Alrighty, I went ahead and did that until all of the hardpoints on the Ruin were oriented correctly according to the ingame displays. However, the ship was still firing at the left side from the right side. I figured I just needed to reload the game, so I did that. And it works! Yaaaay! It has been well over a month since I first put this ship into the game... and so many endless hours of energy put into trying to fix those bloody hardpoints.

This doesn't solve the reason why it happens but at least I know how to re-orient the hardpoints now. Thank you sir, I shall now try to fix the Hysteria next. I won't be able to have the angular launchers I was hoping so much for... but having it work at all will be a good place to start getting this trainwreck under control.

I don't think the engine has changed very much since vanilla, so if removing fighter trails at some point caused an error I wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case.

I do mirror half of the mesh through Symmetry, but the nulls are different. Those were copied if I call, though some may have been mirrored as well, at least on the Hysteria. How can it be possible that their orientations would be broken as a result of that? And, some of the Hysteria's hardpoints are mangled even though those were just hand copied. To be sure, I even removed instancing from all of the nulls (which has never caused a problem in any of my previous ships) but this didn't seem to matter.

I wonder if ConvertXSI is reacting to some value I don't see just by looking at the hardpoints in max/XSI?

Curiously enough, the hardpoints on the Hysteria maintain their angled settings, but those get reversed and start pointing downwards. It is so incredibly weird. Out of the dozens of ships I've put into the game, only these two have ever given me this kind of an issue. I've had other issues, sure, but they were all a result of XSI. Stuff like having to point the tangent UV to what it was already pointing to so ships weren't turn into a creamy white mess ingame. I've heard that XSI 2010 can cause issues with ConvertXSI, though? I don't have an option of using an older version because I run Windows 7.

Really? I think I tried to install an older version previously but it didn't work for some reason. Hmmm.

I did the nulls in 3ds max. I only use XSI extremely briefly, just to get the models ready for exporting to XSI. Re-apply tangent to itself, delete unused material, remove unused clips, freeze mesh before all of that... aaand export.

/edit

Are you unable to enforce AF with the dev exe? Obviously, you cannot record without anisotropic filtering... everything always turns into a blurry mess. I sure hope replays work with this.

/edit 2

No, I think RadeonPro is just broken for some reason. Well, I did load a replay of the dev exe in regular sins, and the dev changes (e.g. instant build) definitely do not work and thus the replay doesn't work. Oh well...

/e 3

I gave up trying to figure out why stuff in the dev exe looked so blurry and just went ahead with my standard routine of recording games in the normal exe. The lag from projectiles in Anahn vs UD is exceptionally high... I can only imagine how many projectiles are flying around with fleets of Leviathans stacked on each other. I need to reduce their numbers much further than their current caps.

The reform fleet bug severely impedes the Undead's ability to fight. Since they're all shorter ranged than the Anahn, they have to get up and close... but constantly lose their "lead" ship, and reform incessently. The end result is Undead fleets 4x the strength of Anahn ones dying to said Anahn fleets without ever laying a finger on them. Utterly terrible. I'll have to try to fix the dev exe's blurriness or this is going to take forever.

Regardless I have nearly two hours of raw .avi files I am now starting to go through. I expect a return of 1-3 minutes of usable footage. Some of it I expect to be really good for the narration parts of part 1. I also recorded some more civil war stuff in hopes of patching the holes in my previous recordings. I can record without the Undead being finished because the timeline for this recording is Black Sun: Bloodstone Jordan and not actually the Salvation/TOA timeline, so the third-gen Undead fleet is mostly low tier stuff. I can start adding in the seriously mean ships when I get to part 2 of the video, which will basically be a max tech brawl.

I still intend to put in the Xy`Kranasha and at least a few Templar ships, as well as hopefully the Zelconian ships I have. Chances are I'll merge the Templar/Zelconian into one race as per their alliance, and since I won't be able to model other than a handful of their ships.

I don't know how difficult Xy will be to model, but I think their SFX shouldn't be too bad.

I discovered the cause and resolution to the hardpoint flipping issue.

It seems that mirroring hardpoints in 3ds max causes something to go funky in XSI. I don't know how, or why, but the following steps caused the hardpoints to become correct in sins with a re-conversion.

- First, selecting all of the hardpoints that are incorrectly oriented in sins (but incidentally correctly mirrored in 3ds max/XSI, this is the weird part), make them unique. This doesn't fix the problem, but we do this in case our next actions effect previous, otherwise functional hardpoints.

- Reset Transforms.

- Then, reset pivots while effecting Pivots only. Now, re-orient them by rotating with Pivot Center active. This will allow you to mass rotate without going one-by-one (some of my ships have 60+ guns per side, unrealistic to do this with CTS as serve as mine at this point).

Convert per usual.

This fixed the Razzador for me.

As to why this happens at all, I suspect it's yet another XSI-related issue. 3ds max and XSI both claim the hardpoints are correct, but I think somewhere between XSI and ConvertXSI.exe some information is either getting transmitted or not getting transmitted due to mirror, even though mirror does not attach any modifiers, and even though the objects mirrored were not instanced. This could also be a byproduct of using the FBX format to crosswalk between the applications. In either case, I was able to fix a ship without manually re-orienting everything via text. My poor, poor hands thank me for this one blessing.

/e Part 1 recordings entirely completed. CGI is all that remains. By God I'll finish this fight if it kills me.

/e 2

Xy`Kranasha ships are giving incredible difficulty in starting with. I was not expecting to have such a hard time getting this race started with. If I can't make progress here Black Sun goes nowhere. My motivation dwindles every passing day. I cannot afford delays..

It would appear that Particle Forge does not support my new video card. Unless there is something else I have missed, as that is the only thing that has changed since I last used it. I've gone through the whole compatibility routine, restarting and such and the program still refuses to start completely. When I attempt to maximize it, nothing happens. The taskbar preview thing shows nothing. Meanwhile, it perpetually harvests ram until the cows come home. I've tried different installations of the program, different versions, no dice.

(e/ Reinstalling directx/.net had no effect.)

Would it not be poetic if the action I took to save Black Sun instead killed it?

How do you access this exactly?

If it's a newer card (like the ATI 6xxx line), Iskatu is probably best off asking the devs about it, as odds are it's an issue with the program itself.

Render [e] -> Show Greenscreen [b]. More info in my annotated guide to the Dev.exe of course, but here's an example.

How many more particles do you need?

I have set up teamview on the laptop and suddenly this doesn't seem so bad.

I plan to revise a huge amount of the Anahn muzzle flashes. Muzzle flashes are difficult to make indeed, and I am not pleased with the current ones. I am not sure why they seem so difficult to make look proper. I want something similar to real life battleship cannons, but that doesn't seem possible. Maybe if I was a texture artist...

Quick question - in anyone's experience, does the Overtime damage type seem to cause a bigger performance hit than Backloaded? I am using Overtime for at least 90% of the weapons in my mod and am starting to become curious why I suffer such a huge performance hit in big fights. This may just be unavoidable due to having an i7 and the game being single-threaded, but... well, if this is a potential cause, I could try to change some of the faster weapons back to backloaded. The problem is, of course, I hate volley weapons doing all of their damage at once, usually a second or two after the last projectile hits. But I'm starting to wonder if this could potentially be massively increasing the cpu hit of big fights.

I'm also curious if there's any particular part of a particle system that may cause a significantly larger performance hit than the others. I have a lot of flashbeam weapons and it seems the more of those that are up the worse the hit.

Also, I've done a re-recording of the entire civil war part of part 1 and am now content with the new recordings.

Well, memory isn't a concern (yet). I'll have to check soon if it shows cpu usage.

/edit

Particle forge has magically stopped working on the laptop despite never doing anything but using it on the laptop since I put it on there in the first place. Progress on the project halts as a result.

/edit

LOLOLOL I FIGURED OUT WHY IT DOESN'T WORK

ParticleForge corrupts its own settings! !

I have gone through my second UD recording session I did a while ago (that I felt would need new ships to complete), but it actually turned out to be really good. As in, a lot better than what I was hoping for. Part 1's Undead recordings are virtually finished. Some minor stuff would need to be recorded to patch the holes... but nothing very significant.

That means the new UD ships I have created would become part 2 ships, meaning that another huge chunk of work (making new UD content to show) is already dealt with. This completes a significant portion of the project, or at least it will when I make sounds/SFX for the remaining incomplete Undead material. But, modelling-wise, the Undead are finished. Forever. Unless I manage to make the Incubus or update the Crusader, but the latter is child's play compared to the difficulty of the new stuff.

The Undead portion of Part 1 is the second final portion of part 1, followed by the Memory dialogue sequence - which has been finished for quite some time now. Other than CGI material, an extremely difficult to fill music slot, and some minor polishing, Part 1 is nearly totally finished. Part 2 in comparison is not going to be as hard to make. The hardest parts will be modeling Xy`Kranasha ships, and doing all of their ingame content. The latter is just time, but the former will surely prove to be a truly significant challenge. The rest of it, though.. voice acting... music... easy. I've already done all of Xul`Amon's takes.

I can feel the taste of victory on the tip of my tongue. I've only but reach out and take it. Black Sun... is nearing completion. At long last. My work is almost over.

It is true that this video will not do the work justice. I may never even be able to get a good Ruby Cannon recording, and I never could scrounge together the mental fortitude to make abilities for all of the Anahn ships that needed them. But this project is nearly over. A few more weeks of work at least, sure.. but the biggest portions are starting to tumble one by one. Four years... is almost over.

My Xy implementation and testing is going according to plan.

About half the race remains to be modeled, polished, or otherwise brought into the game. Three of the ships I need to create are already made in their own way;

- I was donated a few models in the past from a friend of mine and one of these is getting mangled into a Xy fighter slowly but surely.

- I will polish my old Heraa model and use it for the heavy MRF fighter equivalent. This completes the Xy fighters.

- I have the Titan GK variant to polish up and bring into the game as the first Xy supership type (comparable to the Dementia, Crusader, ect.) that it will have normal access to.

These three things I hope to finish today alone.

The more I test the more I wonder how the computer AI for this game ever made it to release like it is. There is so much blatantly broken with it, the AI is not even capable of playing a normal game on a tiny map much less manage itself across large ones. The AI's control/assessment issues on top of reform fleet really makes this very difficult. At least I'm almost done and the pain will soon end.

However, my trials as a whole are not likely to end with ingame work. The gentleman who was supposed to be helping me in CGI stuff has been too busy to even start on it yet. Although this was not an unexpected outcome, it will hurt the delivery and completion of the project as I will have to enter the alien world of rendering and animation to create the base content I need to complete the composition. This will need to happen soon.

Under a month now, if things keep on track. If I can focus, three weeks maybe, for ingame material to be finished minus recording time polishing. I am almost ready to begin making preliminary test recordings for the Xy.

I finished the Undead minus some stuff for the Crusader, creating large-type explosion sfx/particles. Following this, I need to finish the Fortress, Great Knight, and Emperor-class for the Anahn. Of those three ships, only the Emperor isn't ingame and virutally finished statistically. The Knight is one of the early ships from over a year ago (christ) that hasn't been finished yet. It just needs its effects polished up. The Fortress is about 90% finished, needing some impact effects I haven't gotten to yet. The Emperor's model needs to be finished, but I've run into design difficulties for a change and don't know where to place secondary/tiertary guns. Then I need to make cannon abilities for the Fortress and Emperor. I forget how to even do that. I suppose copy-paste the ruby cannon and change some stuff around.

I reduced my fighter counts ingame and started heavily restricting logistics/tactical slots to tighten the grip on performance. Though the dev exe just seems to perform much worse in general and I have to do recording in the normal exe anyways.

/e

I have devised a new plan.

I am going to finish all existing material to the best of my ability, and all ships that are modeled but not ingame will be finished and added. Then I will begin recording immediately. This project has gone on long enough, and it's nigh time to end it.

Or you're asking for advice or other support about modding, which is what has gone on in this topic.