To Demo, regarding the next HTL release.

[Thunderchild]

Hey, Demo. Can I ask you a couple questions about the final release?


1) Will the thrusters be fixed? Like..on a StarFury, for example, the thrusters don't fire in sequence. If you want to roll port, the port dorsal pylon thruster should fire, the starboard ventral should fire..Instead, both dorsal thrusters fire. It'd be 1,000 times better if they fired realistically. [:)]

2) Will the Whitestar be fixed? Firing rates, and fighter support? (Whitestar carries 4 Nials)

3) Will the issue with fighters crashing into your ship during retrieval be fixed? Lol..Out of a thousand fighters launched, I think I've had one successfully recovered.

4) Does SS support engine sounds? The stock 'Afterburn' sound is kind of bland..It'd be great to get some ship-specific engine sounds.

5) What other ships will be inplimented? Is there a shiplist we can see?

[&o] Anyway, I'm glad to hear the final release is inbound soon. Can't wait.

[DamoclesX]

Bin'Van
Bin'Kan
Bin'Tac
Bin'Debona
Gquon
Gquonth
G'Lan
G'tal
G'laud
Ronathon
Rongoth
Gtorth
Glorth
Bin'Nic
Sar'Nic
Var'Nic
Gkarith
Glarnath
Gvald
DagKarith
DagKar
Octorious
Octorion
Emperor
Sectorion
Primus
Balvorus
Balvarin
Corvan
Corvanic
Corlonis
StarBase
Name
Necromancer
Sorcerer
Warlock
Supernova
Nova
PoseidonAdv
Poseidon
Omega-X
OmegaAlpha
Omega
OmegaINT
Mercy
Lexington
Coventry
Exeter
MidWinter
Hyperion
Angis
VegaStrike
Vega
Hades
Olympus
OrionStation
BlackHand
BattleDestroyer
AssaultDestroyer
Striker
Reaper
BattleWagon
EscortWagon
Station
Tinashi
Tinarlshi
Tigara
Graendial
Leshath

Frazi
FraziHV
FraziSR
TorethLT
TorethINT
TorethLRSR
MKosHF
Freighter
Starliner
CrewShuttle
Shuttle
CargoTrans
CargoEmpty
FuelTrans
SA-23E
Zephyr
Arrow
LightShadow
MediumShadow
StrikeShadow
Sentri
Rutarian
Cargo
WhiteStar
Nial
Narish

Real thrusters are in, nothing on sounds, I know how to change the compass(guy told me) nothing on other graphics yet

doing small releases, probably 5-10 ships a pack, that way they are smaller, easyer to download, allow people to test them out, and allow me to fix any major errors before moving onto the next 5 ships or so

there will be a system releae holding all the weapons /sounds
a mission release, both dated and uncompressed
and a aced music release when I get the change
then a ship release
each of tehse is a dat file you will load up and build upon each other

no eta yet, it depends on when I get my new computer, and I just found out my keyboard is on backorder:( and the stuff JUST shipped yesterday from bc...

[Thunderchild]

Heh. I understand that one completely. My laptop (Barely a year old. Got it in August last year) is screwing up. One of the memory slots went bad, leaving me with only 256. The slot itself went bad, not the memory. And now it lost a speaker last night...

Once everything is done, will there be one big release?

No other Shadow or Vorlon ships? No Sharlin? [:(]

[DamoclesX]

shadow and vorlosn ships unbalance the game to much

no sharlin, I never got around to doing one, I thought there was one in the htl 301 but I guess I was wrong

I"m not adding more ships into this release.

This release is more a toy release to give people something to do/build missions with

Once the first part is out and working i"m going to start on our main mod, that is going to be the Dilgar war, for this one we are changing a lot more then the ships, interface changes, sounds(engins and so one) hud, and adding dynamic campaigns.. so thats going to take a long time

i"m hoping that people will take this release here, and build their own missions and stuff and have fun / offer advice for our dilgar war mod,
also the models in a dilgar war mod will blow anything away you have seen from us so far:)

[Thunderchild]

Aww. It's just not the same without a Sharlin. The Tinashi's just a cute little frigate..It's not the same without being able to blow stuff in half with the baddest ship of the younger races. [;)]

But I understand if you don't want to do any more modeling for this particular release. I can understand that 100%.

[DamoclesX]

ya,

well I had to do a LOT of mass modeling, so i"m not happy with the quality of any of these ships, some like the gquon and hyperion are decent, but even they are a shadow of what I could put out if I had more thne 2 hours per ship, breaking textures down to multiple files and such to maximize the sizes and all that good stuff

on the downside.. I suggest people upgrade:) while I wont be using 2048 textures for ships -ever-(total waste of texture memory) I"m going ot be pushing 3-4 1024 maps for most of the capital ships(right now its one)
you just cant get good resolution by using one map, everything is to constructed

on another front, lol, I found a way to "fake" specular maps... but it doubles the polycount of ships.. so I doubt I will be using it, I have one more way I'm goign to try, by using secondary textures / primary textures and transparency.. but I could be a poly killer two.. I"ll post if I ever get something working right

[Thunderchild]

2 hours per ship? You are a god. [&o]

But really. That's amazing. And I think they all look fantastic. I honestly don't know how you do it.

[DamoclesX]

they look okay, and do the job, i've been at this for a while.. but they can be a -lot- better

check out the gquon, hyperion, and starfury for the general idea.. just remove the generic hull plates

I hate b5 textures.... they are really cheep, they took generic panels, added grime to EVERY level, and just mapped them then colored them.... are we suppose to belive that at EVERY hull intersection there is massive leakadge... not to mention it leaks like the ship is in gravity... sigh.. lol

the dilgar war ships.. for all sides.. will have textures I built totaly from scratch.. so dont expect a cannon look.. the ships will be the same design.. but its time to change the textures to more then just coloring one hull pattern

I think the thunderbolt is the only ship that uses a real textures setup
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/b5/tblt_tp.jpg

thats the direction I"m going to go with these ships, and avoid this

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/b5/furydet5.jpg

those are both from the show

that starfury... man... somebody should have been fired over that

[Thunderchild]

Lol. Yeah. That Starfury is kind of cheesy. But damn that Thunderbolt looks gorgeous.

I was just thinking why I liked EA designs so much..They look Earth-like. No frills, down to business gun platforms..No curved lines, no graceful bends or shapes, just big, boxy ships designed to carry lots of guns and take lots of hits. I think the Hyperion is the only real exception, and I love it's midships and rear architecture. It's one of the coolest designs in sci-fi history. It LOOKS like something we'd send into space in the not-too-distant future.

Dilgar war ships..Should I expect to see ships like the Artemis, Olympus and early versions of the Hyperion? The Dilgar war was one of those eras I never really put much study into.