VonFrank's Bridge Commander Remastered Project: RELEASE

[Wintersfrost]

Well after I posted my last message. I dug through some old files I have for Bridge Commander. I have a bunch of planet textures saved. But the problem is, they don't seem to work with BC Remastered. For example, I installed the textures for gre planets and a few other files. But they don't change anything in the game. All the planet textures still look like moons.

[eclipse74569]

How can I disable the intro movie and logos?

Pressing escape skips intro movies ( you have to do it with every one of them)

[vonfrank]

Well after I posted my last message. I dug through some old files I have for Bridge Commander. I have a bunch of planet textures saved. But the problem is, they don't seem to work with BC Remastered. For example, I installed the textures for gre planets and a few other files. But they don't change anything in the game. All the planet textures still look like moons.

You should be able to replace the planet textures without any issues. The mod already includes higher quality planet textures than the stock game (from 256x256 to 1024x1024 IIRC), but if you want to modify them further it should work no problem.

Are you sure you're replacing the correct files?

[Wintersfrost]

Pressing escape skips intro movies ( you have to do it with every one of them)

Of course the escape key works, but I thought there was a way to disable them with an in-game file. Maybe I was thinking of Star Trek Legacy.

Are you sure you're replacing the correct files?

Yes, but I'll try again once I get everything sorted out here. Had trouble with Windows 10 and waiting on recovery media from the manufacturer. As much as I love Windows 10, I hate it. On a new laptop too. What a PITA.

I like your mod overall btw. Seems like you worked hard on it and accomplished what I never had time for. Making a polished version of the game with more ships that's compatible with SP. A shame I gotta wait before I can try it out more.

[Vidmaster]

Yeah, the experience is pretty good thus far. Got sidetracked recently by a few first-party Sony Releases but I have every intention of returning to this modded game.

One thing I was wondering about was framerate, it seems you uploaded a few playthroughs of what looks like an earlier version of your mod to Youtube.
And it is silky-smooth there. Is this just a recording artifact? Because no matter what sort of options I select, a fluid 60FPS is not achievable with the game.

I know, its old, single-threaded and overall a botched engine, but today's hardware should simply kill all of these issues with "iron", aka with the hardware's brute force. Moore's law may have changed somewhat but modern CPUs are still factors faster than the hardware the game was designed to run on.

So...   how do you do it?

[vonfrank]

Yeah, the experience is pretty good thus far. Got sidetracked recently by a few first-party Sony Releases but I have every intention of returning to this modded game.

One thing I was wondering about was framerate, it seems you uploaded a few playthroughs of what looks like an earlier version of your mod to Youtube.
And it is silky-smooth there. Is this just a recording artifact? Because no matter what sort of options I select, a fluid 60FPS is not achievable with the game.

I know, its old, single-threaded and overall a botched engine, but today's hardware should simply kill all of these issues with "iron", aka with the hardware's brute force. Moore's law may have changed somewhat but modern CPUs are still factors faster than the hardware the game was designed to run on.

So...   how do you do it?

What you see in those videos is the same framerate I get when playing normally. A solid 60fps.

The only way I've found to get the game to run smooth is to set it to windowed mode. Not sure why, but when the game runs in fullscreen, it limits the framerate to 30 at most (and usually lower) but playing windowed unlocks it.

Also, if your windowed resolution is the same as your desktop res, then it gives you the appearance of fullscreen anyway.

[Wintersfrost]

Von, I'd like to change Excelsior NCC-2000 to the TNG upgrade (glowing nacelles) and different registry like Malinche or Livingston. How would I go about doing that? I have the Excelsior Family Pack and Excelsior/Centaur Pack. I am assuming for the TNG upgrade I can take the WCnccexel.nif and replace it with WCds9excel.nif. But I am not sure about the registries. Any other files I need to add to the data/models folder?

[vonfrank]

Von, I'd like to change Excelsior NCC-2000 to the TNG upgrade (glowing nacelles) and different registry like Malinche or Livingston. How would I go about doing that? I have the Excelsior Family Pack and Excelsior/Centaur Pack. I am assuming for the TNG upgrade I can take the WCnccexel.nif and replace it with WCds9excel.nif. But I am not sure about the registries. Any other files I need to add to the data/models folder?

If you go to the "data\Models\Ships\Excelsiors" folder, you will find the Excelsior.NIF file. You can replace this file with another 3D model if you want, but I recommend against it because every ship in my mod has been custom scaled to a 1 unit = 1 metre sizing. Since the other excelsior you want to replace it with has not been scaled, all of the hardpoints will no longer line up with the geometry of the hull. You might get some subsystems 'floating' off of the ship hull when they are targeted.

As for the textures of the registries, that is easier to deal with. You just have to replace whatever texture file contains the U.S.S. Excelsior registry with the new one you want to use. You can even achieve the glowing nacelle look in this way by swapping the grille textures with ones that have an alpha channel for glows set up.

[Wintersfrost]

If you go to the "data\Models\Ships\Excelsiors" folder, you will find the Excelsior.NIF file. You can replace this file with another 3D model if you want, but I recommend against it because every ship in my mod has been custom scaled to a 1 unit = 1 metre sizing. Since the other excelsior you want to replace it with has not been scaled, all of the hardpoints will no longer line up with the geometry of the hull. You might get some subsystems 'floating' off of the ship hull when they are targeted.

That might explain why when I edited the Vor'cha HP the disruptor appeared to be firing off in space opposite my ship and behind the target. I moved the main disruptor from the center of the ship to it's cannon location on the bow.

As for the textures of the registries, that is easier to deal with. You just have to replace whatever texture file contains the U.S.S. Excelsior registry with the new one you want to use. You can even achieve the glowing nacelle look in this way by swapping the grille textures with ones that have an alpha channel for glows set up.

Do you know which textures contain the Excelsior registry and the glowing nacelles? I couldn't discern by looking at the files.

[Wintersfrost]

Also, if I wanted to add other ships, does that mean they wouldn't be scaled with your since you set them to 1 meter?

How come you can't move more than 60 km away from the target too? As soon as you reach 60 km, the cursor start fluttering but you don't move beyond 60 km from the target. It's like your in a sandbox.

[vonfrank]

Also, if I wanted to add other ships, does that mean they wouldn't be scaled with your since you set them to 1 meter?

How come you can't move more than 60 km away from the target too? As soon as you reach 60 km, the cursor start fluttering but you don't move beyond 60 km from the target. It's like your in a sandbox.

You can add new ships if you want, but their scaling will be whatever the original creator of the ship had set  as opposed to the standardized system in my mod. I will say though, unless the scale is wildly off, you probably won't notice the difference.

As for your second point, ive never seen that issue before. 60km is pretty close and it's a very regular occurrence to be at greater than that distance from your target even at the start of a quickbattle.

[Wintersfrost]

You can add new ships if you want, but their scaling will be whatever the original creator of the ship had set  as opposed to the standardized system in my mod. I will say though, unless the scale is wildly off, you probably won't notice the difference.

What program did you use to adjust the scaling in your mod? Nifskope? I'd like to know in case I use your system.

As for your second point, ive never seen that issue before. 60km is pretty close and it's a very regular occurrence to be at greater than that distance from your target even at the start of a quickbattle.

Well that's what it does. In fact, there are other bugs that come with the mod. I just haven't had time to list them all or do further testing. For example, if I put the speed of a torpedo back to 50.0 it'll fly off to the sides of the ship at the start of quickbattle. The distance issue still persists. I can't get further away than 61 km from the target. I took a screenie in an Excelsior. I'm at full impulse and I can't get any extra distance between me and the target. I'm just bringing these to your attention since you expressed the desire for others to build upon what you've created. I'd like to make some improvements as well.

I'm also still wondering what ID glows I can use for a different registry. I left the Excelsior.nif alone since you adjusted the scaling.

[vonfrank]

What program did you use to adjust the scaling in your mod? Nifskope? I'd like to know in case I use your system.

I used Gmax to scale everything. Scaling in Nifskope often leads to bizare issues with hardpoint values in game not lining up with the expected locations.

Well that's what it does. In fact, there are other bugs that come with the mod. I just haven't had time to list them all or do further testing. For example, if I put the speed of a torpedo back to 50.0 it'll fly off to the sides of the ship at the start of quickbattle. The distance issue still persists. I can't get further away than 61 km from the target. I took a screenie in an Excelsior. I'm at full impulse and I can't get any extra distance between me and the target. I'm just bringing these to your attention since you expressed the desire for others to build upon what you've created. I'd like to make some improvements as well.

Have you tried to replicate this distance issue with stationary ships or with friendly ships? Enemy vessels have a built in AI fiction that makes them "intercept speed" towards their targets when they are farther away than approx 60km. The ships you are fighting may simply be trying to "catch up to you" to stay in combat range. This is an element of stock BC's AI system.

For the torpedoes, that doesnt make much sense either. Lowering the speed of the projectile doesn't produce any unusual side effects from my testing, nor should it. Does this happen only when you fire at a target? Does it happen when you blind fire as well?

UPDATE:

Upon testing I can say with certainty that the distance issue is not an issue at all. It is simply the AI trying to intercept with you. I had the same setup (Excelsior vs. Freighter) and the freighter zooms towards you on intercept speed in a vain attempt to catch up with your ship. The intercept triggers and deactivates so fast, that it seems like the ship is stuck at 61km distance with a stuttering target indicator. This is just an element of Bridge Commander's built-in gameplay.

And I think I know what's happening with your torpedoes, but it is also not a bug with the mod. A few seconds after the start of a Quick Battle, the AI ships will intercept speed towards you until they get within that same 60km distance mentioned above. For those brief moments, they are traveling at excess of 47,000 kph. So if you try to fire a torpedo at a ship while it is moving that quickly, the projectile gets confused and tries to over-compensate by veering off to where it thinks the target will be if it continues at that speed. This happens in stock BC as well, but its less noticeable because stock torpedoes are incredibly slow and do not seek as well as in my mod. Wait a second or two for the ship to slow back to combat speed before firing torpedoes and this will not be a problem.

And to answer your Excelsior ID question: the file "blankid_glow.tga" in the "data\Models\Ships\Excelsiors" folder is the one that the model currently uses to display the U.S.S. Excelsior name plate. Modify or replace that file to change its ID textures.

[Wintersfrost]

Upon testing I can say with certainty that the distance issue is not an issue at all. It is simply the AI trying to intercept with you. I had the same setup (Excelsior vs. Freighter) and the freighter zooms towards you on intercept speed in a vain attempt to catch up with your ship. The intercept triggers and deactivates so fast, that it seems like the ship is stuck at 61km distance with a stuttering target indicator. This is just an element of Bridge Commander's built-in gameplay.

Ok, that's what I thought. I never noticed it in Stock or KM.

And I think I know what's happening with your torpedoes, but it is also not a bug with the mod. A few seconds after the start of a Quick Battle, the AI ships will intercept speed towards you until they get within that same 60km distance mentioned above. For those brief moments, they are traveling at excess of 47,000 kph. So if you try to fire a torpedo at a ship while it is moving that quickly, the projectile gets confused and tries to over-compensate by veering off to where it thinks the target will be if it continues at that speed. This happens in stock BC as well, but its less noticeable because stock torpedoes are incredibly slow and do not seek as well as in my mod. Wait a second or two for the ship to slow back to combat speed before firing torpedoes and this will not be a problem.

Normally I'd wait a second or so. Maybe I never tried to fire straight away in KM.

And to answer your Excelsior ID question: the file "blankid_glow.tga" in the "data\Models\Ships\Excelsiors" folder is the one that the model currently uses to display the U.S.S. Excelsior name plate. Modify or replace that file to change its ID textures

Nice, thank you as I was really not sure what file to replace and didn't want to mess it up.

I am having a bit of another conflict too. I tried to replace the damage textures with mdamage. When I go into combat, I can't increase my speed, target or fire at the enemy ship. Did you use the JL Studios Federation Damage textures? I was wondering if the conflict was caused because there were extra files I may have to delete. I've attached the mdamage1 file in case you need to take a look at it. Could I use fc's realistic damage textures even though they are for NanoFX?

[vonfrank]

I am having a bit of another conflict too. I tried to replace the damage textures with mdamage. When I go into combat, I can't increase my speed, target or fire at the enemy ship. Did you use the JL Studios Federation Damage textures? I was wondering if the conflict was caused because there were extra files I may have to delete. I've attached the mdamage1 file in case you need to take a look at it. Could I use fc's realistic damage textures even though they are for NanoFX?

Just looked through the textures you linked here. The Damage1 - Damage4 textures are identical to the ones included in BC Remastered already. The only difference here is the Damage.tga texture that goes into the "data\Textures\Effects" folder. I dropped the file into my install and it works perfectly fine, as it should, since texture replacements have no direct effect on the game's basic functions. There has to be something else that you've modified that is causing this issue.

[Lakota]

Damn, I've been playing STBC since years and just know now about this place. The Remastered mod works pretty well!

I wish it would work with KM though, I miss some things that just gotten used to me ^^;
Is there a way to somehow get KM 0.7 or 1.0 to work with remastered? All i get is the intro sequence of KM and then the game loads endlessy.

[vonfrank]

Damn, I've been playing STBC since years and just know now about this place. The Remastered mod works pretty well!

I wish it would work with KM though, I miss some things that just gotten used to me ^^;
Is there a way to somehow get KM 0.7 or 1.0 to work with remastered? All i get is the intro sequence of KM and then the game loads endlessy.

I'm glad the mod works for you!

Both BC Remastered and KM are complete overhauls of the game. As a result, they are incompatible with eachother.

That being said, you can add certain elements of KM into an install of BC Remastered if you desire, but this would take a LOT of work and would likely make the single-player story non playable. BC Remastered is designed to be completely single-player campaign friendly, so many of the script heavy mods are purposely left out.

[Lakota]

Alright, thank you.
The game just runs sooo smoothly and well so far that it would be pretty nice to have the quick battle mode of KM in it.
Or have the Phaser targeting system like in KM, where you use all your banks at once if theyre in range ^^

Nano FX would be nice as well etc...is there a list which mods are so far compatible? Would be neat to know :3

[Lakota]

Also..since im planning to play through the story normally, then maybe see what mods could work.
Is there a way to report bugs? Or should I just post them here should I find some, since i already found a few already, like the Hitbox of starbase 12 is too far out, makes it unable to manually dock nor fly close to the starbase without bumping into an invisible wall.

And many space textures are blurry or very zoomed in. Registry/Ship Names of Dauntless and San fransisco are both of the Enterprise D
Annddd..the bridge screen shows everything stretched.

[vonfrank]

Alright, thank you.
The game just runs sooo smoothly and well so far that it would be pretty nice to have the quick battle mode of KM in it.
Or have the Phaser targeting system like in KM, where you use all your banks at once if theyre in range ^^

Nano FX would be nice as well etc...is there a list which mods are so far compatible? Would be neat to know :3

There is no list of mods that are compatible with this mod, so that experimentation would be up to you. All I can say for sure is that many of the mods you've described require "Full Foundation" instead of the "Basic Foundation" version installed in BC Remastered. Full Foundation corrupts single player unless massive tweaking is made to many of the game scripts, so I left it out to ensure stability.

Also..since im planning to play through the story normally, then maybe see what mods could work.
Is there a way to report bugs? Or should I just post them here should I find some, since i already found a few already, like the Hitbox of starbase 12 is too far out, makes it unable to manually dock nor fly close to the starbase without bumping into an invisible wall.

And many space textures are blurry or very zoomed in. Registry/Ship Names of Dauntless and San fransisco are both of the Enterprise D
Annddd..the bridge screen shows everything stretched.

Feel free to post here any bugs that are related to a clean install of this mod. I want to narrow down problems with the mod but when bugs are posted after other tweaks have been made, it becomes impossible to determine if this is an issue related to my mod or the other changes that have been implemented on top of it.

As for the issues you've mentioned:

What blurry space textures are you referring to? If it's the backgrounds in locations like The Badlands, The Briar Patch, or The Bassen Rift, this cannot be avoided because the game cannot support larger texture backgrounds without becoming highly unstable due to RAM usage.

The registry of the Dauntless and San Francisco are known issues. The creator of the Galaxy Class model (Wiley) never made registries for those ships and I don't have the photoshop skills required to create new ones. If such registries exist for Wiley's Galaxy Class (as well as the rest of the ships in the mod) I will certainly add them.

The bridge screen being stretched is a result of forcing the game to run Widescreen and cannot be avoided (as far as I know).

The hitbox of the Federation Starbase.... Well, that is a more interesting problem...

Before replying to your posts I spent several hours testing this problem since it never used to be an issue back in older versions of my mod. I'm not entirely sure why its cropped up, but you are 100% correct. The collision mesh around the starbase does not line up with the physical model. Ships near the door will collide with an invisible wall about 200-300m away from the actual door frame.

I'm going to work on this more today and hopefully arrive at a solution, but so far I have not had any luck.