Battlestar Galactica 2.0

[OmegaMagus]

To show that I haven't been sitting on my hands for the past several days, here is an alpha prerelease. This will allow you to play as the Cylon Basestar. I did my best to base it off of the new show, although I am sure I have missed a few details. Which is why I am giving this out, in hopes that the finer details will get worked out before I finish Battlestar Galactica MOD v2.0. Enjoy!

[MajorDiarr]

You did a better job on this than the Galactica, or so I think. The ship's image is nice and clean around the edge. The Raiders don't quite look grey or silver enough but it's hard to see them anyway.

On a related topic, I didn't like how the weapons worked in either mod, so I ended up modding them to my liking. Just treat these files as patches and drop them into their respective mod files. That means you have to have the mods in the game directory already.

The first one is a mod to your missile, meant for the Basestar, the file in this zip has to be put right into the items directory, where it will over-write the old Basestar missile file. It adds smoke trails, flame plumes, and flames when shot down. This can also be used with the Battlestar mod by the same method, since they use the same weapon. [EDIT] Apparently, I screwed up a parameter, this one has it fixed.
http://www.filegone.com/gqfd

This file replaces the flak guns for the Battlestar. You can put the file from the zip right into the game's directory, if the battlestar mod folder is already there it will over-write any old files automatically. In this one the timing of each gun is slightly different, the firing pattern is different, and the explosions are different. I think the effect is slightly better.
http://www.filegone.com/7jxq

Tell me what you think, OmegaMagus.

[OmegaMagus]

I love what you did to the missiles! I've been trying to get them just right for a while now and never could nail the look down.

I personally don't like the shot gunning of the flak guns, I don't think it lines up with the show all that well. Which is why I stuck with the "wobbly" machine gun look. But it is something that I will look into since they do seem to be a point of focus.

The Raiders I left on the white side because they are a lot harder to see the darker they get, and I didn't want it to seem like the Basestar has invisible fighters. I'll probably end up making them a shade or two darker.

One last thing. I'm trying to decide if I should keep the Basestar as a playble ship, or if I should make it into a new race. Let me know what you think.

[EDIT] I'm going to keep the Basestar as a playable ship. That means I'm going to keep it as a seperate MOD. IF (that is a big if) I decide to do a MOD or Total Conversion that "follows" the TV show then I will make it into a non-playable alien race.

[MajorDiarr]

No problem on the missiles, I'm glad you like it and I didn't really think you would like the flak gun change that much. However, I still think there are some aspects worth using. Mainly, the explosion sprite I used, I think it's much better than the expanding circle explosion. You can just copy and past that line out of my version onto yours. It just needs a random angle of 30 or 50.

It should be playable but as a seperate race within the Battlestar Galactica mod. That way you can have them fight each other in the simulator. There are three other ships to add as well, a super Basestar, which may be a Raider factory, the heavy Raider, and the Resurection Ship.

[OmegaMagus]

Final prerelease before I combine my Battlestar and Basestar MODs into a single uber-MOD.

-Combined MajorDiarr's additions to the Basestar's missile with some of my own. (THANKS MAJORDIARR!)
-Basestar's missiles fire out in random directions (looks better when attacking, but makes them useless for shooting at empty space)
-Raiders are slightly darker and larger

Enjoy!

[MajorDiarr]

The width of the smoke trail is good, although I think it could stand to be slightly, maybe a pixel, wider, as is the random launch angle, it is far more like the show with that. However, I think the smoke trail is far too subtle since I remember it being far more visible at a distance in the show. Increasing the number of particles laid down may help a little, as well as decreasing the random Y placement slightly. Other than it's great.

The Raiders also look a bit better. The guns, I would remove the muzzle flair though, it looks like engine flair. They need blue gun particles too, although I'm sure you're getting to that, in the mean time you could try setting the gun particle to 34 34.

[OmegaMagus]

The only problem with laying down more smoke particles is that the game engine has a preset limit. The more you lay down the more likely you will get gaps or sudden stops in the smoke trail. I made the smoke trail stand out more by making the smoke particles larger as well as taking away their random placement (doesn't look as good, but I don't think you will be concentrating on the smoke trails while the Galactica and a Basestar are fighting it out).

I already made the Raider guns shoot blue particles (first thing I did after I posted the last release). I also made the Raider missiles fire faster and made their smoke trail more visible (both to look like the show and to stand apart from the Viper missiles).

Not too long ago (read: few hours) I stumbled across a wiki site that is all about the Battlestar Galactica universe and I am using their technical data to finish both the Galactica and the Basestar. Here are some details of what I have done so far to finish this thing:
-I have removed two of Galactica's flak turrets and modified the remaining two so they give the apearance of 20 flak turrets shooting two rounds about ever 2 seconds. I also upped their damage to compensate for the diminished amount of fire.
-I added two point defense cannons that (some what) give the appearance of about 392 cannons shooting 200 rounds a second. They do next to no damage.

Some things I am thinking about adding:
-I am playing with the idea of adding anti-fighter missile launcher(s) to the Basestar (since the basestar has no guns and some sort of anti-fighter weapon).
-Both the Galactica and the Basestar have nuclear weapons, Galactica's are very limited while the Basestar's are not. I don't think that this kind of super-weapon would be appropriate for this MOD, but still think the idea of making that kind of a weapon is pretty cool.

Just to show how close I am to finishing 2.0, I have combined the Basestar and Raider ships into the Galactica MOD. So now you can play as either of them in the simulator, pit fleets of both against each other, watch them in the main screen, and fight the Cylon ships in the game!

I attached a picture for your viewing pleasure.

[MajorDiarr]

In the mini-series, the BSG takes a direct hit from what was probably a 1 megaton nuke and the only damage it took was hull breaches in something like ten compartments. But that's still 100 times stronger than the weakest missile in game.

I seem to remember that number for the guns being wrong, I counted them all a while ago but then again it might be right. And I still don't remember the BSG ever firing missiles.

[OmegaMagus]

I don't know about hte number of point defense cannons (all the numbers I've seen seem too big to me) but everywhere I look the numbers are in the hundreds. As for the missiles, the most recent example of Galactica using them is in season 2 episode 12 (The episode where they attack the Resurection ship). I've attached a screenshot and circled the missiles.

[MajorDiarr]

I remember those firing from the main guns.