I'll try to answer some of these here as the responses may generate more questions
will there be a "developers kit", or is everything we would need "in the box" from the get go?
and if there is to be a developers kit, will a basic FAQ or guide be included to use it?
(unlike SOME Dev kits... *cough* SKYRIM)
This is a good place to start. We don't have a development kit in the way you know from Bridge Commander. All of our developer tools are built directly into the game which makes the game itself the development tool.
how much different is the learning curve to mod for Excal as opposed to BC?
namly the hardpoint scripts..
Talking specifically about hardpointing, the experience is for the most part simpler but in some ways more complex at the same time.
As I hinted at above the Hardpoint Editor is built directly into the game. This means that you can pause the game at any time and start to fiddle with hardpoint values in any way you want. This means it is much easier to balance weapons, maneuverability and other attributes. We can also do some really cool stuff like adding ID maps and decals on the fly.
Hardpoints themselves are slightly more complex though. Rather than adding points in 3D space you will be adding actual components to the ships, scaling them, rotating them and moving them around the ship. There is also a lot more in the way of power networks and computer networks which need to be added to the Hardpoints.
Overall I would say it is easier to create a hardpoint than in BC, but you do have to consider a few more issues while doing so.
are we restricted to certain software to use for modding?
(for example BC REQUIRES bridge sets to be exported via old hard to obtain 3dMax software,
i doubt this is an issue given Excal is MUCH newer, but dosnt hurt to find out)
(you do know my background with bridges and BC.. right?
)
what are the game engine restrictions?
i.e. texture resolution sizes and file types, model formats and poly counts.
is there an easy way (or a way in general) to "port" existing BC mods to Excalibur?
Does this game still use Nif files or a different format and if so will there be plugins for 3D max and other model building programs?
Excalibur imports model through a library called Assimp which can read a
huge amount of 3d model formats. In theory you can export your model to any of these formats and import it into Excalibur, but of course in practice you will find that some formats work better than others.
We are using the COLLADA format for all of our internal work and that will be the best supported. This is an XML-based model format which has a very wide range of support from 3D modelling applications.
Textures can also be loaded from a wide variety of formats including TGA and PNG, but we are recommending the use of DDS since this includes generation and storage of mipmaps within one file. Since the texture specification on Excalibur is quite significantly expanded over Bridge Commanders we do need to be more careful about using high resolution textures.
Poly counts are usually between 10k and 20k for ships and 20k to 30k for large space stations. For ships we recommend no more than one set of 4K maps, but we have pushed this to two 4K maps on one ship in rare situations.
How will the dev team handle any bugs that become apparent after release?
We aren't making a game in the traditional sense of something that "goes gold" and gets published via DVD. When you get your hands on Excalibur for the first time it will be just the first phase of the entire project. As such, bugs and other issues will be squashed with each new release.
How easy will the 'MainGame' be to use? And will it be easily modded?
I could do with some specific details here. Are you referring to the campaign mode? What do you mean by "use"? I think the answer below might partially answer your question.
Is the engine flexible enough for me to create a total conversion mod with a central campaign, branching side missions, player choices that factor into the storytelling, third person shooting, a cover system, Star Wars-like fighter combat, a party system, cinematics that trigger on objective completion and the like, a Mass Effect like dialogue system, and customized character appearance?
Most of the logic for Excalibur is written within python scripts just Bridge Commander's was. As such you can achieve pretty much whatever you want so long as you are willing to rewrite enough code.
As for the missions, we aren't aiming to release a hard-coded set of missions for the campaign mode as was the problem in Bridge Commander. One of the later stages for Excalibur will be a modular mission editor which will allow anyone to create their own campaigns and release them for people to play along with. We won't actually start work on Excalibur's story mode until that is completed since we will be using the same tools and features that will be available to modders.
An interesting aside here, but as part of making the mission editing more open and modular we intend to build it so that you can add a "level of ship" rather than a specific ship to a scenario. This means that ships you download and add to your game will have the potential to show up in missions.
Will we be able to modify the scale and range of combat within the game?
Again, I'm not entirely clear what you mean by this. Could you clarify?
Not a modder myself, but a valid question I think. While playing with the new NanoFX viewer, I noticed that if I brought in the older models from the previous version, they don't have the enhanced glows or the weathering. Are modders going to have to account for these things when creating ships for Excalibur?
The texture spec for Excalibur is very different to that of Bridge Commander and includes new map types which people will have to produce. Full colour illumination maps, bloom, separate specular colour and levels, height maps, detail maps and weathering have all been added or extended.
I feel that Bridge Commander's community has tried to compensate for the age of the engine and there will be something of a learning curve caused by this. For example, the ships we are producing for Excalibur tend to be lower polycount than those created for Bridge Commander since our artists are able to effectively use normal maps to create the appearance of hull lines and escape hatches.
Modders porting these ships directly to Excalibur will need to remove such details from the model and add them instead to the normal map. In a similar way I would also point towards "
deferred lighting" and of course the terrible ID maps which require big cuts in the unwraps.
How complex can ship/station model animations be? Like is there a limit on the number of moving parts?
Animations are put together within the Hardpoint Editor which allows for moving parts without breaking physics (you can play golf with the Intrepid's nacelle and a small asteroid). As such, more complicated animations take a long time to put together and you really wouldn't want to consider anything too complicated.
The animation system will also support animated turrets in a similar way incidently, so we will hopefully be giving the NX class some animated phaser turrets
will there be engineering functionality, will we be able to enhance the ship systems via engineering control like laforge tries to increase power transfer efficiency in a tng episode, and re-routing power to increase or reactivate systems... or increase shields or sensors. And what about using sensors to find new anomalies and then use the "particles" to enhance systems. Also can you alter phaser settings like they did in best of both worlds.
This is a gameplay question really... we have discussed these things with members on our forums at STExcabur.com/forum. As I mentioned above the hardpoint system does account for power and computer networks which means most of what above will be possible if not actually implemented at launch.
