I just want you to know that Homeworld 2 FS1/2 mod has all models (exept space stations) converted to usable format - I mean I heard from evillejedi (importand figure in HW2 modding who plan to make star wars mod from HW2-->SoSE) that HW2 models are SoSE compactibile ("everything that works in HW2 should work in SoSE).

I was the member of Homeworld 2 Freespace mod but I haven't heard any news from mod leader Duelron for long.
Some mod members are still active so you can ask for permission to use models here:
http://freespacenewage.proboards36.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1196439612&page=1

Or at the HW2 relic forum:
http://forums.relicnews.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

Although I don't have SoSE yet, I hope that FS mod for SoSE will become a reality.

Yeah, thats true but I think it's probably possible to incorporate it into the game somehow. I'm just going to have to look into it.

for those fans of freespace, you should seriously look into X3 Reunion...http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/info_en.php

It is essentially a free for all, where you can do whatever you want… trade, fight, build up an armada, be a pirate, construct factories, save up for capital ships…ect.

I would work on this if I had available models. Haven't put much practice into 3d modelling.

Yes but there is one fatal flaw that it doesn't have that Freelancer(yes Freelancer not Freepsace) does... MULTIPLAYER!

As long as you can export it into a third party program (like 3D Max), it's possible to convert it into another game (after neccessary modification). Although I think the Freespace community is more geared toward Maya and Caligali rather than 3D Max.

Depends what stage you're at & what you have. The textures and models live in the VP files, so you'll need to extract them (I don't have a link handy for the tools for that at the moment, I'll check when i'm not at work) from there.

The textures should be DDS format (the original FS2 used 256-colour PCX files, but I think these have all been converted to DDS), and the models are in *.pof format. The textures have compimentary -shine and -glow files; for example, for map1.dds, map1-shine.dds is a specular map and map1-glow.dds is a glow/luminosity map. I think bump/normal mapping was added after I left the community, but I don't know the naming convention.

You'll need pof2cob to convert the POF to caligari object format - AFAIK there isn't any other format convertor (i.e. no pof2max). The pof file itself contains several components; a main hull model (LOD0 detail), associated subobjects (for multi-part rotating turrets, etc), 3 level-of-detail submodels (detail1, detail2, detail3), a shield mesh object (used to calculate any shields on the model), a set of debris# objects spawned when the ship is destroyed, and a bunch of control data for firing points, etc (in cob2pof conversion, these were represented by linked lights - I'm not sure if this convention is preserved in converting the other way, you had to jump through a lot of hoops converting a cob into a FS2 pof file).

(It's been about 8 months since I looked at FS2, so I don't have tools installed or handy at present)

Does that help?

It used to be Caligari due to being forced to convert from that object format. But there's been a 3ds max exporter for a while now and there's actually a decent variety of tools used - I used max along with a good number of people (my expectation would be it to be the primary tool now), a few people modelled using Caligari TS (not sure if it's more than one or two nowadays), and there were a few using Lightwave, Rhino or Blender. I'm not aware - off the top of my head - of anyone using Maya or XSI.



Yup, if you have Max (or something with the same feature) I'd look to bake maps on; I don't think the multi-map approach is particularly efficient anyways on modern cards (something to do with the gfx card context-shifting each time it has to change texture), plus it was IMO mainly because the developers were restricted from using hi-resolution maps (so used tiles instead) by the hardware of the time.

True... it took me nearly 700 hours of game play before I would even consider going up against a xenon fleet...and at nearly 2000 hours of game play I only have 14 capital ships and a couple hundred fighters… but I feel like I’ve earned every bit of that

I'm assuming you're talking about X3 here.

Thank you for that. It's been a while since I've seen that. I forgot that the Colossus = peace. Lol. Anyway, the Colossus would destroy in Sins. Absolutely destroy. It might be a bit unfair.

This is actually possible. Cleansing Brilliance, the super beam gun of SINS, uses a charging effect. Of course, it's an ability, so that method wouldn't really work on capital ships with many beam cannons. Ships like the Deimos or Lucifer would be fine though.

Although the Colossus supposedly has 60 fighter wings, that was kind of an arbitrary number that was never part of gameplay...heh. In SINS context, that might be something more like 10 or 15 command points, and the excess capacity is used for replacements. In fact that fits remarkably well in FS2 context, since FS2 gameplay centered around waves of enemies - not walls of enemies   

The Colossus - if you're constructing FS2 factions along SINS lines - would probably be an ultimate weapon ala novaliths. It's just, uh, a little more straightforward. Haha.

The downside would be limiting the Terran (/Vasudan?) faction to only 4 regular capital ships, which would be too bad.

Sadly, no.

The real question mark for any mod is how many different squadron types you can put on a carrier. I'm not really sure how many the game supports. There's some ways you could take the fighter combat, too. For example you could make stripping fighter coverage more important by turning off antimatter regeneration and adding antimatter restore to repair bays. Although that would horribly nerf the AI...Hrm.

Okay, I got the beam cannon sound effects working for both Advent and TEC. The only thing is this though...In the reference gameinfo files, there is something that says this:

WeaponEffects
weaponType "Beam"
burstCount 1
burstDelay 0.000000
muzzleEffectName "Weapon_PsiCapitalBeamHeavy_Muzzle"
muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.100000
muzzleSounds
soundCount 1
sound ""

What is 'muzzle'? I've tried looking for the original sound files but there aren't any files named that. I'm guessing it's the sound the turret makes on the ship itself as the gun fires. If this is the case, it would be possible to make it so that a beamcannon powering up sound plays but so far I haven't been able to get anything from naming a file 'Weapon_PsiCapitalBeamHeavy_Muzzle' with a sound effect.

Any ideas whats going on/what it is?