My Homeworld Mod

your joking right???

AWSOME!!!!!!!

Will you add the original HW music??

Will you make it available for 1.1??

I AM SO EXITED I CAN BARLY STAND IT!!!!

No, no Homeworld music.  Had to add Addagio for Strings myself from the Tri-Pirate mod.  (How the hell can you forget to include that song in a freakin Homeworld mod?)  Don't have the rest or I would have added that stuff in too.

And ships really need some work.  As in balance work.  Capitals suck.  Badly.  They don't FEEL like a capital ship.  Add in EVERY model is the same bland white and it gets boring real fast.  You could have at least textured the Kushan ships to have their distincitve powder-blue paint job.  Same with the Taiidani and their color scheme.

And no place for the Pride of Hiigara.  Really.  You know you could have used it as the colony capital.

But really.  This mod isn't that good.  No offense wraith2209, bu this really needs some work.  Finish up the Kushan and Taiidani, then do the Turanic Raiders.

Weapons need fixing, for example Kushan phase missiles (WTF?) and some custom effects would be nice.  HW ships don't fire in bursts, they fire one powerful shot at a time, although at a faster recycle rate than Sins ships.  I want my capitals spamming autocannons and ion beams.  Right now they are just the standard Sins capitals (for the most part) with new models and downgraded weaponry.

And wraith, I am offering to help you with your mod.  While I can't do custom effects, I can at least modify your entities and get them closer to Homeworld for you.

Did you noticed the "beta" part of the name?

I hope that you will continue to develo this mod, coz I love the Taiidans

Yeah, I know.  I'm giving something called "feedback".

I sense that Sparda is as much as a diehard as I am for the Homeworld series. 

No one's left...
Everything's gone...
Kharak is burning.

SWEET MANLY TEARS OF SORROW.

Vengence.

PICS... We must have PICS!

Thanks all for the imput. Yes, I am still learning. I'm not real happy with the textures either. I have never textured before. I also wish I could make the weapon effects more Homeworldish (is that a word? ) too, but that is something else I have to learn to do. Yes still needs alot of work and any help is appreciated. SpardaSon21, please feel free to tinker with it and I would really like to see what you come up with.

hmm......

anyone know how to turn off the sins beta so I can play this?

LOL @ you using my Tri-Pirate mod for the music...well that is what I desinged it for......

Wraith, Are you going to add HW music? Cous' that would be awsome.

Note: if your going to add HW music, I sugest that you DON"T rely soley on my Tri-Pirate mod. becouse it contains only The best HW music, I cut quite a bit out.

EvilTesla-RG, sorry but your mistaken about the music. I haven't touch the music. As a matter of fact I don't even know how to mod the music yet. Besides the music is the least of my worries right now.

I think I did figure out the problem with the washed out texture. I read in the forms that Eviljedi was having trouble with the normal map texture and he didn't put them in. I took out the normal map on the Kushan carrier and it did look better.

The problem with eviljedi's normal maps is that they didnt have proper alpha channels. I already explained this to him, but he said he was having trouble exporting his ships with the normals maps.

Look at your normal map in Photoshop. Specifically the color channels. Make sure it has an alpha channel. If not then duplicate the RED channel, and rename it to alpha (this is straight from the dev's). Save it as dxt5 argb. NOT dxt5 nm! blammo! Your normal problem "should" be fixed.

And post some screens dammit

Edit: I looked over the textures, and there are several problems. One is the normal map alpha issue i said above. It is best to make your normal using the nvidia plugins, and duplicating the red channel as i posted.

The second problem is the DA textures. You have "ghost" ships because you have all white in most of the alpha channels in the DA textures. Only the areas that are lit should be copied to the alpha. Basicaly copy the GREEN channel into your DA's alpha.

This is how the DA works for 1.05 (it is changed for 1.1)

Red channel is team color. self explanatory. Make all black if you dont use team colors.

Green channel is your light map. Areas like engine glows, lit windows, etc. etc.

Blue channel is your reflection, or shiny mirror surface. If you dont want shiny surfaces make this channel all black

Alpha channel is bloom. If you dont want bloom make this channel all black

The third problem is the models themselves are extremely bright in game despite all of the texture fix's. How did you export them? Did you use XSI? I have ship mesh highlight filter disabled, and they are still way too bright. It seems like the ambient is set extremely high on the materials. In XSI it is best just to delete any, and all of the imported materials, and create just ONE new scene material. Delete any extra phong materials it creates, and just use the one scene material.

Then assign your cl, nm, and da textures to that one material. Set your glossines in phong to 32 which is the default sins setting. You have some models with multiple materials assigned without any textures assigned to them. You are using one single texture sheet which is good. However the multiple unused materials could create some problems.

Dont forget to duplicate your UV's and set your tangents to the duplicate set in accordance with the mod documentation

......

is thier a way to revert back to 1.05 so I can play this.

Hey man this is a good mod but its a shame about the textures if they were better this mod would be great.

Also I like how you used the Scafolding as a repair sation and the krimera station as a hanger defence.

The derilect is a cool idea for the capital ship i like it very much i can remember seeing it in the origanal homeworld I was interested in it.

Also maby you should try making the Homeworld 2 races as well.

Yeah.  It's really missing the ion-y goodness of a Hiigaran Battlecruiser.

HW1 had better plot, HW2 had better ships.

They told me that it could never happen! Now, how's laughing now! (Note: I know some people said that this could work, But I really want to gloat )

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/314553

This mod just needs spit, and polish. The models are direct ports from HW itself. Which i dont think is illegal being the source code is out, but the textures are extremely low resolution. Even to my standards. The ships poly counts can stay as they are, but someone needs to make new textures for these ships. I dont have any time to screw around with this otherwise i would do it. Slightly higher res textures, proper effects, and sounds. This just might be doable.

Thanks for all the comments. I will work on the textures, but I am having a hard time understanding the mechanics of the texture channels. I hope I can it better with Major Stress' suggestions. For right now I have stripped the normal maps from the .mesh files (open them in notepad and look for the .nm file reference and delete them, leave the quote marks. It makes the ships look better. I will try to get some screen shots in the next few days.

By dws2209 at 2008-09-29

HMMMMMmmmmmm.....

DANMAN

If you need a hand answering some modeling questions let me know though a PM. I am now extremely busy in RL. So i cant help out as in making stuff, but i can answer questions if i have the answers for them. By removing the normal map the ship "should" be damn near all black. least that has been my experience if you all remember the "black ship syndrome" i was suffering a when we first started modding sins.

I haven't downloaded your mod yet but that ship picture you posted looks amazing from that distance.  I guess the low resolution would be more obvious zoomed in or with a higher quality picture.  Your poly lining looks great. 

What are all the programs you need to do this that you used?

You need softimage XSI first, and formost. Without it you wont be able to prepare your models properly for import to sins.

XSI Mod Tool is free and while it does not work for me it works for some people that use it. I use XSI 6.0 which is the same program the dev's used to make the sins models.

You will also need Adobe Photoshop with the Nvidia dds plugins, or any image editor that can work with color channels and .dds files.

You will also need the Forge Tool set for Sins 1.05 which can be downloaded from here.

Lots of time, and patience also doesnt hurt.

The texture resolutions on the models are low because they are ported straight from Homeworld. A good job was done combining all of the little textures onto one single sheet, and UV mapping the models to them. There are just issues with the model exporting which i will be glad to help out with.

Great mod,how is texture repairs going?

Man this is awesome to see. Really glad someone decided to give this a shot.  Kudos to you wraith.  Looking forward to giving it a whirl to check it out.  Hey the funny thing is i always thought that the kol really looked like a slightly moded version of the tidani battleship.  anyone else see that?

You should have seen the early betas version of the Kol. It had a very striking resemblence to the kushan destroyer.

Hmm...I have a problem with some lore based stuff.

Most of it will get worked out (like Kushan using a reaserch station to colonize)

However, I have a series problem with the use of corevets.

Salvage Corevetes don't build things. Granted they can move debri around, but using salvage corevetes to build things doesn't match HW lore. Maby use reasourcers to build things, or invent a new type of ship.

Minelayers don't bomb planets.

I like the idea of having minelayers and salvage corevets in the game, however, don't mix what they are supposed to do.

Maby, combine missile corevets and siege frigates. Then, have the minelayers actully lay mines, and the salvage corevetes actully salvage.

I also have a problem with the repair corevetes. They repaired one ship at a time. Not a repair field. Maby use the abitlity from the repair platforms, just slightly modified.

Lastly, I have a problem with the Derelects. Neither the Kushan nor the Taidan used Derelects.

Maby. replace the Kushan derelect with a bentusi ship. And replace te taidan derelect with maby planet destroyers. (never actully made it into HW1, they were later added in HW2, they bombed Hiigara).

I have other problems, but those are the biggist onse. I think this mod is going great. I am exited that someone has tackeled this. I am just scared some mistake will be made.