The FFED3D Thread
- Thread starter Steve O B Have
- Start date
Any word on these two builds? You fine gentlemen still working on FFED3D?
Yes, I'm still 'tinkering' with it. I'd intended to take a break after the 1st release but sadly a sudden family illness/bereavement last month meant I'd pretty much had to throw a build at Steve to host and then disappear from here. Haven't had much time since due to some on-going training, and also with Glastonbury festival approaching at the end of this month, work on the next build has been & will continue to be very sporadic for the time being.
There has been some progress though.
The next version fixes the rest of the intro sequence; no disappearing ship, and ends with a police viper in pursuit, not a 2nd Quest ship.
Specular lighting is re-enabled - I'd accidentally left it commented out after investigating if textures were becoming transparent.
There are now 3 common shaders to cover ships, asteroids and other objects. So ships can appear metallic, and other objects less so... individual objects can still use their own dedicated shader .fx file of course. Originally there was to be a single common shader that every object used, but I chose to exclude it in the initial release as it just made everything overly dark and shiny and I didn't like the look!
I've been playing with the sky and its shader too - no sexy sunsets to report as yet but it does transition better between day/night to conceal/reveal the stars now. This is an area I want to look at in more depth for a subsequent build and I'd like to add an atmosphere shader rather than just a texture. There's a nice one at PETROCKET that made me drool and I'm hoping might be adaptable!
Finally, I've also implemented multiple skins on objects to give some variety. Each ship can have up to 10 different skins, and the skin for police vipers is separated too - this should please the artists out there! (And no doubt strain resources, but anyway) Changing the colour of your ship with "Buffet" lets you choose a different skin. In future I'll be looking to support bump-mapping on the skins as well. (probably parallax occlusion mapping)
In theory, multiple skins also applies to buildings etc too, but I've not had time to test these yet!
I suppose with a tease like this, I best try to find some time to package something up this week... no promises though!
There has been some progress though.
The next version fixes the rest of the intro sequence; no disappearing ship, and ends with a police viper in pursuit, not a 2nd Quest ship.
Specular lighting is re-enabled - I'd accidentally left it commented out after investigating if textures were becoming transparent.
There are now 3 common shaders to cover ships, asteroids and other objects. So ships can appear metallic, and other objects less so... individual objects can still use their own dedicated shader .fx file of course. Originally there was to be a single common shader that every object used, but I chose to exclude it in the initial release as it just made everything overly dark and shiny and I didn't like the look!
I've been playing with the sky and its shader too - no sexy sunsets to report as yet but it does transition better between day/night to conceal/reveal the stars now. This is an area I want to look at in more depth for a subsequent build and I'd like to add an atmosphere shader rather than just a texture. There's a nice one at PETROCKET that made me drool and I'm hoping might be adaptable!
Finally, I've also implemented multiple skins on objects to give some variety. Each ship can have up to 10 different skins, and the skin for police vipers is separated too - this should please the artists out there! (And no doubt strain resources, but anyway) Changing the colour of your ship with "Buffet" lets you choose a different skin. In future I'll be looking to support bump-mapping on the skins as well. (probably parallax occlusion mapping)
In theory, multiple skins also applies to buildings etc too, but I've not had time to test these yet!
I suppose with a tease like this, I best try to find some time to package something up this week... no promises though!
That's great news that the main niggles with the intro (the first thing people see when they load the game) has been sorted out.
Now all we need is updated models for every ship that's in the original FFE
Now all we need is updated models for every ship that's in the original FFE
Yay! \o/
Great to hear you're working on the next build Andy. This is the game we all need while ED is in development. Some of the ideas you mention in your post sound amazing
Great to hear you're working on the next build Andy. This is the game we all need while ED is in development. Some of the ideas you mention in your post sound amazing
Unfortunately that would involve a lot of work, and the process is very fiddly as wellNow all we need is updated models for every ship that's in the original FFE
Unfortunately that would involve a lot of work, and the process is very fiddly as well
I quite agree - can't help but have it on my own wish list though.
Hi I am trying to download FFED3D-beta3-Ittiz (which I think it's the latest?) from spacesimcentral.com.However I get on error "Response denied by WatchGuard HTTP proxy". I pasted that in google and I think it's because of some strict router rules.
I can't alter them however because I am staying in an hotel. Does someone know a mirror? I could wait a week I suppose but if that error pops up at home I wouldn't have a clue how to solve that anyway.
I am also a bit dumb in patching and such, so any help telling me which (one) download to fetch would be very welcome
regards,
I can't alter them however because I am staying in an hotel. Does someone know a mirror? I could wait a week I suppose but if that error pops up at home I wouldn't have a clue how to solve that anyway.
I am also a bit dumb in patching and such, so any help telling me which (one
) download to fetch would be very welcome regards,
I have it shared as a torrent.
There is link to it on an earlier post.
There is link to it on an earlier post.
In post #1077 you are asking for a torrent. After that I can't find any link about it?
If you're still struggling to get it try
http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/games.html
It's the original Dreams version which as its a .rar file (winrar) you may be able to get arounf the hotels firewall.
http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/games.html
It's the original Dreams version which as its a .rar file (winrar) you may be able to get arounf the hotels firewall.
Post #1025 has the torrent to beta3... I've just realised i was downloading beta1...
start again in fact....http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=94273&postcount=1025
Hi Bikky
Assuming that you've grabbed the small patch from Steve's FrontierAstro site (see bottom of page) then, yes you can just extract it into your existing Russian Mod FFED3D folder. My build is a continuation/fix-up of that mod and has been released as little more than the .exe files. Note that there are a couple of terrain textures that'll be overwritten as they needed to be greyscale for the game to be able to colour them as it chooses.
There's lots more info though in the FFED3DAJ_readme.txt file inside the patch .zip file, I'd recommend a quick scan of that as it explains new .cfg settings etc. as well.
You can also drop it into Ittiz's installation, and that has collected together all of the best models and updated textures, but beware that there is a clash at the moment with textures/tex724.png which I'd used for the brown dwarfs but is an atmosphere billboard in his version. You'd need to take a copy of that before extracting and swap them depending which version you want to play with. I've renamed the texture in my next release so that people can co-exist both variants within one folder if they do want to save space.
Cheers
AndyJ
Thanks I already downloaded and tried that version last night. Mobius has it his sig.
But it raised an error http://picpaste.com/pics/application_error.1370949116.jpg
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Post #1025 has the torrent to beta3... I've just realised i was downloading beta1...
in fact....http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=94273&postcount=1025
Thank you I will try this one! The torrent downloads as I am writing
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Hi loststargirl
Not sure what that error is, I'd imagine perhaps a visual-C++ runtime dependency might be missing...
But first of all - I've just had a look at the Elite-Forever bundle - if you drill into the AutoPlay/FFED3D folder you can launch the .exe's directly and bypass the launcher.
"FFE D3D.exe" is the original v1.12++ Dreamzzz build from 2008. Does that one work for you or do you get the same error?
And does running FFED3DAJ.exe directly work, or still the same error?
Not sure what that error is, I'd imagine perhaps a visual-C++ runtime dependency might be missing...
But first of all - I've just had a look at the Elite-Forever bundle - if you drill into the AutoPlay/FFED3D folder you can launch the .exe's directly and bypass the launcher.
"FFE D3D.exe" is the original v1.12++ Dreamzzz build from 2008. Does that one work for you or do you get the same error?
And does running FFED3DAJ.exe directly work, or still the same error?