Those "FFFFFFF" letters are hexadecimal color codes.  Someone more informed than me can tell you the formatting they're in.  Also, the weapon effects are .particle files stored in the Particle folder, and beam glows are texture files stored in the Textures folder.

Seriously, this is basic Sins modding here...

  Except we have been specializing thus far... I've focused on tech and ability entity files almost to exclusion... so knowledge levels of our small team have varied greatly over time as folks drop by, help then move on. Thanks for the assistance!

Tobi, I have just come across this interesting 3d printing PEN on kickstarter that youmight be interested in

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1351910088/3doodler-the-worlds-first-3d-printing-pen

harpo

 

 

While running SotYR under the dev.exe I spotted the

error that may be a source of desyncs, see JasanFJ's post https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/385376 and psychoak's reply 1170 on https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/407617/get;3198017

Maybe worth making sure that the case of entity names are consistent...

@ Darvroth, SpardaSon: Cheers for the pointers - I'm sure this modding noob can figure out how weapon effects are wired up given the time - couldn't resist reusing Londo's "Landing thrusters" quote.

I would expect the 0xXXXXXXXX colour codes to be transparency + R,G,B - IIRC one of the modding gurus documented them somewhere in this section.

No offense to you guys, but particle effects "just like the show" are probably a bad idea considering the extreme age of the CGI graphics used in that show.  They were big and flashy at the time, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make those exact same effects today. :P  Making higher-definition and yes, flashier particle effects that are inspired by the show is probably a better idea IMO, especially since compared to the show this mod's focus is definitely on the space combat and not character interaction.

None taken. I was thinking not having arbitrary blue and purple pulses extend out 7-8 time large capital ship length and having better explosions and beam effects. There is little desire to be exactly like the show given the dated CGI but rather have it in the spirit of the show if they had access to the tools we have today. That said we are mostly Noobs so improvements are likely to be sporatic.

That's exactly what I was suggesting you do, so I'm good with that.

 

Hi guys, I'm back! Portugal was so nice, 18-20 degrees and sun... now I'm back to 0 degrees and clouds. Damn.

Yes, it is, but not everyone needs to know everything. I can do most things, except sounds and music. But not everyone is a coder or 3d modeller.

Saw that one already, thanks. But I#m not good at drawing, so I need to save for the Ultimaker or Form1. Than I can print my own sotyr models for tabletop games.

Well, has somebody got the time to look into this? See if rearranging the english.str does some good? I would need to adapt my ModDB to create the strings file correctly but first we need to know if this is the error we have.

Please not flashier effects!!! I don't want WoW in space, cartoony and flashy. I Why should everything be flashy today?The should look good, yes, but IMHO the effects of the show were good BECAUSE they were not overdoing it. They could have created flashier weapon FX even back then, without much of a problem. They didn't and I'm grateful for that,

Well, from my perspective there is. Yes, we should use what we have at our disposal now. No, we should not make a comic book or fireworks out of it. Minimalism is an art. E.g. if you give the Sharlin 3 times flashier and more intensive effects you take away from the power the design of the ship alone radiates. Babylon 5 space scenery never was about the weapon effects but he ships/stations, camera and planets/stars (in my opinion that is).

I think we may be in violent agreement. Welcome back.

TobiWahn, one thing you really need to consider is that you're making this mod for Sins of a Solar Empire, which unlike the TV show is extremely combat-oriented.  I am not saying the show is bad or that the way it presented itself is bad, merely that compared to the show combat is the main focus of this environment with everything else taking a back seat to allowing a player to vaporize his enemies.  There are few options for diplomacy and almost everything you can do as a player is specifically geared towards enabling you to have a bigger, better warfleet than your opponents.  If you wanted to create a complex and deep mod representing the intricacies of the Babylon 5 universe, I'm not sure Sins of a Solar Empire is the best game for that, and I wish you the best of luck should you decide to move this mod to a different game.

 

... so far what they have planned out as well as what they have done is very impressive from a B5 perspective. I definitely think it is possible to accomplish the majority of what is on the to-do-list for this mod. It might take a little longer than other projects but TobiWahn and crew have made steady and constant progress so far without fail.

Oh sure, and I'm very appreciative of all they've done.  I just think that there's really only one way to win a Sins game, and that's by blowing everyone else up.  Sins just doesn't have complex victory conditions or any room to do true 4X-style negotiations with opposing empires.  All I really want changed in this mod are some better particles for combat and ship, structure, and starbase build costs and speeds adjusted to support large-scale war that isn't over after a single fleet battle.  IIRC in "In The Beginning" Londo said the EA managed to hold out against the Minbari for several years before being pushed back to Earth, so the EA must have clearly been able to produce warships in sufficient quantity to replace what must have been extremely heavy losses against superior Minbari technology.

Agreed - sorry SpardaSon    - I suppose its personal preference. I like the SotYR effects that mimic the series as, IMHO, it visually reminds the player of their favourite B5 episodes. Mods that are based on other sci-fi franchises have also taken care to match their effects to the originals, eg SoA2.

I think the original weapon effects in B5 still look pretty good - it not so much about the glow, but the consequence. Eg, Trigati having its engine assembly sliced off, or a Narn heavy cruiser being cleft in half by the Shadows. Series CGI that is looking a bit dated now are the two-tone diffuse textures used for jump-points, hyperspace and the hull patterns on Vorlon ships.

It would be nice if there were more diplo opportunities between Narn/EA/Minbari and Centauri/EA/Minbari so that (initially neutral) factions had the chance to ally against Shadows & Vorlons. I guess with Rebellion's factions the 'doves' (Narn/Sheridan/Religious caste) could ally against the Shadows while the 'hawks' (Centauri/Clark/Warrior caste) could ally against the Vorlons. That of course would mean giving the 'hawks' some diplo bonuses, but might have the desired effect.

Getting back on topic, it looks like I might be able to pulse Minbari medium weapons by using similar settings to the Vasari FLASHBEAM effects - I just need to fiddling around with the timing values. What would be nice is for the Tinashi is to move the weapon points from the centre of the hull to the fin-mounted cannons.

WoW is like, anti-flashy. It's too low res and washed out to be flashy, and the particles are far too simple. A lot of the particles are too big and overpowering, which I think might be more the word you guys are looking for. Minimalistic effects can be flashy, and not overwhelming. However, this is something I have not seen done in sins to large extent yet (it's what I aim to do in Black Sun). Most sins effects are using the default textures which are, in short, horrific. Worse yet, many of the graphics mods I've seen are too resource intensive for major effective use on a small scale.

The same argument is easily applied to SFX and music as well, really. I am of the opinion that babylon 5 is one of the only space shows to do combat respectably. I can't stand the camera shaky, clumsy nature of BSG.

I also think that the effects in Babylon 5 could be replicated very well in sins, but only if you make abundant use of new animated textures. Animated textures are the lifeblood of a particle system as limited as sins. I recommend acquiring afterburn and FumeFX, which are the plugins for 3ds max used in large part by library cd providers, to make animated textures. Sins, however, has a limit of around 20 frames for an animated texture, about 1/3 that of engines from 2001. But you can make due if you are clever. Sins as an engine is as archaic as when 3d was first invented, but it's not impossible to make very sharp, good effects that are significantly less demanding than the defaults.

 

If I am able to make some decent sheets with the aforementioned tools, it's possible I will share them with this community. However, this is not likely to occur for some time, as I still have around 3-4 dozen ships to model and a lot of scenes to model, which are more pressing matters.

Any help would be appreciated, we happy few should still be here toiling away in obscurity.

That would be most welcome, cheers!

When submitting weapon effect changes, would a diff suffice? That would avoid the conflicts of existing entity files on bitbucket that address other issues. Eg to pulse Minbari medium weapons all that is required is to change the Duration, burstCount and burstDelay values:-

For reference, I used the view of a Sharlin in the background of Delenn & Coplann's "bravery vs desperation" debate from "In the Beginning".

For the EA Omega it would be nice to include a 4th weapon type for the forward firing heavy plasma cannons. The projectile particle effect for the Jarrasul's 'Nano-disassembler' and 'Weapon_TechCapitalLaserMedium_Muzzle_Alt1.ogg' are fairly close matches. A burstCount of 4 or 5 with a burstDelay of around 0.5 sec would look pretty good. The damage output of the forward beams could be shared with the plasma cannons so that the overall effectiveness of the ship isn't altered too much. Range of the plasma cannons would be the same as the forward beams - watching the series, it seems a 50/50 mix as to which weapon an Omega fires first.

NewHorizons,

Looks good, however be sure to adjust the cooldown period as well so that the duration of the entire firing sequence remains about the same as in the current build, otherwise the damage/sec changes and that may adjust balance where it wasn't intended.

I'd also argue there are race standards for most weapons/effects within the various story arcs. So early ships with the same/similar weapons should have similar/identical firing sequences. This makes each race visually unique during a particular time period. For example, EA has three distince time periods during the story arc: the early years - which runs up to the EA-Minbari War, post EA-MinBari War, and the post ISA. Centauri by contrast are very consistant with weapons slowly refining rather than wholesale replacement as EA does. Thoughts?

Ahhh, I see, so

(burstDelay + Duration) * burstCount + cooldown

should be the same before & after any changes.

My intention was to try and match (as close as possible) existing effects to what we see in the series. Where there are gaps, eg we don't see a Tinashi or a Nova d'naught fire, use or adapt effects from a similarly armed ship (of the same race).

 

Yes exactly. We can adapt known effects for ships of that faction from the same time frame for those we have no demonstration of. Where firing sequence timing needs to change then weapon damage (or type) needs a corresponding tweak to preserve overall balance.

EA Badger needs TargetCountPerBank:BACK  increased from 0 to 1.

Done.

Well, as soon as I have the ModDB - Sync Routine finished you can both modify the values directly and submit them to me (I think of implementing submitting via email and/or shared (dropbox) folder.

 

Just a small update, the sync routine is 40 percent finished, the concept is 80 percent done. I will not be able to work next weekend as I'm skiing if everything goes as planned. Sync routine should be finished the weekend thereafter and I will distribute the builds for first testing then. Restoring from backup should also work by then (which is needed to distribute the consolidated builds back to you). If everything works as planned, updates can be churned out much faster after that (as Darvroth and NewHorizons can start to implement the changes directly in the DB, leaving me to work on the rest of the models and just reviewing and approving their changes)

Hope you like it.

Thanks.

Have fun but avoid the trees, not a part of nature you want to meet while skiing.

Me too.

What do you mean by "animated textures" ? For particles or for meshes (which to my knowledge are almost impossible)

For particles. An animated texture is a texture sheet consisting of multiple frames, say, a muzzle flash or fireball. Sins uses several of these; I've come into possession of many more, and modified those further for more specific purposes. The animated textures tend to look significantly superior to non-animated textures in particles, and allow you to save a lot of particle overhead that would otherwise be the price of spamming particles for faking animation (e.g. a ship exploding).

Sins is pretty archaic and has a texture sheet frame limit of somewhere around 20 before it starts to flip out, most games from older generations (like wc3) support around 64 or more frames. This sucks, as you can expect, but I have quite a few sheets that fit well in those restrictions, and I plan to make some more at some point as I am pretty sure I know how they were created (most companies just use frames from stock fireball footage libraries - I have those, too).

Here is a basic example I recorded for someone on TS a while ago. It has some animated fire in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaviziqV_9U

 

 This is a basic example of a massive Tiran kinetic shell impact. It has an uptime of around 3-4 particles at max.

Thanks. So does it use an emitter per texture or is it a special picture format (like animated gif) to really store more frames in an image file? The latter would be awesome though I think you mean the former.