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Interview with New Gen Mod Team on TBIII - Interview
Posted by: Amagosa987 on 12-04-2009 @ 16:02 |
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This News Item has been viewed 7,281 times
At 7pm this evening, I headed up an interview with New Gen Mods illustrious leaders,gdata and yopyop. This evening was a as much a recap as an Update on there upcoming TC mod, Trek Battles 3 and there addon pack, Resistance.
Take a seat, get some coffee and enjoy what went down.
Trek Battles III Total Conversion & Resistance Addon Pack: Interview with New Gen Mod Team
Date: 04/12/2009
Time: 19:02:00 (GMT)
Amagosa987:
Ok Guys, it has been almost a year since IKS interviewed you about your under development mods, TB III and Resistance.
Let's go for TB III first and start right at the beginning, I recall there being a change in the interface of legacy, a new design and a general streamlining of it to make it better for the gamer, can you elaborate a little more on how TB III makes navigation of the menu's easy for them?
gdata:
The main change is, the color of the new interface - although it's not ready yet, but work in progress - it is not as colorful as it used to be. Apart from that we made some minor changes. We improved the font resolution for example, or added additional features that were also part of Keys of Legacy. The menu structure has also been changed. The missions have been sorted differently and you will find what you are looking for way faster than in TB2.
Amagosa987:
Cool, and does that ease of finding things also cover the ship selection process? as In any large scale mod to date, even with faster computers, it does seem a bit sluggish.
gdata:
That's why we decided to develop a second version of the STL Tools. It is a unusual but practical solution. There is an overview of all ships avialable in your install and you can easily edit some stats or disable the ship. So what users can do to improve the speed with slower computers, is disabling the ships they don't like or use.
Amagosa987:
It doesn't sound unusual at all, it sound like a sensible plan, giving the user that ability to choose makes their gaming experience all the more dynamic I think.
gdata:
Yes, but there are people who prefer ingame solutions.
Amagosa987:
Ok then, before we get on with the In game aspect...
At the time of initial interview, you weren't able to give us any inkling into the back-story of TBIII, is there any chance you can shed some light on it now?
yopyop:
Well, the story of TBIII will be a very dark and mysterious one, where the player will only get to know every aspect of it step by step. After playing teh first mission for example, you don't know much, yet. There should also be a little teaser-trailer featuring the camapign available soon.
Here's a little hint for you:"cryogenic freeze" =)
gdata:
Yes We will upload a gameplay video showing the first mission soon.
Amagosa987:
Well I look forward to the trailer, as I know I cant prise any more information from you, but "cryogenic freeze"? Are you sure you cant throw something more our way? ...Aside from snow?
Yes that was bad I know
gdata:
Our campaign will be full of surprises. Things you won't expect. And things that might shock you. And we prefer to give every gamer using our mod the chance to find out themselves. That's also why there is no other option than actually playing through the campaign, just as you had to with the original one. Ok, with some xml knowledge you can get access to all missions, but that's not what we want
yopyop:
So, no more "mission failed" after winning it =P
gdata:
No...
Amagosa:
Awesome, yes I agree, even I like to play through a campaign, sometimes its nicer to play through the missions you dont like, just to get an understanding of the plot.
Right then...to the real meat of this mod, Game play and Game modes, I daresay you have had the chance to expand the frontiers of legacy's potential regarding new game modes and forms of game play. Can you tell us what new and exciting things you have been able to implement into TBIII, and even what things you haven't been able to put in, because as modders we all know, some things work, and others just refuse to!
gdata:
We have the Custom Battle, Capture the Starbase, the Escort and the Quick Battle mode. So we did not change much since last year. Instead we thought of ways how to improve the actual Skirmish gameplay. And ghugh and me had an idea this summer:
The Legacy Enhancement Framework or also LEF. This is nothing more than a usual script assigned to the skirmish maps. This script offers the oportunity to do everything you can do in missions in skirmish as well. Theoretically you could launch Shuttles, create new special weapons, etc.
The problem is that this requires an enormous insight in both, scripting and odf. We do not have any massive improvements, yet, mainly because it is such a difficult topic. That's why we intend to make it open source and have the community included in the development of the Framework.
Amagosa987:
So the LEF is a sort of open source development kit for the skirmish mode?
gdata:
Yes, I will write some sort of tutorial for it. Explaining the theory a little bit....
Amagosa987:
Good, am I right in understanding that it sounds like it could be used for new modders to come in and understand how legacy works a bit better, and promote the further development of legacy?
gdata:
No, not really. It won't explain how Legacy works, it's more like a cheap workaround, but this is the only way how we can fix things or add things without manipulating the engine, respectively the exe, itself. Whether it will promote the further development of Legacy or not depends solely on how many people are interested in working on it. But I can think of a few people who would definitely help to contribute to that project.
Amagosa987:
Ahh I see, well either way. It looks to be an interesting concept.
Continuing with the gameplay aspect, We all know how terrible the original legacy multiplayer was, with the introduction of TBIII is there a chance for any online play? I'm sure there are gamers out there somewhere who desire a co-op battle against a Borg Cube.
yopyop:
Well, we weren't able to change that much about the online gaming experience without manipulating the original netcode.. but if you use the same version ofLegacy AND the same version of TB3 it should work like a charm. There could be problems using windows vista and seven, though. Also we'd like to recommend using the program "hamachi" to simulate a LAN. ^_^
Amagosa987:
Yes indeed, it does seem a suitable programme for it, the reason I ask about multiplayer was if you start editing the smallest thing within your copy of legacy multiplayer becomes an impossibility. But yes you are right its a difficulty that is not easily overcome.
So to my favourite part of any big mod, the ships and environments. I have always been impressed with the quality of ships, maps and textures that you guys can churn out, what can we expect to see in TBIII?... without giving away too much of course
yopyop:
Well, we took a lot of our ships and refined them, making new textures, improving the smoothing and stuff. Also there will be some new ships, of course. And we are also proud to announce that we can give the community one last masterpiece of tiptop. And that particular ship is really his best so far, if I may say so.
gdata:
We also have several new map backgrounds for TB3. Some of them have been made by IKS and some by me. I created a fluidic space background for example. We also decided to throw out the ugly maps, mainly made by me in 2007 and naturally we also added new ones and improved old ones as well as tweaked the lighting, performance, etc.
Amagosa987:
Well if you say its his best so far, I think that in itself is something to look forward to.
Oh really? did you have many difficulties with that, as fluidic space is well... made from matter.
Oh and what kind of scale are you working to with the new maps? and will there still be the 4 ship cap limit per team when it comes to skirmish mode?
gdata:
I used some of the 'advanced' rendering functions of 3ds max - at least they appear to be advance from my point of view - to render a spherical texture on a cube and get these textures ingame. I explained that on our blog a few weeks ago. Making it look fluid was the easiest of all things.
Unfortunately the 4 player limit could not really be removed. That's also one of the reasons, why we did not include shuttle launching as a part of the framework, yet. I'm still trying to think of a workaround...
Amagosa987:
Well if you do find a workaround, let us all know asap!
gdata:
I think it will involve lots of math and coding but I will do so.
Amagosa987:
Excellent! maths and coding is always fun, as I found out in my masters degree... yes even in a modelling masters degree you have to do maths and coding
So...... to Resistance, the addon that was proposed last year, incorporating, and I quote, "several different elements of Trek, Star Wars and also Stargate". While I know developing TBIII and the small thing of real life keeps you very busy, has there been much in the way of progress towards this interesting mod?
yopyop:
Progress is definately being made, slow but steady.
We have divided the development of resistance up so that each member that knows the most about each universe is working on there respective areas of the mod.
As of now ghugh is working on the Stargate part, chris and scott are working on the Star Wars part and Kophjaeger and myself are still working on KLG.
Amagosa987:
Will you have balancing issues when it comes to the various universes interacting?
yopyop:
Yeah, it could be one hell of a job to balance that one and still keep it reasonable
gdata:
I'm not sure how it would be with the other mods, but the Stargate mod will be an addon for TB3. So it won't be a standalone mod, mainly because it's difficult to remove all Star Trek content from the game without messing everything up. So ghugh balanced everything to TB3 and you will have two additional races in there. One race for the bad guys and one for the good ones.
Amagosa987:
Forward thinking! I like it! having it as an addon would mean we dont have to create another version of legacy as well, which makes me even happier!
yopyop:
yeah all those various versions do take a lot of HDD-space
Amagosa987:
So aside from the new modes, the graphically appealing features, new interfaces etc, are there any secrets you couldnt tell us last time, that you could reveal to us now...
gdata:
I guess there are...but during the last two years so many things have been changed and I can't remember all of them. This sounds stupid, but that's how it is. Development continues and continues and you get used to new features. So, apart from the things we already mentioned, I can't think of anything...
yopyop:
Well, we COULD tell you the RD, but that wouldn't be too much a surprise xD.
gdata:
It's the typical TB release date. But maybe we already mentioned that a few days ago
Amagosa987:
hehe well it was going to be my final question,
Release dates! I recall from last year YopYop that you said we could expect to see TBIII on the 25th of December, has that stuck? I know with all projects you expect some delay, but will we see this as a christmas feature for legacy files? Or something at the top of the new year sales?
gdata:
IWe intended to postpone it again, but in the end we kept the 25th:
Amagosa987:
Excellent, well I think I speak for a large majority of people when I say I look forward to its release!
If there are no more treasures I can prise from you gentlemen, I would like to thank you for your time this evening.
gdata:
Ok, thanks for this little opportunity to talk about the mod and for helping us to keep the community well informed.
yopyop:
Yup, thank you, Chris =D
Amagosa987:
You are most welcome, and thankyou for talking to us about it. Its nice to keep track 
Interview End
Time: 20:35:32(GMT)
__________________________________________
I thank Gdata and YopYop for spending there precious time on this interview.
Dont forget the upcoming interview with Unity mod developer IKS_Yo_Mama soon here on Legacy Files!
 12-05-2009 @ 16:48 - Weekly Poll Results - Which Trek Character do you think is most like you?
 12-01-2009 @ 11:23 - Contest Reminders!!!
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| User Comments |
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The following comments are owned by the user that posted them. STLegacyFiles is not responsible for their content.
Total comments: 13 | Last comment: 12-11-2009 at 18:38
IKS_Yo_Mama
From:  (New York City)
Joined: February 5th, 2005
Posts: 3497 | lol I was not involved in this interview but its good to see a gremlin put my name forward |
Amagosa987 (Staff)
From:  (oxford)
Joined: May 12th, 2007
Posts: 388 | haha, yea that gemlin has since has a smacked hand and been sent home |
acidfluxxbass
From: (Portsmouth)
Joined: August 16th, 2007
Posts: 1626 | Will be a good Christmas  |
MARKYNCC
Joined: April 12th, 2009
Posts: 162 | I really hope, that I have made these campaign missions so they appeal to all. There is a bit of everything in there, backed up by a great storyline, hard work and dedication from all of the team members and much more besides!
p.s I wont be giving the story away!
And once again thank you to 'gdata' for giving me the oppourtunity to join the team. |
PETESCAN321
From: 
Joined: May 11th, 2009
Posts: 389 | Yes TBIII yes!!!!!   |
muldrf
From:
Joined: November 3rd, 2008
Posts: 227 | Be cool to see a full campaign finally created after all this time. Also looking forward Resistance for it's stargate and starwars features. Does it intend to have BSG as well? And I take it no release date estimate with "slow" progression? |
Hellraiser_NGMT
From:
Joined: November 25th, 2007
Posts: 166 | There is going to be BSG, but it's the seperate KLG mod. |
Jc2006
From:
Joined: January 16th, 2007
Posts: 238 | I'd be interested in seeing what the Star Wars elements are going to be like, there's a lot of content that could be added. |
muldrf
From:
Joined: November 3rd, 2008
Posts: 227 | I think the alternate Scifi works are going to be well received. It has bee odd to take so long until someone got serious about it. Ofcourse there have been some false starts from various teams on that. We had some guys working on a Starwars section for a short while the other year. |
IKS_Yo_Mama
From: (New York City)
Joined: February 5th, 2005
Posts: 3497 | the one thing I would love to see in Resistance is proper scaling and decent balance..nothing worse than seeing an x-wing half the size of the Galatica |
muldrf
From:
Joined: November 3rd, 2008
Posts: 227 | Ya.. I have to agree that scalling should be good. The problem with that is such small ships compared to such large ships.. get wacky.
An idea that I think originated from Maxloef when he was working on that very thing was to make the model be like 3 XWings in locked formation. I'm not sure how effective that would have been visually during flight, Also it was to give them more firepower and punch I believe.
A scripting method could be having "good" flight AI and missions built that when a single X-Wing is picked to fly you get 3 (or more) where you get direct control of the 1 and the others fly cover for you. You could then get 4 X-Wings in Fleet Selection and when the mission starts have a full squadron of 12 in the mission with 4 direct control and the other 8 split into groups of 2 flying cover for your 4 as wingmen. Also if you loose your direct control X-Wing and one of the Wingmen are still alive you could then get direct control of it. This would take some planning and work as well as specially setup content, but might be worth it in the end. Same goes for other Star Wars Fighter sized craft, A,B, and Y Wings, Ties and Intercepters etc. |
muldrf
From:
Joined: November 3rd, 2008
Posts: 227 | The concept in my last post was to make "Skirmish" type battles between Fighters and Capital ships more practical. 4 X-Wings would have a hard time taking down 4 Star Destroyers, and even 1 if you get down to it..
A bit more than Ik's post which was making it "look" right, my thought was making it also play right.
Still Legacy isn't built for "Missed shots"... so a single hit from a star destroyer would probably take out any X-Wing assault.. And Ties without shields...
I don't envy the work involved in making it both fun and believable.. |
acidfluxxbass
From: (Portsmouth)
Joined: August 16th, 2007
Posts: 1626 | @Muldrf
what if the weapons were made in a similar fashion to the torpedo's, whereby some miss. |
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