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Topics - Arparso

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1
Modding Tools / Issue running Nexus' model / texture converter
« on: November 07, 2015, 14:55:05 »
A while ago I did a fresh Windows 10 install and since then I can't run Nexus' model / texture converter. As soon as I try to start it, it displays an application error dialog and tells me, that the application could not be started (also giving the error code 0xc0000142).

Does that sound familiar to anyone? I remember having trouble starting the converter back on Windows 7 as well, but I don't remember the actual error message and how I eventually got it to run.

Without the converter, I cannot bring in new assets or make changes to old ones... kind of kills Nexus modding for me :(

2
Mod Development / Released Mods / ModDB - Mod of the Year 2012
« on: November 30, 2012, 23:04:33 »
Do any of our mod teams have any plans for a MOTY 2012 campaign? Nexus might not be popular enough to win any actual award, but I'd still like to see at least one or maybe even a few Nexus mods in the top 100. ;)

Don't know how active the modding community now is, though. The Forum isn't exactly sprawling with life and I haven't really kept myself up-to-date on the latest developments :(

3
General Gaming / Humble THQ Bundle
« on: November 30, 2012, 01:45:41 »
Just stumbled upon the newest Humble Bundle - this time, they've got a great selection of THQ games for their unique "pay what you want" sale. That's right, you can choose what amount of cash you're willing to pay for these great games:

  • Company of Heroes (including addons Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor)
  • Metro 2033
  • Darksiders
  • Red Faction Armageddon
... and you'll even get the soundtracks for these games.

Additionaly, if you're willing to pay more than the average customer (right now less than $6), you'll also get the hilarious open-world romp Saints Row The Third. That's a LOT of bang for your buck... like, literally, because all these games feature endless amounts of shooting, fighting and big explosions.

>> go to the Humble Bundle THQ Homepage <<

The only downside: I already own all of them except Darksiders... which I'm not that interested in. If you don't own these games, however, it's a pretty awesome deal and one of the best humble bundles ever, I think. Personally, I can highly recommend Company of Heroes for that tactical challenge, Red Faction for some very fun sci-fi-shooting and of course Saints Row for its over-the-top sillyness and GREAT coop experience. I didn't really get into Metro 2033, but for this price offer you can have a look for yourself, I guess. ;)




The Humble THQ Bundle

4
General Discussion / Nexus hits gog.com!
« on: July 27, 2012, 21:10:22 »
Nice one. "Nexus - The Jupiter Incident" was just re-released on gog.com, a service hosting a lot of gaming jewels from times long ago. Among them classics like the Wing Commander series, Master of Orion, Dungeon Keeper or the Freespace games (all worth checking out, btw).

Nexus @ gog.com

As usual, it's a DRM-free copy and comes with a few goodies such as wallpapers, artwork and a soundtrack. Also, for us EU folks, it's slightly cheaper than on Steam: $9.99 on gog vs. 9.99€ on Steam.

5
General Discussion / State of things
« on: June 23, 2012, 01:33:18 »
Soooo, how is everyone? Is there still somebody modding and/or playing Nexus? Some people still visiting this forum?

6
General Gaming / Nexus Conflict
« on: June 23, 2012, 01:08:30 »
Alright, my first thought after reading the title of this game was something like ... "Did Nexus 2 get renamed?" ;)

It hasn't got much to do with the Nexus we know and love, though. Except... that it also features tactical space combat. Actually it just got renamed to "Black Prophecy Tactics: Nexus Conflict" and is free2play tactical MMO spinoff to the more figter-action oriented "Black Prophecy" space MMO. I wasn't too impressed by Black Prophecy back when it was in beta, but Nexus Conflict might convince me to take another look... a free tactical space MMO where we get to command our own battleships in beautifully rendered space? Count me in on that one :)

BPT: Nexus Conflict - Official Announcement Trailer - next-g 2012 - gamigo

7
General Discussion / Nexus 2 coming to Kickstarter?
« on: May 10, 2012, 18:23:31 »
Nexus 2 may be coming to Kickstarter soon, according to an email exchange between galaxy366 and Zsolt Tatrai, Studio Director at Most Wanted Entertainment:

Quote from: Zsolt Tatrai
Yes, unfortunately Games Plant was a failure and it buried Nexus 2 as well.

BUT...:), we are currently preparing a new campaign on Kickstarter, which should start in a few weeks' time.

We all hope we can bring our favorite game back to life with the help of the fans like you this time.

If that goes through, Nexus 2 may get yet another chance to see the light of day. In the last few months several Kickstarter projects have had amazing success, such as a new Tim Schafer adventure, Wasteland 2 by Brian Fargo and a Leisure Suit Larry remake by Al Lowe himself. Although Nexus 2 probably won't get the same kind of publicity and overwhelming support by the masses, at least Kickstarter is much more well-known and successful as Gamesplant ever was. Hopefully that increases the odds enough to finally get a proper sequel to Nexus.

:)

8
Off-Topic / Welcome our new robot overlords...
« on: August 30, 2011, 21:46:26 »
Omg, this is absolutely hilarious: two chatbots talking to each other about ... well, about everything it seems... :D :D :D

AI vs. AI. Two chatbots talking to each other

9
General Gaming / Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
« on: August 18, 2011, 04:04:55 »
How to ruin a perfectly awesome series with a sequel in two easy steps:

1.) Change the game's setting to a westernized mess of alternate WW2 with mechs

2.) Make it run on Kinect instead of using THAT FRACKING AWESOME CONTROLLER:



See? Isn't that thing pure awesomeness for mech-loving sci-fi nerds? Who in god's name would prefer Kinect over that?

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (X360) Steel yourself for this gamescom trailer[HD]


Ugh... :(

10
Scripting / Nexus' scripting language - how'd you rate it?
« on: May 30, 2011, 12:22:39 »
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know your thoughts about the Nexus scripting language.

What do you like/dislike about it?
Is it easy to read?
Is it easy to write?
Too verbose or not verbose enough?
Do you miss any kind of feature?
How does it compare to other scripting languages you use(d)? (e.g. Lua, Python, UnrealScript, etc.)

Hoping for some opinions... ;)

11
Off-Topic / Happy Easter
« on: April 24, 2011, 11:56:06 »
:) :) :) Happy Easter! :) :) :)


12
General Gaming / Humble FrozenByte Bundle
« on: April 13, 2011, 23:52:57 »
The guys from Frozen Byte are offering some of their games as a "pay whatever you want"-bundle, with some of the revenue going to charity, if you so wish. All released games can be activated on Steam or Desura. These titles are included:
  • Trine
  • Shadowgrounds
  • Shadowgrounds: Survivor
  • Splot (not yet released)
  • Jack Claw (unfinished game source, editor and assets)
The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle


Buy Humble FrozenByte Bundle

A pretty good deal, I'd say! Trine is just awesome and both Shadowgrounds titles are very fun old-school action games, especially if played in local coop.

13
Do you even listen to anything at all or do you prefer to work in absolute silence?

Just curious ;)

Personally, I like to listen to some calm, soothing music in the background, preferably without any singing whatsoever. This usually helps me a great deal to get "into the zone" and just start solving whatever problem gets in my way. Some movie soundtracks are great for this - for example my standard go-to music would be the "Kundun" soundtrack by Philip Glass:

Kundun (Soundtrack) - 18 Escape to India


It's not really that calm and soothing, but has a certain ... uh ... atmosphere (?) ... don't know why, but I could listen to this the whole day and just be productive.

Any favourites of yours?

14
There are some more or less interesting videos by some guy from the BSG FX team showcasing some of their models and techniques in Lightwave. Might be interesting for the BSG mod team (or any other fan interested in the show's visual effects):

Battlestar Galactica Lightwave Demo Pegasus Video One


Battlestar Galactica Lightwave Demo Pegasus Video Two


Battlestar Galactica Lightwave Demo Pegasus Video Three

15
Off-Topic / Where did Sci-Fi go? (tv, cinema)
« on: March 23, 2011, 22:47:28 »
Seriously... seems like barely anything good comes out nowadays for us Sci-Fi geeks. BSG is gone, Caprica is cancelled, SGU too, etc.

Is there any decent Sci-Fi show left (or upcoming)? Not fantasy monster-hunt stuff (Sanctuary?), not quirky funny Sci-Fi (Eureka), but just "regular" more serious traditional Sci-Fi with space ships, strange new worlds or societies or whatever...

Movies, too! What was the last great Sci-Fi movie you've seen at the big screen (hopefully not "Pocahontas in Space" a.k.a. Avatar)? For me it's probably "Sunshine"... four frakking years ago... :(

18
General Gaming / Dead Island
« on: February 18, 2011, 01:06:48 »
I do like me some zombies from time to time, but the new Dead Island trailer just blew me away... this is great stuff, right there. Somehow they managed to make "zombie apocalypse in holiday resort" appear totally serious, gruesome and most of all: emotional. The horrible fate of the little girl and her father, beautifully animated and shown partially in reverse, is really, truly engaging.

Dead Island: Official Announcement Trailer


Now for all I know the game might end up being crap. It's been in development for god knows how long and the developer and publisher aren't exactly known for their high-quality AAA titles... still, that trailer is amazing no matter what.

Apparently, there's also a bunch of new screenshots:














19
General Discussion / Hidden Skirmisher feature: Mod-specific shipnames
« on: February 09, 2011, 03:15:24 »
I don't believe I ever documented this, so its probably about time now :P

The Skirmisher comes with a list of default shipnames, which it'll offer to the player in the drop down menus. The player can also enter his own names, of course.

If there is no name specified by the player, the Skirmisher will randomly select names for the ships from that list.

However, this list can be overridden by your mod by supplying your own list of default names!
To achieve this, create the following folder and file inside your mod's directory:

_nsconfig\shipnames.ini

It's a simple text file, similar in format to Nexus' other ini files. Here's a sample, defining two possible shipnames for each civilization:

Code: [Select]
CIVILISATION 1
Trafalgar
Coriolanus
CIVILISATION

CIVILISATION 2
Andromeda
Mirage
CIVILISATION

CIVILISATION 3
Urobach
Armaros
CIVILISATION

You can have up to 512 shipnames and should supply at least 20 total. If you include less than 20 shipnames, the Skirmisher will add some of the default ones to your shipnames list until there are 20. This is simply because the Skirmisher needs to be able to give each ship in both fleets a name... since there is a maximum of 10 ships per fleet, it needs no less than 20 names - simple as that.

The names can be grouped by CIVILIZATION, matching the ids in your races.ini. The Skirmisher will completely ignore this grouping, however, as this was only a planned feature for future versions and never actually implemented. :(

Still, it's a useful feature for supplying the player with a selection of names better fitting into your mod's universe and setting, so you may want to add this to your mod.

20
Mod Development / Released Mods / Limited ammunition for bombers?
« on: February 07, 2011, 02:47:37 »
Got a rather strange problem: I'm simply trying to limit the amount of missiles my bombers carry, because they're... well... rather strong. Now I did it the same way I did it for capital-ship-based missiles: on the missile launcher DEVICETYPE setting MaxCount to the desired amount of ammo and CountDec to 1. Still I only see one missile fired by each bomber and then nothing more...

Bug? Feature? Am I forgetting something?

21
Modding Tools / Modding tools overview
« on: February 01, 2011, 13:19:41 »
This list should present to you a (hopefully) complete listing of all available modding tools and important ressources. If I missed anything you think should be included here, comment here or send me a message.

Official tools:
Nexus Mod Tools by Mithis Entertainment
... also supplied with the game
... includes modding manual, a model viewer, model converter (Lightwave to Nexus), texture converter, solar system editor and mission editor
... also includes Excel spreadsheets to make tacticstypes and effects editing easier

File extraction and/or packing:
datool by ElFarto
... able to extract and create Nexus' .dat- and .dap-archives, except the movie files (nexus_01.dat, nexus_02.dat, etc)
nexus tool by Socarr
... able to decrypt Nexus' movie files to bink format (nexus_01.dat, nexus_02.dat, etc.)
DatXTract by Arparso
... GUI-enabled tool for extracting .dat and .dap-archives, except the movie files

File conversion:
model converter by Arparso
... converts Nexus' models (.msh) to Wavefront .obj format
texture converter by Arparso
... converts Nexus' textures (.tex) to Targa .tga format

Importer:
Milkshape 3D importer plugin by Rainman
... imports Nexus' models (.msh) in Milkshape 3D

Miscellanous:
Tacticstype tool by Mularac
... detects free shipclass/devicetype/shiptype IDs and can also assign each item a new number in numerical order
OpenOffice spreadsheets for tacticstypes.ini and efx.ini by Arparso
... spreadsheets with attached macros to make creating/editing tacticstypes.ini and efx.ini easier (scroll down for the efx.ini sheet)
... this is mainly a conversion of the Excel sheets included with the official modding tools, but with new macros to make it work in OpenOffice

Modding ressources:
dynamic lighting by jstubbles/Arparso/GeoModder/Mularac
... describes a method to achieve dynamic lighting in your mod (e.g. from weapon fire), also including a sample patch for the vanilla Nexus campagin
Pack of suns by DreamorCZ
... contains blue, red, white and yellow stars for use in Nexus mods
HD Asteroids pack by DreamorCZ
... new asteroid models with much higher detail

22
Scripting / How to avoid ships evacuating too fast?
« on: February 01, 2011, 03:19:08 »
What's the preferred way to delay evacuation procedures? Sometimes my crews leave the ship already at around 40-50% health, which seems a bit early.

23
General Discussion / Nexus Launcher beta - need feedback
« on: January 27, 2011, 20:31:49 »
In preparation for the Freespace mod release, I've been cooking up a new launcher tool for Nexus. The goal is for tighter mod integration with latest news feeds, links to mods' homepages, etc.

Download Nexus Launcher (Beta)



Capabilities:
- start vanilla Nexus (single/multiplayer) or any installed mod
- displays RSS news feeds for supported mods (*)
- allows setting graphics options, including resolutions and windowed/fullscreen modes

Planned stuff that's missing in this beta:
- welcome page with some content...
- working uninstall button
- setting texture detail doesn't work yet
- (skippable) automatic intro movie playback for mods (*)
- displaying extended infos about the selected mod (*)

Requirements
- working Nexus installation, obviously
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Client Profile)

(*) - in order for these features to work, the mod needs either his own "modinfo.xml" in the mod's base folder or needs to have his information already included in the launcher

modinfo.xml?
This file includes some basic information about your mod: name, version, author, website, intro movie and an RSS news feed can be specified right now. You just have to place the file in mod folder and the launcher will pick it up. I'll give an example of such a file:

Code: [Select]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mod xmlns="http://arparso.de/nexus">
<name>Battlestar Galactica</name>
<version>beta 4.1</version>
<author>Nexus BSG modding group</author> 
<web>http://www.moddb.com/mods/nexus-battlestar-galactica/downloads/nexus-battlestar-galactica-beta-41</web>
<rss>http://rss.moddb.com/mods/nexus-battlestar-galactica/news/feed/rss.xml</rss>
<intro>intro.wmv</intro>
</mod>

Hopefully that's rather self explanatory. As for the RSS feed: currently only the moddb-news-feed is properly supported... I can't guarantee for other feed formats to work as expected.

Regarding the intro playback: it's not included yet, but it's planned to play the intro movie specified in the modinfo.xml when launching the game with your mod. There'll also be a checkbox "Skip intro" so you're not forced to watch it every time. I didn't really find a way to make Nexus play an intro movie upon startup, so that's the reason behind this feature... its a bit boring to just be thrown into a mission-selection menu, when you start a new mod, isn't it?

Feedback and suggestions welcome
Am I missing something vitally important? Does the launcher not work for you? I'd like to hear all of that, so please try the tool and send some feedback my way ;)

If you want me to already include your modinfo.xml in the launcher - possibly also for older versions of your mod, so they'll get the news feed treatment as well - feel free to post the file(s) here along with the actual folder name of your mod.

24
General Discussion / Server maintenance, January 27th/28th
« on: January 25, 2011, 16:59:42 »
Message from my server hoster:

Quote
on January 27th and 28th, between 12:00 a.m. and 07:00 a.m., we\'re going
to accomplish maintenance on our network. This could lead to a restricted
availability of your websites for a short duration.

There will be made no changes on the servers. Your websites will be
available again as soon as the maintenance is completed.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

In other words: don't worry, if you can't reach any of my sites during that time ;)
(including this board, the Skirmisher site and the Nexus Wiki)

25
Scripting / Hide object in target list?
« on: January 17, 2011, 17:21:05 »
Any easy and straight-forward way to actually hide an object in the target list, but not visually in the scene?

Let's say I have a specific model I'd like to display as sort of a marker or navpoint. It's just a visual clue to the player, but shouldn't be selectable by mouse click and it shouldn't appear in any contact list, friendly or hostile. Oh and other ships should be able to pass through the model (=> no collision avoidance).

If I set "Behaviour 5" (navpoint), there is no collision avoidance being calculated, but the object appears on the contact list and is selectable by mouse-click. If I set "Behaviour 4", it's not selectable anymore, but ships try to fly around it instead of just passing through... so how do I get the best of both worlds?

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