Star Trek: Defense Line (Developing a new ST RTS game)

[u.s.s.sovereign]

I've got an image of the updated model as well as a close-up of the cannons so you can see their position. The close-up also shows some small torpedo turrets I placed in several locations to, in my mind, act like a point-defense system. I'm not sure if you noticed them before or not.

The model looks to be suitable for Evolution. Point-defense system turrets are on their right places. Well done. About this structure (Luna-like frame). I think it would be better to make it in the shapes of racing car spoilers. And to make this construction useful, I would add some torpedo launchers mounted in the frame. If it's done the model is complete. Thank you very much.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

I've got two different frame designs for you to look at.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

I've got two different frame designs for you to look at.

Ok, the variant B is ok. we will correct it a bit, but in general it's the needed design.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

After some work we've created a Borg Cube test video. It shows workable Borg vessel for the first time and damage & destruction system. You can see all the debris are affected by physics and collide with each other and ships. By now the debris system is working not good, but we're working on it. Such debris will be used by players to get resources. Player will tug ship fragments to surplus depot and get additional materials from them. You will be able to try this in the nearest demo.

Thanks to Major Payne we have a very good Federation ships pack! Thank you, major!

Borg Cube test video:

P.S.: dvatreknerd314, will you allow us to use your variant B as our Evolution class in game?

 

[MajorPayne]

Well. After the culmination of around 27hours total time the mesh is complete. Poly count is just short of 2850 which is well within my personal goal for this. Images above are unwelded vertices so there is a small amount of "hard feathering" around the saucer edge but this should be fine. I've used other models with the same seeming errors but this is just Ms3d and not an external program such as 3dmax. Next up is the textures although these might take a bit longer to source the material....

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Well. After the culmination of around 27hours total time the mesh is complete. Poly count is just short of 2850 which is well within my personal goal for this. Images above are unwelded vertices so there is a small amount of "hard feathering" around the saucer edge but this should be fine. I've used other models with the same seeming errors but this is just Ms3d and not an external program such as 3dmax. Next up is the textures although these might take a bit longer to source the material....

View attachment 13594 View attachment 13595

Very interesting design. Sovereign class style. Thank you for your help.
This ship should have USS Beowulf as captain's yacht, so please, make a flat area on the lower side of the saucer section, so we could add Beowulf model on it. And how about our texture? Maybe you could reuse it in some places? And one more thing. We'd like to save hangars, phasers and other stuff on the new model, as this systems on it's hull will act their roles when the ship is in game. Nagasaki is a very big ship.

 

[MajorPayne]

If the beowulf shares a similair size to the defiant (which its based on) then the beam would be around 170m. Looking at that image you've posted would make the Nagasaki anything upwards of 700m for its saucer alone.

Besides. Its all down to the texture/s which give the detail and give an indication of the overall size of a ship. Still. I'll see what I can come up with.

 

[MrVulcan]

Very nice work. I hope the destruction system is mostly automated so that people creating the models do not have to add these features to every model. Great ideas, and kudos to the team for the hard work in getting them implemented!

Also, over on AFC, you mentioned that you were looking for someone to help you with creating construction animations.

How detailed do you want the build animations to be? Poly-by-poly construction in Armada worked surprisingly well, and might need only a bit of modification on textures so that nacelles and windows start glowing only after construction is finished.

Anything more complicated will need some creative combination of game engine code and model animation. I can attest first hand that a brute force approach to this kind of work on hundreds of models is exhausting... lol

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

If the beowulf shares a similair size to the defiant (which its based on) then the beam would be around 170m. Looking at that image you've posted would make the Nagasaki anything upwards of 700m for its saucer alone.

Besides. Its all down to the texture/s which give the detail and give an indication of the overall size of a ship. Still. I'll see what I can come up with.

Thank you very much!

Mr. Vulcan, I responded to your message on another forum. Your help may be essential for us, thank you!

 

[MajorPayne]

Okay. After the email I recieved I went hunting for a more suitable candidate as the changes requested would require a complete model rebuild. I have, however, found one which might be better. I bring your attention to this: http://admiral-horton.deviantart.com/art/Polaris-Class-Refit-by-WileyCoyote-515458010

Its a superb creation and if Wiley grants permission for its usage then I can grab the model and its textures no problem (although there is the matter of the 22k poly count and the need to draw on the phaser arrays on the textures). However, be warned that even if he says yes, then you may have a slight issue with the changes that were requested (hull geometry change to reflect the Beowulf class or hangar bays etc.etc) but this is the best representation of a totally unique look for a large advanced explorer, which I would assume is the primary concern.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Okay. After the email I recieved I went hunting for a more suitable candidate as the changes requested would require a complete model rebuild. I have, however, found one which might be better. I bring your attention to this: http://admiral-horton.deviantart.com/art/Polaris-Class-Refit-by-WileyCoyote-515458010

Its a superb creation and if Wiley grants permission for its usage then I can grab the model and its textures no problem (although there is the matter of the 22k poly count and the need to draw on the phaser arrays on the textures). However, be warned that even if he says yes, then you may have a slight issue with the changes that were requested (hull geometry change to reflect the Beowulf class or hangar bays etc.etc) but this is the best representation of a totally unique look for a large advanced explorer, which I would assume is the primary concern.

An interesting idea. And how about to combine your saucer section with simplified variant of Polaris engineering hull? By the way, your variant is more like what we would want to see in game. So, the trouble is to make the secondary hull more suitable for hangars and bays. And Beowulf of course. Polaris is like your Excalibur model, so it would become too similar to it. So, your saucer section and nacelles pylons suits better. So I'd prefer your variant.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Well, a new demo is finally released. It’s already version 24.1 though the previous one was 18.

I have already written about the models we were busy with. Eventually all the models were replaced. The meshes are provided by Major Payne (All the Federation vessels). Stations models (bearable) were built by our team because we still need building animations for good Major’s models.

The destruction system is also added to all ships and stations (ship or station is replaced with collapsing model while it’s destroyed). By the way, all the fragments have their own physics.

A primitive physics is also added to ships themselves, but there could be some bugs when a ship with disabled engines is hit by torpedo (because of torpedo system specifications). I wanted to cut off physics from ships, but it ingrained into the code and it would be a challenge to cut it off.

The fog of war is deactivated by now because of a performance issues (the game was dreadfully lugging). But now you can watch what the AI is doing.

The game map is remade to be a star system (a kind of). Player’s base is on one side from the star and AI’s on the other.

The AI itself was modified, though it keeps on building stations in wrong places (inside other stations). Now all the AI’s ships have three designations: defensive fleet, offensive fleet and reconnaissance fleet. AI acts a bit oddly, but we’re working on it and all other issues.

We added new stations to the game. Phaser turret, surplus depot (a place where player can recycle debris to resources) and outpost. Phaser turret – is just an ordinary turret. Surplus depot – if you drag a ship fragment to this station you would get some resources (by the way, the Borg cube from the latest video would give you a lot of resources). The outpost is just a heavily armed station with extraordinary fire effectiveness.

The battle system is now stabilized. And of course we solved some bugs.

IMPORTANT!

We tested this build on only one PC, so you could meet problems and bugs we haven’t met before. If something goes wrong – write to me. We will try to find out what has happened.

Download Demo 24.1: https://yadi.sk/d/yjKDLzMJuEanc

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Today we celebrate Star Trek Defence Line Birthday! It is a year since the official development started. Before that moment the game existed only as a draft. You can see screenshot created after a couple of weeks after the work started and a new one for compare. Many things have changed since that time.

 

[Hellkite]

Congratulations to your team on this mile marker

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Congratulations to your team on this mile marker

Thank you, Hellkite!

 

[OpetJa]

Keep up good work!!! But can you change backgorund in game maps, anything instead black so you can se more clearly units...something similiar Armada's backgrounds...

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Keep up good work!!! But can you change backgorund in game maps, anything instead black so you can se more clearly units...something similiar Armada's backgrounds...

Backgrounds in Armada series are too cartoon-styled. We are trying to make the game look more realistic. Of course there will be a lot of backgrounds of different colours, but we can't drop the natural colour of space - black. The background will depend of map, so if you don't like black, you will be able to choose a map with another background.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Some news. We added subsystems to ships and stations (they are 8). The ship control panel is rebuilt too. We improved physics and building system. Now player is able to cancel station construction (and get back the resources) and not able to build a new station inside another one (location selection hologram changes colour to red). Torpedoes are able to miss the target at last.

Some new game wallpapers for your desktops

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

New Update!

These are two screenshots with sovereign class starship. We have added individual names to ships (like in Armada series). We also stabilized the resource collection system (all the bugs we could find were solved).

Assimilated Sovereign... What do you think of it? By the way, Borg assimilation textures are added to the models randomly. So if you assimilate two vessels of the same class, you would be able to recognize each of them, as they are different.

The MSD (Multi-System Display) menu is totally remade. Player can see all the information of the selected ship in one menu.

NEEDED: we still really need someone who could create station building animations for already existing models!

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

We have shown you mostly starships and stations so far. As you could guess we have a lot of other objects in Star Trek Defence Line. For example stars, nebulas, asteroids, black holes, etc.

Today I'd like to show you our planets. There will be a large variety of planets in the game, each with it's own set of parameters. For example after M-class planet colonization the colony population will gradually rise and player will get additional crew along with titanium and a few dilithium. If player colonizes a planet like Mercury, his colony population will hardly rise, but he'll have a greater amount of other recourses, than if it was an Earth-like planet. However he'll get no crew from such colony.

In sum, here are our beauties:

NEEDED: we still really need someone who could create station building animations for already existing models!

 

[kjc733]

Those are some gorgeous planets. Did you create the textures yourself?

I wish I could help with the animations, but I'm afraid that is beyond my ability.

 

[marsneedswomen2008]

It's amazing how officially licensed Star Trek games have died. Outside of Star Trek Online, there's nothing. Nice to see what you're doing though.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Those are some gorgeous planets. Did you create the textures yourself?

I wish I could help with the animations, but I'm afraid that is beyond my ability.

Thank you, kjc! Yes, planets' textures are created by me in Photoshop.

Not at all. Don't worry, hope we will find out the way to solve the animation issue. By the way, we also need someone to build a model according to schematics.

It's amazing how officially licensed Star Trek games have died. Outside of Star Trek Online, there's nothing. Nice to see what you're doing though.

Thanks, Mars! I believe we will make it do)

 

[Aad Moerman]

Perhaps I can help with the model. What do you need?

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Perhaps I can help with the model. What do you need?

I wrote to you via PM. Thank you!

 

[marsneedswomen2008]

Makes me want to install Star Trek Armada 1, if only it would work on Windows 10. I do hope you improve the lighting. Its hard to see anything against the darkness of space and the light from nearby stars overexposes the ships. Nice work though!

 

[CABAL]

Makes me want to install Star Trek Armada 1, if only it would work on Windows 10.

The FO team actually made a patch to get A1 working on newer versions of Windows. It also adds widescreen support. Available here.

 

[u.s.s.sovereign]

Makes me want to install Star Trek Armada 1, if only it would work on Windows 10. I do hope you improve the lighting. Its hard to see anything against the darkness of space and the light from nearby stars overexposes the ships. Nice work though!

Yes, Armada 1 is a wonderful game. I really appreciate it, and playing it right now.

About lighting. Every map has it's own lighting that depends on star position. So if you have a star above the centre of the map, your ships will be lighted only from there.

 

[CABAL]

About lighting. Every map has it's own lighting that depends on star position. So if you have a star above the centre of the map, your ships will be lighted only from there.

That's a pretty interesting idea. Can objects cast shadows onto other objects?

 

[kjc733]

ooh, proper dynamic lighting instead of glow maps. Has it's pros and cons though, just means you need to test maps extensively.