Shivan mod...

It seems people might be interested? At least when I played online my first time this Saturday, someone mentioned being interested...

Well, it's not that hard, actually. I have a semi-finished version lying around since some time, it's about 12 MB; 3 MB without the FS1-music I added (but that would need some missions to be re-edited, I guess) . As for missions, I have changed the gauntlets and dogfights to allow flying as Shivan.
And it should even work with retail (and thus, Tom's build, too) ; though I haven't used retail for a long time (so if it doesn't work with it, I'll have to check why).

For full multi-implementation I'd need some help in testing the balancing however (no changes to campaign-related stats, just adding some balanced dogfight weapons for us Shivans)...
And if I upload it, I'd *hope* (of course, I can't demand) the multiplayer-community accepts it (unlike what I've heard of the MediaVPs...) , otherwise the multiplayer-implementation would be a bit pointless .

If there's interest and some place I could upload it to...
(and please overlook the dates in the readme - or else I fear I'll get hunted down by a mob of angry FS-fans and FREDers... :shaking: )



*activates cloaking device*
*runs*
*cloaking device begins to fail*
- "Nooo..."
*mob closes in*
"Heeelppp *argh*..."
... [censored]

so we can fly the lucifer and beat those pesky terrans?

Huh, slow down, piloting capships is another issue.
But for now, flying dragons or such works quite fine :biggrin1: . Shot a few Vasudans earlier this day in a modified Vasudan Gauntlet... :devel: . Can't really recommend flying a Nephilim - you're gonna *MISS* that afterburner...

A mission where you escort the Lucifer would yet have to be FREDed, though. But could be fun, agreed .

yay! i can shoot down my old fs1 character!

I believe that Blackhole over on SectorGame and HLP is working on a shivan mod. Maybe you should join forces?

hey, battle of the shivans! great idea kajaroma! we can join forces and make a shivan vs. shivan mod!

say... its like democrat shivans force republican shivans off of the planet kind of thing....

*shivan mega laser hits me for comparing them to earth politics*

takashi said:

....

*shivan mega laser hits me for comparing them to earth politics*

Click to expand...

Right. You shouldn't do that. :biggrin1:

karajorma said:

I believe that Blackhole over on SectorGame and HLP is working on a shivan mod. Maybe you should join forces?

Click to expand...

SectorGame?? I think I know the name somehow, but I'm not sure where it is...
Found the HLP-thread, thanks .
And sorry - I haven't been at HLP for ages. I really like the FS-forums, be it HLP, F2S (I already got my account there erased for not being there too long) or GW, but I simply can't keep up with the speed mods and posts keep popping up...
But I'll visit one of those threads by Blackhole and/or send him a PM. Maybe at the weekend, we'll see.

But actually, there doesn't seem to be much sense in joining forces right now - we both have a working Shivan Mod each, and joining those into one would be extra work; and that without much reason - his mod is (far as I can see) focused on a specific campaign (I'll have to try playing it...), while mine is more thought for the multi-player mode.
Of course some things could need a bit work for being made prettier, but well...
What I'd need most is some feedback later on, and people being interested in testing the mod.


Oh, and would it be a problem if I put the version that includes some FS1-music for download? After all, FSPort surely also includes these, so it shouldn't be trouble, should it??
I'll upload it once I get positive (or should I say, negative??) on this question . (would upload it right now if I already knew...)

I checked the mess, that the mod was, a bit and found out that I didn't use the FS1 music in any but some experimental missions that anyway don't yet work as they should. Also cleaned the archive a bit, there was plenty of unrelated stuff in there :/ .

So, here it finally is:
mavshivan_v0-9.zip - 1.10MB
Oh, I forgot to mention - I cleaned the .tbls a bit and added a new info system. With the old one I somehow felt I got told too little about the ships/weapons I was going to choose.
Oh, and please note that the readme is a temporary one - its quite a mess, and I even included two old ones so I don't miss something. A big sorry for that . I'm just not good at writing readmes - thats one of the points that kept me back from releasing it earlier...


And an extended version (for installing, unzip this above the first one):
mavshivext_v0-91.zip - 1.26MB
with some FS1-ships (Valkyrie, Amun, Scorpion, Shaitan; big thanks to that "darkage" who converted them in the first place; I just made Icons, techanis and table-entries for them) that I felt needed including; as well as some stat-corrections .

You don't want to tell me that the Nahema flying slower with more energy diverted to its engines does make sense, or that it makes sense that the Artemis DH has exactly the same stats as the normal Artemis; do you?? So I corrected that; but the stats I replaced it with are of course open to discussion.
Things like these (plus the new info-system and the dogfight-weapons) are what I would like some feedback about .
And of course, I'd like to fly this a bit together with others over FSNetD .



Oh, and takashi - it's for FS2... I just a few hours ago read in some other thread that you only have FS1? Sorry at that, the idea you might think it's for FS1 simply didn't happen to me before. But it might be possible to make something similar for FS1 (would take a while, though).

Also, you might check over at HLP and ask for HOTU... that site considers FS2 as abandonware, and is cited there quite often.
I don't know how the legal situation exactly is, but at the HLP forums, people with that issue usually get directed to HOTU... you might consider asking for more info about that over at HLP.
(I hope this isn't considered warez in any way... :shaking: )
[edit:] Oh, I just found that topic: http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2610



[edit2:] *ouch* - the first version (0.90) of the ShivExt-package was full of lazy errors. That should be a lesson to me - NEVER assume that because one part of an old backup works fine, the other part would do so, too...
I took some time and solved those, while also enabling the Shivan dogfight-lasers (just the old ones, but with new stats). Please tell me what you think of them .

Oh, and I realized there are now 2 different mission fileformats - one for FSO and one for retail FS2.... for the moment, the missions are in the FSO format, but I'll try this WE if the retail- format works with FSO as well (it should, but I'll test anyway, just to be sure).
So at the moment, you'll need the SCP for it. I'm not sure about the format of the missions in the first package, though.

I also found some other changes that I wasn't aware of yesterday - first, I had changed the respawns in the gauntlets in an attempt to make them more equal in difficulty. Second, I changed the ships available in the dogfights.

As I want/hope this to become a community-accepted mod, I'm of course open to discussion about these changes .

did my bomber get in?

oh, and the rakashaka...rakcha..RA... that shivan cruisers normals are not done welll. turret9's normal especialy. if you mod it right, every turret can have a 100+ Field Of View.

Is KillFrenzy still active? Might be good for the old Shivan Swarm project (Fs2 through the eyes of the shivans)... :nervous:

That would certainly be nice - maybe with the option of seeing earth blown up as one of the endings??


@takashi: Not yet, I only just got the PM. I'm not online every day, sadly .
And I'm also not sure if it's that good an idea to include too many custom ships. But we'll see. I'll take a look at yours , but cant promise anything.
At least I want to keep the mod as retail-compatible as possible; "retail-compatible" as well in the sense of "not relying on SCP features" as in "not influencing the original missions too much".

Of course, rising the Nahema Oclk speed from 72 to 117 might change a bit there, but I REALLY think it's a simple copy&paste error - the ships that are listed directly in front of it - the Nephilim and the Taurvi - BOTH have the same value.
So I guess someone at :V: simply copied the entries of one of those as template and then forgot to change this value :/ . Same goes for the Artemis DH that has COMPLETELY the same stats as the normal Artemis. Actually, ever heard the SCP-coders complain about :V: 's code? It seems the .tbl's aren't much better off - in FS2 at least, the FS1 tables look rather good compared to them.
(hmm, afterthought - the Taurvi has a normal speed of 65, while the Nephilim has only 60... so I guess I should increase the Taurvi's Oclk speed a bit, too. Maybe to 78...)

Oh, and does anyone remember the time when the size of the ships.tbl was a major modding limit? Already heard that you can decrease that size by about 100kB (i.e. one quarter) by just replacing loads of empty spaces with tabs, not loosing any stucture thereby? :/



And has anyone tried the mod yet? I'd REALLY like to play it online . "Down with the Terrans!..."

all us people who get tired of playing as terrans could start a shivan squadron.

"23rd ravanas" maybe?

Don't know - I'm not particularly good at naming... But start away and we'll see .

Now could I please get some feedback from someone how the mod works and what they think about some of my changes?
Especially - is it a problem that I regrouped the ship loadouts of the dogfight missions? Or that I changed the gauntlet respawns to make their difficulty comparable? :nervous:
If anyone has a problem with that, I can revert to the old mission specs; I just changed them because they made more sense to me this way...

i just do edits to allow 100 firing points on a turret.... and BFreds on a terran fighter... and stuff.

Hi .

I put the following together over the weekend:

http://upload2.net/page/download/S79ButqQMbc4eOm/MavCarrierTest01.zip.html

It's a small mod and mission that lets you command a SD Ravana... :devel: :cool1:
(note: the SEXPs in the mission are are needed, the mod alone will not do everything for you if you want to base anything off this)

Oh, and it needs the SCP - I tested it with version 3.6.9rc7dot9x .

There is still much room for improvements (as can be read in my included todo-list...), but it already works quite fine :-D .


Note of advice: DO READ the readme! I can't cover everything here. Still, I may warn you that having too many fighters "in the air" at once WILL crash FS - so just keep yor reserves till you need them. Having 16 fighters (plus the independent Manticore wing) "in the air" at one time did work for me... :ha:

Somehow annoying that I can't edit my above post anymore :-/ ... but well, so I'll have to double-post, oh my .



IMPORTANT NOTE: Some people said the uploaded zip file would be corrupted. It shouldn't be, I even tried to download it myself and it was all fine.
So, PLEASE note that the above link IS NOT THE ACTUAL DOWNLOAD LINK, BUT THE LINK TO A PAGE WHERE YOU WILL BE GIVEN A DOWNLOAD LINK AFTER WAITING ABOUT A MINUTE (scroll down to see the countdown) !!!

(I hope I didn't overdo it with the capital letters, I just wanted to make sure nobody misses this . )




As for a more happy notion, I just uploaded version 1.1 of the mod (again, PLEASE DON'T DOWNLOAD THE HTML PAGE, BUT RATHER VISIT IT ! ) , mostly "fixing" leaks in the shield by applying the "surface shields"-flag, implementing beam ranges, and solving an annoying exploit that you could launch lots and lots of fighters (until the game reached its max number of ships and crashed, of course) while your launch bays/secondaries actually were reloading...

Oh, and only one of the missions is up-to date, as is described in the readme. Updating the others will come at a later stage, so for now if you want to fly another one then the standard mission, you'll have to see which mission works, and if, how.

I might also have confused the Ravana's beam-turrets by something I tried to add (i.e. the beam turrets quite likely won't fire), if that's a problem to you either continue using version 1.0 or wait for version 1.2 .