Freespace 2 mod any one?

I loved the freespace games. Could never get the mod for homeworld 2 to work. Would love to see a mod for this. Have no technical skills but can write storylines/characters if it could help!

I have a British accent hence could do voices for the bad guys? :p

Freespace ships have the problem of - based on my understanding - sitting inbetween the poly limits you'd want. On the one hand the originals are all pretty much sub <3000 poly (approximation, as debris models and stuff distort exact figures), on the other the newer models redone for the source code upgrade are in the 20-30k range (at least - I always shot for about twice that, with 5k + for fighters etc). Also, a lot of the models use tiled or multiple textures, which I understand isn't the most efficient way to do it in Sins (and also wouldn't look as nice).

All of which means it'd be a pain as you'd have to remodel a lot of stuff. (on the plus side, the newer stuff already has a lot of what you'd need, like bump/illumination/reflection maps).

I spend a good 4 or 5 years modding FS2, myself, so I've got quite a few contacts in the community. If you want to get people interested, try hard-light.net; it's the largest collection of people still playing the game. There's definately been work on a homeworld 2 mod amongst others (I think maybe Star Wars: Empire at War or whatever it was called?).

i love freespace too i think thiswould be great

Ah yes, my favorite game series of all time... Freespace. I would love a mod for that!! Could you just imagine, sending your Orion and Deimos cruisers in, just to see that your enemy has built a Sathanas Juggernaught? That's one game where you'd definantly need the super large ships in game.

1. those models have WAY WAY less then 3k polies
2. Mods don't have to be perfectly accurate(infact sometimes its in improvment when you aren't(example the Freeworlds mod for Freelancer had TIE fighters with shields but people still loved it.)

1/ That depends on the model you mean. Approx LOD0 (highest level of detail) for a fighter, bomber or similar small ship in FS2 was between 700 and 450 polys. The likes of the Hecate, Orion etc (destroyers, the largest frequently seen models) are about 2000-3000 polys, but this figure includes upwards of 15 individual turret models and assorted debris. I don't have modelview installed at the moment to give a precise value, but I'm pretty certain of the approx amounts. (there were also some restrictions on said models; they'd be traingulated by default, and you weren't allowed open / intersecting faces)
2/ I realise that, no argument, what I mean is in terms of converting over existing assets it might be frustrating. I mean, who wants to reinvent the wheel?

It would be awesome just to replace the models with freespace2 ones. You dont even need background/story. I still have my cds so if its possible to convert the models for sins use then i would it.

I love the FreeSpace series... was looking into making a mod for it myself....

Offhand, you'd need to extract the model POF files from the VPs (a sort of archive file used by the game), covert them to cob (Caligari object format - i.e Truespace)*, convert it to your preferred editing format (in my case 3ds), do what needs to be done (delete unnecessary objects, merge what needs to be merged, bake textures to a single file and edit them, etc) in a 3d program, then somehow export it (possibly requiring another conversion effort).

*note; this is because there were no official mod tools. Everything initially used cob format as there was a free version of truespace favoured by the first people to mod Freespace 1.

You stole my idea LOL. I was gonna drop that tidbit and also ask if any1 knew of a an Imperium Galactica mod :CONGRAT: . Man this game has such freaking huge potential that its sad that i dont know how to re-model stuff :SNIFF!: Heres to wishing though.
?
P.S. How come theres no campaign story line

YESSS!!! I want my GTVA Colossus, those cool fighters/bombers and of course star systems with cool names like Epsilon Pegasi and Gamma Draconus, hahaha...

And you know what, I just realized. The Jump nodes system works perfectly with the "phase lanes" concept!

What bout a Wing Commander/Freelancer 2 mash up mod lol. That would so own

If you guys are going to do a Freespace 2 mod, I some tracks from it. I wouldn't mind ripping the rest so you can use it for the mod. And I think I would even help redo the entities for ships/fighters/etc so that it's more a fighter/bomber combat game rather than frigate vs. frigate.

Heres how it looks it can be done. You convert the pof files to cob using the POF Constructor Suite, then you import the cob into Blender and convert to XSI format and then use the tool to convert them into MESH format. It should work in theory though i have no experience on how to fix hardpoints and such. I'll attempt something when i find my freespace2 cds.

If you can't find your CD's, Freespace 2 is available for download legally. Also, I think the downloadable version comes with enhanced textures and such.

Agreed! MUST...HAVE...SHIVANS!!!

Try http://www.hard-light.net/forums/

You can also use a 3rd party tool like deep exploration to convert from cob to another format.

!!! I finally found a working VPViewer. I'm extracting the sounds now to replace the ones in Sins Time to hear that lovely beam cannon powerup/fire sound effects

Man...I really want to know what happened to the GTVA after they destroyed the Capella jump-node. I also want to find out what was beyond the second gate you find when you jump through the one in the nebula during the black ops mission =|

I think the sound files have to have a frequency of 44100. Tried converting .wavs to .ogg at 22000 and they wouldn't work in-game.

i see only one problem with this idea, being an avid freespace fan myself, and that is that a point was made in-game that the shivans never colonized worlds (likely because there appeared to have evolved in a zero or near zero-g enviroment). Though this is simply an objection in the flavor department, i also would have exactly no problem with ignoring this fact and letting them colonize worlds to fit the sins motif.

If anyone has a better idea of a workaround, i'm all ears.

*breaks out flight stick and blasts some ships to bits*

I find Freespace 2 much more fun than Sins. Don't get me wrong. Sins has me more excited than any game since, oh, Super Mario World (possibly). With the addition of the mod materials, I'm stoked for the future of Sins, but I'd rather see a great Sins mod than a Freespace mesh package.

44100 sounds right. Albeit the Source Code Project AFAIK has converted a lot to ogg.

Good to see some Hard Light folks over here (hey Aldo - it's me, Singh XP); really livens the place up a fair bit

Also, a freespace mod would be awesome - especially seeing the SCP ships in game - oh man would that be made of WIN

*waves*

Right now I'm just trying to replace the sound effects with those from Freespace 2.

So far the only things I see which can be a bit problematic is the fact that, beam weapons do not power up/power down in Sins and there is no sound effect for ships entering warp, but there is a sound effect for ships powering up warp engines.

Also, capital ships share the same warp entry/exit sound effect as frigates. I don't remember if this was the same in Freespace 2, but I do know that there are at least two types of warp entry/exit sounds in Freespace 2 for fighters/large ships.

To sum it up:
1) I can't tell which beam weapon sound effects are used for which ship in Sins.
2) Beam weapons do not power up/power down in Sins
3) There is no 'warp entry' sound effect in Sins (just the engine reving)
4) Capital ships share the same warp exit sounds as frigates (don't remember if this is the same in Freespace 2 though)