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

[L.I.F.]

And to finish the week-end, I present you the pride of the Fleet, the Confederation-class dreadnought! Armed with eight antimatter turrets, two missile turrets and twelve laser turrets, this beast would be terrifying on its own... but the name "dreadnought" shall not be uttered in vain, as the Confederation-class can bring to bear eight short-range torpedo tubes and the infamous Phase Transit Cannon. The latter is a devastating long-range weapon able to maul any capital ship in the Kilrathi arsenal. Add to it a large hangar capacity and you soon realize why the Cats fear this ship more than anything else in the Terran fleet.

 

[L.I.F.]

Tonight's update, the backbone of the Confederation Navy, the destroyers and cruisers!

The Southampton-class destroyer is small, but a very nasty escort ship, that will prove its worth as an escort ship against any threat. Its eight laser turrets will keep a healthy fire barrage on any attackers, while its frontal antimatter turret gives it a good punch against isolated corvettes and frigates, but its real value lies in its missile armament: a dorsal Vertical Launch System allows it to fire every minute up to eight medium-range ImageRec missiles on inbound attackers, while the usual light torpedo package will fire every minute a potentially devastating salvo of four light torpedoes at close ranges, making its enemies wary of a destroyer squadron that could easily maneuver to force a torpedo attack on an unsuspecting target.

The Savannah-class strike cruiser is a powerful light cruiser with a predilection for the raider role. It brings to the battle six laser turrets, a pair of missile turrets and three antimatter batteries that are sure to make short work of anything lighter than a cruiser. In addition to that, this cruiser brings the usual complement of short range light torpedo tubes to increase its effectiveness in point-blank battles against Kilrathi warships.

Finally, the Tallahassee-class cruiser brings the heavy firepower to the frontlines, with eight laser turrets for self-protection, four antimatter batteries for heavy combat against enemy warships, the four light torpedo tubes and a spinal plasma cannon for medium range fire against critical targets.

The Confederation expects everyone to do their duty.

 

[Dundradal]

Looks great! The semester is finally winding down so I'll be able to play through HW and HW2 soon! I cannot wait to get to this!

I hope you can add a Hakaga model soon! I'd love to see Eder's flying around!

 

[L.I.F.]

Looks great! The semester is finally winding down so I'll be able to play through HW and HW2 soon! I cannot wait to get to this!

I hope you can add a Hakaga model soon! I'd love to see Eder's flying around!

If we can get his model flying, why not, but that's not in the plans right now. First, gotta get a series of roughly balanced factions to make the game entirely playable, then possibly add some additional stuff here and there.

BTW, I've finally set my sights on what the jammer ship will do in the 4.0 version. In the original mod, it can cloak neighbouring capital ships. Powerful indeed, but not quite as memorable as the Peleus missions. In the remastered version, it will reduce by like 75 to 90% your units' sight over... 40 to 50 km. It will be expensive, fragile and capped to one such unit per player at a time, but it will definitely make your life a whole lot harder and will make recon units and absolute requirement to locate it... and then send a suicide mission to try and strike at the heart of the Dead Zone while Black Lance units are ready to pounce on you.

 

[L.I.F.]

Klavs' very own Bearcat is now ingame, alongside the Victory and the correctly defined Lexington:

The Papillon Project was a dream, given form. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, privateers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers.

Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night.

[Cookie to whoever gets the other reference, not the obvious one]

 

[ravelin]

Was away for a little while, come back to this incredible progress. Truly blown away. Thank you so much for all the time you've invested into this.

 

[ChrisReid]

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.

Hey, I love the greater detail and nuanced design of the new HQ, but the textures seem kind of "dirty." Does anyone else see this? It's not really just this model - a handful of the Saga Confed and Kilrathi assets have a mottled texture that I think is supposed to simulate being well worn, but it I think it comes across as being fuzzy and corroded. That surely happens to metal in the real world, but it doesn't seem to fit space. For ships and stations that never exist planetside, it shouldn't look like there's moss growing on the hull, and for ships that do enter and exit the atmosphere, I'd think scorch marks and scarring is more appropriate than more randomized marbled degradation in the hull.

 

[L.I.F.]

Was away for a little while, come back to this incredible progress. Truly blown away. Thank you so much for all the time you've invested into this.

It was a ten-year dream of mine that I can now fulfill. So no worries.

Hey, I love the greater detail and nuanced design of the new HQ, but the textures seem kind of "dirty." Does anyone else see this? It's not really just this model - a handful of the Saga Confed and Kilrathi assets have a mottled texture that I think is supposed to simulate being well worn, but it I think it comes across as being fuzzy and corroded. That surely happens to metal in the real world, but it doesn't seem to fit space. For ships and stations that never exist planetside, it shouldn't look like there's moss growing on the hull, and for ships that do enter and exit the atmosphere, I'd think scorch marks and scarring is more appropriate than more randomized marbled degradation in the hull.

Well, these are the Saga textures, and the integration of these is a bit iffy right now. I am using an editor designed for HW2, which works quite well, but not perfectly and I had to hack some stuff here and there to make the models work. For example, one of the sublayer textures isn't integrated at all because it makes everything look extremely dark and awful ingame. I hope that when a proper editor with a good UI gets released, I can fix these issues.

One possible thing to do would be to manually edit the textures later to improve the rendering. I think I have the tools for this, but it would be extremely time-consuming and would not be started before the core gameplay is ready with all factions remastered to Saga/Klavs level of quality.

Honestly, this whole endeavour is fascinating for me. I've learned tons of things since I started porting the original mod to RM, and now I understand much better some 3D and image tools as well as coding. And I encourage everyone interested to unpack the mod with unfBig and start tinkering with it to make it fit their vision of things.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

 

[Iceblade]

Now this is what I've wanted out of a WC strategy game. The other two mods (Empire at War and the original Homeworld 2) just didn't quite cut it.

 

[L.I.F.]

The Caernaven frigate, a small package of sensors, two pairs of turrets and anti-fighter missile launchers. Her only hope against larger ships is a pair of close-range light torpedoes, but do not under-estimate her, as this frigate makes an excellent picket and her low cost make this characteristic shape a common view in Confederate space. She is watchful. She is reliable.

Vigilo Confido.

The Clarkson transports have the most underrated and the most important role of the fleet. Without them, no war can take place, as they ensure the proper logistics of the Terran Confederation forces.

Gents, the mod files on my computer, before compression in a .big, are now weighing 3.57 GB. The mod is bigger than Wing Commander IV itself. Here is exactly how I feel as I am making a back-up before attempting a stress-test with every single unit of the Confed on screen at the same time:

This is glorious.

 

[L.I.F.]

AND IT WORKED! No framerate loss, smooth running on my laptop.

And look what ship we still got in reserve for 4.0, thanks to @Lunawolf242 who got the model in the HW engine:

 

[Dundradal]

That's awesome! I can't wait to see them at war!

I actually managed to get one mission in the original Homeworld in today!

 

[L.I.F.]

I'm now playtesting the 3.0 version, and it works quite well. Going back home and I will upload the whole stuff. Do not expect it to be online before several hours, because I'm going to do the final playtesting, and, well, the update will be HUGE.

There will still be missing icons and the Confed research will be barebone, but the whole stuff is quite playable. Uploading it tonight will allow me to post fixes more easily later on and also to get feedback for bugs and balance.

Edit: uploading in progress. Remember, it's a pre-release. I fixed some other bugs, but please let me know here or on Steam if you find other obvious problems such as unbuildable ships.

Thanks, and... enjoy!

 

[L.I.F.]

Did a Day 1 fix for some bugs in prevision of the week-end updates, but I can confirm it now after downloading the 730 MB update: the released version works. Show them how it's done, Confed-style!

Edit: Confed and Black Lance are not working, I forgot that they are sharing assets with Confed and need to be edited to fit these. I'm not able to upload anything right now, but will do it in a few hours, when I'm back home. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[Romale23]

Unfortunately since the update happened my game crashes when it try to create a game.

 

[Iceblade]

It happens. No rush to release. Just get it beta-tested and work out those kinks.

 

[L.I.F.]

Unfortunately since the update happened my game crashes when it try to create a game.

It happens. No rush to release. Just get it beta-tested and work out those kinks.

The crash is related to Black Lance and Border Worlds using Confed assets that are no longer here. The game works well for Kilrathi/Confed, and given that I'm quite busy most of the day, I don't have the time to make too much beta-testing. Did some as I could, but I forgot to test the "untouched" factions.

Anyway, that day was actually very productive since I've got my usual testers on Steam giving me a good list of the problems and I'm fixing them right now.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Well Congrats on importing that massive starbase! It was a pain to create LOL

 

[L.I.F.]

Well Congrats on importing that massive starbase! It was a pain to create LOL

Ha! I imagine...

As for the update, I've fixed most of the reported bugs, but I've just got that really weird one where the Kilrathi ships have better accuracy and firepower than the Confed even when using the same weapons...

Edit: at last! I've just found out what was the problem with the untoucheable Kilrathi cruisers. Fixed it and uploading the fix alongside several others.

 

[gavinfoxx]

So... I was wondering... will the Border World make use of 'improved' versions of old ships? I was thinking that they'd make use of a lot of things like Demons, Artemis, Super Ferrets, Stiletto, Rapier, Gladius, Razor, Centurion, Errant, Free Trader, and so on. But I also think that they'd probably manage things like some modified Strike Sabres, and maybe even -- as a high end research project -- Morningstar or Wraith. Or even knockoffs of other 'not used' confed designs, like Crossbows? What about older capships like Exeter or Gilgamesh?

What do you think?