[WIP] Dawn of Rebirth

[Max Bain]

What about a short description how you can import XR ships into X4? It would help others a lot I think and we would see way faster progress in discovering more good looking ships in X4

[BigBANGtheory]

tbh just the XL class would be fine, the Arawn & Taranis probably being the best examples.

[Ojump]

Guys, Please try to not talk here about good/bad choice it is for Egosoft to agree or not about the use of XR Assets as it is not the goal of this topic ( There is another topic for that here )

Finally, for the ones asking, I will try to make a tutorial on how to make a ship when I will be entirely familiar with the process and when I have some time (If someone does not make it before me ^^ ).

I intend to convert several ships of X Rebirth (L/ XL) to X4. So I create a topic here to share how the things are going.

So far, I worked on something relativey small like the Onir Mineral and got pretty much everything working :



Problems remaining so far :
- Minor cockpit glitch

- The docking process to the Shipyard: I did not find yet where to specify the "Docking point" for ship so the docking bay goes in the middle of the ship (I believe I should be able to solve this soon).

- Equipping the ship in the shipyard: for some reason, I can equip the ship entirely but when I want to add the modification in the buying list, the ship canvas goes black (as if it was accepted), but nothing is actually added to the buying list, so I cannot confirm the order. Curiously, the only way to validate the modifications is to modify the Large shield on the top of the ship. => for this point, I'm open to ideas is someone has already faced this problem...( I don't have this behavior for X4 ships)

How difficult was it to port the ship over? I know how to basically create new ships in rebirth and edit turret hard points and such. I'm wanting to import the scaldis to begin with then work my way up to argon ships.

Hi, porting the ships is not very difficult:

It is pretty much the same as it was in XR, as you made some ships in rebirth I believe, i'm pretty sure it will be fast for you to start . A few comments on my current experience on the topic:
- A few xml flags need to be changed compared to XR descriptor files
- Modify the Hard points => coordinates are basically correct. But most of the rotations of the components must be redone.
- The Waypoints for docking also need to be redone
- Only the main components are specified in the macro files of the ships (like landing pads, cockpits, etc...). All the components that can be bought/changed in shipyards are not explicitly defined, just the hard points are specified in the files now.
- some part of the 3D Mesh must be modified to get a more "professional" result ( ie. avoid graphical glitches when you merge a component in the hull, like landing pads).

[x3fan5322]

Thanks for your work, looking forward to this mod, hope this paves the way for even more ships in the future!

[Max Bain]

What about the textures? I cant find them in the extracted folders.

[mr.WHO]

From practical point of view this is rather stupid statement from Egosoft:
"can port some ships from XR, but not all"

Quantify "not all" - like 40% of ships? 90% ships? All minus one ship?

Basically you can bypass it by making "pack mods" like "Albion pack", "Omicron Lyrae pack", "Canteran pack" - as each pack is separate mod that doesn't contain "all ships" it's ok.


They should simply say - if you own XR we are fine with it.

[Riccardoman]

From practical point of view this is rather stupid statement from Egosoft:
"can port some ships from XR, but not all"

Quantify "not all" - like 40% of ships? 90% ships? All minus one ship?

Basically you can bypass it by making "pack mods" like "Albion pack", "Omicron Lyrae pack", "Canteran pack" - as each pack is separate mod that doesn't contain "all ships" it's ok.


They should simply say - if you own XR we are fine with it.

Totally agree

There could be two reasons:
1- they want us to purchase x rebirth at full price to experience its universe, a smart marketing strategy (although not that smart considering that it would be difficult to sell an older game that got an overall negative impression) but a huge middle finger at the community
2- they are planning a future "rebirth" DLC and they are afraid that when it will be released the community wouldn't be interested because the modders already did the porting for free

I sincerely hope for the second

[Kadatherion]

Yeah, it's a bit of a paradox because under normal conditions it would be just natural to only port a few ships from an older game into the newest one, it's what happened before, for instance in X2 ships for X3: mods only ported a few cap or iconic ships because the quality of the models in X3 was superior - of course - so it was a given to only port a bunch of ships for the novelty of it. Porting the whole roster would just decrease the overall quality of the game, and the problem can't really emerge at all.
However X4 is a step backwards from XR when it comes to every ship model quality, which is absurd by common standards, so one would be tempted to port most - if not all - ships from Rebirth. Which is something that - per se, quality issues aside - the devs can't easily allow, as it's probably the main appeal of a game that is still for sale. I myself don't know how I would reply if I were in their shoes, appealing to common sense seems the best/only solution, but common sense is much less common and much more subjective than the idiomatic expression implies.

For instance, I'd suggest something like this: concentrate on cap ships, from M6/M7 size and bigger (and maybe don't overdo it either, as we can't have much difference in role/loadouts anyway for now, so not too much point into having dozens of ships that in the end play and fly the exact same), and leave fighters and mid-small freighters out, as the biggest issues in quality (and variety) we have now in X4 is about them. Fighters are "ok" at best, but although they might suffer too from a conceptual design standpoint, they aren't affected by the additional issues in design caused by the dock modules.

[mr.WHO]

2- they are planning a future "rebirth" DLC and they are afraid that when it will be released the community wouldn't be interested because the modders already did the porting for free

I sincerely hope for the second

Unfortunately Egosoft devs already said that adapting XR ships to X4 was too much of a bother for them (that's why they went with new designs for X4) like space for landing pads, bridge etc.
Therefore XR DLC is highly unlikely for first two announced DLC. The most propable is Boron and Split DLC, but I hope it will be Boron&Split for one and Terran for second.

[Riccardoman]

Yeah I've heard about that, but I'm optimistic that X4 life cycle would be as long as X3, and it would make sense

They built a solid "foundation" to improve upon, like X3, so they will stick with this chapter for a long time

I can see "X4 whatever conflict" to be sold as a separate game like terran conflict was

So what I'm saying is that at this point, if Egosoft cares about the franchise (which I think they do) they will stick hard to the number as they did with X3, adding a lot of content along the way
So an XR expansion was never confirmed neither denied, they have too much pre-build high quality materials to not at least consider this option

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Guys, Please try to not talk here about good/bad choice it is for Egosoft to agree or not about the use of XR Assets as it is not the goal of this topic

Yes but you can't simply go ahead with this project without the consent of Egosoft , anyway correct none the less and it has been sorted out over on the other thread and it is legally okay to proceed just don't go crazy and import everything Egosoft's words, not mine.
I am looking forward to this as much as anybody else and besides the fact that I am too lazy to rip the content out myself I am happy to do any testing or model optimisations you like as I have made cockpits for other games using 3DS Max so if you need to make the poly count work I can probably fix it.

[csaba]

This would be very welcome additions to the game.

i for one fell in love with the Eterscel fighters and i was so overjoyed when a modder allowed me to change the skunk for one of those.

tbh if egosoft themselves would port them with a sort of discovey plot line for the ships id pay for such a DLC.

I wouldn't be surprised if they did a discovery, Heretics end is in x4 and also in rebirth. Which might actually be why they're saying its "frowned upon" because they plan on doing the same thing.

I’ve been staring at the XR map for 30 minutes straight. Heretic’s end is not in the game.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

This would be very welcome additions to the game.

i for one fell in love with the Eterscel fighters and i was so overjoyed when a modder allowed me to change the skunk for one of those.

tbh if egosoft themselves would port them with a sort of discovey plot line for the ships id pay for such a DLC.

I wouldn't be surprised if they did a discovery, Heretics end is in x4 and also in rebirth. Which might actually be why they're saying its "frowned upon" because they plan on doing the same thing.

I’ve been staring at the XR map for 30 minutes straight. Heretic’s end is not in the game.

If that be the case, Egosoft better not get any ideas and think about a DLC before optimisation of this game first, I sifted through some of the algorithms and I spotted a couple of potential loops and a few nasty bits of slow logic which come to think of it affect the timing it takes for CPU threads to finish calculating ship course routines. (potentially a 5-10fps difference if fixed)

I would do it myself but I ain't touching XML based algorithm it would take me over a month to write it correctly, however, if this was in X3Script that could be a different story I would try knock at test over a weekend.

[Shinra Vanity]

This looks fantastic

If this mod turned out to be very popular egosoft would sell more copies of x rebirth so everyone wins

[Grimshad]

Since .21 my deployment ship just flys to a sector and sits there doing nothing. Tried to restart the command but still doesn't work. Worked when I restarted the command from a very distant sector.

.22 still has incorrect text displaying

Request: Make the ship drop the sat slightly off to the side of the station so it's not as annoying to click on the station from the map later.

[Requiemfang]

Since .21 my deployment ship just flys to a sector and sits there doing nothing. Tried to restart the command but still doesn't work. Worked when I restarted the command from a very distant sector.

.22 still has incorrect text displaying

Request: Make the ship drop the sat slightly off to the side of the station so it's not as annoying to click on the station from the map later.

Uh I think you posted this in the wrong thread?

[Osbot]

From practical point of view this is rather stupid statement from Egosoft:
"can port some ships from XR, but not all"

Quantify "not all" - like 40% of ships? 90% ships? All minus one ship?

Basically you can bypass it by making "pack mods" like "Albion pack", "Omicron Lyrae pack", "Canteran pack" - as each pack is separate mod that doesn't contain "all ships" it's ok.


They should simply say - if you own XR we are fine with it.

They should simply say - "we are fine with it".

Mods enrich the game. Porting XR assets to this game enriches it. More people will buy this game. Eventually Egosoft can port them, themselves, or not, or port some of them, or not. Either way, it doesn't hurt them. The games are fundamentally different. If someone wants the XR experience, having the ships in this game isn't going to be the reason they do or do not buy it.

[Vovva]

Any progress for ships from rebirth?

[Clifffitir]

Its a shame this mod needs to be made. Egosoft did an amazing job with Rebirth ships. I hope you are able to get this working!

[Ojump]

Any progress for ships from rebirth?

Progress Yes, but it will take some time before I release anything (if I can) as there is a lot of job to do.

Currently, I'm trying to take a look on Blender/xmf-dae converter to modify the 3D of the ships by myself, but i'm not familiar with those and I get some errors when I try to convert the dae back to xml, so I lose a lot of time on that part.

If someone with some skills in Blender/3DS max is around, I would be interested to share my current work with him/her to make the necessary 3D modifications in order to have some decent quality on the components integration for the ships ( Spacesuit docking bay and ships Docking bay mostly).

So if someone around is interested, feel free to mp me

In the meantime, here are some views of a Taranis fully functionnal ( but in need of a few 3D modification as stated before).