Read post #1447

any beta testers need yet?

im a good beta tester ,im also a REALLY good coder.

Ok, time to bring everyone up to speed.

To just cut to the point, the whole project ran into a major brick wall a while ago when I realized just how the Sins engine works and what kind of memory management it has. Chalk that up to my own inexperience since I was daft enough to assume that a seamless transition engine would have some sort of a memory manager which loaded and unloaded stuff as it was required (I know this can be done, but alas it was not the case with Sins).

This in short means that the mod, when fully loaded, is very inclined to simply crash the game, especially if you run it with all expansions loaded as well. That I was very liberal with texture sizes did not help either. So, I was faced with one of the worst things you can face when working on something for a long time - that I was, simply put, doing it wrong. Most of the models were textured in such a way that it is is not possible to reduce their memory footprint without making them look like something out a 90's game.

What to do, what to do.

Well, right now I am working furiously (and I mean that in the full sense of the word) to redesign the mod so that it:

• is in line with the excellent Optimization Project
• works better and looks even better
• retains the Awesomeness Factor™ 

This means I have to rework most of the models, unfortunately - fortunately however, I have gotten a lot better at it since the early days and can crank out a fully furnished model in four hours or so. Last week, I have already redone all of the frigates. I hope to be done with all of the ships by the end of this year. Modules should take a week or two more. The effects also need optimizing, but that should be a minor issue. No Sins game is complete without a set of BailKnight's Effects in my opinion!

Another major change is that, in light of the above revelations I have decided to curb my enthusiasm and limit this mod to just ONE race, the Xin. Recent news about the new memory model being in the works for Sins is great, but I won't make any plans for the Remnant and the Hegemony until I see that model in action so I can be sure it can all fit in nicely without making Sins implode.

With these major changes in mind, I will be opening a new topic soon, with a new project name, because in a way that's what it is. I've learned a lot during these years, gone from total n00bie to semi-pro, had tons of fun and want to especially thank each and every one of you who showed support for the project.

The saga continues. I have to get this out before Duke Nukem Forever...

Ok ill say to my self that this is better than nothing

will the xin ships still look basicly the same?

Better. Still organic shapes, only now the focus is on looking alien, not looking necessarily like (Earth) aquatic creatures. The basic premise is the same, flowing, smooth hulls, organic and non-organic components, only the non organic hulls don't look like metallic hulls, more like carapaces. 

I also removed some discontinuity, for example the frigates now look like they've been actually designed by the same race as the cruisers and capitals. Also, the textures are smaller overall, but the detail is better (which just goes to say what a mess some of those models have been).

There will be plenty of screenshots and ingame action movies soon, since I'll be doing updates by batches (coming first are combat frigs) instead of individual ships.

*drools* OOOOOOH, CONTENT. SHIIIIIIIINNNEEEEEY!!!!1!1!111!!1!!!!

A taste of things to come...

As my TEC defenders would say ... "There's too many of them!!!" as the sounds of gunfire and battles rage on.

ManSh00ter, this is awesome.

I prefer the older Xin aesthetic with the smoother, flatter lines.

*drools*

I agree that the older aesthetic looked REALLY good. But the new look is also pretty good and really goes with the background of their race.

In a way, it's almost like the aesthetic of the 3 major factions of an open-source space game, Vega Strike. You have the assembled ships of the Humans, the grown ships of the Rlaan, and the molded ships of the Aera.

So instead of the semi-molded/semi-grown look, ManSh00ter's going with a heavier emphasis on the "grown" aspect.

Well, from my understanding, Xin ships are all grown, molded, and assembled as part of the construction process.  When it comes right down to it though, I just feel the older designs are more menacing than some bulging space anglerfish thing.

Yeah, but he might also be going for the "Eeeeww, that's unnatural" factor. But meh, it doesn't matter right now. We'll see how it turns out when he's finished.

Heh, bulging space anglerfish. I like that.  

But in the defence of the little guys, they're scouts - basically flying eye pods, see?

No eyelids too. They can stare at your fleets all day long. 

As for menacing, I humbly submit the blueprints for the Assault Drone:

So don't be too hard on the little scout. Their job is to watch, not fight.

On a more serious note: 

The Xin grow their ships. Its in the lore. Also, if in the future I do decide to work on the Hegemony, their design aesthetic always was - also - smooth flowing lines, because their high tech ships are more of an work of art than engineering.

This of course would mean that if the Xin were left as they were I would be doing the same old with a new color scheme basically. Besides, I want the Xin to be more alien. Some of their creatures and ships may look beautiful and elegant, some ugly and repulsive, but the main guideline is *different*.

So... no visible engines. The Xin are masters of exotic physics and their ships use gravitational tidal waves to move across space. No gun turrets. Xin ships are alive, and their weapons are a part of them, not grafted on them. No metal hulls. Instead, coral-like carapace is grown across their skin. And so on.

Wow. Just, wow. That's pretty creepy/awesome, a "flying eye pod". But I think that you've definitely got something with the idea.

Though I personally would say, for the bigger ships (like the capitals), have a slightly metallic look; after all, I'm sure that the Xin would enhance the coral-carapace with some metallic compounds for superior resilience. And with the Xin being super-advanced (I like the "surf on gravity waves" bit), it would make sense, no?

I really like how it's going so far. BTW, in the OP in-game screens, what's going to happen to the Impaler Drone? Is it still in? (I really like the Impaler Drone).

Also, do you happen to still have the old models&textures? Mostly I'm just curious as to the fate of the originals.

As fate would have it, all the old models are currently locked away on a hard drive of a machine whose OS gave up the ghost. Fortunately it's a backup hard drive, so the data is safe. Just can't get to it right now.

The bigger ships will of course have a lot more going on on the hull than the drones. The coral hulls themselves do not look that different from what the old Xin have, still grey-white surfaces with a slight metallic sheen to it, only now those surfaces look like they've grown out of the skin, not like they have been grafted on.

The Impaler is being replaced by the Assault Drone (the blueprint above). It just doesn't fit with the art direction of the rest of the race. It never did, in fact, although it does look cool. I may reuse it in the future for something else.

Well, it's nice to know that the models are still in existence. I can certainly get that the Impaler didn't fit with the rest of the Xin (though I thought it looked pretty fitting next to the Overlord).

Hmm, have you heard about the Sins modding wiki? They've actually started a ship archive; they'd probably be pretty down with having the old Xin models donated to the wiki.

i KNOW that i would

If I manage to recover them, I'll definitely think about it.

hey Mansh00ter,if you make the other two races also,can you make the hegemony next instead of the clans remnant? i want to see some high tech pwnage!

also what weapons will the xin use?

He's already stated that IF he's going to make them, he's waiting for the rumored performance patch to be released and (likely) after all the improvements it has have been revealed.

I can understand if ManShOOter doesn't want to make them now... But it would be possible to make them as separate mods. If it's done right very little work would be required to combine them. I try to keep what I can split by race, like brush files. I then use template files for most of the combined stuff so I edit the template for the race and then merge with some custom ant tasks I wrote to combine the common files (i.e. sounddata files, etc). Just a thought.

Xin will use mostly plasma and bioengineered weapons. For example, the Assault Drone spits a superhot gob of plasma, the long range variant uses a similar weapon, only more powerful. One of the weapons the Xin use is a sort of a living missile which latches onto the victim and literally burns itself out trying to chew through the hull (if I manage to pull off the weapon effect for that one right, its gonna look awesome). 

I do keep separate resource files, and the new workflow relies heavily on custom made texture patterns I use in ZBrush, but there will be very little mixing of art assets between races if I do decide to make more. Reason being the Hegemony has a totally different look.

If I do make them, they will be compatible, of course, and you will be able to play with both enabled.

I really want the Remnant and their swarms of fragile ships with big guns.  I think they'll be a nice counterpart to the low-numbers/high-health Xin.