WC4 Mod For Homeworld 2 In The Works (June 5, 2006)

[Deathsnake]

That site used pics from here.

The Snakeir is Klav's model

 

[L.I.F.]

Ladies and gentlement, I present you the ultimate proof that Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka, Heir to the Throne of Kilrah, is a damn pussy with a lot to compensate:

Dubav Captain: "I feel kinda inadequate, now."

Transport Skipper (the captain, not the missile): "Dammit, someone get that guy a girlfriend..."

 

[L.I.F.]

And I'm being told that we have confirmation: Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn also has quite a lot to compensate:

Hobbes: "You know, Christopher, I think I just understood right now why our two species are at war..."

Blair: "Yep. We should have gotten these two idiots a girlfriend decades ago." *sighs*

 

[Deathsnake]

Maybe help is soon there:

LC4Hunter from the HLP Forum made a Saga Style Vesuvius but the model is not done yet. He uses the Textures, and stuff from Scooby to match with Saga ones. Maybe we can help each other out to make also the Black Lance Transporter and Carrier Saga ready and in the same way - for your mod. Here is the pic: (size too small)

 

[L.I.F.]

Maybe help is soon there:

LC4Hunter from the HLP Forum made a Saga Style Vesuvius but the model is not done yet. He uses the Textures, and stuff from Scooby to match with Saga ones. Maybe we can help each other out to make also the Black Lance Transporter and Carrier Saga ready and in the same way - for your mod. Here is the pic: (size too small)

That would indeed be awesome. Thanks! Keep in mind, though, that there would still be some time before the Vesuvius and other BL/BW units get updated.

Also, penny for your thoughts, everyone, about how to buff the poor Border Worlders in the final version of the mod and make them a valid faction to play. I intend to add a menu option to force a game to take place in an era or another, though there would be one "free for all" with everyone authorized. Anyway, one of the ideas was to give Border Worlders access to some light Kilrathi units as Melek reluctantly sides with the Heart of the Tiger, so stuff like corvettes and frigates, but it would be hard picturing a "super-unit" like the other factions will receive. Maybe some bigger advantage in ressource or some non-conventional buffs, but I'm not sure what... oooooooh, just got an idea while writing this post: a sneak capture unit. A specially modified Avenger bomber with cloak and a capture function, or some way to neutralize defences remotely, like the vanilla game capture units neutralize weaponry on the target ship after some time...

 

[L.I.F.]

Small update, 2.1: the Kilrathi heavy carrier model is fixed from its buggy textures and the Kilrathi faction should have working AI now. And for those with the extraction tools, the Lexington, Hvar'Kann and Behemoth models are hidden in the files for playing with and other tinkering.

 

[ChrisReid]

Also, penny for your thoughts, everyone, about how to buff the poor Border Worlders in the final version of the mod and make them a valid faction to play. I intend to add a menu option to force a game to take place in an era or another, though there would be one "free for all" with everyone authorized. Anyway, one of the ideas was to give Border Worlders access to some light Kilrathi units as Melek reluctantly sides with the Heart of the Tiger, so stuff like corvettes and frigates, but it would be hard picturing a "super-unit" like the other factions will receive. Maybe some bigger advantage in ressource or some non-conventional buffs, but I'm not sure what... oooooooh, just got an idea while writing this post: a sneak capture unit. A specially modified Avenger bomber with cloak and a capture function, or some way to neutralize defences remotely, like the vanilla game capture units neutralize weaponry on the target ship after some time...

Yeah, I think the way to think about this is the same as the game/book do. Take inspiration from the scrappy stuff we see in WC4: highly capable marine contingent, very good at scrapping together special weapons like the stormfire/coneburst, takes advantage of leech technology to steal things like the mace/bearcat, potentially has access to Dragons/flashpak, ships keep functioning long after a capship's bridge is destroyed or they otherwise sustain critical damage, potentially has access to local reinforcements/homeguard units, potentially able to make Confed people defect to their side, etc.

 

[L.I.F.]

Yeah, I think the way to think about this is the same as the game/book do. Take inspiration from the scrappy stuff we see in WC4: highly capable marine contingent, very good at scrapping together special weapons like the stormfire/coneburst, takes advantage of leech technology to steal things like the mace/bearcat, potentially has access to Dragons/flashpak, ships keep functioning long after a capship's bridge is destroyed or they otherwise sustain critical damage, potentially has access to local reinforcements/homeguard units, potentially able to make Confed people defect to their side, etc.

Well, as long as we don't get sent the Marines from Wing Commander 4.123106, of course...

Though they did make an impression on the Kilrathi Marines.

 

[L.I.F.]

OK, as you noticed, the turrets were kinda ugly on the Kilrathi ships as I used placeholders. So after I started replacing them by the Wing Commander Saga actual turrets, I realized something would make me save a lot of time... Individual, targetable turrets. So for the next version, I'll have every Kilrathi ship from the corvette onwards having turrets fighter crafts can attack and temporarly disable. Going to save me a lot of time for the ship editing, a lot of space for the ship models themselves and be much closer to the original games.

Let's get some Arrows on a Wild Weasel mission!

 

[L.I.F.]

@Klavs81: a small question for you, Klavs. Our team is interested into importing your Shiraak carrier from Armada, but the high definition model is too large for import into the ship editor. With the Saga models, I have a workaround allowing me to get them ingame, by slicing the model into several submodels by removing sub-elements of the main mesh. However, when I opened the Shiraak with Blender, there was only two sub-elements: the hangar and the main hull, with the latter being much larger than the face limit. Do you have any tip or software suggestion for me to break the model in several parts without losing the texture mapping? Thanks!

 

[L.I.F.]

The Dreadnaught is... magnificent. 52 turrets, hours of work to get them all done, and one hell of a fireworks show when it fires at the enemy:

Though, given the size of the ship, its death animation was kinda lacking as it went boom and just disappeared. So I added a new feature for the Kilrathi faction, to be released in the next update: wrecks for capital ships. Here's what remains of a combat group after someone let a kitten play with the self-destruct buttons:

In addition, the jamming frigate will be available too in the 2.5 update. With the turrets, the stuff indicated here will make the most visible updates. I'll try to get on the balancing of stats too for that release, as I've been pointed out by the team that there are quite the problems there, especially WRT fighters.


Though, from what I've seen of my first deployment of the Dread... you will need that damn Behemoth, or an endless stream of bombers with meatshields around, because the firepower thrown around by that monster is damn impressive. And its price will be just as much.

 

[Dundradal]

Awesome!

I can't wait to jump into this!!!

 

[L.I.F.]

Awesome!

I can't wait to jump into this!!!

Well, there's a bit more to do yet. I still need to add icons for the two new ships and the turrets, to integrate the ships in the build and research list and to finish the Hvar'Kann, which only has the weapons properly defined (I need to set up its subsystems, engine positions and docking paths).

 

[L.I.F.]

The 2.4 version is being uploaded right now. It's 2.4 and not 2.5, though, because I haven't updated the voices for Kilrathi fighters and ships. I hope you'll enjoy anyway!

 

[L.I.F.]

Quick update after the biggie from yesterday:

- Addition of a scout variant to the transport, which can deploy laser platforms and jump buoys,
- Kilrathi ships now unable to jump on their own, require jump buoys to do so,
- Corvettes to capital ships buffed in firepower, frigate buffed in resistance, corvettes and frigates buffed in price.

 

[L.I.F.]

New update that should be posted this week-end: upgrades.

The Kilrathi faction will now have a full set of upgrades for its fleet, with two types of upgrades, either for the entire category of crafts (all capital ships, for example) or for a single class. The thing is, each class will be further specialized by its upgrades.

For example, let's take the capital ships:

You will be able to buff the damage and the HP of all your capital ships through global research projects, but the light destroyer will have specialized projects to increase its speed. The heavy destroyer will improve its accuracy, the light cruiser will have first some line of sight upgrade, then anti-stealth detectors, while the heavy cruiser will get regen rate improvements. The Dreadnought, I hear some people ask? Well, it will have a massive and very expensive redesign upgrade that will give it an internal copy of the Kilrah Imperial Palace to make sure our favourite Princeling never feels away from home... and does nothing to the combat capabilities.

Also, all ships equipped with long-range missile launchers will now require an upgrade to be able to fire them, with a different upgrade for each class. So, your heavy destroyer will be influenced by the following projects:

- Global Capship Project 1 (health)
- Global Capship Project 2 (damage)
- Specialized Capship Project (accuracy)
- Specialized Weapon Project (heavy destroyer missile launcher)

Edit: uploading the 2.42 version right now. Enjoy!

 

[L.I.F.]

Apologies for your bandwith, all. The new update will be more than 200 MB, given that I updated, well, all the textures, to improve the visuals, to have reflection and proper glow on the ships, fixing also a few issues that bothered me since the beginning, like the Bhantkara's hangar.

Anyway, enjoy a pair of quick updates too, with a new intro video at the game launch, and now the AMG blasts will look properly awesome.

Edit: OK, so according to comments, the video doesn't show up, which is really weird. When I have it in the Data folder and launch the mod with the Steam version, it shows up well, but when the original video isn't there, it doesn't anymore. Argh! X_X

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

This looks really impressive! I'd dreamed of playing the Kilrathi against Confed when playing the Homeworld 2 mod years ago. Does your Mod require any game other than Homeworld 2? I saw it says "Homeworld Remastered" and it's generally called a Homeworld mod and not a Homeworld 2 mod, so I wasn't sure if I'd have to buy the "Homeworld Remastered" game or if I could go ahead and download it, then play with the Homeworld 2 game I own.

 

[L.I.F.]

This looks really impressive! I'd dreamed of playing the Kilrathi against Confed when playing the Homeworld 2 mod years ago. Does your Mod require any game other than Homeworld 2? I saw it says "Homeworld Remastered" and it's generally called a Homeworld mod and not a Homeworld 2 mod, so I wasn't sure if I'd have to buy the "Homeworld Remastered" game or if I could go ahead and download it, then play with the Homeworld 2 game I own.

There are pretty much two versions of the mod: the original one, available on the CIC, which you seem to already have, and the current one, which indeed needs Remastered. Depending on the kind of work that would be needed, I will try to see later on if I can make a HW2 Vanilla version of the mod with all the updates, but in any case, it is doubtful it would come before several months at least, as I would make the retro-conversion for the finished mod rather than for each sub-version.

Oh, and a BIG advantage with Remastered is that you can play multi with the mod if you want! I've done a carrier battle online with both sides Confed, and it was glorious!

Current status update for the mod:

- musics are working in the menu and ingame*
- fuel management** is available for the Kilrathi faction
- integration of the Kilrathi Supply Station, that will act as a shipyard to give new fabrication lines for the Cats.

* the music stuff is one of the reasons doing a lot of retro-conversions would be painful, because Gearbox, in its great wisdom [/sarcasm], has decided to change the way ingame musics are managed, which took me a while to get.

** same thing here, Gearbox set up some rough fuel system to copy the mechanisms from Homeworld 1, but it's barebone at best, and I am not sure at all if it can be ported easily on HW2.


Oh, and spoiler for the new category of units for the mod, the Space Cavalry:

Spoiler

Don't worry, it'll remain a hidden Easter Egg. ^^

Edit:


And a sneak peek at the jump from low resolution to high resolution:

The Ferret light fighter:

And the 'Bow:

 

[L.I.F.]

Hem, public service announcement here: I loathe your graphic cards and I want them to self-ignite with the fury of a flashpak. I present you the refurbished Confed HQ for the upcoming 3.0 version. It weights a wooping 155 MB and is, by itself, bigger than most mods for the game.

I might have to increase its size a bit to fit the canon that carriers fit in these hangars.

Edit:

The Jutland is now coming in:

Edit 2:

So, the Jutland is now configured as a battlecarrier. With 11 laser turrets, 2 missile turrets, 2 antimatter turrets and 4 short-range light torpedo tubes, it is definitely a beast you do NOT want to see coming your way, as it can take on a heavy destroyer and win handily if it gets in range of its torpedo tubes. It will take a bit more time to build fighters and bombers, due to the weaponry, but it's a ship that changes the paradigm for carriers: you need some heavy firepower to take it out, not just a destroyer breaking through the lines to take out the defenceless flattop:

The Eagle escort carrier: cheap, fast, unable to build bombers. Eleven laser turrets, two missile turrets.