Sins Forums
Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers? - Jean Luc Picard
Loaded Rebellion up for the first time in awhile today. SOA is going to be awesome once completed! Is it the lighting effects that make the ships look even more detailed than they were in Diplomacy?
Was just wondering, will the normalisation of maps work with the custom planetary defenders (ie. Ferengi D'kora)? Often when playing against other people, one person gets completely screwed over by a wall of Ferengi, as they're very tough beasties early on.
On a complete aside, Star Trek Online has Romulans coming as a playable faction on May 21st. D'deridex are probably my favourite ships in the franchise. Woo!
I noticed too that some of the normal maps don't stand out as well in Rebellion as they do in Trinity. We didn't change anything in regards to the meshes, or textures. Except for one small entry in the mesh file to make them work in Rebellion. It has to do with Rebellions Shadow System (Not Za'Ha"Dum!!) If you disable the shadows, The normal maps work just as well as they did in Trinity. I cant see why when shadows are enabled that some normal maps don't work. We are looking in on this.
The Planetary Defenders were supposed to be just a little "tougher" than they were in vanilla, but yea the D'kora is a tough nut to crack. Wait till we get Sona Battleships, and Tammarian Battlecruisers in there 
Give me a couple examples of textures that work good and not good for rebellion and I will see if I can trace the issue.
I am going to take a quick guess that it is tangent maps I have not finished. I was going down the list of mesh files doing each and got half way through Klingon when I got totally sick of doing tangents and optimizing. Most are done now, just finishing up ROM structures, importing stocks and scaling.
This is how the ambassador looks in Trinity
This is how it looks in Rebellion
Another view in Trinity (Rebellion with shadows disabled reverts the game to Trinity shaders).
Again with the shadows enabled. I think its the shader change that makes much of the details disappear.
As you can also see we still have much work left to do on the UI. Granted the ships do look better. It is disappointing to see this. Especially after all of the work i put into this particular ships normal map (i did it all by hand. Not quick, and dirty like most of the other ships). The normal map issues really stand out in the low resolution ships. Even in ambient lighting there are some faint shadows in the details. The trinity shaders sort have got that right. The Rebellion shadow renderer sort of missed this.
Ugg, shadow system looks like crap, while trinity could have used a little more light from the environment cube I like the lighting way better. Definitely not worth it to cast a shadow on another ship.
Speaking of the environment cube. I don't think the Environment cube is used when the Rebellion shaders are active. I see very little reflections, or they don't stand out nearly like they did in Trinity. Even on some vanilla ships. Not that its a bad thing, because i thought some of the trinity reflections were overkill. I am just wondering if the EC is disabled when Shadows are active. If not then its a waste of resources because we cant see it.
Heh, and to think. None of us are programmers.
It is definitely used. I use it for the tron-like lines on the DyiithJhinn.
And it is easily visible in all of my other textures as well.
Interesting.. I am running a crappy intel video chip on my laptop (though it plays dead space 3 rather well). That could be the issue. The V-11 Stormbird model uses a lot of reflection maps. Can someone post a screen of that reflecting the EC? while i do the same here.
EDIT: Nevermind the reflections are there. They just don't stand out as much as they do in trinity. You can barely see them in the pic but when you move the camera it shows. So i pointed them out.
BTW: Nice job Myfist0 for fixing the tangent, and other mesh issues 
I figured out what was causing artifacts on the Sovereign.
It was the only spot on the ship causing it so I finally looked at the UV map and DOH!
Anyone see what's wrong with this picture?
CRAP! That is the old texture from 2008! Somehow old stuff winds up back in the mod. I filled all of the white areas with matching gray to hide those errors. The UV didn't fit quite right when i converted the trekmod meshes that used lots of little textures into a single sheet. Ill look for the fixed texture. If i cant find it ill redo it again.
Speaking of errors the Cardy Barkus is all jacked up. It has 2 materials when it should only have one. It just glows in game. Materials need to be redone, and resaved. I didnt see much else wrong with the rest of the ships.
also the SOV is fixed, unless you have org bitmaps or tgas I would not bother editing a dds and re-compressing to dds, every time you lose quality.
ok i already fixed it, but yea it does lose quality every time you re-save. Cant do SVN my internet sucks so bad it will take a week to update. Instead how about a link to the latest dev build. Least i can pause and resume that.
You can just get sections with SVN as well. Dont update entire mod, just update a specific file or folder. Like, select all the fed meshes, right click, update.
EDIT: You will have to get psy to re-upload t a new version, I cant see the point when you have SVN.
huh? It's not public, you need an account with password.
BTW peeps we can still use some mesh, and texture artists... Just saying.
I love the mod (I play it while watching old episodes of the varios ST shows on netflix), but one ship I notice the absence of is the Prometheus. Is it going to be added at some point, or is thier a specific reason why it was kept out of the mod?
It is out and will never be added because the team considers it a silly, overpowered, wankish super-ship that was added to the Federation lineup for no good reason.
What SpardaSon said..
Plus we can't duplicate multi vector attack mode, or saucer separation in Sins (we can, but once a ship separated it must stay that way). Berman, and Braga trek had a fascination with indestructible "Uberships" The Prommie , General Chang's fire while cloaked B'rel, The fire while cloaked, Armed to the teeth, Nigh indestructible Scimitar, plus many more that existed only as a plot device. One could say the Big-E's, and Voyager were examples of the "ubership". Least till 2 movies blew up the refit, and D, and wrecked the Ent-E.
We "try" to keep this kind of absurdity out of the mod. We have very powerful units (especially the Borg units). However, No ship is indestructible, or invulnerable. We keep the "unique" classes out Like the Scimitar, and Prommie. We didn't chose units just because they "looked cool". We chose them because they all served a function. Just like everything on the Big-E served a function.
Not to say that the Prommie wasn't massed produced later like the Defiant was. We just have no canon evidence that there was ever more than one ship (other than alternate timeline/universe crap that we tend to ignore).
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