Galaxy Charts WIP

[USS Frontier]

lol i had forgot to post this up here... Advertisment a little isn't bad lol

Galaxy Charts is the new mod i'm making, after finishing GravityFX.

What it does is basicly improve the way you go from set to set in BC, also making it more realistic.
It organizes all regions of BC in a "galaxy", so each region can have it's position in the galaxy. A "Region" is the conjunction of sets in a system in BC (normally defined by scripts in a folder in "BC/scripts/Systems").
Here's an example:
-  In stock BC we have the Belaruz system defined in the scripts "BC/scripts/Systems/Belaruz".  In the Helm's Set Course menu, we go to "Belaruz", arriving in "Belaruz 4", then we can go to Belaruz 3, Belaruz 2 or Belaruz 1.
   So, see?  Belaruz is a region, containing the sets Belaruz 4 (which is the initial set which you go to when travelling to the region), Belaruz 3, Belaruz 2 and Belaruz 1

And with a new GUI window which you can bring up by the Helm menu or by the Science menu, you have an map of the galaxy, showing all regions of the galaxy, the region you are in now, the destination region which you have selected, the sets of the region you are currently in, the distance of where you are to your destination, the time needed to travel from where you are to your destination, your current selected warp speed (which you can change). You can also zoom in, zoom out, move the map when it is zoomed, show each quadrant of the galaxy, or just press the Warp button in it to warp. Then, when warping, you can select a new destination and change your destination while warping, or just drop out of warp to a set which should normally be empty, but the AIs can still track you down to there. All this works together with the Helm's Set Course menu and Warp button, so there isn't much diference, except for the obvious one of using a map or a list, between the galaxy map and the normal helm menu.

A new warp travel system was written from scratch. With it, you can change destination and drop out while in-warp, the time you need to travel from your origin to your destination is calculated based on the distance between those regions, other ships will only appear warping with you when they have the same origin and destination than you. Also, if you see ships warping in after you, or dropping out before you, you'll see the warp flash they create. You can change the warp speed while warping, but you can't maneuver the ship in the warping set, plus battle while warping is completely allowed. Ships that are chasing you can fire on you with phasers, pulses and torpedoes if they have you on their sight, and if your warp engines go down, you will dorp out of travel. Ships now are also allowed to tow others thru warp, tho they aren't allowed to stop towing or changing the tow target while warping.  All of this while still having the nice NanoFXv2 nacelle and warp flash and sounds if you got it installed, the warping-in and warping-out GFX sequence were re-written as well, but they pratically the same than NanoFXv2 one's.

As for multiplayer compatibility, i don't know what will happen, mainly because it wasn't tested, but it is something i would like to add, and probably will need some help to do so.

This 'description' was taken from what i wrote in the "Mod Description" topic in the Galaxy Charts forum, right there in the BCS:TNG forums. link to the forum here
Now, this mod is a Work-In-Progress, so check the status update topic in the forum for more current info on the mod's status. There's also a screenshots topic, and some other things.

[MLeo]

Please excuse me from not sounding excited, it's late here...

But I hope you will handle blinkers right when a ship comes into a system the player currently is in. Right now with NanoFX, the blinkers invert (or something like that) and they block out the screen. And yes, it's the blinkers, since if you (temporarly) remove them, then the screen clears up. But when you add them, then the screen blacks out again.

[USS Frontier]

I've already made various tests, some of them with ships that have blinkers, and i didn't found any problems with the blinkers blacking out the screen. Not once.

[RhVaurek]

 I've never noticed that problem myself.
 Anyway, I will be allowed to get excited I hope? Excellent.
 
 A great idea I always like a nice galaxy map to have a look through and your right it will make it so much more realistic with an "astrometrix" kinda style to navigation over the Galaxy.
 Also towing through warp thresholds would be brilliant! Imagine the vids that could be made using that little trick lol. Good luck with this Frontier.

[MLeo]

There are plenty of threads complaining about the blacking out, and each and single time it has been traced back to a ship with blinkers jumping into the set.
If memory serves, a 10+ thread on BCU about the SNS Galaxy was spend mostly on this.

[USS Frontier]

I remember seeing some threads about it as well. But i'm not having that problem. It's kinda hard to try to fix a problem which you doesn't happen to you. So i'll just wait til it happens with me (which i doubt will) or with someone when the mod enters beta testing.

Thanks RhVaurek