Halleck and NÃ³zmÃ¡jner's Elite Mod!

Nózmájner · Post by **Nózmájner** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 12:12 pm

A working clock would be great!

I think Froniter style textures and colours are nice, so I don't have any objection about that. I think that Frontier colouring scheme wouldn't look bad on original Elite ships.
Anyway, are FFE ships needed? Because I didn't found any working trainer or editor for that, and without them, it will be pain to obtain some ships for examination to modelling.
Also, here's another database of ships and their specification, from Frontier, FFE at Sirocco station.

And I want to mention that I almost completed modeling the Coriolis class station.

It now has a Vegastrike advertisement

in the dock, and the "Dock other side" signature on it's back, but it needs some more advertisements. I think these advertisements should be some easter eggs. Any ideas?
Anyway, is openable airlock door solvable?

Also I don't think the Frontier's psyhics are hard to emulate. I mean, there is a Shelton Slide key, so almost Newtonian physics is possible. Maybe with alternative layout of keys, like that Shelton Slide is mapped to space for example.

For splash screens, how about some advertisements too, like the Pacifier's in Vegastrike? And of course a splash screen with the Imperial Courier, because the Frontier's intro is about one of them.

Post by **klauss** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 4:21 pm

As I said somewhere, I already got Inertial Flight (or Newtonian) working. It's just a bunch of new key mappings to enable a kind of shelton slide that doesn't kill thrusters. It works just like elite. Only thing is, you must toggle it on/off. For instance, press the key, and you'll be just like in "no engines" mode, where you press the thruster key and accelerate forward (in VS, using the afterburner). Press it again, and you'll be like in regular VS, with the compensator compensating your heading, like when you're in manual flight in Elite (engines on, but no autopilot). ASAP would be the autopilot thing, but right now, ASAP does not use inertial flight. That would be much harder.

And I don't think the opening door is doable right now. Perhaps later, when animation support is fully implemented.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 11:03 pm

Awesome. For the time being, leave the docking bay open. I think it could be done with an animated mesh, but animated meshes kinda suck in VS right now, so I wouldn't bother.

Also, we don't need to put in any FFE ships. The only mandatory ones as I see it are the original elite ships. It's also cool to have some frontier stuff (like the eagle), but not neccessary in the least.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:26 am

NÃ³zmÃ¡jner's Imperial Trader has arrived!

The textures need work, but I'm just glad that I've finally gotten the geometry all clean and tidy.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 7:19 am

Update! I've derived an imperial courier model from NÃ³zmÃ¡jner's trader. You can see it here:

EDIT: Also, I've reposted a handy collection of all the ships from frontier, screencapped and compiled by the guy I mentioned earlier. This should serve as a nice reference for color schemes and scale.

Nózmájner · Post by **Nózmájner** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 8:18 am

Klauss: would you direct me to that solution of your's? It's sounds interesting, because I use shelton alot in Vegastrike (and I mapped the thrusters to WASDRF and QE for rotating, and SPACE to shelton), but in shelton if I use a thruster, it slows down the ship on the other axises. Does your solution gets rid of this?

Halleck: Imperials look nice, but I forgot to mention that they have a cockpit on their nose, something like a plane's cockpit. I didn't carved them to the mesh, so they should be included during texturing. Sorry for that.

Also I finished modeling the Interplanetary shuttle, the Lifter and the Python transport. I used the ship images at Frontierverse for reference, but I found some of them inaccurate, so I checked them in the game too.

Post by **klauss** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:08 pm

My solution involves recompiling, since I did code changes. But yes, it gets rid of everything. It even allows you to accelerate halfway to destination, and decelerate the other half just like in Elite.
Sad thing is, I started working on the halos (the engine flames, whatever they're called - in the code they're called halos), and everything broke down. But I'll upload a patch containing only the new bindings soon, probably tomorrow, so all you'll have to do is wait until I upload it, and recompile. If you can't compile, tell me and perhaps I can get an .exe working for you, if you're using Windows.

Nózmájner · Post by **Nózmájner** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:31 pm

Wow! sounds good!
Could you compile it for me to windows? Cos I don't really have much experience in compiling, and also my debian is currently not working and needs reinstall. (as my win, but I can play at work

)
Anyway, thanks in advance!

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:01 pm

I can try compiling an exe once klauss posts the code.

And yes, since I made bitmap textures, it shouldn't be too hard to add a little cockpit somewhere. Can you try it if I send you the textures with a UV reference image? (I'm relatively poor at texturing jobs, but I have no problem doing the actual UV mapping or generating bitmaps from material colors.)

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:18 am

ASP: It's just what the doctor ordered.

I'm not all too keen on the pitch black hull, but that's the material color that was set. I think this might be a bug in wings. Oh well, It can be easily changed later.

Also, NÃ³zmÃ¡jner, can you try to clean up the panther clipper model a little? Fixing that one is beyond my skill, also some of the normals are inverted. Thanks.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:06 am

Enter the adder.

Nózmájner · Post by **Nózmájner** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:11 am

Sure, I clean it up.

I didn't even assigned a material to the Asp, that's why it is black.

And yes, sent it to me, I do something with the imperials.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:13 am

Ok, I will send them over along with uvmap reference images.

BTW, before I do, would something like this work?

(click to enlarge)

Nózmájner · Post by **Nózmájner** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:32 am

Something like that, but much smaller and more on the front. It is a somewath large ship.

I sent you the cleaned up Panther

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:38 am

Cool. Hey, can you log on to IRC? We can chat about this in real time.

EDIT: Panther clipper, spick and span.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 11:37 am

NÃ³zmÃ¡jner and I have been hard at work on the coriolis station. I thought you guys would like to see the advertisments we cooked up to plaster on the station walls.

NÃ³zmÃ¡jner made this poster about the fictitious pop star "ZLAD!".

I made a poster for The Ur-Quan Masters project:

and one for the Timewarp project:

And last, my favorite of all. This is a poster I made for vegastrike:

Hope you like them!

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:53 pm

We've been really cranking it out tonight. I finally got the coriolis station into the game, which I consider a project milestone.

Haven't yet gotten the posters to appear in the dock, but the main texture is aligned properly, not to mention the scaffolding on the mesh itself!

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 1:27 am

I've added a new round of ships from NÃ³zmÃ¡jner:

Cobra Mk. I

Gecko:

Viper:

Moray Starboat:

I also made a small bitmap icon to match the new splash screen.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:08 am

Elite Strike finally has a home!

Please come and visit at:
http://eliot.bambi.net/elitestrike/

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:14 pm

Cool, I cant wait for this mod to be finished. Quick question, are you guys going to make a stand alone verison?

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:54 pm

Thanks!

Eventually I'd like to make a standalone installer, but I expect the first release to be a patch since It's a bit easier to distribute.

I can compile an installer with NSIS easily, since there is already an installer script for the privateer remake. I don't have the bandwidth to distribute such a large file, though, so at that point we may need to register a sourceforge account.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:14 am

Ask and ye shall receive. I sent 'ya a PM.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:50 am

Ah, thanks much. If I ever make a standalone installer, I will put it up on your server.

I may even be able to use it as a file mirror for the patch release.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 6:15 am

Lonestar asked me if we had a timetable for Elite Strike, and I thought y'all might want to see my response.

I wrote:Nope, no formal timetable.
I think it would be realistic to say that the first elite strike graphics/music patch for privateer remake 1.0 will be available before summer's end (so in a month or two).
What you can look forward to in the first release is:

A nice assortment of ships from classic elite and frontier: elite 2 (but not all of them, yet), frontier-style coriolis stations, and whatever else
NÃ³zmÃ¡jner whips up between now and the release

Classical MIDI soundtrack taken from frontier: elite 2 and frontier: first encounters, with a few elite tracks in there for old time's sake.

A playable game with elite-style controls (gameplay itself is still like privateer)

A custom splash screen and program icon

That's all the stuff I have implemented now, although I have yet to make the new ships buyable in-game (currently, they must be accessed by editing a save game). The list may grow longer before the first release.

Also, hellcatv has expressed some interest in doing some code tweaks for Elite Strike, which is good news indeed.

Post by **klauss** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 2:18 pm

Hey, with the intertial stuff you can make pure inertial flight (no compensator) the default in the config file.

The code changes for that are in this quick patch (this patch I've been distributing contains a lot of requests, including inertial flight - very useful for the Elite mod). I promise I'll commit sometime, but I don't want to make a mess out of CVS by committing everything in that patch. The thing is, someplace around the patch is a list of new options. One of them is the initial joystick mode. I think there's an initial flight mode as well. Come to think of it, I don't remember that very well. If that's not done, I'll do it before committing. But the idea is that you can make the default flight mode in Elite the default flight mode in VS. That would be quite a step.