Just want to express a public vote of thanks to CZW for allowing the Executor in TOW. We're not quite sure what to do with it yet, but it may be flyable.



The other ships are Enforcer class cruisers.

Edited by - Outcast 1-1 on 7/13/2005 10:37:38 AM

Aldebaran, do these have custom SURs?

I haven't heard jack squat from y'all about whether you've been able to build new SURs, so I've been assuming that you haven't been able to do it, or have and haven't bothered telling me if you've developed a new method

If you have built new SURs and have done it using a non Rhino-specific method, please let me know what it is, so that I can document it, k?

Sorry Argh, been meaning to get back in contact with you and the rest of the guys on this. Eseentially life went a bit haywire for me (problems with my kids, housing etc... all private personal stuff). When I finally managed to get back online again in the last three weeks, I found the Freeworlds mod team in disarray after the collapse of the USA 24/7 Server and a major split occuring in amongst the community. Not only this, Burnout had quit leading the Freeworlds mod development team and no one had a clue as to what was going on. All my time so far has been spent picking up the pieces left all these events (and still dealing with the events in my own private life) and getting the Freeworlds Mod Development back on track.

In short, the answer at the moment is I am having to get things going again. The Sur File Exporter is something that I have on my list to get into properly now sometime in the next week or two, but the unexpected life and mod problems have unfortunately delayed.

Apologies once again for not notifying people sooner.

EDIT: And in answer to your question, the answer at the moment is no. Once I have got things on track again, these though might be one of the things I will try applying things to. If I do, the Sur Files are going to be immediately shared as agreed.

Edited by - Aldebaran28 on 7/13/2005 2:13:11 AM

Hey, no problem- it's not like I have unlimited time to make mods either, and I can totally see how a large team like the FW one occasionally breaks apart at the seams. Having issues come up IRL can take me away from any real modding for days to weeks at a time- I do it in spurts, and just try to get a few small things done every week, so I know where you're coming from, believe me.

At any rate, I haven't heard back from anybody about building custom SURs, so I've had to conclude that nobody but me has been able to do it yet This is a bit frustrating, but not unexpected- I'm not exactly the most 1337 modeler ever born, but I'm using a toolset that most aren't, and I think I got fairly lucky- the only other 3D app. I know of that can do what Rhino does with co-planar faces is Lightwave, and it doesn't do it as easily. I'd really like to see Beta 3, but Colin hasn't released anything except for the source, and Anton's been busy with his own RL stuff for quite awhile now, so I haven't been bugging him to compile that sourcecode and get us a new binary to play with- the last notes I got from Louva indicated that many of the issues with concave objects haven't really been resolved yet, so I dunno whether we're ever going to get it to work 100% as we'd like, or whether I'm going to remain the sole source of custom SURs... in which case, I should probably build a bunch of shapes for people to use that fit specific geometries and release them- it's not like it takes very long to make one, so long as one is aware of the current, severe limitations on valid shapes...

Ok Outcast, got to hand it you, you guys at ToW are officially nuts

Heya guys,

Wow, I've seen some large ships in some mods, but those two are impressive. What did you do to model them? Reason that I ask is that I'm working on creating some new bases for SirEx (a new Mod that Ro9ue, myself and some others are working on in parallel with us slowly trying to repair Rebalance).

Argh, how did you build those SURs? If you can provide me with the info (information like what software, what techniques, etc... wanna make a tutorial?), maybe I can start trying to dig a little deeper into it as well. Two heads are said to be better than one, but that's only a theory

And of course, I'll share whatever I can so that others have a chance to get things rolling in SUR creation as well. I'd like to see some really killer custom-made free-form bases myself

Oh, and by the way, if I can manage to learn enough, I may eventually be able to come up with some way to write a program that will allow one to directly modify custom SURs while they're applied to the ship (shows the ship model, then as an overlay, the SUR, which you would then tweak as needed). I would write the software in C# (pronounced see-sharp). But, this might be awhile down the road, since I'm still working on my FLNotepad project. It allows one to directly decode and edit in game save files, without having to use FLCE, which will not let you directly edit the save file content. The only drawback to my approach is that you have to be very careful what you edit

If you guys are curious I can send you a copy to mess with, though I'll warn you that it's still in very alpha stages of development, so there are some small bugs, but nothing that will stop you from doing what you want to your save files. Just remember to back them up somewhere safe first. Drop me an email if you want a copy: archkaine***SPAM***@gmail.com (remove the ***SPAM*** first).

Have fun guys, and thanks for reading.
ArchKaine

Some say ignorance is bliss, I say they're just too blissful to know better.

Edited by - archkaine on 7/13/2005 2:26:53 PM

Nuts? I'll say. We seem to be making our ships bigger than ever. Home One is coming soon, and possibly an Alligiance class SD. Anyway, if the Executor gets out of hand, I have a squad of A-Wings ready to do their thing.





EDIT: Is that a custom engine effect on the TIE? Do you know how to resize them, by any chance?

Edited by - Outcast 1-1 on 7/14/2005 10:04:43 AM

Nope, I don't know how to resize them. These were sorted out by the original Freeworlds team a long time ago and is one of those things we would love to know how they did it.

Oh well. Anyway, since I'm hijacking this thread unfairly, go play Freeworlds! I'll see you there when 1.66 is out (unless TOW's been completed).

Thx Outcast ...
Argh, if you could contatc me to explain me how you do to make custom Sur file, i have somes models how needs a expert to make specifix SUR files ...

thx

CZW

I wouldn't mind getting some info on this custom sur file program also. It would give me something to do while i wait on Dev to finish all the coding for ToW.

Don't worry, I will be explaining in full when I have a piece of software that's publically releasable. Right now, what we have is very... erm... experimental, and very difficult to work with