Updated mod: The Babylon Project

[PaddirN]

Well, this is basically an updated version of Psientist's very excellent mod 'B5 Shadowfall'. Things new to this version include:

- Version 2.60 -
* new ship: Frazi fighter -- replaces gorith as mainstay narn fighter, although the gorith is still around...
* new ship: Thunderbolt Starfury for the Earth Alliance
* new ship: Shadow Scout -- mid-sized shadow vessel
* new ships: Brakiri Avioki Cruiser, Brokados Corvette, & Riva Fighter totally redesigned from the ground up
* changed game messages for Omega mission, only reports halfway point and so on, feels less like having a mainquest everytime now. May add Earth Civil war as a mainquest at some point.
* Tirk and the Vree are now found on the map instead of offmap.
* slightly different image for Omega to show rotating section (note: does not actually rotate... yet?)
* Omega weapon slot sizes changed so that only large guns can be place din front
* Whitestar forward weapon slot changed so that only one very large gun can be equipped
* Centauri Primus now launches sentri fighters, why should the Narn have all the fun?
* the price of Dust has gone up
* The Well of Forever isn't just a myth anymore...
* scanners have been acting funny out near the rim, as well as reports of... "things" out there.
* an Apocalypse box is waiting to be found.
* quest naming structure changed to reflect FLAG value ('ally_', 'alws_', 'evnt_', 'game_', 'main_', & 'nevr_') just easier to organize. should not affect gameplay at all, checked & double-checked folder vs. game.ini file.
* Data crystal with jump gate no longer findable, but you may get it if you wish upon the cheating star

- Bug Fixes
* Vorlon beacon event *should* work now
* beacon allies (vree, tirk, rangers, vorlons) *should* show up on large maps

- Known Bugs
* Non-occurring event somewhere out there, possibly even one that crashes the game to windows
* there is an earth alliance ally buried in here, but it doesn't work for some reason so it isn't implemented yet in game.

- Version 2.55 -
* weakened shielding on most fighters, may compensate later by adding in more fighters
* Various changes to weapons to make them more in line with how they are portrayed in the series, includes: Omega x-ray guns, Drakh weapons, and the Victory main gun
* new graphics for weapons as well as a new weapon or two
* new items!
* new lifeforms!
* new GUI "beep" sounds!
* added a B5 icon pack from somewhere (forgot where I found it)
* alphabetized game.ini file, shouldn't effect gameplay, but will help keep things organized for me.

- Version 2.50 -
* New mainquest: the Thirdspace aliens invade! Can you stop them before its too late? (not a kawangi clone, I promise)
* New mainquest: the Shadow war comes to a head as the Shadows amass a fleet to break the back of the fledgleing Alliance!
* New race & ship: Thirdspace aliens w/ a Thirdspace Cruiser
* New sprite for Raider Zephyr
* Vorlon planet killer mainquest SHOULD work now.
* New targeting system: the Holographic chamber (note that I thought it was a stupid idea)
* Fixed the Vree "multiplying beacon" bug

- Version 2.45 -
* new vorlon ship: Vorlon Fighter
* new race & ship: Vree with Xill warship
* summon more allies into combat with Beacons. only one I'll give away is Drazi mercenary, Tirk! Can you find the rest?
* adjustments to the power levels of the shadows and the vorlons, slightly more manageable
* it pays in new ways to have some passengers aboard...
* new graphics for various races
* and yet Another attempt at jumpgates, this one is a bit of a cop-out on my part, but should appeal to the non-violent score junkies
* changed way the Primus is picked up, should be a tad more interesting.
* changes to the Jump Drive particle effects, should be more "realistic", also made Jump point generator drive as a findable item now, may have to add more items to make it less common
* numerous other changes/fixes which I completely forgot to write down

- Version 2.40 -
* new drazi ship: Sky Serpent
* merged Shadows with Drakh to remove "Shadow vs Drakh" battles, can't evil just get along?
* Victory Class: main gun is now only one use (per combat); possible problems if used with other ships in flotilla (?) (simulator still uses old style for obvious reasons)
* Victory Class: size changed after looking over the actual sizes of ships in the series, an Omega is actually smaller than the Victory
* added a "Minbari ECM unit" system item to Minbari craft, practically untargetable?
* added "Justin" to Lorien quest, an alternate event for evil players who visit Z'ha'dum. May follow up with additional quest on Epsilon.
* added Garibaldi drop-off at B5 for the uncurious.
* another change to 'virus' quest following revelation that "haveitem" command only applies to cargo hold.
* further changes to narn/centauri behavior, hopefully they will behave as expected
* changed weapon for minbari fighters, should look and feel more like the tv series (more of a gatling gun effect?)
* Raider Battle Wagon: changed size, as well as layout of systems, should work better now.
* changed graphic for raiders, that pirate face was making me sick
* increased size of Minbari Sharlin b/c it is also supposed to be bigger than Omega, also gave it improved combat computer b/c they're supposed to be bad-***
* changed sizes/speed/armor/turn of various craft after comparing and contrasting from data on B5-tech manual

So why the name change? A couple of reasons. First, because Shadowfall was Psientists mod and should he decide to come back and start updating again I would probably have to rename this thing anyways. Also, I wanted to give this mod a new direction of sorts. In the TV series the Shadow war played a prominent role, but it wasn't everything. The series was centered on the B5 station but a great deal more happened than just fighting the Shadows. In addition, should I decide to just drop this whole mod altogether I'd like to hope that somebody else would pick up the torch and run with it, so I see it as a continuing project of sorts, passed down from one fan to the next.

While I've tried to test the new additions out as much as possible, I can't possibly run through every scenario, so even though this is starting from v2.3, it may not be so stable. If you encounter any problems, e-mail me at PaddirN@hotmail.com and I'll try and figure out where I f'ed up. If you have any suggestions, comments, improvements of your own, don't hesitate to send them all to me. I can't promise I'll update on a regular basis, as 2 jobs, a girlfriend, family, friends, and a 'zine all are competing for my time. But for the moment I've still got a lot of ideas for additions to this mod.

[PaddirN]

Plans for the next version include:

* Streamlining certain passenger quests so they work more efficiently
* more quests
* update to the Centauri Primus battlecruiser, that all white skin just doesn't match with the centauri's purple theme.
* possibly add more EA or vorlon ships, whichever one ends up being easier.
* the vorlons strike back!
* a new "weapon" against the shadows...
* may add the url carrier to the pak'ma'ra arsenal, but not sure if it'll make the pak'ma'ra more powerful than they really should be... I mean they're Just in the League of Non-Aligned Worlds

All this and maybe more, depending on how much time, effort, and imagination I put into it.

Graeme out.

[ImUrOBGYN]

Can't wait to give it a shot. I haven't had time to do anything or play in sometime. I'll let you know when I have time to play and any bugs I come across.
Damn, didn't even realize there was an update to WW!

[Jamiri]

Great! Just downloading it! I'll try it out tonight and let you know about any bugs I come across!

Looking also forward to your other ideas!

As for the Pak'ma'ra (and the other races that use the original WW ship graphics) I think they should be getting their proper ships, although I know that this requires even more time, which none of us have.

[Jamiri]

Excellent job! Overall you did some very good improvements, creative and very well implemented. Played about 20 games with all settings medium and really enjoyed it so far. Here's my feedback:

- I like the Starfuries a lot, they even move realistically, i.e. stop abruptly to turn and than shoot off to a different direction. Maybe the non-player Omegas should have Starfury fighter bays onboard that launch suqads as the new Urlu Carrier does (I noticed that the ones in the simulator have fighter bays).
- Raiders are also cool, but I don't think they need different kind of ships, just use the ones that are from the movies (I personally feel that original WW stuff should be minimized as much as possible).
- Garibaldi! Nice one. Maybe you could make him reward you if you bring him back to B5 before you retire (the remove passenger command should work in 1.2)
- Morden: great improvement over the old version. I usually go for the Gravitic Discharge Cannon (if I chose to become evil). I think Morden should appear early in the game (if the quest triggers) because then the player is forced to chose sides early in the game and other missions that depend on it (Keeper) are more likely to happen. It would also make battles against the Minbari more frequent.
-Jumpgates. Very creative implementation, however a bit awkward to have the jumpgate always with you as an "ally ship". Makes it impossible to retreat from combat and just "feels" strange. Also, looks a bit funny to see all the ships from top down perspective while the gate is actually a side view. You can also do funny things with it, such as placing a cloaker on it to hide it during battles.
-Music in combat! That's a brilliant addition, although the pace is a bit slow some times to be perfectly suited for battle. Would be better fitting as an intro music. Also: can you make it louder a bit? Could you also add music while travelling on the starmap - some kind of ambient B5 theme. That would be really cool.
- Liked the "Alone in the Night" event a lot, as it adds more to the theme! But what's the difference between this one and "The Coming of Shadows"?
- The battles are more interesting now. Had a four way battle with 3 Drakh Raiders, a Shadow Crab, 4 Shadow Fighters, 2 Omega Class Cruisers and 6 Starfuries, and me, i.e. the Victory Class and the Nial Fighter. Strangely, the Shadows attacked the Drakh first (BUG??) and then obliterated the two Omegas. At that time I decided to run quickly...
-the EA fleets are a nice addition to the game. On the first encounter, however, they told me that they would be really happy to see some humans this far out in deep space, while their fleet circled around Earth? I thought on Earth they would see humans regularly...They also had a free Drakh Cannon in their arsenal. Very strange! The planet graphics did not look like Earth anyway...
-I only got a peek glance at the quest where President Clarke takes over EA, because it coincided with the Drakh mission that ended the game too early. In general, I never ever managed to stop the Drakh (I had them about ten times now in all my B5 games) as they are far too powerful to be stopped that early in the game.

Bugs (some are from previous versions, but maybe you can fix them):
-Pak'Ma'Ra ally ship does not befriend me with the Pak'M'Ra (how do I befriend the League of Non-aligned Worlds anyway???)
-I destroyed a Centauri fleet, but that did not befriend the Narn.
-the Victory Class main weapon has a graphical glitch which it hadn't before on my computer. It fires from somewhere behind the ship.
-Neutrino Array does only reveal cloaked ships when NOT equipped but only in cargo hold.
-When I chose the dark side (Morden) I can still free the First One Prisoner on Zhahadum, although this should not be possible.
-I can remove the keeper from my cargo hold and drop it off on a planet (it also has a trade value?!?!?). Furthermore, the Shadow and the Drakh become my enemies again when the Drakh Keeper is on my ship. this should not be the case. Maybe you can have a look into that.
-the Drazi Merc still does not function properly

Gosh, that's a long post. Don't get me wrong by the criticism, it's just meant as creative feedback. You did an excellent job on this one and I really want to encourage you to keep up this fantastic work!

[PaddirN]

Whew, I'll try and do a point-by-point reply:

* Yea, in the race profile for the EA there actually are some fleets that have the new fighter bay omega, but in game I noticed they weren't appearing as much, I'll do some fidgeting and try and get them to show up

* I wanted to give the raiders some kind of variety, but thinking back all they really had was like, what 2 ship types?

* There actually is a little something that happens with garibaldi in some other events, but I think the chances of triggering them might be too low. I'm working on making it happen more often.

* Hadn't thought about moving morden closer, sounds good.

* With the jumpgates, allying was about the only thing I could think of to be able to implement them. It wasn't even supposed to have that system slot, but for some reason the game kept on freezing whenever I went into battle with the jumpgate, so I added a slot and shielding.

* I've noticed the sound issue, it seems like every sound I download is way way too quiet. I even wanted to change the intro music to the opening music from the series, but I could barely even make out the monologue. Not sure which program to use to bump up the volume. I think I might have cooledit around somewhere. Anyone know what to use?

* "Alone in the night" and "Coming of shadows" were just different naming schemes I came up for the "failure" events for something else that's supposed to happen there. It just depends on who you might be carrying with you at the time.

* As far as I know there's no way to make other races ally with each other. I'll look into it, but I've seen that happen before too. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of that would work would be to make them all part of the same race, but with separate fleets. Wouldn't know what to introduce them with though.

* With the Clark storyline I pretty much cheated and made that part of the military mission b/c it seemed the most appropriate.

Bugs:
* I hadn't intended for the League allies to befriend you with their races, but I guess that was how it happened in the main WW game, may change it to work that way. What I planned to do later on was add items for every race that would befriend them. Maybe a colored sash for the Drazi and some dead rotting animal carcass for the pak'ma'ra. No idea what to do for brakiri and gaim.

* The whole narn/centauri conflict thing needs to be adjusted, but the way I intend it to work is only if you pick up allies from one group, that will turn the other group against you. The idea being that if you show up in Narn space with a centauri battle cruiser, they won't take very kindly to you bringing their hated enemy to their territory and see it as an act of war.

* I haven't even touched anything with the victory class, mostly b/c I never like playing it anyways. But I'm guessing it may have something to do with the new 1.2 update. I'll check it out though.

* I was wondering about that neutrino array. I went ahead and just added another object into the game that has hypervision, it should be in with the next update I do. As for the neutrino array, I'll either turn that into something else or just change its description.

* I noticed being able to drop the keeper off awhile ago. The only thing I can think of is to just remove it as a passenger and just keep its effect. I mean, why would you even have a drakh keeper as a passenger anyways? But as far as the FLAGs are concerned it looks alright, it shouldn't even have a trade value though. Unfortunately it doesn't look like theres anyway to make passengers into permanent non-removable guests. The only other thing would be to make it a ship component you can't remove but that doesn't even make sense.

* I.Have.No.Idea.About.The.Drazi.Merc. Sorry, I'm not upset with you its the drazi merc, it works for me sometimes, but most of the time it doesn't and I just don't know why. I've compared the code of him with the minbari ally and they're virtually identical, but one works and the other doesn't. And yet I've had no problems with the pak'ma'ra or minbari ally.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated, I'll add these to my to-do list.

[Fingers]

One note about sounds: sound effects should always be in mono, and music should always be in stereo. Mono music seems to play at approximately half the volume for some reason, while stereo sound effects will cause other problems.

[chabex]

Annoying: I had a nice fleet: EA destroyer, Narn cruiser, Drazi fighter and the jumpgate. I entered a black hole and boom: back to windows instantly...
Has anyone experienced this as well?

[CautiousChaos]

Wow - just tried this mod out. What a great job done! I can see myself playing the mod for quite a while to come. Keep up the (very good) work!

-cc

[Jamiri]

chabex said:
Annoying: I had a nice fleet: EA destroyer, Narn cruiser, Drazi fighter and the jumpgate. I entered a black hole and boom: back to windows instantly...
Has anyone experienced this as well?



Probably a bug in some of the encounters that are triggered in black holes. Must be one of the first Firstborn events. Had you met Morden in before? Maybe there's a conflict when the game has to create the "Timeless Bauble" effect twice per game (as there is one Firstborn who also grants a wish). Just an idea. PaddirN?

Noticed that on the large map most of the quests still do not work, either, as it was the case before in 2.2 Shadowfall. Fingers, do you know what might be the reason for this?

[PaddirN]

Not sure about the black hole thing, tried reproducing it myself, haven't seen it crop up yet. But if it does have to do with the double bauble effect, that shouldn't be a problem with next release.

Which quests still aren't working? I've been doing some cleaning up and may have fixed it by now.

[chabex]

I can confirm some glitches that Jamiri found: Excalibur firing the main gun like behind the ship, and I had the Neutrino Array which supposed to reveal cloacked ships (eg.: Shadow Mothership) but I could not see it coming (Rest In Peaces...)

And I wonder: do you think if it would be a good /possible idea to have Bester/Lyta or any telepath as a solution to defeat/stop the Shadow Mothership (if it is already there- delete this part) to have a little chance for surviving the encounter?

[PaddirN]

Yea, saw the Victory class glitch and have taken care of that. Oddly enough, I didn't change anything about that and just carried it right over from Shadowfall. Turns out the OFFS variable for that beam effect was set to -200, which apparently is whyt its behind the ship, I just don't know why it didn't do that before. I'm still thinking it has to do with 1.2 update(?)

With the neutrino array sensor, I think that the only way for an item to have hypervision is if it is an item in your cargo hold, otherwise if a ship's systems or even passengers have it it won't have any effect. So I've just turned the neutrino array into a normal sensor and added something else that might help level the playing field a little.

I don't know that there's really anything that would specifically help against the Battle crabs (apart from the thing I talked about last paragraph). There *might* be a way to send them away to another star system, but I don't think there's a way to just outright destroy them or weaken them with an item... Perhaps the First Ones can be of assistance. I'm wanting to do something with Lorien to send them away, but the problem with that is you have to actually go to Z'ha'dum first. Meh, I'll figure something out.

2.35 update should be available here in a little bit, just doing some minor tweaking with quests and then I'll upload it.

btw I have no idea what the procedure is for version numbers so if they don't make sense that's why. I mean, how do you tell the difference between 2.35 or 2.4 or 2.5?

[ImUrOBGYN]

Couple issues other than the ones mentioned...

1. When Delenn enters her special chrysalis event, the text box w/her pic that comes up is screwed up. The bottom half is blurred or something to that affect.

2. I've had problems getting the Narn to join with the Narn book in my hold. They did finally join me once when entering a star system while they were battling another race. Game before that, I met them in 3 seperate star systems and each time they would not join me. They were not in battle either time. Dunno if that matters.

[PaddirN]

1) With the Delenn thing I believe the problem was that I didn't have that pic at the correct size (128x128), it should be corrected with the next update.

2) The events for both the narn and the centauri are both in need of a major overhaul and I think thats next on my to-do list b/c its been bugging me for awhile now too. With the narn book not working it may be a problem with some of the code i added. To keep from having too many allies at once I made certain allies mutually exclusive from others, don't know if thats the case here, but it sounds like it.

While I'm at it, things to look forward to next update:

* Big change to the Victory class and I think you know what I'm talking about (along with something you might not).

* Mission-specific quests. Not a big deal for now, but I may expand on it later on.

* Changes to some alien fleet set-ups that were just plain weird/stupid

* Merged the shadows and the drakh together into one uber race to keep them from battling it out (tsk tsk senseless violence), may have to bump up the number of fleets now.

[chabex]

An idea- or question- hit me: would it be possible to use more beacons? Or use the existing one to summon an ally of choice? It would be cool if in case you have allies like the centaury or narn etc. they could be summoned to fight eg. the Shadow Battlecrab. This would be more like in the series and it would be more fun to play. Only small ships could be added to the fleet. Of course it would cut the possibility to upgrade those capital ships, but with race specific permanent weaponry could spice up the B5 feeling.
Opinions?

[PaddirN]

It's an interesting idea and it may actually help with another problem I've encountered. Maybe do the beacons as trade-offs: Each race would have its own item that would befriend them and get their beacons.

The only thing is that the command to get those beaconed allies to come is a SUMN command which I think just summons the nearest <race> fleet to your position. In the regular game this is just fine with the klakar because they only have just one fleet. So if I wanted specific allies I think I'd need to make new races for each one. Not too hard, but I'll think about it some more and play around with it.

[Jamiri]

I like the idea as well. And I don't have a problem with summoning the closest of the fleets (as this is the most logical anyway, although MIND that no races besides the Centauri, Minbari, Vorlon and Shadows/Drakh have the Jump Drives, so actually no other race could jump in instantly).

The Shadows will take out even larger fleets easily so you shouldn't worry to much about having to make extra fleets for each race that are sort of scaled down. But make the beacon single use only, cause otherwise you could summon in a fleet, back out if it is destroyed, go back in and summon another fleet again and so on.

B.t.w. when do we see the next update??

[PaddirN]

Actually I just uploaded the new update, you can find it at the top of the thread.

Two somewhat big changes:

1) Victory main gun is now a one shot (per combat) deal, with a "gong" type activation. Only fires straight in front of the ship, so make sure you're locked on to target. Also, b/c of this I had to remove any allies to the Victory mission (other missions unaffected), otherwise other ships in the flotilla would fire the victory gun. However, the ally beacon idea may very well solve this problem, so I'll mess around with it and see what I can do with it. Though, now that I think about it, no allies for the Victory (science) mission might make more sense as not having allies would give you less incentive to attack, although I might have to create an 'aethric mirror' type item(?) for non-violent scorers. Maybe I could finally do something with jumpgates!

2) Ship sizes/armor/speeds/turns have been altered after I reviewed info on the B5-tech manual. Not sure how that page rates as far accuracy, but I wanted to make everything consistent (ie the drakh cruiser should be the biggest ship at 3300m, while the Victory is 2990m, and the Omega is 1700m; whereas previously the drakh cruiser and the Victory were both smaller than the Omega). This may or may not completely F up gameplay, let me know and I'll fudge some more numbers.

Enjoy!

[CautiousChaos]

Love the idea of having Victory only firing once per combat. Much more aligned to the weapon's characteristics in the series. Just d/l now. Looking forward to trying this latest version out.

Want to compliment you on this mod. Hands down, this is the very best mod out there. I'm not even slightly inclined to switch back to the vanilla after playing this one for a few weeks...

-cc

[PaddirN]

OK, new version 2.45 has now been uploaded, you can get it at the top of the thread. Highlights include:

* As per request: the addition of beacons to your list of allies in the war against the Shadows. The drazi ally event has been deleted and in its place is: Tirk, a drazi mercenary you can summon with a hyperspace beacon. There's also a few more beacons out there to find, can you catch them all?

* New race & ship: Vree with a Xill saucer. Vree Conglomerate grandly open now for good business trade!

* New ship: Vorlon fighter

* adjustments to power levels of shadows & vorlons, should make battles slightly more manageable

* Jump point generator is now findable and the hyperin/hyperout effects/sounds have been changed to make it more "realistic"

* Yet another attempt at jumpgates

Enjoy.

[CautiousChaos]

Uh oh.. Bug. I met the Vree and was offered a beacon (think it was the Vree).

Anyways, I had no room for extra cargo, so I wanted to switch out an item for the beacon.

I clicked on the item to switch and then moved it to the planet.

Then a whole mess (like 5) beacons appeared on the planet. Then another 4.

I finally got rid of the item in exchange for the beacon and found 3 beacons in my hold.

This is over the maximum I should have been able to carry.

I then took this over to a shadow-occupied planet, entered combat, and crashed to desktop...

Pity, I was looking forward to the fight...

-cc

[PaddirN]

huh... That's really weird, I'll try and mess around and see if I can recreate that one.

(10 minutes later)...

ok, figured it out. Apparently that was supposed to be a popup, but it wasn't functioning that way, it was happening even without a full cargo hold. Fixed the problem, I'll update here in a sec along with a few new goodies, sorry about that. My debugging process isn't incredibly rigorous.

[PaddirN]

Aight, new update is posted at the top. Just wanted to fix that bug really quick, but I figured I may as well just post everything I've worked on since the last update. Newer things include:

* 2 New Mainquests (neither of which are kawangi clones, I promise):
- Thirdspace aliens invade!
- The Shadows launch an all-out attack!
* New sprite for the Raider Zephyr, now you won't have to look at that mutilated garthan fighter anymore!
* Fix: Vorlon Planet Killer mainquest SHOULD (fingers crossed) work right now.
* Fix: Vree "multiplying beacon" bug buggered

[Black_Bear]

Good game play. You have done a GREAT JOB!!

[PaddirN]

Tanks, although I still think like 90% of the work was really done by Psientist, I'm just extending the work. This is actually my first attempt at modding anything, but Weird Worlds is fairly easy to pick up. It's prolly just as much fun for me tinkering around with the game as it is playing it.

[Jamiri]

Wow! This mod's really evolving! Every new release is better, filled with more surprises and has more depth than a previous release. Keep it coming, PaddirN!

Just want to give you my detailed feedback once again (you don't have to answer this long post).


Impressions:
- the game has so many options and decision points now that every time I play it it's really different depending on the choices I make. This mod is truely a must have for B5 fans!
- Very cool is the new pics and sounds you added. I am really happy to see that the old hyperdrive "Christmas bells" sound was removed and replaced.
- You did it! The Drazi Merc finally co-operates with the game ;-)! I also like the way you made it work.
- The cloaking sound of the Shadows is even better!!! However, why does de-cloaking still play the old sound. It'd be even more frightening if a Shadow crab uncloaked right in front of you with this eerie sound.
- The Raiders are much better now, especially their weapons are cool visually. The Battle Wagon is also a nice addition.
- You can return Garibaldi and Bester early - but does it have some benefit for the player or you just lose the ability to catch certain thiefs? Maybe you should get some reward for bringing them back early.
- There is less WW stuff, and more B5 items! Not that I dislike the WW gizmos, but they don't really fit into the setting. I have said that earlier, but especially the Urlu and the Muktian ships seem a bit awkward.
- The Nials have become much more of a threat, although they tend to stop once close to an enemy.
- Wow, the Vorlons as a Kawangi replacement. Can I still get them as an ally against the Shadows?
- Very cool that you placed Morden closer to Epsilon Eridani. Makes you take a tough decision in the beginning. However if you go evil, now you can just wish for a Shadow Cleaver Beam and you're done. Maybe Shadow tech should not be given away so easily - same for Vorlon tech, which Morden shouldn't have for sale anyway.
- The Hyperion class is really great. How many fighters does it launch simultaneously? Unlimited?
- I also like the idea with the Data crystals. Had a good laugh until I got the one mentioning Clarke's scheming - that was the moment when I thought: Another important B5 story element in the mod! Things are getting better and better! Go, PaddirN! Go!
- Nice idea having the Centauri Battlecruiser drift in space - now the player can decide whether to board it (and making the Narn your enemies thå next time you meet them) or to leave it behind to keep the chances of befriending the Narn
- The jumpgates: well, though I see they really should be in the game and the female voice over, as well as the beacon approach is really great, I doubt that using the Aethric Mirror for this purpose is a good idea. The problem is that you displace enemy fleets with it, which is not realistic and makes the game far too simple. Unfortunately, I do not have any better idea on how to implement them in the game.


Ideas:
- the Triluminary should be removed once you have Delenn on your ship, and Delenn should always be much more valuable than the Triluminary (makes it a minor mission to have to pick up Delenn from her homeworld to get those additional points). Does Delenn acutally have a higher purpose in the game?
- The Omega Class X-Ray main cannons should have their own proper sound from the series. The Tachyon Ray sound is not suitable for their mighty beams.
- Have some defense against the virus - maybe something like the Plasmaworm from WW, of which the description fits nicely!
- My personal opinion is that it should NOT be possible to find a Jump Point Generator on the map. It makes it a much more interesting and tough choice whether to ally with the Centauri (forfeiting the chance for such a device ) or whether to attack them to acquire a Jump Point Generator in battle against them. In addition, the device is very powerwul, so it should be quite hard to get one.


BUGS:
- One of the encounters in a black hole removed a beacon that I did not have
- when I summon Tirk the first time while not in combat, the radar screen pops up if I click on view in the planet display
- Great solution for the Victory Class main gun. However, I got the Narn ally by giving the Book of Narn to them. So during combat the Narn cruiser fired the Victory main gun instead.
- when I chose to be evil (give in to Morden's offer) the Shadows still attack me? Why? Also, why do the Minbari turn against me then, but the other races such as the Narn or EA don't?
- I still got the event where I meet the EA fleet in deep space hailing me and exchanging information, although B5 had turned independent due to Clarke's takeover of EA. Shouldn't this cancel this event to happen?
- Can Justin's mission to lure Sheridan to Zha'hadum acutally be completed? After getting this mission, I flew back to B5 to get to sheridan but nothing happened. Maybe it's a bug so let me recreate what I did: I got the mission from Justin on Zha'hadum (no battle took place), then I moved to a couple of black holes, where I had taken away my non-existing beacon (as described earlier), I moved on to B5 (nothing happened) returned to Zha'hadum, where I then also discovered the First One??? Why did I get to events on the same planet, and why can I free the First One from the Zha'hadum prison when I'm allied to the Shadows in the first place??
- B4 always attacks me and never just drifts defenselessly in space. Is that intentional? Furthermore, it does not have a long range attack, which makes it such an easy target even with the weakest weapons on your ship. How about some figther cover Or just remove the weapons entirely.
- The Drakh Keeper event did not place any Keeper icon in my hold. Is that because you removed it? Is there still any effect of this event?
- When I summon the Drazi Merc outside battle for the first time, the radar pops up and a first contact text box is displayed, which feels strange as it is not really first contact. Should work somehow similar to the Klakar encounter and summoning.

PaddirN, I really appreciate the great job you're doing here! I know how hard it is to come up with a mod of such scope (did my own mod back then for Strange Adventures in Infinite Space). I just wanted to let you know that there are players who enjoy playing what you produced! Keep up the great work!

[PaddirN]

Tanks for the feedback, I'm glad people like the mod, though I'm starting to worry about the bugs cropping up.

Impressions:
- One of my overall design ideas was to put in choices and conflict, because that was an overarching theme in the series, the choices the characters had to make: between the shadows & the vorlons, Londo and his rise&fall, Babylon 5 and Earth, Garibaldi's fall from grace. Everything they did had consequences later on down the line. I think Londo's story influences most design ideas.
- With the cloaking sound with the shadows I didn't want that screaming sound to be popping up every few seconds as it would get really old after a minute or so, hell if you just wait at the intro screen for the intro battle you'll hear it more than enough times.
- With garibaldi being returned early you actually get less points, though I'm considering adding on a reward later on. I may have bester interact with the Ship of Tears event.
- The vorlons may lend aid when the time is right.
- Yea I want the data crytals to add a certain surprise to the game, they're like little gift boxes.

Ideas:
- Delenn actually makes use of the triluminary later on, and if you follow it through you may even find a new friend in an unexpected place...
- I never thought of having a defense for the virus, but sounds good.
- With the jump point generator I was thinking of vanilla WW and I realized that you can just find it lying around. Plus I figured with all the high-powered baddies flyin around out there (shadows, vorlons, 3rdspace) players needed something to give them an edge. However there doesn't seem to be enough items in the mod and the JPG seems to pop up way too often, I'll fiddle around with an idea.

Bugs:
- Just put most of these on my toodoo list, tanks
- I never really wanted the shadows to actually ally with you, even if you accept their gift. They're not trying to be your friend, they're trying to create conflict by giving you something powerful. As for the other races, some I prolly accidentally left off, while the EA was intentional. If you think about it, Earth was actually aligned with the Shadows during the series, plus because of the media blackout they didn't even know anything that was going on outside their own world.
- The Justin/Sheridan thing I never finished, though I might at a later point. The trouble will be with 1) how to account for Sheridan being gone and the alarm popups 2) Victory mission where sheridan isn't young anymore. I knew it was gonna be big headache when I put it in, but I think I have an idea for it now that might work
- The drakh keeper has been removed as a passenger because it just didn't make sense to me that a little invisible thing riding around on your shoulder should take up valuable passenger space. So i figured you'd still be able to feel the effect of the keeper, without actually seeing him.

[chabex]

I am so happy to see the mod evoling like this! I wish a had more time to contribute some minor things to Psientist's mod (some objects-pictures) but for now I can only be "smart" and suggest things:
- In the B5 shows the destroyer class ships( eg Victory, Omega) they could fire their main gun only in one direction- no tracking. But they also had strong defense grid (eg plasma cannon) AND fighter bay!
What you say guys?

And I almost forgot: Happy New Year and modding to all of you!

[PaddirN]

- I've thought about adding a small fighter bay to the victory and there's already a version of the omega with the fighter bay in the earth alliance fleet, but i'm kind of worried about play balance with adding it to player ships. The designers of the original didn't even add a fighter bay to any of the player ships or even the allied ships. I think it has to do with how unbalanced it would make battles, as you could always just use your fighters to bait the enemy and then go in for the kill with your main ship. Having only a single fighter ally makes this a bit harder as he can only die once.

- as for the main gun tracking, that problem should be fixed with the victory (except in the simulator), although with the Omega I'm actually going over its forward weapons now readjusting trying to make those more "realistic".

- part of me even wants to add the defense grid too. I've gone over specs on B5Tech.com and both destroyers have pretty strong defense grids, but again, I think play balance would be disrupted. Ships wouldn't even have to worry about fighters because they'd be blowing them out of the sky left and right and the only way to counter that would be to beef up the fighter count in the fleets. Although with some of the changes I've been making to the fighters I may have to do that anyways.

[drumsonly2002]

EXCELLENT WORK!!!! Like owning a new game (space sim). Fantastic. It's great to see new mods. Well appreciated.

[Ace_Garp]

This sounds like a great Mod - but just one question.
Does it use any of the new content / features from WW 1.2 ?
I use a Mac, and the latest update isn't (yet) available.
I can't tell just by trying it, as another mod used some parts from the update, and seemed to run fine until it crashed on me at an apparently random time.
Anyway - look forward to trying this mod - when I can.

[PaddirN]

Actually yeah, it should carry over everything from v1.2. I haven't noticed anything thats caused any problems with carrying it over to 1.2, although there was an unknown crash I was getting at one point which I haven't seen for some time now. Hopefully its gone away now.

Oh, and just got a message back from psientist:

"
Re: B5: Shadowfall open source?
From: Psientist

I am indeed no longer updating this mod. If you want to release your own variants, go right ahead. Just make sure you identify your version differently, and credit your changes and my original sources appropriately.

If you intend to do lots of work on it, you might want to give it a new name and numbering system, but build upon the existing version history so there's no confusion.

Good luck!
"

I guess the torch has been officially passed now.

[Hopeakannel]

Best mod ever! Thank you.

I found a small bug in v.2.50. After winning the Centauri fleet at their home wold, I got another jump point generator at every subsequent visit.

Before the first visit to Centauri homeworld I had previously found a jump generator as a random item on a planet, if that makes any difference.

[Psientist]

Sounds like everybody likes PaddirN's mod - wish I could play it (it crashes on my mac, doh). keep up the good work...

[dod488]

I'm in the same boat ... Mac. Guess I'll have to wait for a bit. Still enjoying Psientist's mod.

Hal

[PaddirN]

Why exactly doesn't the mod work on macs? Is it just because of the 1.2 changes? Do any mods work then, or do mac-users have to just play vanilla?

I should think that 1.2 mods would still work on macs if you just took out a few files from the gamedata directory. The only thing I did to bring this mod to 1.2 was to add a few .ini files, I believe its just strings.ini and numbers.ini, though I think there may be one or two more (just compare the gamedata folders with an older mod). It should work fine if you just pull those files out I would think...

[PaddirN]

Aight, new 2.55 update has been posted. This update is more for maintenance and upkeep than anything else. I've been going back through the series (and I'm actually watching Crusade now all the way through for the first time evar) and trying to bring the weapons effects more in line with the series. You'll notice a big difference with the Omega guns (positions and color) and the Drakh weapons. Apparently the Drakh are pansies and actually have a light blue and yellow weapon effect theme going on.

New items and lifeforms have been added in as well to spice things up, some may help your cause, others may get you into trouble... Also, the Jump Point Generator is no longer findable, may add another quest at some point to pick it up for a price.

I've also apparently reached the upper limits of the max # of quests allowed in a mod. I'm confidant I should be able to condense some quests together, but it won't be much, so don't expect many more new quests unless I start deleting old ones.

BUGS: there is still a non-occurring event which I haven't been able to identify yet. You'll notice it when you reach a planet and nothing happens (no item, no fleets, no events). I suspect its the Vorlon ally event (who? what? where?). Can anybody else confirm this? If you've seen this quest pop up let me know, otherwise I'm clueless.

[Phlagm]

I never had any crash issues when I put the 1.2 content into my mac, it just acted funny sometimes. (especially with the multimissile launcher) I'm guessing that the new mod overflows one of the old hardcoded system limits that was increased after 1.2. But that's just a guess.

-Jeremy

[Jamiri]

Last Episode of Dallas, rofl!

Just a quick note: some of the new click sounds you added are a bit, well, annoying. Especially the one that confirms your actions or is used when you click on the buttons that change playing speed during combat (sounds a bit like breaking glass). In my eyes (or ears ;-) ) the click sounds shouldn't be too prominent.

The reduced firing arcs of the Omega are good, it's already the most powerful of the three ships anyway.

[dod488]

Looks like the 1.2 for Mac has been pulled. 1.21 is only for Windows. There is a "coming soon" message for Mac users.

I haven't tried today's version. I'll give it a try on 1.11 and let you know what happens.

Thanks, Hal

[dod488]

OK, must be a 1.2 thing. After selecting the mod and clicking "Start", the screen goes black for a bit then the screen goes back to the normal desktop with an abend message. A dump file is available.

Thanks, Hal

[PaddirN]

Yea, I remember when I put the sounds in I thought they were quite annoying and I meant to rearrange them or at least bring the volume down on some, but I never got around to it and eventually I think I just got used to them and stopped noticing them. Believe it or not there were some other sounds that were far, far more annoying than the one you're talking about.

Apparently I was wrong about the max limit on the quests. According to fingers its actually 128 now. So full steam ahead now and I'll have to try and figure out what exactly was giving me problems before...

[blargue]

Not sure if this will be illuminating for you or not but I tried to add a quest or two from added content mod (wanted more potential allies) and couldn't load the games afterwards. Game would get as far as launch screen, new ships would load into simulator background, then game would crash to desktop as soon as you tried to begin a mission. I'm pretty sure all of the quests I added were to do with allied ships. Could have been because the result would create the opportunity to have a fleet that would exceed game limits(whatever those might be).

Good luck tracking that down. Loving the mod so far. Always amazed at the sheer stamina you modders have. The amount of work you must be putting into this is astonishing - high fives all around! Also... thanks.

[PaddirN]

Your problem might be that you didn't bring in all the required files for those allies to work: hulls, systems, weapons, graphics, even races. You also need to account for all that stuff in the game.ini file as well. Other than that not sure what it could be.

[chabex]

I have had the 3rd space alien quest (to go to a specific black hole) and when I went there the message: "standing triumphant" or something message popped up and that was it- I won the battle even without starting it...

Ship balance: for my taste now the Narn fighters are too strong... Most of the time they are a lot, and stronger than the centaurian fighters... I also couldn't recall that I have seen this type of narn fighter in the series. What I remember is that Narn fighters were more like miniature battleships regarding the shape. Now i will run and try your last update :-) Good work anyway!

[blargue]

Yeah, I've comboed lots of mods before. That said you're probably right that I just missed something obvious, but obvious or not, I couldn't figure out what it was!

[PaddirN]

That's odd about the 3rdspace alien quest, I actually just went through it not long ago without a problem, was even able to beat them with the help of a cloak. I'll play around with it more when I get the chance, anybody else had this problem?

With the Narn gorith fighter I don't recall seeing it in the series either. I believe the only one they showed was the Frazi fighter, which I actually have a nice image of. I didn't want to put it in because the Narn already have a fighter and it seemed like a waste since you can't really see the fighter too well anyways. If alot of people want it in (or I just get the coding itch) I'll put it in, probably as a replacement for the gorith fighter, though I'd prolly keep the gorith fighter and use it as a narn ally.

In the latest update I tweaked the shielding on the fighters and made them easier to kill since they never really seemed all that sturdy in the series. I may need to actually increase the number of fighters to compensate for this though.

[Jamiri]

Getting the impression that on large maps events and quests still are erroneous sometimes. For example, yesterday (using the Omega) I got Vree's beacon but Vree could not be summoned. And I also had the Pak'Ma'Ra ally, but with the text (when you fly Victory class) rejecting him due to his smell. I still got the ship, though...

[PaddirN]

That's largely my fault. Due to time constraints (i.e. not having very much of it), most of my testing consists of just running through the game on default settings with a whitestar. Not incredibly professional, I know.

With the Vree (and Tirk), I've changed the coding around some and made it so they actually appear on map, this may or may not fix that issue. Were they not being summoned into combat or on the star map or both?

The text for the Pak'ma'ra ally is fairly similar for both the victory mission and the others, I think a bad smell is mentioned in both versions and that he needs to remain on his own ship (which I figured would explain the extra ship in your flotilla). It may be that or its possible something is out of whack in the large map version.

[Jamiri]

PaddirN said:
With the Vree (and Tirk), I've changed the coding around some and made it so they actually appear on map, this may or may not fix that issue. Were they not being summoned into combat or on the star map or both?




Neither on the map nor in combat!


PaddirN said:
The text for the Pak'ma'ra ally is fairly similar for both the victory mission and the others, I think a bad smell is mentioned in both versions and that he needs to remain on his own ship (which I figured would explain the extra ship in your flotilla). It may be that or its possible something is out of whack in the large map version.




You may be right. Need to double-check that next time.

However, there's another bug I found: I allied with the dark side (Morden) and had attached a keeper to me later. When I got to Zhad'um, the radar popped up and I was about to fight. But then the mission, where I have to get Sheridan from B5, suddenly came up after I decided to stay. At the same time, the siren (warning me of a super nova) was played and when I clicked "ok" on the Sheridan mission I got to another screen (which was all the time in the back already) saying that I had followed Sheridan to Zhad'um, who was now blowing up the whole place. I barely escaped but I took some of the nice stuff from the planet with me. However, it seems broken that Sheridan was already there, when I received the mission to get him from B5.

[Jamiri]

I had a really good gaming experience with the B5 Project mod tonight. So here's my (bug) report:

I got the Narn and the Pak'Ma'Ra ally relatively early and managed to take out some fleets (played on medium), while building up a rather well equipped Whitestar. I also found the Triluminary and Delenn became "cocooned" soon, but strangely never came out again (although I explored all systems). In one of the tougher battles I lost the Pak'Ma'Ra ship but not before befriending the rest of their race.

I also got the Drazi Sash, and here's the first major bug: After getting the sash I went to the Centauri Homeworld and destroyed the fleet gaining the Jumpdrive. Then I went to a Drazi fleet and they told me that they would beat me up wearing that Sash in the wrong colour. However, another window popped up telling me that the Drazi were impressed by my battle skills at Centauri prime and that they would ally up with me. But they didn't...instead they attacked me. Maybe some of the quest conditions need to be checked here, don't know.

And then the situation became tough for me, as two Shadow fleets and one Drakh fleet appeared on the scene making their way towards B5. I decided to intercept one to see how strong they were. I had the frozen telepath with me only to reveal a Battlecrab in the fleet so I retreated from battle - for the moment. While the invasion fleets were moving I noticed another strange bug: fleets seem to stop moving when their movement path traces through a black hole. These fleets get stuck in space for good.

I used the jumpgate beacon to displace any Shadow fleet that had reached B5 until I had explored the entire map, hoping to have Delenn pop out of her cocoon after all. When I realized that she wouldn't I used the jumpgate (mirror) effect to get the Minbari fleet to B5 and waited for one of the Shadow fleets to arrive. Together with the Minbari War Cruiser I took it out easily.

However, the Minbari capital ship was destroyed during the engagement so I had to get another fleet - this time the Pak'Ma'Ra - in to defend against the second Shadow wave. I succeeded again but only to find the incoming Drakh fleet stuck in transit towards B5 next to a black hole (see above). So I retired (as everthing else was explored) only to find out that I still lost due to a Shadow victory, since I did not destroy the attacking Drakhs.

What I also had tried was sending Shadow fleets into a black holes using the jumpgate beacon (=mirror), but they did not get destroyed in there, which is a cool feature I think. On the other hand, the invasion fleets move very slowly through nebulae, as if the y had no drive equipped at all. Maybe you should fix that, as the Shadows definitely have developed such kind of nebula drive.

Comments:
Wow, this was so great to play tonight and even though I played on a medium sized map, it felt epic as the struggle against the incoming Shadow fleets seemed to last for ages. I also managed to find out some new things, such as getting into trouble if you have "dust" on board your ship (make it more valuable to have the player keep it on board at all times) and bump into a EA fleet. They scan you and tell you to stand down, but there's another bug here. During the encounter when they scan you and detect the drugs they will let you leave or investigate the system without harming you. But if you come back later or go to a different EA system, they'll attack you (which is fun nonetheless).

I still believe the jumpgate beacon is way too powerful right now and breaks the game somehow. I suggest: just remove the jumpgates from play until you find a better solution. I know it's been a great effort and it's already your second try to get them into the game, but I'm sure you'll come up with a much better alternative later. On the other hand it's just my opinion and if the others believe they should stay in the game, well, it's your choice.

On a further note: I met Morden only once recently. Have you reduced the odds for him to show up?

Gonna play the mod again as soon as I find time! It really rocks!

[PaddirN]

Whew! That's some hella feedback, glad people are still enjoying the mod, bugs and all. I'll try to get to everything.

* As far as events not showing up (Morden, Delenn chrysalis), I'm guessing thats due to the number of events in the mod now. I may change the FLAG for Morden to always or just add in another wishing event to compensate. With the Delenn (and Garibaldi) change events I didn't make the two stages linked, as in under the same event file. Before it wasn't so much a problem because chances were you'd always get both events, but apparently that isn't always the case anymore. I'm sure there's a way to make both occur in the same event file, I'll just have to play around with that.

* With the Drazi sash and centauri prime victory conditions, I can imagine how I can fix that, though I'm not sure if it'll work or not. I've noticed that when trying to cram too many Conditions into Page commands it tends to just ignore the Page altogether. Although 4 is the limit I still notice problems with even this many, I usually try to keep it down to 2 or 3. We'll see what happens.

* When the fleets come to attack B5 its actually supposed to be only Shadow ships with no Drakh, but for some reason I can't figure out which Fleet numbers its using. In the quest file it goes for shadow flets -1, -5, & -10, but the fleets it actually sends out don't seem to correspond with those numbers.

* Hmmm, not sure about the fleets being stuck in transit to B5. It may have to do with the hull flags on the ships. I may just need to set them all to 'antigravity' or something. However, that would then take away the 'black hole kill' aspect of it.

* Dust has been made more expensive for the next update, making it worthwhile to keep. I also noticed the bug with the EA not immediately attacking you if you have dust onboard and I've been working with it, but I'm still not sure why that is. I may just have to make a Page command that just makes the EA an enmy as long as you're carrying it aboard, and not just when you encounter them.

* With the jumpgate beacon I'm reminded of the vanilla version of weird worlds and every time I go into the weird worlds forum I always see that forum thread: "The non-violent high score list", so I figure there's gotta be at least some people who are interested in playing with an aethric mirror effect in the game. I'm tempted to make it not findable, but allow it to be wishable so that if you really want it you can get it.

Hope that covers everything.

[Jamiri]

PaddirN said:
* When the fleets come to attack B5 its actually supposed to be only Shadow ships with no Drakh, but for some reason I can't figure out which Fleet numbers its using. In the quest file it goes for shadow flets -1, -5, & -10, but the fleets it actually sends out don't seem to correspond with those numbers.



Isn't it just because you made the Drakh and the Shadows being one race in order to not attack each other?
If you cannot correct it, I don't see a problem here, as the Drakh may very well support the Shadow attack with a small fleet.



* Hmmm, not sure about the fleets being stuck in transit to B5. It may have to do with the hull flags on the ships. I may just need to set them all to 'antigravity' or something. However, that would then take away the 'black hole kill' aspect of it.



Don't want to be able to kill the attackers in black holes. It's too easy.



* Dust has been made more expensive for the next update, making it worthwhile to keep. I also noticed the bug with the EA not immediately attacking you if you have dust onboard and I've been working with it, but I'm still not sure why that is. I may just have to make a Page command that just makes the EA an enmy as long as you're carrying it aboard, and not just when you encounter them.



That should work, I guess. Can you make the dust be valuable regardless of the type of mission you are on (i.e. science, military, etc.)?



* With the jumpgate beacon I'm reminded of the vanilla version of weird worlds and every time I go into the weird worlds forum I always see that forum thread: "The non-violent high score list", so I figure there's gotta be at least some people who are interested in playing with an aethric mirror effect in the game. I'm tempted to make it not findable, but allow it to be wishable so that if you really want it you can get it.



B5 is not a peaceful world, so I don't think people want to play it the non-violent way (as it might be the case for vanilla). Here's my suggestion if you want to have a aethric mirror effect in the game: use something different to represent it, not the jumpgates. Jumpgates do not make other fleets swap places with your ship if you use them. That's just not as it is. It destroys some of the B5 realism in the game...

Jamiri

[Jamiri]

Ok, here's another short report:

- I played 5 times, of which I had Tirk's beacon three times, but he never could be summoned (neither on the map nor in battle). I played on a large map tonight with the Omega.
- Dust: the EA fleet was scanning my Pak'Ma'Ra ally for contraband although it was long since dead already. And I read carefully this time ;-).
- Dust (continued): this time, however, the EA fleet immediately attacked me, while another one later on did not. How come?
- Recommendations: make the Nial fighter have a much smaller turning radius to give it more agility, which it deserves.
- the Omega frontal cannons should be "integral". Right now I usually swap them with the Rocket Launcher in the second row and have my full firing arcs back again. They are even better protected there from enemy fire. In addition, it would make sense to have these heavy guns fixed to the ship permanently as their sheer size make them difficult to handle in deep space. The player still keeps four flexible weapon slots to put all his other nice guns and beams into.

Jamiri

EDIT: this page might help to get some ship pictures http://www.shipschematics.net/b5/chronology.html

[Fingers]

The negative fleet numbers pick the fleet based onthe race's difficulty settings. -1 is the first fleet on the DIFx line, -10 is the last one. The DIF line is chosen based on the map size and the "number of enemies" setting, just like for regular fleets.

[PaddirN]

* What do you mean by: "make the Nial fighter have a much smaller turning radius to give it more agility"? I would like to keep it from stopping so much when firing but I'm not sure which attribute you're talking about.

* I'm looking into the large maps and fleets, for some reason none of the beacon allies shows up, I suspect it has something to do with the #'s in the distribution.ini file. The beacon allies work fine in medium size, so I figure all I have to do is tweak some numbers.

* Having dust on you should work properly now with the next update and the EA will attack on sight although I'll have to change the text around because I think the code for <uvar=shipname> will just grab the newest ship in your flotilla.

* I don't think I need to make the omega main guns structural, I should just be able to change the size of the weapon slots to make it so they only fit into the forward slots.

As for the distribution.ini file, curious about what these values mean exactly, these are the values for the large map size:

ENMY 4
FLET 25
JOBM 40
SCRN 96 112 128
SCRE 96 112 128

[Jamiri]

I mean the radius the Nial needs to make a full 180° turn, which seems to be much smaller for other fighters. Might have something to do with the overall speed of a fighter.

Currently the problem with the Nial is that it sometimes
does not stop spinning around the waypoint you sent it to.

With regard to the Omega: Didn't know that the weapon slots on one single ship can differ.

[PaddirN]

Ok, new update 2.6 is posted at the top o' the thread.

* I believe I figured out the problem with some fleets not showing up in the large maps. Well actually, I came up with 2 fixes for it and I'm just not sure which one did it. It had to do with the max number of fleets allowable. This created some conflicts with some races always having a set # of fleets vs. the fleets created for the random races. Beacon allies should show up now on large maps.

* New Ships! Shadow Scout, Narn Frazi, EA Thunderbolt, and the entire Brakiri fleet has been redone.

* New image for the Omega shows rotated section. Doesn't actually rotate... yet?

* Centauri primus launches fighters now, should make it a bit tougher (antique primus unchanged). Why should the narn have all the fun?

* Changes to the weapon slot sizes for the Omega and the whitestar. Omega only has two large (size 3) weapon slots in the front. Whitestar only has one large weapon slot. Instead of being able to load up on heavy weapons, you'll have to pick and choose between your big guns.

* quest file naming structure changed ('ally_', 'alws_', 'evnt_', 'main_', 'game_', and 'nver_'). Purely an internal change and *shouldn't* affect anything in game. Just easier to organize everything now.

* Jumpgate access codes no longer findable, however they are still in game as a cheat code of sorts.

* The price of dust has gone up and the EA should respond accordingly to traffickers. Just say No to dust!

* You now have something of a choice of what to do with the data crystal containing Clark's dirty little secret.

* A bunch of other changes too small worth mentioning!

[Jamiri]

Guess I've become an addict of your mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. I am always looking forward to the latest updates of this.

So today I couldn't wait to give the 2.60 a try. Here's what I found:

- the new Omega looks good. But check out the firing arc view of it in the game. It overlaps the border of the circle.

- EA dialogue seems to be cut short (or a full stop is missing)

- Hooray, the Brakiri ships have arrived! This was one of the greatest additions, I believe! I just couldn't stand the Muktian/Brakiri hybrids any longer. Their cruiser seems a bit weak though.

- What's the use of the Apocalypse box? Does it have any?

- Nice: the enemy Primus Battlecruisers now launch fighters. But they are missing the fighter bay on the schematics during combat (not too much of a problem).

- the Narn Gorith ally is also great. Have they been using Drazi Railguns all the time?

- Tirk's beacon cannot be traded (e.g. when he's dead). Intended or just a bug?

- The scanner anomalies are really creative! At the first encounter nothing happened and then on the second the nasty Shadow scout took me by surprise!

BUGs:

- I encountered B4 (after a long time eventually) and this time it jumped during combat, just like a Zorg Fighter! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif It was also armed like hell (which is no bug, I know)!

- Spelling: Micheal Garibaldi (in his second form) should be Michael

- Debriefing: when playing and finishing Omega missions, I got the following: "...put the XYZ to a test", where XYZ was the name of an allied ship long since dead.

- major bug: played Omega on large map, came to Earth and suddenly the End of Civil War event popped up. At that point I had not triggered any specific events or missions, and carried no specific items. The only special items I had were the Green Sash and I had dumped the Dust before (using no in the dialogue). The latter one might be the reason, as it probably affects EA fleets in some way.

Ideas:
- remove sound in the intro that is played when the planet is displayed.

- make some muzzle effects for the beam weapons (low priority)

- there's still the glass sound when you confirm something. Should be changed, imho.

Apart from that: Great, great, GREAT mod!

Jamiri

[PaddirN]

Nice to see the bugs aren't too horrible this time around.

* I noticed the thing with the Omega firing arc being out of whack and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It may have been that I made that frame on the ship image too big (?).

* With the Brakiri ships I went by the descriptions that I've been seeing on the net. Mostly they're described as being very impressive looking, but without any real teeth behind them. So I tried to make the brakiri weaker than the centauri, narns, and the drazi.

* The Apoc Box fit in nicely as a replacement for the codex of primordius, however since the Crusade show never actually explained much about the box I haven't thought of any real way to implement it, although it could just become a device that says random things.

* I think with the Primus it already had a weapon there and I just didn't feel like moving it around so I just made the fighter bay hidden, although that may actually make the fighter bay invulnerable come to think of it.

* Yea, drazi railguns have been standard the whole time. They look nice, but it really doesn't make any sense. The narn don't have any mid or small sized weapons. If I can fish up a graphic and I do some research on the show I may add some other narn weapons later.

* Never thought of making the beacons tradeable, though I suppose death and dismemberment is as good a reason as any. They probably won't fetch a high value though.

* Yea, I was hoping to make those encounters an X factor that would keep players on their toes just like the spacehulk events.

* The B4 zorg teleporting thing has been in for awhile now, although I don't know that anybody else noticed. I wanted it to be like some weird time warping effect, although it doesn't seem to look or act anything like the zorg, it moves way too fast. Also, its an earthforce space station so I wanted it to be armed with slightly more powerful weapons to make it a bit more formidable.

* When you say remove the intro sound, are you talking about the music or the little ripbobo, scrugug, and skrinch sounds? I tried to replace those sounds with silence before but to no avail. If I could I'd like to find some kind of "flash" type sound.

* The GUI beep sounds can be disabled if you go into the directory '/Weird Worlds/babylonproject_v##/sounds/gui/' and just go through and delete any or all of the beeps in there to go back to the default sounds. Otherwise I may be awhile in trying to fine tune the sounds.

[Jamiri]

PaddirN said:
Nice to see the bugs aren't too horrible this time around.

* I noticed the thing with the Omega firing arc being out of whack and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It may have been that I made that frame on the ship image too big (?).



Probably, yes. You could compare it in size with the old Omega or the Primus.



* I think with the Primus it already had a weapon there and I just didn't feel like moving it around so I just made the fighter bay hidden, although that may actually make the fighter bay invulnerable come to think of it.



Exactly, the fighter bay cannot be damaged during combat, that's why I mentioned this point.



* Never thought of making the beacons tradeable, though I suppose death and dismemberment is as good a reason as any. They probably won't fetch a high value though.



Beacons of dead allies are rather worthless, I suppose, so trade value could be very low.



* The B4 zorg teleporting thing has been in for awhile now, although I don't know that anybody else noticed. I wanted it to be like some weird time warping effect, although it doesn't seem to look or act anything like the zorg, it moves way too fast. Also, its an earthforce space station so I wanted it to be armed with slightly more powerful weapons to make it a bit more formidable.



Aha, now I'm getting it. So B4 is warping in and out of the normal space time as in the series. Should have more effect to it though.



* When you say remove the intro sound, are you talking about the music or the little ripbobo, scrugug, and skrinch sounds? I tried to replace those sounds with silence before but to no avail. If I could I'd like to find some kind of "flash" type sound.



Yeah, not talking about the music but the sounds you mentioned.

Jamiri

[Jamiri]

If you ever re-incarnate the Earth Civil War quest in a future upgrade, wouldn't it be great to have "Earth Alliance GOD Satellites" stationed around Earth orbit?

IIRC, these were a major obstacle for the B5 fleet that went in to free Earth from Clarke and his minions.

Information on them can be found here:

http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conversions/Rifts-B5-Equip/Earth_GOD.htm

Just an idea.

[Jamiri]

Another issue:
Remember when I mentioned the conflict between the quest about Garibaldi and the data crystal about Clarke? I think something similar happens, when you have the very same crystal and Delenn (after going through the Crysalis) on board.

I got Delenn (after transformation) first and then collected the crystal, went to B5 and selected "no" for the disclosure of the material about Clarke (how evil!), before going to Minbar. On Minbar, however, Delenn did not trigger the beacon that you should get for calling the Minbari Fleet.

Hmm, I am getting the impression that two different quests cannot run in parallel...

[chabex]

Wooow, PaddirN! I hope you won't get tired to bring up updates like this! :-)

Some side notes: If you look at the storyline of B5 by the time you could have a Victory class ship, no Shadows linger around... I hate to say this but shouldn't be them replaced? Let say with those aliens from Legends of the Rangers?

[Jamiri]

Although I hardly play the Victory Class I don't think that Shadows and the Victory Class co-existing in the same time period break the game...

[PaddirN]

* Ideally it'd be nice to have the Drakh replace the Shadows for the Victory mission, although I'm not altogether sure how to accomplish that. I could give both races a 'never' flag and then only activate one or the other for the different ships, but I don't know if their fleets would be placed in random positions or if I would need to actually define starting points for their fleets.

* As far as adding in the aliens from the Legend of the Rangers? I'm a fan of Babylon 5 and all, but I couldn't really stomach that one. Andreas Katsulas was about the only shining beacon of light in that movie. Might do it, though I'd need to find a good image of the Hand ships because I can't draw worth a damn myself.

* EA GOD Satellites? Sounds good. The only image I've found so far isn't a top down view so it may look out of whack if I put it in. I'll see how it works out.

* With the Delenn/Garibaldi Clarke thingie, if you're returning to B5 it maybe because some variables are set to '0' when at Epsilon Eridani. Psientist had had it in there originally I assume to make sure those variables started out at a 0 state, otherwise I guess changed variables can carry over from game to game somehow. It wasn't a problem before because you never had to return to B5 until you retired. I'll have to do something to get that action to only trigger once.

[chabex]

Yes, it seems tough... For me the LOTR was strange too, but no other biggies around are they?
Connecting to the big guys: I have never met the Vorlons. Are they in somewhere? How can I meet them? If I go to black holes the most I got is some lame weapon... How about a beacon which would summon the eg Walkers of Sigma-957?
Idea about trading: There is this mantis like Thrakallan race, how about them? Or the smugglers whith whom Sheridan -Ivanova made a deal in the series about supplying B5. Wouldn't it be fun to have the trading back?
And also there is this race, the Streib (the abducting aliens)I would wery much like to banish them more then once :-)
Oh, and what about having Bester as a weapon against the Battlecrab. He could stall one.
And my favourite: how about the Shadow-modified Omega destroyers? fighting or finding one?
Stop dreaming Chabex...

[PaddirN]

Actually some of the things you mentioned are already implemented in the game. I don't want to spoil the game, but the Walkers do make an appearance, though not as a summonable ally. There gift is something much more powerful...

There is a race that trades with you, but they don't make an appearance everytime. I can't find any useable image of a streib ship, and as mentioned before I couldn't draw my way out a paperbag. My ability to add races in game is limited by what ship schematics have already been produced elsewhere.

With passengers they really don't do all that much except hang out in your ship. It was tried before to give Bester hypervision so you could at least find cloaked shadow ships, but that doesn't work and there's really no effect in game (that I know of) that would be able to stall or stun ships, otherwise I would've thrown in a tractor beam by now.

The Shadow Omegas sound cool, those didn't cloak did they? Cause I think that'd be a nearly unstoppable ship right there. If they do make it in I'd rather they only appeared in a more fleshed out EA Civil war quest.

Funny, now that I see it written like that, 'LOTR', it makes me remember how many similarities there are between Tolkien and B5.

[chabex]

Yes, I just met the Vree- nice little fellas. Why? They helped me to defeat the Shadows!!! I summoned them during the fight. Bright idea, it was I must say.
As I remember, the Vree ships use some kind of antimatter-projectile weapons don't they? It would be nice to have weapons (at least by the look) like in the show. If I remember they must have at least 5 of this guns, they look powerful when firing- real spitfires :-)
About the Shadow Omegas: I couldn't recall them cloaking. As I remember they "only" had organic hull armor and some über brutal particle cannons (green ray)
One more thing: Sometimes I somehow manage to disable a ship. It just spins there, all systems down.
Wouldn't it be fun to board them? Is it possible anyway? Imagine: A Centaury Vorchan, or even a Drakh Cruiser in your fleet :-)))
LOTR: lol
What about B5: TLT? I can't wait...

[Jamiri]

Will we be seeing another update of the B5 mod soon?

[PaddirN]

Short answer: Might be awhile

Long Answer:
Unfortunately it will be a while before I get another release ready. I had barely started with the new update when disaster struck! Well not quite a disaster, but apparently a hard drive on my computer is going bad (many cyclic redundancy errors and unreadable files). So its been a mad dash to backup all my music, video, pr0n, warez, games, whathaveyou. You'd be surprised how slow a process it is trying to backup 230 some odd gigs worth of stuff onto dvds on my off hours before and after work. Nearly done with that and then a hard drive swap.

Apart from that I've been doing some job hunting and then there's a story or three I'm writing for a local zine my friends and I are working on. So for now all I can say is possibly sometime in the next month, maybe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Jamiri]

Ok, take your time! Hardware issues never ain't easy stuff...

[chabex]

I hope everything is OK with PaddirN and his HDD... It's been a while since there were any lifesign.

In the meantime I played (of course) the mod and some questions popped up:

Is there any parameter set how frequently I can get the help of the First Ones or the Vorlons? It is damn hard to beat the Shadows without them. I have to have at least two additional big ships with me to use them as a "decoy" to get the first shot of the Battle Crab... Even with this a lots of luck involved.

Another thing: it would look cool if I have a small ship in my fleet (no stardrive) and when I got into the battle screen this small ship would be "launched" from my ship as from a mothership. Is it even possible?

[Jamiri]

Yeah, PaddirN, bring it on! Hope you recovered your HDD!


chabex said:
Another thing: it would look cool if I have a small ship in my fleet (no stardrive) and when I got into the battle screen this small ship would be "launched" from my ship as from a mothership. Is it even possible?



No way, unless you have a fighter bay on your own ship that launches one single fighter only. Maybe there is a parameter that can be set to infinite (or near-infinite) time between launch intervals, so that only one ship is launched per battle.

The downside of this would be that even when the small ship was destroyed, it would be launched in the next battle again.

[chabex]

Hmm, it is maybe a small detail, but for me it is "Weird :-D" that a ship without stardrive can make it to the next star... Perhaps a tractor-like beam would be nice to see as it releases the small fighter behind the mothership?

[Phlagm]

Well, i guess that's weird, but then again you wouldn't travel at the average speed of all your ships, either. YOu would travel at the speed of the slowest...unless you were towing them with the faster ships. In that case you'd need tractor beams between all the ships unless they had identical drives. I think it's best to just assume that they disengaged the tractor beam when they pulled up to the planet, because they were no longer travelling at a significant clip.

[Jamiri]

When you enter a battle the fleet has already left hyperspace and hence travels without the need of warp drives.

[PaddirN]

Hi, sorry its been awhile since I've made any news on here. My HDD problems are all cleared up, but I've still been kept busy with other things: massive overtime at a job I'm trying to quit, spring qtr at school started, trying to transfer over to OSU, preparing to move, blah blah blah. So in short, I think my work on the Babylon Project mod will be at a standstill for awhile. Modding for a game seems like one of those hobbies that requires near total commitment which I don't have the luxury of at the moment.

But as for some earlier questions:

* Yes theres a parameter for making a ship launch out only a single fighter once per battle, but like jamiri said it'd show up in every battle, even if it were destroyed in a fight. It *might* be possible to do something with a device, it'd be very complicated to do I think and even if it worked there'd be inconsistencies.

* To make the First Ones appear more frequently you'd have to go into the quests firstones#.ini file (can't remember which # has the beacon) and make it into an always event, which should make it happen in every map. Other than that I don't remember there being a way to change the probability of an event happening.

[mantari]

Hi! Just wanted to say that I enjoyed this mod a great deal. You really did a great job in taking the base game and going beyond that, into a full-fledged theme. Also, I greatly enjoyed the greater balance in battle. So many times I managed to end a battle with a terribly damaged (but not destroyed) ship. Awesome. And an interesting take on the map (very large sized, and minimal 'unguarded' planets).

My only regret was that I got too spoiled on hyperdrive. I shamefully modded the Jump Point Generator back as a random item. (I could never seem to hit the quest to get one, and Mr. Morden has too high a price!)

[Jamiri]

I think the Jump Point Generator should stay as it is. I never found it balanced to acquire it by mere luck. Now you have to fight for it to get it.

Hey PaddirN, any news from development?

[Mafaa]

PaddirN any chance work will be continued soon?

[chabex]

I just bring up the subject again...
Will anybody ever make an update for this mod? It should worth it...
PLEASE!!!
ps.
PaddirN, are you still around?

[Jamiri]

This is definitely THE best mod of WW in terms of theme and added stuff. Lots of missions and other things to find out. Nice special gadgets and cool B5 stuff all over the place.

However, there's still those classic WW ships in the game used for the League races such as for the Hyach and Pak'Ma'Ra. This really destroys a lot of the B5 theme.

Could anyone skilled at modding WW replace those ships with original B5 graphics (as I think the original author of this mod won't ever do it). I do not know how to do it myself, but would be willing to search the web for some graphics of the missing ships.

Anyone interested?

[Fiacha]

I've been fiddling with the B5 Project mod and made some changes to the Victory ship. First I swapped player ship for the one with three weapons (swapped the victory and victory1 ini files, which might not have been a good idea) and added a fighter bay (which I got working). However, now, whenever I try an use the Quantum Discharge Canon, I get a crash to desktop. Any ideas what's causing the problem?

[Fiacha]

Figured out what I did wrong: deleted the ship's victory weapon. The game was trying to call something that didn't exist...Probably shouldn't edit files when tired.

[Alderanas]

just wondering does this work on mac because i try to start it with the mod loaded and it just exits the game and doesnt pop up an error or anything.

[PaddirN]

To anybody still reading up on this, I apologize for the lack of any updates, shortly after my last few I entered into the College of Design at OSU and life got really busy, really fast and my time to work on The Babylon Project dropped down into the negative hour range. I'm sure I still have all the files that I had been working on and probably even a newer updated version, but nothing that would have been in any state to be released. As it is, I'm sure the last version probably has more than a few bugs that should have been worked out that I may or may not get to (most likely not) if the time presents itself.

If anybody cares to take up this mod or has any additional comments, feel free to e-mail me at paddirn@gmail.com. Thanks.

Graeme

[Jamiri]

Go, modders, go! I really would like to see an updated version of this one!!!

[Black_Bear]

We are still here!!! Bring it on..

[meKanicalj3sus]

This still stands up as the most ambitious mod 2 date imho. Would be awesome to see some more development :))

[Zythee]

The detail and work that must have gone into this mod is incredible!
I really enjoy it, and particually the challenge it brings. Usually on other games I can get a good score easily enough by playing sensibly. Because the jump drive is so hard to get in this though I'm finding it a little tougher! Also it's hard to know when to just attack and when to hope I'll run into a drazi sash or whatever :P
Say no to Dust!

p.s. I occasionally get brain bugged the game after I've taken up Morden's offer (I don't often I swear!). Does anyone know why this might be and how I could fix it??

[clomaka]

i haven't run into this, but then again i don't usually accept. Maybe if I didn't always have captian Ivonava...

[Zythee]

Can't ever seem to get Keffer as an ally. Also still getting an occasional crash as well.

Anyone able to help?

[Alphasite]

Can't ever seem to get Keffer as an ally. Also still getting an occasional crash as well.

Anyone able to help?

I don't recall ever seeing Keffer.

I haven't played it in quite a while due to the crashes. I tried it when the latest update to WW was released and the mod crashes more frequently.