[Black Wolf]

For those who are interested, this is what modular bases look like at the moment. It's imagebin, so the link will expire eventually. What you see there is made from 2 pieces - the bevelled bit and the flat fronted bit - where they join is pretty obvious. You can also see the dishes, turret and cables. I still have some work to do with diversity, obviously. I'm going to be grabbing a few pieces off that outpost I posted the other week (The "Claws", which are designed to integrate with the Kit anyway, and likely the pods), and doing some more large chunk type pieces, but I'm not quite sure exactly how to design them. I am working on it though.

[EDIT]My bad, you can't actually see the dishes in that particular shot, but I'm sure I've posted a pic of them before.

[Black Wolf]

Another imagebin pic - another type of possible hab module, but with a lot more work involved. Going down the biodome route means something to fill them with, which adds quite a bit of work

[T-Man]

Another imagebin pic - another type of possible hab module, but with a lot more work involved. Going down the biodome route means something to fill them with, which adds quite a bit of work

Maybe just have them opaque or semi-opaque Eden Project-style for now? Assume they have an artificial lighting system running inside, which would be good if the crops/scene they're growing needs light and day settings or a controlled environment anyhow.

Love how these are coming along though Black Wolf; the people of the GTA thank you! (well they would... if they had a voice... )

[LoneKnight]

Awesome! Ever think of adding solar panels?

[Black Wolf]

Awesome! Ever think of adding solar panels?

As a matter of fact...

[LoneKnight]

Awesome! Ever think of adding solar panels?

As a matter of fact...

Sexy. But can you make larger variations? I was building a spaceport using a custom Installation model and your modular kit (sadly an older version) and a large spaceport/city might have several massive solar panels as opposed to lots of small ones. Just a thought.

[Black Wolf]

Sexy. But can you make larger variations? I was building a spaceport using a custom Installation model and your modular kit (sadly an older version) and a large spaceport/city might have several massive solar panels as opposed to lots of small ones. Just a thought.

Probably not - nothing personal, but I've nixed varying the sizes of things before - the reasons then still hold now:

I suggest to add bigger and smaller parts. (not just different lengths)

Problem there is that everything, at this point, is standardized around the single cell and 5 cell girders (except the umbilical dock, but that's already fixed on my end and will be fixed in the next version for you guys). Everything is 10x10 wide. Changing that would mean duplicating every piece in, say, 2x or 5x scale. I can think of uses (like appplying this stuff to destroyers rather than cruisers and corvettes), but I'm not really keen to include it as part of the basic pack, as it'd double the size. Resizing in PCS is now a fairly trivial matter though, so if someone needs big pieces for a mod, they'll be easy to make.

[Black Wolf]

Version 1.2 - http://www.mediafire.com/?xhrz4dh5znndwxn

Included everything bar the modular installation bits, which aren't really ready yet. Let me know if there are any bugs.

[Nuke]

dont forget modular turrets or perhaps some kind of defense module with a wide array of weapons, where you only need a couple to provide adequate firepower.

[mjn.mixael]

 

Did you open the pack? It has a turret in there.. You really shouldn't need more than 1 or 2 turret designs though...

[Nyctaeus]

This is awesome! Utility of this pack is almost unbounded. Can't wait for other types of modular turrets.

[Nuke]

Did you open the pack? It has a turret in there.. You really shouldn't need more than 1 or 2 turret designs though...

of course not, cant really say i intend to make use of it. mission design is not really my area of expertise. i just thought it would be kinda cool to have guns, and didnt see any mention of them.

[Goober5000]

I downloaded the latest pack, and my virus scanner reported the presence of Univ.script/99a.

[Colonol Dekker]

[assasing123]

a sort of robotic arm mounted on the girders using them as rails would be Pretty cool too, and a missile launcher turret, along with some force field projectors maybe? and you know... that sort of modules, space fusion reactors, science stations, warp nasceles (i know i know lol...), and maybe don't make them indestructible... it would be really cool if when hit by a bomb for example, they explode with some radial splash damage, thus causing a chain reaction that you can see advancing and destroying each adjacent piece.

[jr2]

I downloaded the latest pack, and my virus scanner reported the presence of Univ.script/99a.

What's virustotal.com say?

EDIT: 0/44 virus scanning engines detected a threat... must be false positive

[Nuke]

i wish virus programmers would go back to writing their own libraries instead of #including commonly used ones

[Goober5000]

I just downloaded it again and got the same thing.   McAfee says that it's limited to readme.txt though.  Can someone quote it here?

[Talon 1024]

Freespace Modular Construction Kit
By Black Wolf

This is the 1.2 version of the Freespace modular construction kit, used to create drydocks and small installations from a series of small pieces in FRED. There will most likely be future versions with more parts, especially habitation modules. That said, any modders who feel like adding to the collection are more than welcome to do so.

The kit contains the following pieces:

 - A single girder cube
 - A five cell girder (open ended)
 - An eleven cell girder (open ended)
 - A twenty three cell girder (open ended)
 - A Small cap plate
 - A Docking ring
 - An Umbilical dock, to connect ships inside the drydock with the ouside world
 - A Short umbilical connector
 - A 90 degree bent umbilical connector
 - A cube/cross connector piece
 - A large docking pad
 - A series of Solar-type Panels
 - A Modular Turret
 - A modular sensor dish
 - A set of cables
 - A "Biodome" Type habitable area

In addition, two mods that are not directly a part of the kit have been included, a cargo platform (included as one of the models uses one of its textures) and a gas tank cargo container (as a stand-in for a habitation module until a better one is made).

One mod that has not been included but, in my opinion, fits very well with the kit is the GTDk Acropolis Fighter dock. If you choose to add the Acropolis to your kit, it is most easily found via the FSWiki -
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTDk_Acropolis

Another useful model is the GTDr Phidias, or Colossus Construction Drone, by MjnMixael. It is also available from the wiki here:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Phidias
An associated model, the 3301, is available here:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTDr_3301

All of the models have been tested with Freespace Open 3.6.12, and there's no reson why they shouldn't work with earlier or later builds, to a point. They will not work with retail for a bunch of reasons, most significantly the lack of multidocking support.


Some Tips for FREDders

 - Position your items in FRED by docking them together, but use the "Jettison-cargo" sexp at the start of the mission to break the girders up into their component pieces for the actual game. The engine struggles with the physics of docked ships at the best of times, and multidocking potentially dozens of things together can give it a heart attack if anything shoots or collides with the docked meshes.

 - Some of the pieces have multiple docks, sometimes to allow cargo to dock, other times to give different orientations. Play with the docking to get it right.

 - The texture-replacement feature in FRED is very useful for getting more diversity out of a limited set of models. Access it through the Ships editor

 - Always choose a single, easily identified piece of material in any docked set and make note of its coordinates, or place it somewhere easy to remember like 0,0,0. This will be very useful when FRED decides to drag your carefully positioned drydock as one unit a few hundred metres out of place trying to dock something incorrectly.

 - Also, don't stress is FRED suddenly seems to scatter your pieces all over the place - this is a multidocking issue, but it's easily rectified by just moving your construct up or down on one of its axes, then back into place, or even just right clicking on something and using the Position and Orientation editor. As long as everything is docked together and not just placed there, it will snap together.

 - Set all your pieces to hostile, protect ship and stealth in the ships editor to avoid filling the Radar with dots. You may also want to use invulnerable, but that's up to you.

 - Recent builds of the SCP have the ability to define objects as immobile, using the "Does not Move" checkbox in the ships editor. This is very useful.

 - Be creative! The parts are designed to be as flexible as possible, so all sorts of shapes and combinations are possible. In addition, standard sizes have been used for most of the pieces, and so additions to the kit are very welcome.



NOTE - Although pretty heavily tested, the occasional bug may have crept in. Please let me know via the Hard Light Productions forums:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php.

While you're there, check out this thread for some cool ideas about how to use your kit:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74116.0
(But please, if you're downloading this in the distant future, don't bump the thread without good cause - that ticks people off).



CHANGES SINCE PREVIOUS VERSION:

Obviously, new pieces have been added. Also, changes have been made to a few dockpoints to make them more useful - the TGas1 has gained additional dockpoints, and a bug with the 90 degree umbilical connector has been fixed (dockpoint aligned on the wrong axis).

FUTURE PLANS:

Proper Habitation modules for modular outposts. Promise.


NOTES REGARDING THE BIODOME:

The Biodome is currently in limbo due to FSO's inability to handle transparency properly - it's only capable of rendering one model behind a translucent surface, hence anything that lives in the biodome is invisible. It's been included so that, if someone wants to use it, they can, but I would strongly reccomend that they use an opaque texture for the glass.

CREDITS:
All models and textures created by myself, Black Wolf, except the Fen08 texture, which came from the Inferno mod.

[JGZinv]

I found your problem....

McAfee says

Try a real Anti-Virus... like AVG, Avira, or Avast...