can use a flat image/disk for the vortex and that works fine but it's not 3D.

I put it out there as a challange, can anyone create a hyperspace entry/exit effect that looks good, is 3D and doesn't take up tp many syste recources?

I know that I am not the only one intersted in getting this mod to leap forward now with the release of Entrenchment.

Modders Unite!

BUMP for the greater good.

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, what is everyone else doing to help?

Just a bump to keep this in the limelight.

I got to page 3 and after seeing people fail all over themselves trying to remember the B5 story I skipped to the end, nice that people havegotten around to actually making the mod

Happens to be a coincidence that I torrented the entire B5 series recently and have just started season 4 and see this, it'd be nice to recreate or modify some of the B5 universe

just have to ask, where is this mod at.

Hi TFL BigBANGtheory,

I think all is there to make a good B5 mod for Sin's with Entrenchment. All that is needed is to let the moving turrets obsession go. It will NEVER happen with a game of the scale of sins, you would need a small supercomputer cluster to run such a large scale game with 1,000 of moving turrets. Let it stay were it belongs in smaller scale games like Homeworld. Maybe one day with quantum computers it may be feasible.

The emitters, lights issue can be got around with making many lights not particle effects but simply self illuminated parts of the mesh texture with bloom. Also poly counts will have to be kept lower than 5k to make it playable for the bulk of users systems. One just makes it look better with high resolution meshes. Much of the time a player is zoomed out anyway, so its not that much of an issue.

More importantly is the music, sfx, weapons effects,  research and abilities each ship will have, So one has the immersive B5 experience.

So what is needed now is people to create sin B5 ship models with the mesh points added for later effects and weapons. So who’s willing to jump in and start creating <5k models with the textures and mesh points? Who’s willing to come up and do the research tree and abilities for ships that’s fits with the B5 world?

In the politest possible terms, you sir don't know what you are talking about with respect to how model animation works, the scale on how to apply it and the demmands on hardware resources. Needs a super computer? Complete and utter  with flies on top.

If others want to get cracking on with <5K tri-poly meshes, DDS textures to work around the flair point limitations please do so and show your results, at the end of the day individual models can always be replaced.

I'll keep discussions on animation to other threads from now on so as not to distract others progressing.

He may have been exagerating, but I can only run entrenchment on medium graphics, I would rather be able to run it than have it be pristine perfect.

Imagine now, just giving yourself permission TFL to being fully emersed in a B5 Sin's mod, the intense music, the cries of shadow attack vessels, the classic sound of starfury weapons, huge Omega destroys passing by, beam weapons pulsing and bursting everywhere, ripping through the chaos of battle - worrying, thinking can I hold this point - is the battle for Xanus Prime lost! Now, who missed the moving turrets in all that excitement? What extra 100's of gamers pc's could enjoy this because it was kept within Ironclads design parameters?

Also in a recept interview (http://www.crispygamer.com/columns/2009-03-10/rush-boom-turtle-sins-of-a-sins-developer-5.aspx)  Blair from Ironclad games said there was no way moving turrets/meshes are going in and it was a silly idea from a design perspective for this type of game. It would take the mod away from too many sin's players.

“Fraser: Totally. You named a great example and a bad example, and I'll explain why. In terms of turrets, a lot of people coming from Nexus or Homeworld expect that level of detail. But given what we were trying to simulate, and the system specs we were trying to hit, turrets doing that just didn't make any sense, especially at the scale we're doing it. It was absolutely silly. Waste of our resources, waste of the CPU's resources.”

I don't think I was exagerating.

Maybe B5 is now too old for enough people to get behind a sins mod? The people from that era now have young families and busy jobs? far enough I guess.

I may do a B5 mod, once I get some more cash from the government’s stimulus package. I plan to hire a team of young game developers from the local gaming/computer animation training college. All working hard, full time for money, I think it could be done in a month or two. Like many things in life it only gets done if you throw money at it.