MOD: STA2 Upgrade Project 2014 - A stock A2 mod in FO

posted on April 21st, 2015, 12:59 am

Hi don_quijote. How cool to hear from you. I always wondered these past years where you went. I always loved your high resolution map backgrounds you did and you had planned to release more, but then you left the community.

I think I attempted to contact you regarding use of the Fleet Ops menu you did, but could never reach you or something so didn't use it since I didn't have permission. I also liked your LCARS loading screen you did. Everything you did was a nice change from stock.

In regards to the mod yes, the main download 2.0a is the latest Full release and then the patch brings it up to 2.0b. I don't really have plans to do any more versions except fixes and such. I would like to redo the mod from scratch to try and get everything as perfect as I can, but that's a lot of work and I needed a break so we'll see what the future brings.

I have been working on a Star Wars mod with Majestic over at MSFC and I have nearly completed a version of the Upgrade Project for stock A2. It doesn't contain some of the flashy Fleet Ops stuff, but it still contains the bulk of all the great stuff other modders let me use. Oh, the asteroids are actually stock, I just used the textures from FO to give them a better appearance.

Like I said, it's great to hear from you. Stick around for a while.

posted on April 21st, 2015, 9:56 am

I didnt left the community. I was there from time to time. I wanted to make some more backrounds, but there was a problem with the backround cubes in Upgrade Project version at the time. Some maps displayed the backround textures wrong...so i wasnt able to create seamless textures. And i was really tired of these constant error messages on filefront....

My friend, you can use, change, mod etc. all of my stuff without limitations. If you find something usefull, just use it I personally think about to rework the planet textures...for example a colour rework and to change the earth to a random class M planet.

But i stayed a big fan of the old Activision Star Trek games during the past years. Thanks to your fantastic work to bring everything togehter again i will play now again A2 Thanks so much...two days ago i thought "Ok, just google for Armada Upgrade Project to see what will show up" and i found this. Just amazing.

Instead of A2 modding i worked the past years on a grafic overhaul mod for Elite Force with HD Textures and engine updates :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDHJqHbcsNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gjOKVWDp-A

In relation to A2 modding:

1. The asteroid fields. There was a very nice version of the asteroids (in my opinion ) You can see it here: http://armada2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/117063/7. I cant remember if it was already a part of the UP...

2. The Level of Distance Objects. Planets went to very low poly, when zooming out. I always tried to fix this via the LOD entry but it never changed anything. So, does anyone knows how to prevent A2 of using LODs? Nobody needs this today.

3. If i remember right the last UP Verison from Fryer came with high poly planets with an atmospheric glow effect. But if i remember well again, these planets had some clipping problems. Do you take them completely out?

Once again thank yopu so much for your work!

posted on April 25th, 2015, 11:44 pm

@don_quijote: As to the A2 modding I think those asteroids in the picture are from Yacuzza and the Midnight Universe mod. I just chose not to use them. If you replace the stock asteroids with those then they don't block properly on maps and ships can go through them which is not very AI friendly.

For the LOD's on planets I have no idea. Maybe someone more in the know can help.

For the high poly planets that I think you mean they are in the mod in the map editor as background objects. You can place them on the map. There are also glows you can place on regular planets, but if you do you won't be able to mine them or build orbital stations around them or colonize them. For some reason the SOD's used for the glows block access to the planet

posted on May 10th, 2015, 6:49 pm

Hey rifraf I was finally able to download your version of A2 classic and I've really enjoyed it. I'm already starting to mod it myself. I have noticed an odd crash however, as far as I can tell it's a navigation problem of some kind. First time I noticed it was instant action Fed vs Rom on Warzone map. It's happened one or two more times but I wondered if you or anyone else has mentioned this or not. Here's the report itself.

Attachments

exceptArmada2.txt

(30.37 KiB) Downloaded 377 times

posted on May 12th, 2015, 2:57 am

@SPARTAN078: That is an odd crash. I can't say I've run across that one. I'm not sure what it could be with navigation though as I've played many instant action games and haven't had that happen?

It appears centered around numerous Fed scout ships? Can you think of anything else that was going on? What ships may have been battling if any, what ships/stations were being built at the time, did a ship/station get destroyed at the moment it happened?

I used the updated fleet formation files that TChapman500 posted in the STA2 Import mod thread, but hadn't run across any issues with using formations. I didn't alter any of the path planning variables in the RTS_CFG either?

posted on May 12th, 2015, 10:22 am

I had another crash while playing Sp Fed second mission. I had three sets of three cargo ships delivering supplies to the other base, from what I could tell the crash occurred when a cargo ship had finished offloading its material and went to load up some other thing. I don't know if this is just a one-time bug or what. The report says something about a resource transfer but I have no idea what it means.


As to the first crash I reported, I'm not really sure, I had probably half a dozen scouts going around, lost a few to the Romulan fleet. I noticed this though when I told the scouts to explore they tended to go to the bottom of the map so I had to click explore multiple times in order for them to go anywhere.

Attachments

exceptArmada2.txt

(31.17 KiB) Downloaded 395 times

posted on May 14th, 2015, 12:39 am

I tried a few instant action games but every time I built a trading station it would crash a few seconds later. Maybe it's something to do with the Ferengi?

Update: I was able to keep the game up longer by turning the Ferengi off but as soon as I tried to load a cargo ship with cargo it crashed. Maybe there's something wrong with the cargo lists?

Update: I think I fixed the issue. The fed trading station odf had two lines #include Fedtrading.odf and #include Globaltrade (I think), I did a search and there were no such files. All the other trading stations had #include tradingstation.odf, no other race had a specific list of goods to trade they all referred to a global list #include tradingstation.odf

I did have that navigation problem again though.

posted on May 14th, 2015, 2:25 am

@SPARTAN078: Are you sure you haven't modded any of the trading station files and you have the latest version of the mod? Reason I ask is because the #includexxxxxx you listed doesn't appear in mine.

All of my trading stations have the following at the top:
#include "tradingStation.odf"

//Name of Ship class in Ship Display window & in edit mode & tooltip
unitName = "Trading Station"

And the TradingStation.odf has the following at the top of it:
#include "station.odf"

// Basic Trading Station Cargos
cargoKey1 = "GUI_SD_CARGO_SAURIAN_BRANDY"
cargoValue1 = 1.0

cargoKey2 = "GUI_SD_CARGO_TRIBBLES"
cargoValue2 = .8

And so on with the cargo values.

Have you modified the Ferengi or any of the trading values, cargo ships or physics files? You mentioned previously you've started modding it so not sure how much you've done yet?

posted on May 14th, 2015, 2:42 am

I added some ships to the Federation side and a few stations (Two Utopia Planitia and a Family of Spacedocks). I have a upgrade system in place where you can research upgrades for various ships.

For example: Nova class can upgrade to Rhode Island, Defiant to Valiant, Miranda to Soyuz or Saratoga, I even used a few from Ghost's compilation mod and have an upgrade to Intrepid-X, Excelsior to Lakota, Ambassador to Yamaguchi (using Dawnstar model) Galaxy to Venture and Galaxy-X and Sovereign to Sovereign-X. (All refits include quantum torpedoes for whatever level ship it is.)

So nothing all that deep really mostly just added odfs and stuff. I haven't anything else.

Before I was able to fix it the top of the ftrading.odf had two lines #include Fedtrading and #include Globallist or something. Every other trading station only had #include "tradingstation.odf".

Although once I figured out the problem with the Trading stations I made up specific lists for each race. It seems to be fixed now. My other main problem is that navigation/formation crash. It happened several times tonight I'm still not sure what's going on with it.

posted on May 14th, 2015, 10:12 am

It will appear that similar topic was discussed before...

Tsar IvayloUser avatar
posted on January 21st, 2015, 1:07 pm
Last edited by Tsar Ivaylo on January 22nd, 2015, 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
From what i can see this is amazing mod!...
Aldo i saw very little of it because everytime i try to play with the Borg for example (instant action against random a.i.) the game freezes and then crashes onto the desktop!... I em not checked other species so far...

Update - Well i played with the Romulans this time for about half an hour again instant action against random a.i. which turned out to be Borg a.i.... I played against the Borg a.i for about half an hour then the game freezed and crashed again!?...

Update - I played with the Klingons instant action game against random a.i. which turned out to be Romulans this time. Then the Romulans start using their special weapons (shield inversion beam and staff) and then in the place where the beam is start appearing white boxes, seconds later the game freezes and then crashes onto the desktop!...

posted on September 21st, 2015, 5:51 pm

Hi All

I am new to the Forum, firstly have to say fantastic work! I loaded Armada 2 again for the first time last week and was thinking I wish they had updated it, and came across SFO and then this MOD and its made the experience 100 times better, It looks great and feels like a new game with the things that we all loved about A2, so thank you and well played all involved.

I do have one question and really sorry if it was covered before, I saw someone talking about the rebalancing for the single player, mostly the borg as they just swarm like a pack of bees, was there any work done on that side? to make them feel more like the borg? I only ask as when I did the first mission if it wasn't for the Outpost would of been knocked out in the first 2 minuite.

Thanks again for great work

posted on September 22nd, 2015, 1:21 am

Hello,

The ai of single player missions is also modified and there're more borg ships attacking. You can use any text editor to edit the aip files and reduce the number of ships built by ai.
http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding ... telligence

I think the original purpose was to make it more challenging. But it's too difficult if the player is not very familiar with RTS games. Might be a good idea if the original aip is included with mod, or provided as additional download for players that may need it.

posted on September 23rd, 2015, 12:31 am

@Capt. Clifford: Thanks for the comments and glad you like it. I didn't think many people downloaded this any more.

Work was done to the single player missions to make it more difficult. Are you playing on hard settings or easy/medium? If you have a stock version of A2 installed you could swap in the original build lists to make it less difficult. You could also edit the maps to take away some of the Borg ships or resources and such.

I didn't want it to be too easy. It took me several tries before I could beat it. I do have a version of this mod for stock A2 as well that is essentially ready. Just need to tidy up some loose ends before release if anyone wants to try it without FO.

@yochenhsieh: I'm not sure I'll include the stock files or not. One could just grab them from the Classic Mod also hosted here. Will have to think about that

posted on August 19th, 2016, 9:35 pm

JUST FOUND THIS THREAD
Question: Does this work better then Star Trek Armada II Import, Cuz I love that one, but certain things keep my friends going back to the actual stock armada 2 and playing that instead.

posted on August 20th, 2016, 2:37 am

Hey there. I wouldn't say it works any better. The Import mod was designed to bring stock A2 into the FO engine with just enough changes to get it to work. My mod is essentially the same idea except all the graphics/models/textures are updated to look better using mods from everyone around the community.

What about stock A2 keeps your friends going back to that if I may ask? The import mod should be basically identical in game play to stock. I made slight changes to a couple of the game play mechanics in my mod, but they are easily changed back to stock levels as well.