Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops Model Update Pack

Actually, if you say that you can't have more than ten destroyables per ship - how the Leviathan is handled? 14x missile turrets + bridge, engine, 2x launchers + 3x emitters > 10.
Or I don't understand something?
 
Turrets don't count against the total number of destroyables, the Vesuivius has 22 laser turrets, six missile turrets, five AMG turrets, and two heavy plasma turrets. Oddly, the cargo ships are the ones that come closest to the total number of destroyable objects, the Pelican has a bridge, two engines, and 6 cargo objects for nine destroyable objects. The Midway could exceed that number though with 6 launchers, two engines, a bridge, and two hangars = 11 objects. I'll have to check, unless the grouped all the launchers together.
 
It's time to retire this sad old corvette:

barracuda.jpg


And replace it with something that looks truly sinister. Kudos to @Dark Sentinel for a really masterful job on this one.

Barracuda1.jpg Barracuda2.jpg Barracuda3.jpg Barracuda4.jpg
 
Quick update for everyone. The team is hard at work on the next release. It's going to include some new models as always and some additional tweaks:

1.) New Models:
  • Plunkett Artillery Cruiser
  • Orca Destroyer
  • Barracuda Corvette
  • Squid Interceptor
  • Vaktoth Heavy Fighter
  • Excalibur (2.0) Heavy Fighter
2.) Fixes
  • Cerberus Missile turret hardpoint fixed
3.) Other Improvements
  • New VDU target images for all fighter craft
ETA - Pending. I can't really give a date right now but it'll be in the September timeframe. It all depends on the horror of collision meshes.

Notes:

Based on our asset tracker the project is about 55% complete right now. There are a few other things we would like to explore for the project but those are currently in the "nice to have" bucket as opposed to the critical path. Items include things like new debris for destroyed fighters, new missile meshes, and new weapon VDU icons, Simulator missions with flyable Excalibur & Thunderbolt.

I know what you're thinking: "Gee Defiance why ANOTHER Excalibur?" The answer simply is - I don't like the existing one. Of all of what I call the generation 1 MUP models (Piranha, Panther, Excalibur) the Excal is the one that shows it's (I have to keep things within 1,200 triangle chunks) limits the most. The Piranha is fine, and really the only fix I could do there is model a higher poly engine and jump drive core for it - but that's of limited value. The Panther looks good though it is a candidate for a new mesh at some point, I won't hold up new assets for it. But I figured the hero ship of WC3 and a major antagonist in WC4, not to mention the Guest Fighter of the Week for WCPSO deserved a little better treatment - and I was going to have to do another one anyway for the WC4 remake so I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Excal2-FinClay1.jpg Excal2-FinClay2.jpg Excal2-FinClay3.jpg Excal2-FinClay6.jpg

If you want to follow along outside of the forums the team is active on the discord site in the modding channel, feel free to leave us bugs/suggestions either on this thread or on the channel.
 
A couple of issues. Does this mod prevent the Vision engine from reading in files from the directory? I am talking about more than just ship configuration files and meshes. The movies are back to the original res versions for WCP even though the high res movie files are in the Movies folder.

Also, what happened with the tigershark. Its missile firing sucks massively - especially the Dragonflies, which are impossible to use now. Seriously, I'm having difficulty hitting a Barracuda with these missiles, the hardpoints are so far out.

There is a reason why convergence is implemented.
 
Iceblade said:
A couple of issues. Does this mod prevent the Vision engine from reading in files from the directory? I am talking about more than just ship configuration files and meshes. The movies are back to the original res versions for WCP even though the high res movie files are in the Movies folder.

Also, what happened with the tigershark. Its missile firing sucks massively - especially the Dragonflies, which are impossible to use now. Seriously, I'm having difficulty hitting a Barracuda with these missiles, the hardpoints are so far out.

There is a reason why convergence is implemented.
Click to expand...

I think the high-res movies use an extra .DLL do they not? It might be that the unlimited patch isn't accounting for it, we can check. I run all my development versions of the mod out of extracted directories so I'm not sure if that's the issue. We've not made any claims at this point that it is compatible with the high-res movies, only that it's compatible with the vanilla versions of WCP & SO listed at this stage (hence alpha). No reason however why we can't get them to work together that I'm currently aware of so we'll look into it.

As for the rockets, I did a comparison between the meshes. The missile 1&2 harpoints are in the same spot on both the MUP and vanilla meshes, the only difference being that the WCP mesh's center is higher than my own. I'll look into the hardpoint position relative to the original vanilla mesh. I'll do some testing on it.
 
Recently, I've stumbled upon a minor issue regarding the MUP and Standoff.
I attempted to install this fan-patch, which replaces Standoff's Mass Driver SFX with its counterpart from the Kilrathi Saga.

After following the final instruction of the readme (see below), Standoff's ship viewer shows the models from the MUP (the Super Ferret is replaced with the Dralthi IV) and the game becomes unplayable. Reverting that change fixed the issue.
- Next, find the file stan_1.cfg (also inside your Standoff
directory) open it with notepad, and before the very first
line, insert the ; symbol.

So it reads:

;install no_folders 0
 
Last edited by a moderator:
FekLeyrTarg said:
Recently, I've stumbled upon a minor issue regarding the MUP and Standoff.
I attempted to install this fan-patch, which replaces Standoff's Mass Driver SFX with its counterpart from the Kilrathi Saga.

After following the final instruction of the readme (see below), Standoff's ship viewer shows the models from the MUP (the Super Ferret is replaced with the Dralthi IV) and the game becomes unplayable. Reverting that change fixed the issue.
- Next, find the file stan_1.cfg (also inside your Standoff
directory) open it with notepad, and before the very first
line, insert the ; symbol.

So it reads:

;install no_folders 0
Click to expand...
Standoff by default disables loading of files from a directory to force only loading from .tre files. By installing MUP and changing that function standoff is loading the mesh files from the directory instead of the .tre file. As MUP is currently only for Secret Ops the mesh files are Prophecy era ships. (Standoff uses same ship filenames in the background hence seeing a Dralthi instead of a Ferret).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
MUPdate on the next release:

New work:
1.) completed Vaktoth conversion

Bugs Squished so far:

1.) Tigershark missile hard points render rockets unusable
  • Fix: Necessitated a revamp of the Tigershark model. re-centered mesh, extended belly fuselage, shortened missile pods. While I had the hood up, I added the Mass drivers to the underbelly and repositioned the hard points accordingly. The rockets now fire down the centerline. For cosmetics, I tweaked the texture as well to make it look more spec-ops gray (actually gunmetal blue) and less blue metallic.
2.) Crazy spinning asteroid bug
  • Long a thorn in the side, I spent some time really studying the original asteroid meshes. The small rocks were fine but the large, huge, and giant rocks needed some work. I re-centered the meshes, adjusted the collision sphere, added collision trees (instead of relying on the collision sphere like the originals), and fixed the RADI issues and removed FAR chunks. The rocks now spin at a reasonable rate (at either 32 or 64 FPS).
Stuff in progress:
  • Collison meshing continues on all next release cap ships.
  • Optimization of Cerberus collision mesh
  • Texturing of V2 Excalibur

****Edit

So I tried the Vaktoth out in the mission sim - for a "worn out ship" it's fairly nasty - in SO it has two pulse particle cannon (Standard in WCP) two Ion and a single tachyon gun. It makes minced meat out of mantas. In WCP it's a little under powered, with the standard particle cannon, but it can still hold its own against slower Nephilim ships. Too bad it's just a cameo...;)

New Tigershark:
TigersharkN1.jpg TigersharkN2.jpg TigersharkN3.jpg

Kitty Litter:
Vaktoth1.jpg Vaktoth2.jpg Vaktoth3.jpg Vaktoth4.jpg
 
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DefianceIndustries said:
Quick update for everyone. The team is hard at work on the next release. It's going to include some new models as always and some additional tweaks:

1.) New Models:
  • Plunkett Artillery Cruiser
  • Orca Destroyer
  • Barracuda Corvette
  • Squid Interceptor
  • Vaktoth Heavy Fighter
  • Excalibur (2.0) Heavy Fighter
2.) Fixes
  • Cerberus Missile turret hardpoint fixed
3.) Other Improvements
  • New VDU target images for all fighter craft
ETA - Pending. I can't really give a date right now but it'll be in the September timeframe. It all depends on the horror of collision meshes.

Notes:

Based on our asset tracker the project is about 55% complete right now. There are a few other things we would like to explore for the project but those are currently in the "nice to have" bucket as opposed to the critical path. Items include things like new debris for destroyed fighters, new missile meshes, and new weapon VDU icons, Simulator missions with flyable Excalibur & Thunderbolt.

I know what you're thinking: "Gee Defiance why ANOTHER Excalibur?" The answer simply is - I don't like the existing one. Of all of what I call the generation 1 MUP models (Piranha, Panther, Excalibur) the Excal is the one that shows it's (I have to keep things within 1,200 triangle chunks) limits the most. The Piranha is fine, and really the only fix I could do there is model a higher poly engine and jump drive core for it - but that's of limited value. The Panther looks good though it is a candidate for a new mesh at some point, I won't hold up new assets for it. But I figured the hero ship of WC3 and a major antagonist in WC4, not to mention the Guest Fighter of the Week for WCPSO deserved a little better treatment - and I was going to have to do another one anyway for the WC4 remake so I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

View attachment 9302 View attachment 9303 View attachment 9304 View attachment 9305

If you want to follow along outside of the forums the team is active on the discord site in the modding channel, feel free to leave us bugs/suggestions either on this thread or on the channel.
Click to expand...
The F-103 Excalibur is my favorite all time fighter. I think it should have the blue glow of the jump engines, like in the Vampire and other jump capable fighters. Maybe the glow could be red, like in the Dragon.
 
The updated F-103 D is done and ready for Vision-isation.

skymaster said:
I think it should have the blue glow of the jump engines, like in the Vampire and other jump capable fighters. Maybe the glow could be red, like in the Dragon.
Click to expand...

I can do that, although the red intakes would probably mean that the Excal has a matter/antimatter reactor in it (at least that's what we can infer since the dragon is the only ship with red intakes that I'm aware of) so blue would be the obvious choice.

F-103Final1.jpg F-103Final2.jpg F-103Final3.jpg F-103Final4.jpg F-103Final5.jpg
 
DefianceIndustries said:
The updated F-103 D is done and ready for Vision-isation.



I can do that, although the red intakes would probably mean that the Excal has a matter/antimatter reactor in it (at least that's what we can infer since the dragon is the only ship with red intakes that I'm aware of) so blue would be the obvious choice.

View attachment 9322 View attachment 9323 View attachment 9324 View attachment 9325 View attachment 9326
Click to expand...

I would go with blue as well. I think the red would make it look more "evil" then heroic. Given it's appearance in Fallout 4 lends some level of question to the legality of the Black Lance (the whole if the Hero from before is there maybe they're not bad?) making it look evil I think would detract from it over all.


edit: I meant Wing Commander 4!
 
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Adm_maverick said:
I would go with blue as well. I think the red would make it look more "evil" then heroic. Given it's appearance in Fallout 4 lends some level of question to the legality of the Black Lance (the whole if the Hero from before is there maybe they're not bad?) making it look evil I think would detract from it over all.
Click to expand...
Before or after it fights the Brotherhood of Steel? :-P
 
Well we inch ever closer to MUP 0.35a. Tonight's update includes @Dark Sentinel 's most excellent Squid model, and the new F-103D. Both have been converted and are ready for action. There are really only two assets left for this release, the Orca and the Plunkett (both need collision meshes) So no promises but we should have the next version within 2 weeks. So get ready wingnuts!

Also, a huge thank you to @gr1mre4per for fixing my janky collision meshes on the Cerberus as well as doing the Barracuda and Orca. My collision mesh skills are sometimes suspect. The MUP takes a village. :) Collison meshes and the like rarely get noticed (unless they're totally borked) so if you're enjoying those new capships, thank a reaper!

Squid1.jpg Squid2.jpg Squid3.jpg Excal1.jpg Excal2.jpg Excal3.jpg
 
You artists and coders have been fulfilling the wishes of many a Wingnut that we've all had for over the past 10 or more years.

I cannot begin to express how much I and the rest of the community deeply appreciate all of your hard work, now and in the future, towards this Suma Kum Laude effort... and this is only the beginning?!

For someone who lacks the skills (and software) to accomplish even rendering a single triangle this is a momentous task you've set for yourselves ushering our universe into the modern age. I can't remember the last time I felt so good for the future.

It's nice to know even with EA's seemingly (as of yet) willfulness to ignore the IP I'm so very grateful to have such an active and eager mod force in our midst; giving our universe the respect it deserves with this level of fidelity.

I know I say thanks a lot but it's hard not to. Truly, a Bravo Zulu effort out of all of you! :cool:

Thank you.
 
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