Armada2Files MOD News

[Aerilon]

Hey Folks, another update from Zero Hour, though this isn't going to be major as there isn't loads to report upon really. First things first though, Zero Hour now has an "Official Website" - oh yes: http://www.freewebs.com/stazh. I spent the majority of yesterday sorting it out and such so there you are.

Also, the Forum link again (encase any additional people wish to join up - not for the team, but just in general): http://s15.invisionfree.com/SSUK/index.php.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, the general story of the MOD has changed, there isn't like to be anything time related though I may add a few surprises in the mission section, though no huge 22nd - 24th century time jumps. Everything is going to work in sequence.

I've also updated the Zero Hour MOD Centre Page with some additional content, though I've still got a bit more information to add, that'll come later, along with a New MOD Banner.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For those of you that aren't up to speed with This MOD, some screenshots to feast your eyes on: - These and many more are viewable on the Zero Hour Screenshots Page & Ship Images on the Forum Gallery.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This Construction Ship may look familiar, and you would not be wrong. There is a similar one available on both BC & for A2 with the MOD "Sands of Time". However this one has been polly reduced by me, and stands at 1500 from the original 2000+

I've also added a different nacelle, re-textured a few parts and completely remade the "cargo" section. - This Construction Ship also carries a texture set of two, compared to the original four. The only downfall is that it currently has no animation, though for the release it shall have.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, thats it for now, when I've got something else to report on I shall. Hopefully the Forum and now Website will keep you all more up to date with the project.

[The Joelteon7]

Update done

[Aerilon]

You've got the title folks. I'm putting Zero Hour on hold for a little while (month max). Reasons: I've just got some stuff to sort out (MOD-related) before I actually do anything.

I've planned from the start to have eight races, yet can only stick with six of them I keep changing my mind with the other two, it's ranged from the Breen, to the Son'a, to the Tholians, to the Xindi, to the Hydrian etc etc...

I just need to sort out the final two races, have a look around and see what is on offer, additionally, I need to sort out what ships I'm actually having for each race, and what time frame I'm going to set this in. So much has changed since the original plans that I don't wish to work and keep on changing stuff else it's going to end up confusing and I wont know where I am.

Thus, Zero Hour is officially on hold for a while. It wont be cancelled, just on hold.

[willsk8forfood15]

I have an update for TSOT:

Hello everyone, willsk8forfood15 here with an update for The Sands of Time. Well I'll just start with some various details.

We are rebalancing the game from scratch. More details will come soon but basicly weapons will be organized into 3 categories which will have relative attributes as in hitchance, strength and maximum range.

The borg will not have shields as in the shows. Of course they will have stronger hulls to proportion to other ships. They will also be resized. The bor sphere in the stock a2 is far too small. The borg cube was made to be a massive adversary carrying countless drones. Due to pathing we cannot make them too large but they will have a balance of fun and realism.

On another note relative to the borg, I have news of a feature that I think the a2 community will enjoy. Almost every ship will have a partner in fusion. Now Im not sure what 4 spheres will look like but Im pretty stoked about the idea. Now with the increased size and strenghth of the borg cube there will not be a fusion cube(well, at least not of the dreadnought cubes).

Speaking of fusions, we may introduce yet another new feature into the a2 modding community: Docking. Now due to classlabels, it is impossible to make ships unfuse besides the galaxy class which has it's own classlabel. But it is possible to make altered duplicates of this classlabel but it is limited to two ships per un-fusion. This makes docking and undocking possible. Due to file size limitations we will only have a certain number of ships able to dock with eachother. But it will have a strategical advantage when used correctly.

In other news; abettermod.com is not down. To go to the homepage you have to go to abettermod.com/index.html. This is will be fixed soon but I am very busy with the mod and everything thast comes with it. But it will be up before you know it. We do have a forum up at abettermod.com/phpbb. The forum will be upgraded to Invision's power board soon. Registering is quick and painless so head on over and post your comments/questions there.

Lastly, I have a couple more features for TSOT to tell. We are redoing every race GUI and adding a more spacey look to buttons and cursors etc. Every weapon texture will be remade or replaced by a more realistic one. We will add new map items and realistic planets accompanied by bright nebulas making the space environment much more realistic to the player.

Welp thats it for now Happy modding everyone.

P.S. We have a team of 5 but we need of more. We have positions available for modelers, texturers, gui'ers, voicereactors, beta testers, and more. We have a team application set up at http://abettermod.com/appl_for_team. We have benefits for the mod team like your very own abettermod.com email address! Apply Today.

-W15 out.

[The Joelteon7]

Beginning the copy and paste routine

EDIT:

Done.

[willsk8forfood15]

Thank you joelt

[Aerilon]

Well, with a fair bit of time out due to college coursework (which I’ve now completed – resulting in me passing my college course) I’m back, and into Modding Zero Hour once again.

There is the small problem of proper employment, I’m soon to be getting a job thus this won’t leave as much time for Modding as it has done. Thus I’ll be working on it in the weekends and some of my free time.

Unless I can get a team together (something of which has shown very little interest so far) It’s down to me getting everything up and running myself, and whilst I can do this, it is going to take a significant amount of time to complete.

I have had people do various requests for me, and with a little help here and there, though what I really need is a “team”. – Feel Free to apply, either here or on the Forums.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, Updates:

I’m finished with the Cardassians (at least in the sense of their ships). I have all of them I wish to have, some being conversions from Bridge Commander & Starfleet Command III (polly reduced), and others being retextures or kit bashes done by myself.

With them, I have ten Cardassian Vessels, each ready for deployment. As it has been said before, each race is allowed up to twelve playable ships, with the Cardassians I have chosen ten, the reason being I can’t find any others of which I like, and the ones I have do justice.

The Federation are close behind, though not quite complete. I am awaiting a few Polly Reductions from Achilles before they are ready to go. – They (for map usage) have the full twelve ships (as it is expected with the Federation having so many ships to choose from). Additionally, they have a few map ships too of which includes the Prometheus & Sovereign Classes.

The Romulans and Klingons are also on their way to completion. I’m waiting on a Romulan ship from Achilles and a re-texture of another from Major Payne, in turn the Klingons and Romulans don’t have that many ships to play with. The Romulans to be having seven and the Klingons eight - It is doubtful that these will get any higher, though this should be interesting in terms of gameplay.

The Borg Collective isn’t doing too bad either, with eight playable ships and two map ships (each to be scaled and armed accordingly to bring the best out of them).

In addition to this I am however struggling a little with the Dominion. I have five ships of the Dominion to play with, I did at one time have eight, however one was a kit bash that simply looked too cheap and tacky, and the other two are very high in regards to their polly count, thus rendered useless to me.


As for the seventh and eighth races, I still haven’t decided upon them though do have some pretty nifty ideas. I’ve always liked the idea of a 24th century Xindi style race, so am hoping to have them. If the Xindi don’t appear as a playable species, they are going to appear in the game for map usage, this I have decided on and am going to stick with.

In addition to them there are some other species of which I am willing to pop in as the other two races, so I’d appreciate it if you folks could let me know what you’d like to see. I’ve put a few down below, but any others are appreciated (of course within reason) – It would also help if choices made had models already available or some good resource spots for them.

· Tholian
· Vidiian
· Breen
· Son’a

Please note also, I don’t want “Mirror Universe” as an option, though this would be a nice race to have on playable, it just isn’t going to fit in thus I’m not going to have it.

Along with this, I have been doing a little planetary work, and have three types of each class of planet for map usage (I get bored looking at the same M Class texture over and over again).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyhow, generally my current time is spent adding HP’s to the ships; I haven’t really done anything with the stations as of yet due to wanting to get the ships out of the way, I figure stations will be easier to accommodate than the ships are.

That’s about all to say really, progress is slow, as is the incoming models and suchlike. There aren’t any pictures to see either (at least nothing new). Any picture I post as A2Files PoTD ends up getting moaned about by some people (because apparently, staff aren’t allowed to post their own pictures), thus I’m not going to the effort to get a nice picture, only for it to be thought of as crap.

Pictures will appear on the MOD Profile screenshots page however, though the ones I previously had on my MOD Screenshots page, I’ve removed for now – There is one there, but the rest removed due to ship and models changes etc.

Anyway, that’s me done; I guess I look forward to your replies and your choices on the seventh and eighth races…

[The Joelteon7]

Consider your update added

[EAS_Intrepid]

Modern Space Combat July Update!!

SO MSC continues.

I have built several more ship models. These are:
NAA: SWAC - Spaceborne Warning And Control
NAA: John Paul Jones Cruiser
NAA: Update of the Enterprise Class Carrier
ERC: Storozhevoy Carrier (replaces the Minsk carrier mesh)
ERC: Potemkin (replaces the Lenin battleship mesh)
ERC: Katjusha class Experimental Cruiser

Civilians: Supertanker
Civilians: Superfreighter

Also I have a large part of the music tracks for the ERC and the NAA together.
NAA: Patton movie theme; Apollo 13 movie theme; Air Force One theme (all by Jerry Goldsmith)
ERC: Hunt For Red October Movie theme; "The Sacred War" - Alexandrov Red Army Choir; "March of the Soviet Militia" by Schostakovich; "Farewell of Slavianka"; "O Fortuna"; some others


Also I started to work on new planet sods and textures.
I have now a more detailed concept of the fighter system of MSC. I put an example of today's fighters/bombers with the explanation:

Interceptor: Fighters to stop enemy bombers or other interceptors from harrassing friendly units, stationed at large carriers and the ERC battleship [F-15A Strike Eagle, MiG-31 Foxhound]

Multi-role combat (MRC) fighter: to fulfill mutli-role duties, stationed at medium carriers [F-16 Fighting Falcon, MiG-29 Fulcrum]

Attack Fighter: Meant to support ground forces or to engage against smaller enemy warships, little defense against other fighters (it can go against a MRC fighter, but only as last option)[Panavia Tornado, A-6 Intruder, Tu-22 Backfire]

Bomber: In fact a crossing between a fighter and a warship, carriers large amounts of standoff cruise missiles (today's Tomahawk is a standoff cruise missile) [B-2 Spirit, Tu-95 Bear]

ECM: The ECM is a craft launched from large-scale carriers or installations to provide air/spaceborne intelligence or electronic countermeasures for the fighter groups [E-8 J.S.T.A.R.]

Support: for longer flights there is a little freighter that is as large as a Marine Corps dropship accompaniying the fighters. It carries additional weapons payload [Comparable craft is the KC-10 Air Tanker]

Until now I am not sure about the American fighter design, but two Russian fighters are already built, but not putted ingame.

I also made a draft of the ERC GUI.

Voice Actors ARE STILL NEEDED!
For more information on MSC check out majesticscificentral.com!

Some Pictures:

[Aerilon]

Well, I didn't do it, but Joelt has done so