So therefore I'm announcing a little project that I'll be working on for FA: the addition of a few items from the classic flight sim/FPS game series Descent. For those who don't know, Descent 1,2 and 3 were games that had you fly a small spaceship through dark and cramped corridors blasting legions of mechanical robots bent on destroying/taking over the Earth. They're all great games. Quake/Doom have nothing on them
. The game featured several weapons you could use, coming in two categories: primary and secondary. The goal of this mod is to introduce the pilotable ships from the series (the Pyro-GX from D1 and D2, the Phoenix, Pyro-GL and Magnum from D3, and the Black Pyro from the D3 expansion pack) to Supreme Commander and let them blow stuff up in an RTS setting. You'll be able to swap out different guns, missiles and acessories on each ship for full customization via the Commander upgrade system. There are a lot of possibilties for Descent mod stuff beyond this, but since I have a bad project completion history, let's start with this.
So, on to visual goodies. This is the first ship I've completed, the Pyro-GX.
And here it is ingame (barring some slightly messed up normal maps) chatting with the ACU.
Use Smaller Images next time, I could only just read your post without having to scroll side to side, and not everyone has a 19" monitor.|||Gawd this makes me feel old...|||OH SWEET JESUS I LOATHE THAT GAME!|||Wait... could we... you know... fly these? NEED MOAR!|||Kyrein|||Looks great! Good to have a new modder as well, welcome!|||Thanks for fixing the overlarge image - guess i've been spoiled by those forums with the autoresizing images
.Anyways, glad to see there's enthusiasm. It should be a fun thing to work on. Finally got all my enhancement icons working today, so here's an image of how that will work.
This ship will get the classic Descent weapons, the Laser, the Vulcan, the Spreadfire, the Plasma and the Fusion. For missiles it can access the Concussion, Flash, Homing, Smart and Mega. Thanks to FA being a decent scripting platform, (unlike ST:Armada 2 which was the last thing i modded
) I should be able to get them working with their "native" advantages and disadvantages. Some stuff will be good against fast-moving units, some will be good at dealing with lots of tightly packed units... the mega will be good at dealing with everything... There will also be accessories like Quad Lasers, various types of Mine and such. Perhaps cloaking and invulnerability fields! The other weapons from Descent 2 and 3 will be distributed among the other ships. Hopefully there won't be too much duplication (aiming for 5 primary, 5 secondary options per ship), but if there is I'll at least try to make it interesting.
Also, is there anyone in the community who is decent at working with shaders? I'm reasonably good at art shader creation, but my previous attempts at HLSL made my head hurt. I could use some help with a couple of new shaders I think I'll need that shouldn't be *too* hard, but what do i know...|||This is really interesting. These units will be like flying combat focused sub-commanders or customizable experimentals. That's assuming that they're T3 powerful. They could be diverse at any level of play and should be great fun. I may have to look up Descent.|||I'm well known for my numerous eyes, and I have one that's free for watching your project ...
(btw I'll reinstall Descent 2 that is also good, I didn't play it for ages)|||Unfortunately, effects don't work that well on still frames, but I can at least show screenshots to mark progress...
I'll be posting an alpha release when all the weapons I have planned for the GX are 100% working. Then I'll start on the other ships.
The Pyro-GX starts with the Level 1 Laser Cannon. It isn't that powerful and travels slowly, so you'll want to upgrade quickly. As a stopgap measure, you can improve it to Quad Lasers with the accessory slot.
The Vulcan Cannnon is an eight barreled chaingun that is very accurate with a high fire rate, though it has a relatively low damage. It works well against other air targets and smaller targets.
The first of the two screenshots shows what it looks like originally as compared to how I've remade it. The D1/2 weapons that weren't ported to D3 will get a reasonable facelift, though the D3 ones should be detailed enough to stand up in supcom.|||Sweet
|||Can't wait for the release...Just a small note, wouldn't a personal shield better suit the Pyro than a bubble shield?|||In Descent 3, the ships all have bubble shields. At some point once I learn HLSL better (getting there, *almost* got a decent shader for the Fusion Cannon) I plan to make it look more like the D3 shield, which is fully transparent but appears when hit.
On another note, I've finished remodeling all the weapons, so now your ship graphically reflects the weapons you've chosen. Missiles and such show up on the racks or replace the wingtip lasers etc.|||Looks like cool :)|||I am highly impressed.
Can you give it a "body" upgrade to give it a big death explosion? Nothing as widespread as a nuke, something like the Rampage death from 4th D.|||@Buggi, there's no canon Descent reason to have it explode violently, though I may make the Warp Core upgrade have a chance to kill the ship
. Some more weapons finished...
The Spreadfire Cannon fires alternating horiz/vert trio of energy projectiles. It is reasonably fast and covers a large area, so it's ideal for dealing with large volumes of bots.
The Plasma Cannon is a powerful, rapid fire gun that should be effective against anything you encounter
The Fusion Cannon charges up two deadly purple blobs of antimatter and fires them at the foe. Good against targets that are slow but strong.
|||This excellent model should be included as a small, cloaking experimental in 4th Dimension. :)|||Are you going to give the model itself some more love before release?It needs a little extra love, plus some team colors somewhere. IMHO it's a little to shiney right now.|||Though I'm young, this makes me feel ancient.
Keep the good work going.
*Starts looking for his Descent CDs*|||I don't know exactly what's causing the brightness, but it's partially the additive effect of the shield bubble. I made a new set of normal maps yesterday too, that should help.
There also are team colours, I just had them disabled
. Here is a picture of it with them on, and the new normal maps.
|||That's some pretty awesome work you've got so far, keep it up.|||Nertea|||inb4release: need a filehost? send me a pm >.<|||So I spent some time getting this ready for release last night, and played a game with the unit pretty much integrated. Annoyingly, it's more of a gimmick than a useful unit, due to how the upgrade system works. It's difficult to know which of the ships is upgraded with what. I need some way of showing which unit is upgraded with what instantly instead of zooming in to the model and looking at the mesh or opening the correct enhancement tab. 
Ideally, I'd like to do something like this mockup, creating a mini icon under the health/shield bar for the unit when an enhancement is purchased. I hear the scripting system for the UI is pretty flexible, but I have no idea if it's possible.
Other suggestions for how to handle this are also welcome.[/img]|||Well for UI questions I think AdmiralZeech would be THE modder to turn to :p
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