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

[Raptor_Pilot]

I stopped by after a long absence to give my support for this mod. Far too many Wing Commander themed mods simply disappear into the ether. Do not let this be one of them.
Cheers.
- Raptor_Pilot

 

[L.I.F.]

I think the past year is your answer already. ^^

 

[L.I.F.]

Just FYI, a small update after a problem report on Steam. I modified the dogfight script in a way that should do away with the slow furballs and make fighter battles more dynamic and dramatic.

 

[L.I.F.]

OK, I have what is probably the biggest announcement of this mod since the inclusion of the Wing Commander Saga ships.

The ammunition system works.​

This changes, well... everything. To explain, I just did a cycle with the following steps, in an unscripted environment, meaning it would work in any skirmish, with any ship correctly modified to do so:

1) The Thunderbolt VII takes off from the Confed HQ.
2) It goes to its target.
3) It drops a number of torpedoes, and after each drop, a special bar decreases until it empties completely.
4) At that point, the Thunderbolt VII is completely unable to drop any other torpedo but can still fight properly.
5) The fighter lands back on any unit capable of receiving bombers.
6) The ammunition bar gets replenished automatically as it finishes docking.
7) Repeat from Step 1, as the fighter can once again drop torpedoes.

I will work on an additional script to automatically give a return to base order to the emptied bombers, but... it works. That means I can finally give each bomber craft its canon amount of torpedoes, which will all be as potent as the others, instead of having a Longbow's torpedoes more powerful than a Thunderbolt's as balance. As soon as I get the secondary script working, I intend to shift all the factions to this new system, which will finally give carriers their proper role in Wing Commander, through fuel and ammunition management systems. If you go back in this thread, you will see how I intended for that since the very moment I put my hands on czacen's creation, and after dozens of hours of coding over almost a decade, it worked simply because of a weird bug someone reported to me. Quite symbolic, I'd say: we devs cannot do anything without the people on the other side. So, thanks for all the support here, on Steam and elsewhere, people!

As for the system's first integration, well... you will see it really soon in an update to the Single Player Demo Mission, with the Thunderbolts getting the new code.

 

[Dark Sentinel]

Hrrrr.
Subsystem? Any way to restore the bar at certain speed juts while the ship is in field?
This may be useful for stock HWRM HW1 missile destroyers.

 

[L.I.F.]

Hrrrr.
Subsystem? Any way to restore the bar at certain speed juts while the ship is in field?
This may be useful for stock HWRM HW1 missile destroyers.

Restoring the bar at certain speeds is even easier. You don't need any kind of script to do that now that I know how to reliably damage the subsystem. The hard thing after that was to get the subsystem to be repaired by landing on a ship as well as setting up the conditions to have the AI bring back its empty bombers automatically. The code will have to be improved a lot, but it does what I'm asking of it, and that's already going to be a massive gameplay improvement.

 

[L.I.F.]

Additional update, version 3.4: the SP Demo Mission now has the torpedo management system fully integrated. Your Thunderbolt will drop its torpedo and automatically head back to the TCS Victory to reload. I will integrate the system to all factions within a few days and add an in-game option to have the empty bombers stay on station after firing, though for obvious gameplay purposes, the CPU-controlled units will automatically go back to reload.

 

[L.I.F.]

This is it, people. The version 3.5, including the full ammunition management system, is gold. I will upload it to Steam within the next twelve hours as I get access to a decent connexion. The features to expect are:

- each bomber has a different number of torpedoes, fitting the ones from the games, with the exception of the Sorthak that received 4 torpedoes.
- the Longbow is unique in that it fires two of its four torpedoes on each run.
- the bombers and torpedo-carrying heavy fighters are now bought one by one instead of flights. The prices, building times and cap limits have been modified to compensate.
- the Return to Base function is fully implemented and will also cover any compatible Wing Commander capital ship you happen to capture during a game. It prioritizes any compatible ship or station within 10 km and, if there isn't any, randomly selects a destination, allowing you only to choose another landing place and nothing else.
- the Return to Base function is automatically enabled at the start of the game, but can be disabled by building the "Dogfight" module on your mothership. As long as the module is there, your bombers will not autoland after emptying their torpedoes, so you can control them yourself.

- a small bugfix has been done for legacy fighters (from czacen's files) for those playing with the fuel management on.
- in addition, and for the 3D designers afraid of publishing their files, I implemented a security feature on the mod that will make it much harder to extract the files from the Steam version of the mod.





EDIT: it's online now. Edit 2: it's also available on ModDB here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/flag-commander/downloads

 

[L.I.F.]

And because good news are like Darkets, always in pairs, I've been able to modify the new ammo script to get an optimized fuel script that will have the fighters show a fuel gauge. Expect it in an update this week. Happy new year, people!

Edit: the scripts are working, I'll upload the stuff tomorrow.

*looks at the above posts* Okaaaaaay, that was a busy half-week here. >_<

 

[Whiplash]

I downloaded the mod this week after grabbing Homeworld on a discount Steam sale. It looks brilliant!

Will it update automatically when I launch Steam?

 

[L.I.F.]

I downloaded the mod this week after grabbing Homeworld on a discount Steam sale. It looks brilliant!

Will it update automatically when I launch Steam?

Thanks! And, yes, each update is automatically downloaded on your computer. Sometimes, it has been found that the mod can crash on start-up, but that's usually because Steam made a mistake in updating the files. The usual fix for this is simply to redownload the mod, it worked for many people.

Edit: the updated version including fuel script with visual gauges is now available for download on Steam.

 

[David Wade]

I cant get the Mod to run on my computer what am I doing wrong

 

[L.I.F.]

I cant get the Mod to run on my computer what am I doing wrong

OK, so, I suppose you have the game on Steam and you subscribed to the mod, right?

In any case, the normal procedure is:

1) Get the game (obviously).
2) Look on the workshop for the mod and click on subscribe.
3) Wait for the 1.9 GB to download.
4) Start the game through Steam.
5) Select the button "Mods".
6) Select Homeworld Remastered.
7) Select Flag Commander in the list of installed mods.
8) Start the game itself.

If, for some reason or another, Steam does not work properly for you (I won't ask why), the mod is also available for direct download on ModDB.

 

[David Wade]

OK did all that but the mod is not showing up in the list of installed mods nothing is how do I fix this

 

[L.I.F.]

OK did all that but the mod is not showing up in the list of installed mods nothing is how do I fix this

OK? Did you see the mod in your download list?

You can also check in \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Homeworld\HomeworldRM\DATAWORKSHOPMODS\*OneReallyBigNumberHere*\403171608\, where the mod file, WC4FC_Remastered.big should be located after being downloaded.

 

[David Wade]

ok I will look after work thank you for your help

 

[L.I.F.]

ok I will look after work thank you for your help

No problem. It might simply be your network not allowing Steam downloads.

 

[L.I.F.]

***** TOP SECRET *****

Terran Confederation Office of Naval Intelligence

Colonel, we have acquired additional information about the a light carrier deployed by the Union of Border Worlds, which will be forwarded to your attention.

This ship seems to be a heavily modified Durango-class destroyer, refurbished as a light carrier. Our data indicates it is fully able to support all kinds of fighters as well as several flights of bombers. The ship itself might be somewhat obsolete, but its airwing is likely to pack a surprisingly heavy punch. Deal with such ship with all adequate caution.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

Sniff. They grow up so fast...

 

[David Wade]

this game is so awesome thanks guys for all the help getting it to work.