Question for you MOD experienced

no

try x3 Reunion or x3 Terran conflict. Single player only.

Eve online. Monthly fees.

Not possible at all. The AI is virtually untouchable to us modders (there is a slight modification ability in the gameconstants files but not much) so sadly what you are proposing would involve a complete rewrite from the ground up.

Hm, what about using the games gfx/sound assets and physics engine? Would it be too much to hope for Ironclad to allow someone to use those?

You mean use those things and mod them into a different game that is MMORPG?

You would be better off modding X3TC using Sins meshes. "IF" Ironclad would allow you to use the IP for other than personal use. You can always contact them and ask. CCP allows use of Eve-Online IP for other games as long as they are made aware of it.

MMO-ish  Eve-Online is the only game in town for the genre. Which is not bad at all TBH. I have a 5 year old toon that is still ganking on Eve.

Ryat is correct. The Sins AI is hardcoded along with some other game assets. Impossible to change the game mechanics in the way you are describing.

Yep. I am thinking about using existing solutions for MMORPG network architectures that exist but I have zero 3D/Physics engine skills which is practically already complete in Sins to be used in an MMORPG.

How likely would it be for Ironclad to allow you, or sell you a license, to use those assets?

Because the thing is, if you think about it, very little actual features needs to be added for Sins to be a really nice action MMORPG. You already have:

• Great 3D and physics engine with many good looking models, such as ships, starbases, orbital structures, planets, asteroids etc. Imo they look much better than in Eve.
• AI that is fully capable of fighting each other, indefinitely.
• A "world" that supports at least houndreds of planets/systems/asteroid fields and houndreds, if not thousands, of ships. And I have had games up and running for days (with saves) so it seems to be fully capable of going on and on.
• Ship control system that allows you to control one or several ships.

So what is needed to turn this into an MMORPG (to my knowledge)

• Client/Server architecture that allows houndreds of simultaneous of client connections.
• Allowing player to control only a single ship and modify it to work like a third person shooter. Should not be much work since the camera can already focus on a single ship.
• Add upgrades to single ships. Should not take that much work as capital ships can already have upgrades and research can unluck more powerful weapons/shields/abilities, just need to extend that system further.
• Introduce ways (missions?) for a single ship to gather resources (credits, crystal, metal) so he can get better ships and potential upgrades to them.
• Modify the AI so they dont wipe out each other. E.g. they will only fight each other over a designated number of systems.

Would be a far from complete MMORPG but still quite fun, I would think.

Yeah I know, I am dreaming but hey dreams dont hurt right?

I tried Eve and did not enjoy it. Always felt more like RL work than a game as you risk losing countless hours of farming for losing a high end ship, really dont enjoy games that are like that. Dont see the point...

So I am thinking more like Eve, but without the huge death penalty and intricate crafting/trading. More focus on action but not as shallow as STO (which is pure crap).

Go with X3 then. Much the same as Eve but single player so if you lose the 10 million dollar ship you just bought you can roll back to a previous save. Has in depth trading networks, lots of races and great battles with whatever weapons you can afford to load out your squadrons or capital ships with.

Very moddable. I was thinking of adding Sins Races & Sins Ships.

Agreed with ST:O being crap. I like eve because of its complexity, and "risk" factor. As a certain captain once said "Risk is part of the game". However i do hear you on not wanting to invest so much only to lose it in a second. My toons are now carebears in empire building up a mighty warchest for my next 0.0 rampage. Embarrassing yes, but even suicidal psychos need isk too.

X3, or TC would be the way for you to go then. The mod community there is thriving. However they stick mainly to the X universe. There is little to nothing on mods for other genres. I was tempted to port HW2 ships into X3, but someone else beat me to it. Thank god.

The X series is very similar to Eve, but the risk factor is not near as high, and dead is not truly dead like in eve. As MyFist0 said it is single player. So if you die just reload a saved game. I kind of wish there was an "offline" version of eve.

Sins may allow for all of the things you mentioned, but it has some big flaws. It is 32 bit, and loads all of its game assets at once instead of on the fly like other games do. It is hard coded to dump when it reaches 2 gigs of ram usage. There are workarounds, but they are risky imo. We made TSOP to help with the 2 gig problem. The only "true" fix will be to rewrite sins in 64 bit. With multicore support. Which is not going to happen. Unfortunately sins is a good game that came out during a transition period between 32, and 64 bit tech.

So if the code for Sins is not good, what about just using the 3D models and effects. Would that be easy to extract?

And then port them to an X3 or TC mod?

Does that take a lot of work?

EDIT: Also, do you guys have any books or web resources to recommend to make me understand how it works with 3D models in games like these? Because I am a SW developer, so I know how to code, but I have zero knowledge about 3D graphics and related matters as I mostly deal with Enterprise web applications.

Yes it will be a lot of work. Most mods are made with teams.

I already have all the SoaSE models imported to obj and fbx format.

Obj format is fairly standard for models but the texture sheets are quite different. Some games use 2 models for each ship, a low poly for far away and a high poly for close up. Not sure about X3. Best to join their forum. I skimmed through and there is a lot of tutorials.

http://soase.weebly.com/modeling.html

Shared XSI Models - The SoaSE Project

Thanks I will look through those. Is it possible for you to share with me these obj and fbx files for the models if I decide to try and make a mod?

For sure it wont be a full fledged mod as I am just one person but I really want to give this a shot as the market right now is really lacking proper sci-fi space games.

can anyone covert some xsi models i have into obj files for me?

@ Yamota - Ya I guess I can upload the collection to filefront. Will use 7zip. Give me a day or 2 to sort it all. No textures though as that will be huge and you should have them if you own SoaSE.

@ FredLed - XSI does that. Choose File --> Export --> Obj file  . Same with almost all 3d programs. EXPORT

myfist the option to export to obj is unselectable,i v 7.5,does that make a difference?

Fredled's right, export to obj is disabled in xsi 7.5. Just export it to lwo. If you still need obj for some reason import the lwo into wings and export from there.

okay zombie i tried to export to lwo and it will export the file but i cant find it.

Make sure you have the object selected first when exporting to lwo.

Opps, sorry. Always seen it there and never used, always importing. Kinda lame they put the option there if it don't work.

A Monkey's guide to adding ships to X3 This looks like what we need 

Requires 3DS max and my trial is over

If anything all our tutorials should start with "A Monkey's guide to ..."