XWA Upgrade

Amazing work everyone!
Thank you.

Darksaber wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:57 pm

It was Marco Antonio who made the IRS and A/S, not Marcos Edson lol

Wait what ?

*look at the user names*

GODDAMN IT

*go hide in a hole to cry*

Wow, just wow. Thanks to all who makes it possible.
We already knew that Warb_Null is OPTing machine who could finish XWA Upgrade by himself but 4 OPTs in one update in unbeliveable. It is great to have updated stations.
And Marco Antonio's comeback is dream come true. It is fantastic to have him back after all these years.

Wow, those look amazing! But is there a way to just get the opt without the installer? I mean they are just replacing stock ships and with the opt hook I know I have other craft in some of those slots...

What would be the point of the installers???

Don't ask me, drag and drop seems pretty simple on its own.

You've validated that I'm just wasting my time making these installers!

I was in the process of updating the installers, I don't think I bother continuing that now, I might as well just zip them and let the Muppets manually install craft!

Drinkinmiester wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:01 pm

Don't ask me, drag and drop seems pretty simple on its own.

Believe me when I tell you from professional experience there's plenty of people floating around who wouldn't even manage D&D

Yea, don't lose the installers. Noobs gotta start somewhere. There was a time where all I wanted was easy plug and play functionality. Its what sucked me in. He could easily make a dummy install to install those opts then save the actual opt files.

If you can install things manually and prefer to do so, then you're smart enough to bloody find all the relevant files post install and update your personal version manually. Seriously the installers allow for change of install directory on the fly now so there is no excuse to not have a "base" XWAU install, and other mod versions.

The installers exist to keep XWAU assets harder to rip without permission. You ar least have to own the game to use them, I at least havent found a way to extract or decompile them.

I'm a big advocate for installers because most people are inept and wont even try to install any quality of life mods manually, "too much work", and never mind installing .dat image and other backend functions, never mind installers keep multiplayer modes intact and compatible. Someone starts manually installing things for multiplayer purposes and things go sideways super fast if all parties aren't on the same page: see imperial install vs rebel install strings related desync making the game unplayable.

I wasn't trying to discourage anybody it just seemed simpler to drag and drop, I'll manage somehow.

Driftwood wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:02 pm

The installers exist to keep XWAU assets harder to rip without permission. You ar least have to own the game to use them

If that's the new party line, so be it.

never mind installers keep multiplayer modes intact and compatible. Someone starts manually installing things for multiplayer purposes and things go sideways super fast if all parties aren't on the same page: see imperial install vs rebel install strings related desync making the game unplayable.

Doesn't installing one or more of these models pose a synchronization issue with players with only base XWAUCP/DSUCP installs, though? And I never understood the problem with the strings - I mean, if it's a problem, it's a problem, it just seems like shoddy work on TG's part to transmit whole strings instead of merely the string IDs.

Geeze, I'm sorry to have started the whole argument, for what its worth I have bought the game at least 3 times, I still have a carburated car and I don't use Nexus Mod manager either

Personally, I think for ships that are already in the base XWA, there is no reason not to use the installer. For ships not contained in the base XWA game (stuff like Prequel, Sequel or other EU ships) zip files make more sense since people will usually install them in individual slots anyways.

Which is pretty much the status quo policy. I see no reason to change it.

Drinkinmiester wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:52 am

Geeze, I'm sorry to have started the whole argument, for what its worth I have bought the game at least 3 times, I still have a carburated car and I don't use Nexus Mod manager either

No argument, but the current (and hopefully soon to be updated apparently) installers took years to come to fruition and are far superior to the X-Wing Install modified zip file script program that we used to have. They were good for the time, but the new installers are superior; I see no point in going backwards to make things less user friendly.

keiranhalcyon7 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:42 am

Driftwood wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:02 pm

The installers exist to keep XWAU assets harder to rip without permission. You ar least have to own the game to use them

If that's the new party line, so be it.

never mind installers keep multiplayer modes intact and compatible. Someone starts manually installing things for multiplayer purposes and things go sideways super fast if all parties aren't on the same page: see imperial install vs rebel install strings related desync making the game unplayable.

Doesn't installing one or more of these models pose a synchronization issue with players with only base XWAUCP/DSUCP installs, though? And I never understood the problem with the strings - I mean, if it's a problem, it's a problem, it just seems like shoddy work on TG's part to transmit whole strings instead of merely the string IDs.

Point 1: Outright model theft has been an issue for this project since the beginning, so this is definitely a concern, and one reason I believe the installers were created. That reasoning is not entirely new, though idealistically I believe the user friendly point and click nature is the bigger boon and also was a significant factor towards .exe installers.

Lets be honest now, how many people use custom ships that are not proficient at modding the game anyways to begin with? In my old rather large XWA clan, other than myself, one. If it wasn't for the DSCUP being an installer, and the XWAU ships being updated to installers, maybe one other person in the group would have utilized the upgrades. Other than ineptitude, people generally speaking are LAZY and take the path of least resistance. (We all do it to some extent)

How many people use my ships? I have no idea beyond four including myself I know for a "fact" have, and as far as I know DTM uses for sure, two of them in their entirety to my knowledge. Some of that is maybe taste in ship models, and the other is probably in a large part my site is virtually impossible to find if you don't know where it is, and everything is a manual isntall.

Point 2: I agree, changing the strings files or enough edits to other text files related to ships as well shouldn't completely ruin the game sync compatibility. But it entirely does.

It is in my opinion as well poor design, and I honestly don't know why they cause such a disproportionate issue regarding game compatibility, and it seems quite silly. It's more so the Concourse/interface level strings edits that cause problems for some reason in my findings years past. (as long as custom ships that are not 1:1 on both ends are not used in mission/skirmish they do not negatively affect multiplayer, nor does it matter which ones are installed) Having say XWAUP installed 1:1 there is no issue. Having XWAU installed AND ships in the empty slots while the other player(s) don't have them, there is no issue provided the models aren't selected to be used in a mission/skirmish, if they are then the player who does not have them crashes to desktop.

I will say though, the one thing I don't know is what happens if both players have the opt files in their flight models folder but one player doesn't have them installed to the same slot, or has something else installed in that slot but the opt files are still present in the flightmodels folder. Will the game desync, or will it CTD? I suspect the latter. Interestingly enough from what I recall, the game appears to pull the shiplist files from the host, so users can see that the host selected (and or assigned) them to <customshipname> even though the person who is being hosted does not have that entry in their shiplist.

That said, I've never tried to see how the above scenarios would play out since I've always tried to ensure that our modded games have been 1:1 to avoid CTDs and desync. I don't know about now, but on dialup it made the game unplayable. (Yes I competitively played on dialup at 28.8kbps back in the day)

Jaeven wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:22 am

Personally, I think for ships that are already in the base XWA, there is no reason not to use the installer. For ships not contained in the base XWA game (stuff like Prequel, Sequel or other EU ships) zip files make more sense since people will usually install them in individual slots anyways.

Which is pretty much the status quo policy. I see no reason to change it.

Thank you, this is a good clarification on this stance. The idea of the project beyond making the game look (and now function) better, is to make things easy to access for as many people as possible.

Now I'm thinking we should try to move back on track with the topic of the new releases.

Amazing models! I especialy love the look of that casino. The interior is a nice touch indeed. So many models to look at. I spend quite some time enjoying looking at all xwaup models in the ship library. I just found this site here and its just jawdropping how much of an improvement those models are compared to the vanilla game. Great work!

Anyone who wants manual installs for these clearly doesn't remember the XIS zip days.

Having to extract the skirmish pictures from the zip and use DATech to manually update or create the DAT files for each new ship, one by one, was a pain in the arse.

And that's just one under the hood benefit of the installers. The updates to the .txt files, the consistent naming conventions for the craft library and particularly the backup folders are all super useful features that would be an absolute chore to do manually each and every time.

Oh, and just dragging and dropping won't give you the correct co-ordinates for the new cockpits, or even tell the ships to use the new cockpits. So there's that too.

Darksaber wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:08 pm

You've validated that I'm just wasting my time making these installers!

I was in the process of updating the installers, I don't think I bother continuing that now, I might as well just zip them and let the Muppets manually install craft!

DS, if just one person saying something dumb is enough for you to think you're wasting your time, is just one person saying the installers are a huge time save and a giant improvement on the old zip days enough to encourage you to keep using and updating them?



To get back on topic, this update looks amazing.

I'm so happy to see the Casino redone. It's one of the last few XWA exclusive models left, and we're so close to having all the unique story locations done now - I think it's just the Family Repair Yard left. Can't wait to see what it looks like with Dunari's yacht parked up on it.

I love your selections, Warb. It's so good to see all these minor but surprisingly common assets getting done up, like the satellites and gun pads. How do you feel about taking on all the the weird and wonderful cargo train ships?

Also great to see Marco back. The new Research Ship is such a huge improvement, and I'm so glad that the Assault Shuttle is finally done too. Is that the last shuttle/light freighter ship? I can't think of any others from that category left to do. Are we now complete on starfighters and shuttles?

I haven't had chance to check all these out in game yet, but as soon as I do I'll be back to tell you all what a great job you've done again.

For the starfighters, the starviper is still missing (although we do have one in DSUCP pack, albeit under the XWAUP standards AFAIK)

For the imperial starships, I know that Trageton is redoing the VSD to make it closer to (Legends)canon (don't know if someone redoing the ISD)

In the general starship section of the progress page, the marauder corvette remain to be done, although we do have a suitable model in DSUCP IMO(but it was done by Data Droid, so until someone have a way to contact him and persuade him to add the model to the XWAUP....welll..). For the Neutron-Class Bulk Cruiser, no suitable models AFAIK, and it's marked as free.

For stations and facility, we have the Asteroid Mining Unit missing, the Deep Space Manufacturing station (x7 factory), Derylin Platform, Family Repair Yard, the three Golan stations, the Processing Plant, Shipyard and most of the XQ platforms (the XQ5 is done)

For the shuttle and light transports, we have the Combat Utility Vehicle, the Escort Transport(hopefully both the normal and the modified one I found in the original game files) remains

For freighters and Cargo stuff, we have the Cargo Canister, the Cargo freighters and Tankers, the Container hangars (I do hope that there will be an amred version of that one coming at one point, I did find an armed version in the original OPT that was dummied out) and the Pressure tank.

For sentient beings and droids, the rebel and civilian pilots, and Emkay are missing.

For misc objects, Asterois Warhead launcher and laser batteries are missing (there is some acceptable one in DSCUP, but someone would have to contact Abolisher if it was to be included in XWAUP), the homing mines, the debris and the sensor array remains to be done

It look like a lot remains to be done, but the project is done at 82%

Rookie_One1 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:49 pm

For the imperial starships, I know that Trageton is redoing the VSD to make it closer to (Legends)canon (don't know if someone redoing the ISD)

Not to mention pumping ridiculous amounts of details into it to bring even the most powerful gaming rigs to their knees Mwuahahahahaha!

As for the ISD, well Bman was working on a new model but that hasn‘t been updated for a while now.

I may try to see if the swg ISD is viable...

Is Bman even still present on the forum ?

Oh he's still around, he's still working on the fabled Tie Fighter Total Conversion, rehashing the missions, and his ISD2 has also been in the works for donkeys years, one day he might even finish it and begin to texture it lol

Well if he still need help on TFTC, mostly related to mission, I can always help

That‘s why I challenged him over in the ISD Avenger thread. Let‘s make a little race

How many years was you thinking? lol