SEV Mod questions

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Randallw said:
It made for a different war in the book. You had to go through new wormhole stealthed so that the enemy didn't see you, in case it was closed and they were unaware of it, and never go through a closed wormhole unless you were 100% certain there wasn't another stealthed ship watching. An ally made that mistake and they lost one of their homeworlds. Later the good guys find a closed wormhole to one of the enemies 5 homeworlds and wipe it out. The enemy survive the war, unknown to the good guys, but they are in a closed system with only a single planet. If they ever come out they will be detected and their race exterminated.

Is that the 'bug war' you're refering too? I don't remember any text on any bugs surviving.

[Randallw]

yep the bug war. On the Baen edition P587, in one of the systems that must be defended the bugs think on how their systems has 4 warppoints, not just the 3 visible. A new race appeared through it, thus giving away it's location, but the bugs only need 1 gunboat to conquer the enemy. They deem the new planet the planet which must be concealed. They send a colony to the planet but can't send more in case the allies see it. The colony must never use that warppoint again. Later as they are about to be exterminated the last bug planet learns of the hidden colony, and takes some hope that at least some will survive, albeit hidden away.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I remember that now.

I don't think the word 'hope' applies; they seem to be computer-like; emotionless, but not impulse-less.

[Randallw]

Well it's described as a fragile emotion, but yeah bugs feeling anything is a bit out of place. When they lose battles the strongest they "feel" is being slightly annoyed. Even when it is obvious they will be exterminated they don't regret anything, yeah sure they might have made some slight changes in strategy but not for a second do they even consider that they would not have attacked the allies.

[MasterChiToes]

Here's more mod questions...
1) Should the BMPs for the planet models be saved as 24 bit (or 16 or 32)?
2) What needs to be edited besides StellarObjectTypes.txt (looks like one entry for each planet size has to be added there)?

I've begun making some planet textures... using a fractal terrain program. Sweet how the planets slowly turn on the map... never noticed that before.

[Kana]

Randallw said:
Actually I have my own question. One of my favourite books is the Starfire series (I have the Shiva Option). What I would love to be able to do is have closed warppoints like in the book. Practically invisible wormholes with a hidden ending so that unless you saw someone come out you would never know it was there.

I'm theorizing that you could just make alternative space background like WP graphics which would hide the WP, until someone enters the hex, but you would of course still have to use the warp command. Also I wonder if its possible to set up a certain level or type of sensor to the WP, that a certain component/level could detect said Warp Points...

[Suicide Junkie]

The space background is parallaxed, so that won't hide them.
You could make the warppoint model invisible, but that won't stop you from viewing the object lists.

You could start by turning off the settings.txt value for WP seen at any distance = true.

[MasterChiToes]

The problem with invisible warppoints is that they need to be invisible to the AI, which could be really tricky, or impossible aside from cloaking (which is limited)... and the AI wouldn't be up to watching other players vanish to find warp points.

My new planet textures might be causing crashes when a star containing one of the textured planets is clicked on the minimap... weird. Never noticed such crashes before I tried making textures.