Babylon 5 Mod

[Val]

The Hyach shipset is great!! Excellent job!! How long did it take (roughly)?

[zircher]

"The Hyach shipset is great!! Excellent job!! How long did it take (roughly)?"

Thanks, always good to get an outside opinion.

Looking at the date/time stamps, it took four days. Figure about 20 hours to do the models and another 4 or so to render/assemble all the images in the right sizes and mask test them.

That's the outside estimate, being married with children cuts into any project with all the little distractions. :-) You can easily build a set over the course of a weekend since one model 'evolves' from the next, much faster than building 30 unrelated models.

DoGA CGA is really good for quick modelling and Lesson 3 (L3) in the series is really good with textures and materials. I'm tempted to make a 1024x768 glory shot of the fleet to show off the details that are missing from the portraits and icons.
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TAZ

[Val]

That's heartening to hear that it would only take about a weekend, though with my 3D modeling ability I might be able to stretch that into the better part of a month

I've been continuing work on our Mod – adding ShipSets y’all have worked up (including the Hyach), Ramsie’s Intro pic and edited data files (listed below).

Here’s what I have for history so far:

1.49.06 - Added Hyach ShipSet

1.49.05 - Added new EmperorNames, EmperorTitles, DefaultColonyTypes, DefaultDesignTypes, EmpireNames. Editted CompEnhancement.txt to give Weapon Platforms and Satellites greater ranges and added several new mounts. Changed VehicleSize.txt to meet new ShipSet standards. Editted TechArea.txt to accomodate editted VehicleSize.txt file. Working on Breaching Pods and Shuttles (Cargo and Boarding Parties for Fighter class ships).

1.49.04 - Fixed some discrepancies in EmpireNames.txt and EmpireType.txt files. Editted EmperorTitles.txt and EmperorNames.txt. Put in updated Vorlon shipset. Added Culture Mod (by Joe Skarupinski, Jourin. v.1.0) to Mod for more balanced cultures.

1.49.03 - Editted Settings.txt : Changed Maximum Number of Systems to 200, Maximum Trade to 40, Nuber of Quick Start Styles to 7. Added in title screen for B5 Project. Still need to change Lose.bmp, HumnDead.bmp, Victory.bmp and add additional races to quick start styles.

1.49.02 - Added a Babylon 5 map. Changed the SystemNames.txt file to have all B5 systems found on Babylon 5 map. Editted EmpireTypes.txt and EmpireNames.txt to include all the B5 empires.

1.49.01 - Compiled all currently available B5 races into a single zip.

A few notes on the above: though the VehicleSize.txt file has been updated to include the full range of ships talked about in the Variant Hull thread, as of yet we don’t have any specific artwork for these new sizes. So, for the time being the file uses duplicate pics for the various classes and there is a second file called VehicleSize2.txt that is ready to roll once we have the new pics. Also, Breaching Pods, Shuttles, Assault Shuttles and the Planet Killer are really not all that useful without the tech that will be added to the Components. As of right now I can’t get cargo or boarding parties to work on fighter class ships (and don’t think it’s possible), but I will see if anyone knows how. There is an Excel file in the History folder on the mod that has a comparison of the different ship classes.

I can post this mod in it’s current unfinished state if anyone would like (it’s about 9.5 Megs – or only 1.5 without all the Ship and Intro page Art). It is a working Mod, it just doesn’t have any of the B5 tech or sounds as of yet and I am still plugging away at the map in my spare time.

I also want to take a vote on if we should stick to the standard SE IV ship movement or use the more Newtonian form SJ used in P&N (with his permission) or something else altogether.

[zircher]

"I also want to take a vote on if we should stick to the standard SE IV ship movement or use the more Newtonian form SJ used in P&N (with his permission) or something else altogether."

It it an all or nothing conVersion? In the B5 universe we, see both forms of movement. Older races like the Centauri, Hyach, and Mimbari use gravitic drives (normal SE4 movement) while younger races like the EA use a Newtonian system.

If it is all or nothing, we can always give the older races exceptional movement capabilities to represent gravitic technology.
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TAZ

[ 04 December 2001: Message edited by: zircher ]

[Val]

I believe we can represent that in a couple different ways:

1) As a "racial" ability
2) As a different type of Component drive limited to races with Gravitic drives or such.
3) Adding a list of ships to the VehicleSize.txt file with racial specific requirements. (I want to use this Last way to represent the Drazi Super Heavy Fighters and Vree Ultra Light Fighters.)

I guess the main root of the question is: Do we want bigger ships to need to take up more space for engines?

[thorfrog]

Val,

Your the man. Your doing a great job.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Older races like the Centauri, Hyach, and Mimbari use gravitic drives (normal SE4 movement) while younger races like the EA use a Newtonian system.

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Just because you use a gravitic drive dosen't really mean you're not following the laws of physics.
If you're using a gravity gradient to accelerate your reaction mass, you could perhaps get better fuel efficiency and higher thrust per KT of engine, but you'd still need thrust to accelerate.
Any ship that accelerates has to accelerate something else the other way in order to conserve momentum.

The quasi-newtonian propulsion is for systems where a bigger ship needs bigger (or more) engines.
This is the case in B5 even minbari ships, since the engines on thier biggest ships take up about the same fraction of the hull as on their littler ships. We can assume a little bit of "buy in bulk" efficiency improvements, too, so scaled up engines are overall smaller than the pile of smaller engines needed to do the same job.

There are so many advantages to QNP, including a huge variety of useful ship designs (ie. there is a useful design that dosen't max-out on engines ) Slow & powerful, or fast and weak, your choice.

[Val]

Atomannj - Thanks for the compliment, but this Mod wouldn't be going anywhere without everyone who has been helping, especially ShipSet designers such as yourself, Oleg, Ramsie and Zircher.

I'm more inclined to lean towards the Q-N style of engines for many of the reason SJ had mentioned, plus we can easily have Gravitic engines (and the Shadows form of propulsion) give other bonuses, such as a proportionally higher speed to help represent the agility of a whitestar over a Hyperion.

Also, is anyone interested in working up an AI for the Hyach? Anyone interested in rounding out a Drazi, Vree or Brakiri (or another race altogether) ShipSet? Should we start work on "filling-in" the other ship classes on the existing shipsets (eg: Scouts, Corvettes)?

Thanks!

[tesco samoa]

I would like to place a vote for the Q-N engines.

Looks like a lot of stuff has been done. Looks good. ( I am just amazed at what has happened here with this game, Its like a year end rush )

Later.

[thorfrog]

Sure, sounds good to me.