Yes some models don't have any textures at the moment.

Regards Wolfe

Mike had suggested we us BMP for textures. Should we convert them to png?

mesh textures should be tga not bmp or png

If size is the issue we can also scale them back. 2048 x 2048 becomes 1024 x 1024 or even 512.

I think downscaling can also easily be done by the engine itself (via texture quality setting in options dialog; to be programmable I guess).

wolfe, how about a pre-defined command set for the enemy ships at each game start? I would say full impulse and aggressive command per default simulating an AI. I haven't checked, but is a 'pause' command already implemented?

It the textures are going to be downscaled in any way, we should still ask the modellers to produce the larger textures; we may find a way later on to allow for the larger files and it is infinitely better to downscale than to upscale anyways.

I wonder if changing the background from black to dark gray would help the lighting issue?

If that and everything else fails we can always make the models lighter.

hm, to think this whole game further, how about implementing campaigns and missions (wolf 359?) later on with a Panzer General - like prestige system where you get points and credits for well-completed missions within your campaign, prototypes as in new ship models and so on. It could be a self-evolving campaign in a dune2-fashion where you could conquer the whole part of the galaxy by selecting your next region of conflict (war, peace and alliance treaties could be negotiated giving or costing you a certain amount of your credits) and further (Borg territory, Species 8472, the Dominion homeland) or different 'canon' campaigns like the battle of wolf 359 where a lost battle means another mission at sector 001 (could be made accordingly for other alpha quadrant races exchanging names of the locations) where you fight with the last remnants of your race's fleet. Multiplayer campaign could mean 2 players on the same side controlling different fleets (even in one battle) against the AI or multiplayer opponent(s). I guess that would make a lot of fun .

P.S.: Someone might still know the SWOTL game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Wea ... gn_Battles . It had a really addicting combat strategy mix where your performance was dictating to certain degrees what was going on on the ground (invasion of Fortress Europe).

Anything and everything will have to wait for a while, my comp has died and i have lost what could possibly be everything, luckily i think, i managed to copy over the source and assets files to a DVD and pen drive, however i just hope they hold for now while i try and get everything up and running again.

On a side not it is times like these that i wish i had a Mac.

Regards Wolfe

What the hell is going on with all these crashing computers at the moment guys?! Start making backups! Sending yourself emails can be a good way of saving stuff.

Fingers crossed you haven't lost everything you think you have Wolfe. At least you've got a copy of the game out fairly recently. You might be able to reverse-engineer that with any luck. You made it afteraall.

usually a dying pc does not necessarily mean the hdd can't be recovered. only if the hdd has a head crash, then it could be expensive to let the data be recovered by a professional company.

mike would surely say: codeplex!

Well for some reason i can't seem to get half way through posting bios, which means it is an annoying problem to diagnose. Could be PSU, CPU maybe MOBO I'am beyond caring at the moment.

Regards Wolfe

Damn, sucks to hear do you have another PC in the house? I guess you have because you can post. Maybe you can get data out and make some backups by plugging in the hard drive into the working computer.

On a related note, I've been having RAID volume errors too in my RAID0 hard drive setup. I think I'll spend the rest of today backing up data, then I'll unraid the drives and start afresh, before it's too late.

I can post on the damaged one however it only gets so far.

Two days ago i had a a "DCOM Proces Service Launcher" problem which seems to exacerbate into my comp slowly degrading with every reboot, it was about here i managed to copy over my source files , sadly then came a "Machine_Check_Exception" and the one occuring problem which destroys any computer out there, the dreaded "Your NTFS hardrive needs to be checked for inconsistancies please run check disk etc..."

Which is essentially a cycle of finding files, orphaning them passing them around the harddrive and then corrupting more of them , it was aroudn here that began to notice things that check disk has never normally done before and realised once again that it had eaten my master boot record and spat it out again .

Then the final straw was the "Your Systems\Config\Config registry file is corrupt" can not continue.

By then i gave up, now it can only seem to post when i clear the cmos LOL which is a pain, and it doesn't get very far either hehe.

Well something can come out of it i geuss lie a new computer

So anyone have any recommendations with a £600 to £800 budget.

Something to last for the next 3 years

Regards Wolfe

That's why I always disable DCOM (google for a prog that does that right).

hey, and my computer runs fine for 5 years now..wanna buy?

LOL, only if you spend £600 to £800 upgrading it

Regards Wolfe

With that money you can buy a monster with duration longer then 5 yeras, of course after 2 years additional unit or two of memory is reguired.

IMHO, all textures should be .dds
It's small, efficient and offers good quality.

Jig has already said that textures should be .tga files, and since BOTF and Sins of a Solar Empire use .tga, I don't see any reason to use anything else. If the engine can support multiple formats though, is it really a problem?

...

Wolfe, I got my current computer from PC World. Some people might be shocked by that decision, but this was an ex-display model and it's still going strong(ish) after four years. I had the RAM upgraded straight away (512mb won't get you far afterall), and as you know I had to reformat it a month or two ago, but these things happen. It's running fine...for the time being...

I'd recommend you go to your local computer stores (PC World, Comet, Curry's, whatever) and check if they've got any ex-display models, managers specials etc. Make a list of what's on offer, the stats, reasons for the low price (Sometimes it's something liveable with, like minor damage to the case, sometimes it's something more serious), the upgradability of the PC vs whether you will need to upgrade it straight away/in the near future, and other stats like that. Then go to any local specialist/independent computer stores you've got near you and see how their computers compare or whether they can build one of a similar or better spec to those on the lists you just made. Research goes a long way, and i'm definitely proud of my little Pentium 4.

Some questions for those in the know,

CPU, quad core 6600 or a core 2 duo e6750/e6850

Radeon 4870 or something else,

I heard DDR3 is just an expensive waste of time, but also read that you would need it for something like the e6750+, any ideas?

Regards Wolfe

Whilst i'm not an expert, I've heard that the quad-core processors don't give you anywhere near as big a performance boost as you might expect, when compared to the dual-cores. If you're looking for the ultimate in power and/or need it because you're using programs that sap power, then go for quad-core. Otherwise you'd be better off going for the dual-cores and spending the money you save on the DDR3. Having better RAM is unlikely to hurt your PC performance afterall, and less heat means both more performance and reliability.

Multi-core CPUs don't yield a linear performance improvement (or even anywhere close) in most places. However, more and more games and applications are taking advantage of the multiple cores. Supremacy's turn processing engine will utilize as many CPUs as you have .

now if that's no convincing argument .

Anyone else build their own pc? A little bit more work and research, plus hastle of having a bunch of different warranties and no tech support, but a lot cheaper, you make sure you get everything you want, and no computer full of useless software. Plus, tech support has always been so unhelpful in my experience, google is usually just as helpful. But thats just my experience and preference.

Also, Wolfe, don't know if you saw my post about the Cardassian voices for combat a few days ago. I am wondering if they are still needed or not, but I made some. I might go back and work on them some more if you aren't really concerned about that right now (with your computer problems and time on other aspects of the demo). If you already are using a set of voices for the Cardassians and don't need the ones I made do let me know so I don't go off and keep working on them for no reason. Hope you fix your computer issues with a minimum amount of hastle.

Anything that the community makes is useful, so thankyou for that, Stegrex. With the loss of Sharepoint at the moment though, would it be possible for you to hold onto them for the time being? As soon as we get Sharepoint back - or an alternative solution - then we will be able to store all of the files again and sort out exactly what we have and haven't got.

I built my own pc back then (and look how good it still runs )!

Stegrex if you can give me a link to them i would be grateful, i've got to rebulid my comp which i'am currently researching and probably buying today or tomorrow.

One bit of good news is the code seems to be ok, just distributing it to various corners of the internet so it never gets lost again

Regards Wolfe

I built the PC that will run Supremacy when I have to time to play. It takes time to build and configure a build-your-own PC. For now all my time is spent setting up version one of the models. I do not have a copy of the game at this point.

I see you can also look at "refurbished" and "reconditioned" PCs even from a supplier like Dell or HP. A company orders 100 and returns five they do not need or someone unpacks it and can not figure out what end of the mouse to put in their mouth. They send it back. They are virtually new, often still under a warranty and cheaper.

Stegrex, you can put your recordings in a .rar and upload to say MediaFire for Wolfe and others to download. That is what I did for my new recordings while waiting for a SharePointy option.

Here is a mediafire link for the Cardassian combat voices, its a rar at only 600kb or so with all the files in mp3 format. http://www.mediafire.com/?tsh1jcdtyla

I want to redo a few of them to eliminate the sound of air blowing on the microphone (not the best microphone, but if you wrap a towel around the mic you can get rid of the air sound when you speak right into it). I am interested to know whether they sound Cardassian enough, its a first take with no effects added and I think I could do them in a whole bunch of different ways. I think they need more arrogance in them, but if anyone has an opinion on how they sound please let me know because input would be good. (its also wierd hearing your own voice so I can't tell if its annoying or not).

Also, compared to the number of voices from the original BOTF there aren't that many so far for BOTF2, don't know if there is a plan to have as many as there were from the original or to keep it simple to the ones you guys have laid out.

Cool thanks

Regards Wolfe