Star Blazers Mod

[Campeador]

As promess, The Star Blazers Mod is up!
You can find it on the Scenarios and Mods section.
I had some trouble (actually ignorance) trying to post the two files (Data and Music), therefore you will see two posts each with an attachment. At least they are up.
If someone can tell me how to do it right, or more helpfull, If someone can post them more properly I would be grateful!
Thanks, have fun.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yep.

All that's left is to post your links here for easy access:
Data:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=382250
Music:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=382252

[Q]

My congratulations Campeador.

I like your campaign very much. It is something original.
And from my own small experience with creating a new campaign I know that you invested a lot of time and effort.
Thank you very much.

So far I found only 3 small bugs or problems:

First: The fighters have no picture in the spacedock or the ship cargo. They are there and functional but you only have a black square with a blue or green border instead of the true image. In combat you have a real image of the launched fighters.
Second: I don't hear the music you created.
Third: At the end you should at present not give the option to proceed to the next campaign, because there is no second campaign yet and the game will freeze if you select this option.

But once more my congratulation for your excellent work.

[Campeador]

Thanks Q!
About the possibles bugs. The game has 6 folders:
1. Components -that's the icons file for the items and the missing fighters!
2. Data - That contains captains names and ship names in addition to the original ones.
3. Images- all the extra graphics.
4. UI - It will put the StarBlazer logo on the main screen as it starts.
5. Xfiles - StarBlaxers ships x files.
6. Music (second download)- Extra music. Note: I did not create the music, I got it looking all over the net.

Out of all this files "Images" and "XFiles" can remain in the StarBlazers campaign directory. The content of the rest of the files should be placed on the folders of the original game.
For example: Open the Components files I provided, it happens to have only one picture, so dragged to the Components files of the original game folder. When you do that a message on the screen should ask you of you want to replace the original file with this one. Say yes, It is the same as the original except that I added 3 icons on the empty slots of that picture for the fighters!
Do the same with the "UI", "Data", and "Music".
That should solve your first 2 problems.

For your third problem, At the end of the game you have the choice of continue to the next campaign or to do it later. The option is identical to the original game (I think, will have to check). If you chose to continue, and there is no campaign it will crash (which you do not care since the game is over). I can eliminate this option and instead give you the mesage saying that this is the end of the game.
Tha problem with this is that when I make the second campaign you will not be able to continue from the first campaign. Instead I lefted as the original game did.

I hope that this should get you going. You definetly need the music for flavor. It will give you the StarBlazer song as you start the game. Remember that it will ask you to replace one file when you transferet to the original folder, say yes to replace.

Thanks again.

[Campeador]

Suicide Junkie, thank you very much for making the links for me.
I repost them on the Mods/Campaign section again. I also added on the post the same istructions about the folder placements.

[Campeador]

Hello,
I did not realized that there are alot of people that do not know what Star Blazers is (well the TV show came out over 30 years ago). So instead of dooing a poor explanation, I will give you a link for a very good website that will explain all that is Star Blazers.

http://www.desslok.com/yamato.htm

You have to see the TV show series. It was not a little kids show, great story, it was released 3 years before Star Wars. You can order them from various sites, you can even rent them at Blockbuster (online).

[Suicide Junkie]

Campeador said:
Out of all this files "Images" and "XFiles" can remain in the StarBlazers campaign directory. The content of the rest of the files should be placed on the folders of the original game.
For example: Open the Components files I provided, it happens to have only one picture, so dragged to the Components files of the original game folder. When you do that a message on the screen should ask you of you want to replace the original file with this one. Say yes, It is the same as the original except that I added 3 icons on the empty slots of that picture for the fighters!
Do the same with the "UI", "Data", and "Music".
That should solve your first 2 problems.

Don't do that!

Simply move the UI and Components folders inside the starblazers\images folder instead.

---

Been playing.
Quite hard at first, quite easy after the second mission, it seems.

Is the WMG supposed to miss so much?
I managed to hit the first cruiser I met, but haven't hit a thing since.

Story.
Big enemy battleship came up. I was heading it down, waiting for point blank range to fire the cannon. One of its escorts moves to block my shot, and I end up plowing through him. Forward shields are gone. WMG is crushed, 80% damage to the forward cannons. Shield regen down to half. ECM is down. Speed down to 25%. And a battleship plus half its escort attacking from point blank. Whee.

[Campeador]

Suicide Junkie,

"Simply move the UI and Components folders inside the starblazers\images folder instead."

If that works, then it will make all easier. I am not an expert in modding Starfury, actually there are alot of things that I still have not figure out. Whatever errors you guys notice, just keep informing me.

I discover a real bug. Something that I had installed during testing, that I forgot to remove before relesing the mod. Somewere in Pluto sector there is an invisible warp point that will get you into Minerva sector. If that happens to you, just get back to Pluto. I will note it, and will have it fix, but I will wait incase someting else shows up. I do not want to have many versions of the Mod floating around.

About the Wave Motion Gun, I have to do a balance in power in the game. The Yamato is very strong as it is. The WMG was used mainly to take down a base or many ships, not just one smaller ship. The chance of the WMG to hit is as good as any of the other weapons. Most of the ships have weapons in sets of three, and if you noticed sometimes one or two of the three misses to hit, and sometimes all the three miss. The Gamilons have the same components of evesion as the Earth forcess, like ECM (Electromagnetic counter measures that decrease the chance for enemies to target the ship), Combat Sensors, Scanner Jammer, etc. All this components will reduce the chance to hit or being hit. It is a random thing about which components the enemy will have.
I did not want to mess with it. If the WMC hits its target 100% then some players will be firing, running away, waithing for it to charge and firing again, too easy.
In the original story they do not use the WMG unless they are in a really thight situation. So do not relay too much on it. You can still beat the game without it (at least the first part) if you want to, but it is really cool to destroy a starbase or ship in a single blast!

Another issue, is not a bug, it has to do with each computer. In the original game the ships can fire up to 4 weapons at once, depending on the firing arcs. In this mod the big ships can fire up to 11 or 12 weapons simultaneusly (not to mention the explosions), and you can see each beam/torpedo/bolt at the same time (it does look great!) but, that can be alot of "candy" for some PC systems that may not have enogh graphic power or ram, and may crash. So save the game as you start each mission just in case.

The beguining of the game can be a little hard (not a real problem for the Starfury veterans). I did not wanted to start the story with the Yamato. I want the player to try the best that the EDF forcess had before the Yamato. They only had fighters, cruisers, and torpedo destroyers, and all of those were slightly smaller than the Gamilon destroyers! Very unlikely to defeat the Gamilons with those. This way the player can really apreciate the power of the Yamato. As the captain of the Gamilon carrier said "it is not a base but a battleship, the biggest I have ever seen".

As in the original game there is alot of random enemy apearances so every time the scenario will be different, therefore some times it can be easy and others hard. But a good entretainment for at least a couple of hours. The second part will be longer!

[Suicide Junkie]

The trick to the mod folder is to make it look *EXACTLY* like the stock/core/root files.

The path to UI goes Starfury\images\UI, so you place your modded UI in Starfury\campaigns\starblazers\images\UI
The same process applies to just about everything.

--

As to that invisible warppoint, the jump from Minerva to Pluto uses that as its exit point. If you look up the ID number of the minerva exit, you should find the troublemaker.

--

As to the weapon use, I have an idea which may help:
- The reactors and supply look stock. I suggest ripping that out. Instead, give the ship a fixed power generation and maximum capacity.
- The energy capacity can be set to a nice round number such as 1000.
- The generators could provide roughly 200 per second.

Now here's the trick.
- Make the small guns reload in a very short time: 100 milliseconds or so. Set the energy use to a large amount.
- Scale the WMG's energy use to be modestly higher than the reactor's output, but still a significantly lower rate than the small guns.

What should happen, is that the WMG will grab the reactor's output in small chunks.
The small guns will be trying to grab large chunks and since a full chunk won't be available, they will stop reloading entirely.

You will get a big, hearty broadside at first contact with the enemy, and three or four small guns will reload instantly off the charge in your battery.
After that, the battery will slowly charge up to the "big chunk" size, at which point another small gun reloads.
If you fire the WMG, it will use, in "small chunks" all the reactor's input to slowly recharge, and you'll only get three or four small gun shots on battery power.
The battery will keep being drained by the WMG's small chunks, never getting a chance to charge up a whole big chunk. While the WMG is reloading, your small guns will thus not recharge.

I did a quick test, and here are some values that should get you on the right track:
- Reactor generates 500, stores 1000
- Light Shock cannons: Reload rate 75 ms, energy use 1000
- WMG: Reload rate 40000 ms, energy use 20000

The MWG then nibbles out the power as fast as it comes in, while the shock cannons wait until there is a large amount of energy stored up before they take it.
Be sure to adjust the values for game balance.

[Campeador]

I am working on an update for the StarBlazer Mod. There will be no change to the Music part, just the Data (the smalled downoad of the two).

This will solve most of the things that people were comenting about:
1. I will increase the "command points per level" - this means that you get more regeneation points on repair for ship, shields, or whatever the player chooses. (no one mentioned this, but I think that points are too low)
2. I will fix the invisible warp point in Pluto - a bug. (yet, no one has found it as I know, but me).
3. I will add a message to notify the player of the end of the campaign (this will make "Q" happy!)
4. I will fix the firing points, and engine "glow's" on most of the Gamilon ships that are off. ("Captain Kwok" noticed this, thanks)
5.I will have the folders in the right place to make things easier (as Suicide Junkie pointed out).
6. I will eliminate all the unnecesary planet data files from the campaign. (It does not affect the game at all, but lesser unnecesary files will meant a little smaller download).
7. The ambient light and speed is the same as the origial game. The player can adjust that through the keyboard shortcuts, therefore I will not chage them.

All the story of the "Campaign 1" takes place in the solar system. I did not wanted to make all happen in one map so I divided the solar system in sectors. I could not put a sun or star in each one, it would not look right. So most of the light come from the Nebulae. (The system should show only the present solar system planets, and Minerva (which in the story there were suposed to be 11 planets on the "Sol system", one was destroyed by the Gamilons (Minerva), and the story of the other plane is not revealed on this story.)
The speed is as fast (or slow) as the original. I normaly decrease the speed to half while in combat with regular ships. To deal with fighters sometimes I decreased to 1/4 speed. Whatever your preference, all through keyboard (-,+).

Note: when you install patch 1.17, a PDF Manual is included as part of the installation. For those who have lost the manual, all the keyboard short cuts are there.

One final thing, the more comments I made the more great ideas the players come up with. I do not want to keep making changes to the game even thought there are better ways to do the game than my way. I will remember them, will learn from them and maybe will implement them on the next project, but I do want to move on, and do "Campaign 2". I would like to have the second part done by December.

I will have the update done withing the next 2 days.