[Akalabeth Angel]

This may be better suited for personal email, but to those involved in the Star Wars MOD I'm just wondering why you're doing it? With a FS2 contemporary such as X-Wing Alliance available, what would converting SW to FS2 gain? Other than perhaps more-accurately depicting SW Super Lasers and the weapons of some races with which I'm not familiar.

  Just curious anyway.

[Black Wolf]

FS2 has

 - FRED

 - The SCP

 - Beams for Superlasers (though this is not a major issue)

And a lot of SW fans playing it. That not enough for you?

[KARMA]

mostly because xwa suck and fs2 is open source:)

[TrashMan]

X-Wing: Alliance is great!
Only those family missions sometimes bugs me. Either way it has really BIG battles...cool!:D

[KARMA]

xwa is hell to be modded, is hell if you want to add new missions/campaigns, it was more arcade than a pure sim (well fs2 is pretty similar on this side), the story of xwa was cutted in the ending to have -i think- the game released for the planned time, endor suck, it is the most laggy game ever, its hardware requests were higher than the result, the engine now is really outdated.
wanna something more?

[Akalabeth Angel]

I didn't mind it myself. The story was alright and was set open for an expansion, but that of course never came. The graphics, lighting and the up-to three part mission areas was nice.

Is it possible for you guys to just pull the X-Wing alliance models + skins out of the game and plug 'em into FS2? You'd probably need a program of some sort to do it, but it would probably take less time than re-doing each and every model; pending the length of making/adapting a program.

[Galemp]

Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
Is it possible for you guys to just pull the X-Wing alliance models + skins out of the game and plug 'em into FS2? You'd probably need a program of some sort to do it, but it would probably take less time than re-doing each and every model; pending the length of making/adapting a program.

We can, theoretically, but the LucasArts lawyers would have our heads stuck on poles outside their corporate offices.

Basically we don't have permission to redistribute their models, so we have to make our own.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Really? I wouldn't have thought they'd jump on you if you didn't plan to actually sell it. But I supposed that in a way you would be pirating the game in part.

  Kind of dumb overall anyways. You can't use the game models, but you can use 3d party models which looks just like them. Georgie is rich enough as it is anyway.

  I'd like them to make another SW flight sim, but I don't think they ever will.

[KARMA]

well I started this thing because I was tired to wait:p
there were rumors about a new spacesim, but with the space expansion for galaxies coming out soon, I don't think we'll see this for a lot of time
so...
let's go back to my mc-80 model:)

[TopAce]

My main problem with X-wing alliance is that it is LucasArts, which means some things:

- The game focus was on difficulty, which is exegenerated in all LucasArts games, the Ai has quite advantages to the Human players, and in general, the method LucasArts makes their games difficult. The are ready to change the whole universe to put more garbage things to make their games difficult to accomplish.
- LucasArts games have particularly the replay value of -1. The dear company want the gamers to play only LucasArts stuff. So it is hard to mod(I have never tried it). I guess everything is source coded.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The game focus was on difficulty, which is exegenerated in all LucasArts games, the Ai has quite advantages to the Human players, and in general, the method LucasArts makes their games difficult. The are ready to change the whole
universe to put more garbage things to make their games difficult to accomplish.

  In what way exactly? I wasn't aware that the AI had a great deal of advantages over the player. As for changing the story for the sake of difficulty I thought it was just the opposite. Case in point: Tie Defender and Missile Boat. I think the more recent games had the problem of increasing super-ships, which has only continued with the novels with stupid ships like the Sun Crusher.

  The Tie Defender is of course a bit hard to fight against, but no harder to fight against than the Shivan Dragon. While the player can do almost anything with it.

LucasArts stuff. So it is hard to mod(I have never tried it). I guess everything is source coded.

   There were quite a few programs to make new missions for XW, XW:A and T/F but I'm not sure if they were MOD friendly. I hadn't heard of any mods in particular.

[KARMA]

i'm not an xwa modder, but I know of many, and they told me about the difficulty (not impossibility) in making ships/campaigns

btw, if you want a very difficult SW space sim, go play balance of power, the expansion for xvt. Personally I loved it because of its difficulty, to complete a mission you don't have to slaughter the enemy, but to make the right strategic decisions. After playing BOP xwa seems even too easy. I'd like to replicate -someway- the same strategic importance in (some) of the campaigns for our mod

[Bri_Dog]

IIRC there is a NJO mod in the works for XWA, so it can be modded.


Found the link if anyone cares

[Star Dragon]

Back in the day I loved XvT and then Alliance came out. I felt there ws little to no advancement made in the series (you fly a falcon look-a-like, yeah not exactly but same mechanical family corellian transport). I only got halfway through but it was enough for me. It was ok but let me unfulfilled. Then there was FS1... The rest is history.

   As for modding, I looked into modding XWA but found that for someone with no skillz like myself FS2 was simpler to understand and hence easier to mod. I wouldn't even attempt some of the projects I am shooting for if FS2 wasn't here.

    In short with the new source code improvements and the flexible moddability I don't see why you wouldn't be all for FS2 Wars. It can only make a good genre better. I thoght any fan based projects that increase visibility of the franchise was a desireable thing?  In the end I think you should keep an open mind untl the project is finished and then critique it...

[KARMA]

never said it can't be done, only that it was a bit tricky, expecially in adding missions, since it wasn't designed to be mod friendly

[TopAce]

OK, Ai advantages over the [glow=blue]HUMAN RACE[/glow]:

- No engine wash damage for them
- You cannot disable them with lasers, but they immediatly destroy your lasers/communication/flight control at once if your hull falls below 99%.
- Your hull damages if your shields are below 50%, and it takes hit. This is not true for the Ai.
- They can make a jump everywhere, anytime, but you MUST use nav bouys to make a jump.
- Flares launched by the AI always destroy the pursuing missiles fired by the [glow=blue]HUMAN RACE[/glow], but flares are uneffective when launched by the [glow=blue]HUMAN RACE[/glow]!
- They have no energy-management penalties, they always have maximum shield recharge with normal speed.
- I have never seen the Ai firing with 'weaker' lasers. This means they have no laser depletion. Same true for warheads.

I will find more if I can re-play XWA when I can get a joystick.

[Akalabeth Angel]

In short with the new source code improvements and the flexible moddability I don't see why you wouldn't be all for FS2 Wars. It can only make a good genre better. I thoght any fan based projects that increase visibility of the
franchise was a desireable thing? In the end I think you should keep an open mind untl the project is finished and then critique it...

   I never said I was against the project. I was only asking why you, the group, were undertaking it when there were already SW games on the market. From an uninformed point of view it would seem as though you're wasting your time, but the responses in this thread have shed some light on the question.

   Best of luck with the project ; though it wouldn't be the first one I'd choose, having anyone doing further work on the game will only help the community.

[KARMA]

on a side note, I'm in a star wars clan, dedicated to the SW games, and that was born specifically for XvT.
Now Xvt is almost dead but I played, well,  A LOT with it in my clan and in the international tourneys.
Xvt has always been played a lot more than XWA, althought this one was far more recent.
The reason is simple: lag
xwa is almost unplayable online, it suffer of heavy lag if played in LAN too.
Xvt was far better, I said, but it still was very VERY laggy, and this is probably the strongest reason  for its progressive death.
Once became clear that there weren't a new SW space sim coming soon I decided -with some friends at the very beginning- to start this thing, I learned modelling, texturing, modding, etc, and I continued just because I found it funny, like an hobby, but take in mind that if we'll have success in making a product with a feeling close to the official sw games and a decent multiplayer support, a lot of people may be interested.
I know that the netcode of FS2 isn't exactly the best possible, but nonetheless FS2 support dedicated servers (xvt and xwa could be played only with directplay) and, even more important, FS2 is open source, and this means a lot of possible improovments