Star Fortress 64 (TF2 Star Fox Mod)

[AuroraCave]

*Please note; This mod is currently under development and is in pre-alpha stage. I am subject to be silenced on release dates, plugin updates etc. I will continue to post updates on this mod when special permission is given. I am however, allowed to express my projects for the mod freely.

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About:

Ok, so some of you are wondering what is Star Fortress 64? Well, it's basically Star Fox and Team Fortress 2 gameplay combined together to make one intense gamemode for everyone's enjoyment. *Maybe this video should explain it.*

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A24JMjyenpI

 

Maps:

 

Fichina / Fortuna - Here's one of the main maps I built from the ground up for Star Fortress! Unfortunately, this is only the pre-alpha version of the map. I'll update as I go and note on the specific changes.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kao3q6PksZU

 

Co-Op Test - A basic mock up test that I introduced for Kit o' Rifty and my test partner, Simply Delicious, for a possible co-op campaign! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSX9TADuGo

 

Server Notice:

*I would like to inform that I have a private server up and running with the Star Fortress mod installed, well whenever I'm on. Basically, its for testing my maps for optimization and what not. You can send me an invite on Steam. Just be sure to send me a private message here before sending an invite.

 

All assets, names, models and music in relation to the Star Fox series used in the game mode is © Nintendo.

[psy_commando]

Well there's already a thread made about this, but not from an actual dev!

I still have no ideas how you guys managed to pull that off with server side scripts.. 0_o

And I attempted to do the same thing via the source SDK a while ago! But, given I couldn't find a way of making it work in multiplayer without all kinds of weird issues. Such as this:

[AuroraCave]

Well there's already a thread made about this, but not from an actual dev!

I still have no ideas how you guys managed to pull that off with server side scripts.. 0_o

And I attempted to do the same thing via the source SDK a while ago! But, given I couldn't find a way of making it work in multiplayer without all kinds of weird issues. Such as this:

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(hopefully it will stay as a link and not embed itself..)

 

I could never get the sames results..

The most impressive thing is that there doesn't seem to be any gimbal lock issues with the implementation you're working on!

 

But I'm really looking forward to try it!

[Clearwater]

If you need any help, I'm free on weekends, Monday and Tuesday afternoons and SOMETIMES Wednesday evenings.

[psy_commando]

I'm honestly surprised myself that this was even managed for Team Fortress 2 multiplayer thanks to the magical hands of my friend, Kit o' Rifty. He's really kicking the mod far beyond our understanding. 

 

Btw, I'm still curious if even ripping the actual stage from the game is possible.         

Well, technically, given the SF64 levels are very low poly, and that the BSPs and displacements in source can easily match them, it could be possible.

I'm pretty sure there was one guy once that made a displacement generator for source, it would generate a displacement based on a heightmap. If you had a list of the vertices from the actual mesh of the original level, I guess it would be possible to write a little program to do it for you.

 

And, yeah speaking of kicking a mod far beyond understanding, have you seen the Nintendo for counter-strike GO ? http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/19/game-in-a-game-super-mari-csgo/

 

Its probably the only other server side pluging that even compares to this! But there's no prediction, collisions, or linear algebra involved in this one XD

[AuroraCave]

Well, technically, given the SF64 levels are very low poly, and that the BSPs and displacements in source can easily match them, it could be possible.

I'm pretty sure there was one guy once that made a displacement generator for source, it would generate a displacement based on a heightmap. If you had a list of the vertices from the actual mesh of the original level, I guess it would be possible to write a little program to do it for you.

 

And, yeah speaking of kicking a mod far beyond understanding, have you seen the Nintendo for counter-strike GO ? http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/19/game-in-a-game-super-mari-csgo/

 

Its probably the only other server side pluging that even compares to this! But there's no prediction, collisions, or linear algebra involved in this one XD

 

Ah hmm, I guess I would check out sometime in the future. In the meantime, I managed to grab this little beauty a while back when playing around 3D Ripper DX and Dolphin.

 

 

Yes folks, we have some bosses planned for boss artificial intelligence for the mod. *Not saying who the rest are, but this is the one that I ripped that I would really like to see in it.* However, the only reason why this is on a hiatus at the moment is, because well just look at the model and you will see its really ugly looking. And with Star Fox Assault being sadly third party, I have in no way of obtaining Andrew's official model data thanks to the nasty .bin files which isn't suitable for.brstm formats.  My knowledge of 3dsMax is really lacking and I'm not sure if any of you are interested in cleaning up the model for us, although it would be much appreciated. (Not that I'm a big time fan of requests, anyways.)  

[psy_commando]

Ah hmm, I guess I would check out sometime in the future. In the meantime, I managed to grab this little beauty a while back when playing around 3D Ripper DX and Dolphin.

 

 

Yes folks, we have some bosses planned for boss artificial intelligence for the mod. *Not saying who the rest are, but this is the one that I ripped that I would really like to see in it.* However, the only reason why this is on a hiatus at the moment is, because well just look at the model and you will see its really ugly looking. And with Star Fox Assault being sadly third party, I have in no way of obtaining Andrew's official model data thanks to the nasty .bin files which isn't suitable for.brstm formats.  My knowledge of 3dsMax is really lacking and I'm not sure if any of you are interested in cleaning up the model for us, although it would be much appreciated. (Not that I'm a big time fan of requests, anyways.)  

 

Well, at this point I'd say you'd better build one from scratch. Model ripped with 3dx ripper will always be squashed weirdly because they've had the perspective matrix applied to them. Models in all graphic pipelines have always 3 matrix applied to them before they appear on screen, one to apply world transformation, one to apply view transformation and fov, and one to flatten it on a 2D plane to be displayed on screen as pixels.

 

Some people have made extractors for some gamecube games, but I haven't heard of a working one for starfox assault. But its completely possible to write one, although its a "monk's job" as my teacher put it once, to figure out what bytes do what in an hex editor.. Its extremely time consuming however. Maybe someone at the Xentax forums knows what to do already though.

[Icy]

I agree with Psy. Ripping "screen shots" of models from games... it isn't going to be fun to try and properly resize & rig them.

That said, when you say "clean up" the model, what do you have in mind?

 

Amazing work on the mod. I'm blown away by how polished the basic gameplay looks. This is a server-side mod??!

 

My only hope, if it's in the realm of possibilities, that there could be a complete sound mod to go along with it, replacing the voice commands with SF64 (or whatever) lines.

Well, actually, my only hope is that this mod actually gets finished and put up for everyone to play.

[DZComposer]

I would so put this on our TF2 server in a New York Minute.

Since you're involved with this project, I'll elevate it to an Official Thread and sticky it on the General Star Fox board.

[AuroraCave]

I agree with Psy. Ripping "screen shots" of models from games... it isn't going to be fun to try and properly resize & rig them.

That said, when you say "clean up" the model, what do you have in mind?

 

Amazing work on the mod. I'm blown away by how polished the basic gameplay looks. This is a server-side mod??!

 

My only hope, if it's in the realm of possibilities, that there could be a complete sound mod to go along with it, replacing the voice commands with SF64 (or whatever) lines.

Well, actually, my only hope is that this mod actually gets finished and put up for everyone to play.

 

Indeed this is a server-side mod using Sourcemod as it's primary engine. Also, I already had talks with Psy over Steam about the possibility of fixing up Assault models such as this. He said it is possible, however just more difficult in general to actually repair the model and more easier to just create a new one from scratch. I'm going to try to get myself into learning Blender to re-build models such as these.

 

At the moment, we don't want to include to much sounds for people to download (server-wise) and just leaving the default voice commands for the project. Not like the TF2 voice commands are already perfect for a mod like this.   

 

I would so put this on our TF2 server in a New York Minute.

Since you're involved with this project, I'll elevate it to an Official Thread and sticky it on the General Star Fox board.

 

I would like to thank you on this! However, you will have to get into contact with the coder being Kit o' Rifty when the time comes close by (just not now, I'll give the ok when it is). At the moment, the mod is currently a private mod under my group being Gray Mann Gaming. 

[psy_commando]

Indeed this is a server-side mod using Sourcemod as it's primary engine. Also, I already had talks with Psy over Steam about the possibility of fixing up Assault models such as this. He said it is possible, however just more difficult in general to actually repair the model and more easier to just create a new one from scratch. I'm going to try to get myself into learning Blender to re-build models such as these.

 

Well, its not easier, its just that all things considered it will give a much more usable and better result. Let me explain.

 

Models extracted like that have to be basically re-aligned and verified vertex by vertex, and then you have to fix smoothing and normals, check for badly sealed edges, and fix UV issues. Then you can't use the original rig and skeleton and have to build it yourself. Moreover its also possible the textures would have to be manipulated to properly show bump mapping and specular lighting, transparency and so on.

Plus, they're very low poly, have some badly compressed textures(which will have to be compressed again even more), and you'll also have to make the collision mesh yourself.

 

That's why at that point, its as if you were rebuilding the entire model, except that for all your efforts you'd get something pretty disappointing.. You're better off just basing on it and build a new model. You'll be able to add lots of details, and etc..

 

However, the big question is, would a slightly distorted and glitchy ripped model would be good enough for you, or you'd want something better?

 

If you do want something better, you'll have to learn how to model, or find someone who can. And if you want to attempt fixing the ripped model, you'll have to do it yourself or find someone who wouldn't mind spending lots of time on something that probably won't have much potential use. But only you can judge which approach is worth spending time and energies on. Since I don't know much about how you guys operate, or where you're going and etc, I can't really say much on that.

 

But with my mod team, I made the choice of making assets from scratch. (Even though it was a little a no-brainer given the snes models are way too low poly anyways)

[AuroraCave]

Well, its not easier, its just that all things considered it will give a much more usable and better result. Let me explain.

 

Models extracted like that have to be basically re-aligned and verified vertex by vertex, and then you have to fix smoothing and normals, check for badly sealed edges, and fix UV issues. Then you can't use the original rig and skeleton and have to build it yourself. Moreover its also possible the textures would have to be manipulated to properly show bump mapping and specular lighting, transparency and so on.

Plus, they're very low poly, have some badly compressed textures(which will have to be compressed again even more), and you'll also have to make the collision mesh yourself.

 

That's why at that point, its as if you were rebuilding the entire model, except that for all your efforts you'd get something pretty disappointing.. You're better off just basing on it and build a new model. You'll be able to add lots of details, and etc..

 

However, the big question is, would a slightly distorted and glitchy ripped model would be good enough for you, or you'd want something better?

 

If you do want something better, you'll have to learn how to model, or find someone who can. And if you want to attempt fixing the ripped model, you'll have to do it yourself or find someone who wouldn't mind spending lots of time on something that probably won't have much potential use. But only you can judge which approach is worth spending time and energies on. Since I don't know much about how you guys operate, or where you're going and etc, I can't really say much on that.

 

But with my mod team, I made the choice of making assets from scratch. (Even though it was a little a no-brainer given the snes models are way too low poly anyways)

 

Yeah, but like I said before. I'm going to try to get myself into Blender and or 3DS Max to which I am aware of the difficult procedures used in the following to make models.

 

Anyways, I would like to present a simple concept of some of our current plans for the Star Fortress mod.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSX9TADuGo

[psy_commando]

So you're using teleport brushes between corridors ? That's what we tried to go for on Source as well! We'd make some much longer corridors stacked one over the other. And I'm guessing you'll use a 3d skybox to make it a little smoother ? I think we had an issue with the 3D skybox though, I can't remember what exactly.. But it had something to do with how the skybox camera is relative to the player camera's movement.

 

And another tip we got from our friends at the Eternal Silence mod team, was to scale down the ship, so maps could be bigger even with the very small map size hammer allows for.. In ES, they did it dynamically, like the ships are human sized in the hangars, but they're automatically scaled down when you get out of the hangar, and teleported into the actual space "box" . I don't know if that's really doable in your case though.

 

But Eternal Silence is really a great source of inspiration for anyone making a vehicle shooter on the source engine ! They really succeeded at making a space combat sim / FPS hybrid, with the old  HL2:EP1 source engine! And many things they did can be recycled :

 

I was even able to talk with the guy who coded the thing! He was kind enough to share some source code with us ! You can get the mod on steam if you ever want to take a look at it :

http://store.steampowered.com/app/17550/?snr=1_7_15__13

[AuroraCave]

So you're using teleport brushes between corridors ? That's what we tried to go for on Source as well! We'd make some much longer corridors stacked one over the other. And I'm guessing you'll use a 3d skybox to make it a little smoother ? I think we had an issue with the 3D skybox though, I can't remember what exactly.. But it had something to do with how the skybox camera is relative to the player camera's movement.

 

And another tip we got from our friends at the Eternal Silence mod team, was to scale down the ship, so maps could be bigger even with the very small map size hammer allows for.. In ES, they did it dynamically, like the ships are human sized in the hangars, but they're automatically scaled down when you get out of the hangar, and teleported into the actual space "box" . I don't know if that's really doable in your case though.

 

But Eternal Silence is really a great source of inspiration for anyone making a vehicle shooter on the source engine ! They really succeeded at making a space combat sim / FPS hybrid, with the old  HL2:EP1 source engine! And many things they did can be recycled :

 

I was even able to talk with the guy who coded the thing! He was kind enough to share some source code with us ! You can get the mod on steam if you ever want to take a look at it :

http://store.steampowered.com/app/17550/?snr=1_7_15__13

 

That's right, thing is with teleporters there's a bug within Source's particles that always cause them to disappear upon reaching the desired destination. My only problem is when dealing with 3d Sky Boxes is that they always to tend to repeat in different rooms.

 

My friend Kit has often times told me he planned on scaling the ships, players, and the world for optimization and overall gameplay. Also, I'll give a look at the mod when I can. Look's really interesting and I can see why people tend to get inspiration from this!

[Clearwater]

It's looking good! Like I said, if you need any help, just PM me, I'll lend a hand.

[AuroraCave]

It's looking good! Like I said, if you need any help, just PM me, I'll lend a hand.

 

Will do! Speaking of which I just sent one asking about some personal stuff in relation for the mod. So, you should get it soon.

[Clearwater]

Already got it, I replied.

[Clearwater]

I hope those models I sent you helped?

[AuroraCave]

I hope those models I sent you helped?

 

It will in the future, they are just on a hiatus at the moment. My main priority right now is working on maps for the mod. I'll hint that the next map is from Star Fox 2. However, if you guys on the forums do know on what it is just try not to spoil it for the others.  

[Scourge]

Shit, Now I kinda wanna see the escape tunnel scene in SF64 on the hard path in tf2 graphics...

 

with like different classes screaming "go left" or "to the right" in place of James guiding you out

[AuroraCave]

Sorry for the lack of updates as of late, however I would like to inform you guys that the game mode is now in development. Kit o' Rifty has written a new blog describing the new features and the plans he has currently going on.

 

The link to the blog can be found here. http://starfortress64.tumblr.com/post/71241709076/starting-on-the-gamemode

[FK4]

This should be interesting

[Clearwater]

Very interesting.... I better keep my eyes open.

[Jeroscope]

Let me know when you need play testers. I'll get the Voodoo Shipping Co. on it. From there, it will spread like wildfire.

[Terramax]

This looks like an outstanding mod. Particularly the 2nd video grabs my attention.

 

Seriously, just a handful of remade levels of SF64 an Assault, with tight gameplay like the original games, and I'd be playing this online all day long.

 

I really hope this mod becomes available very soon.

 

Also, was anyone else reminded of this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvLE3DgE5ME