27-1
2015
Grey Goo has been released.
Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on January 27, 2015
Ladies and gentlemen, as the title of this news says, Grey Goo is the latest game released by Petroglyph Games. Of course, Petrolution will be supporting it. You can now post your mapping tutorials, tools and anything related to Grey Goo in our site. And in order to start our support for this new RTS game, we have an exclusive updated Open Source .BIG Editor in our download section. This new version of OS BIG Editor opens .meg files with format 2 and 3 (Grey Goo uses format 3) from newer games from Petroglyph. It still does not open the nasty config.meg file from Grey Goo, neither the one from End of Nations beta. They seem to be protected with some very odd sorcery that has yet to be studied by the community. So, that's it. Get posting and help us to make this game become more modding friendly.
22-6
2014
Anatomy of a Starship
Posted by evilbobthebob at Phoenix Rising News on June 22, 2014
Probably the best way to introduce the new space combat mechanics is to take a detailed look at our new (WIP) infobox layout. You may recognise many of the elements from the revamped land combat; many of the elements are also new. I'll go through each in the order they appear using the classic example of the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer. Please note that all values shown are WIP.
Tactical Population Cost
This is a new number based on the total volume of the hull (or hulls in the case of a starfighter squadron). It is balanced around the idea that an Executor-class Super Star Destroyer consists of 400 population points, the maximum available space population. For carriers, it also includes the volume of all the starfighter squadrons as in the case of the Imperial II. This means that you can field 5 Imperial II-class and their entire complements at one time. These values are currently in the process of testing and tweaking, and the exact values may be different in the released version.
Starship Icon
All the starship icons have been brought into lineusing uniform lighting and rendering settings to create a better quality icon set.
Starship Name
As usual, we retain the full names of all ships, including their upgrade version.
Starship Class
From Starfighter through to Dreadnaught, a starship's class helps shape its maneuverability and sensor range statistics. It also determines which shipyard type is needed to construct it.
Special Abilities
With the new version, we have many greatly improved autofire scripts for ship special abilities, so we feel comfortable including more than the two accessible from the GUI. In most cases, the tractor beam will be the hidden, autofired ability, and it will usually target whatever the ship has been told to attack. Note here the Imperial II has a Tractor Beam, Emergency Thrusters (power to engines ability) and Blast. Blast is a new ability we have added to many main-line combat ships. It moves the firepower of the main battery (in this case, the octuple turbolasers and turboions) up a notch, so that has increased range and firepower.
Manufacturer
We have always included manufacturer bonuses on various appropriate planets such as Kuat. Now you can see exactly which ships will benefit, with the inclusion of the Manufacturer in the infobox.
Cost
This is the base hull cost, not including complement (which is included in the final cost at a 50% discount). Costs have been modified across the board to provide a more challenging economic planning experience.
Time
This is the base hull construction time, measured in galactic time. For the Imperial II, this is 15 weeks. Note that building over a world with appropriate shipyard bonuses, or by building more of the same class of shipyard, this time can be dramatically reduced.
Dimensions
Width x length x height, in meters, the basic size of the hull.
Volume
The total volume of the hull in cubic meters, often using exponential notation. Here for example, the Imperial II is 121 million cubic meters in volume. This statistic informs hitpoint calculations and has a great effect on the likelihood for a ship to be hit by enemy fire.
Acceleration
With the change to the new space combat mechanics, we have moved towards a more "realistic" approach. While ships still have a capped top speed, it is directly proportional to their acceleration. This is measured in terms of G-force, the acceleration experienced by a being on the surface of a planet with standard gravity, roughly 10 m/s2.
Maneuvrability
This statistic is the turning speed of the starship, measured in degrees per second. It is primarily class-based.
Hyperdrive
The class of the hyperdrive in the starship (if any), which determines its ability to travel across the galaxy in hyperspace. The smaller the better!
Shielding
Here is one of the new statistics. Shielding is now measured in Shield Points (SP) and has an absorption percentage shown after it. This is the amount of damage the shield can absorb from a single shot before it takes SP damage. So for example, a turbolaser shot hitting the Imperial II shield with a damage of 96 will do around 58 points of shield damage.
Hull
Hull has also changed a great deal. It is now measured in Hull Points (HP), like that of land combat. This value is primarily volume-based. Following the HP is the armour value and type. The Imperial II has 32 Vehicle armour. This means that it absorbs 32 damage from any incoming shot before the hull itself is damaged. For example, the same 96 damage turbolaser will do 64 points of hull damage on impact.
Range
This statistic shows the maximum and minimum ranges of the weapon systems on the ship, followed by its line of sight range. All values are in meters. In this case, the longest range weapons are the octuple turbolasers, while the shortest are the individual turbolaser cannons.
Armament
We have greatly condensed the weapons display into a shorthand that provides much more information. We have done away with "light", "heavy" and so on, instead simply telling you the weapon type, their number, and their damage output. So, here the Imperial II has 6 octuple turbolasers with 240 damage per bolt, 2 octuple turboions with 240 damage per bolt, 2 triple turbolasers with 144 damage per bolt, and so on. Note that ion weapons do 200% damage to shields, but cannot damage anything except Droid armour. The number of tractor beams is also noted, which adjusts the cooldown of the tractor beam ability.
I hope this little snippet has provided some insight to the changes we've been making over the past 18 months. If you have any questions, I will endeavour to answer below, however note that I did not implement these changes myself.
17-6
2014
News. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
Posted by evilbobthebob at Phoenix Rising News on June 17, 2014
Hello Phoenix Rising fans.
First off, I'd like to apologise for the extremely long time between news posts. If this was the only way you kept up with the mod, I can forgive you for thinking we'd ceased development. Those of you who read more of the forums see the team members making comments from time to time, and we made a call for alpha and beta testers for the latest version over the past year. Still, this doesn't make up for the silence we've sustained up to now.
I'd like to change that myself, primarily because I finally have some free time and partly because our team leader and the prime driver of the mod, Phoenix Rising, is without a computer capable of doing modding right now. This isn't particular cause for alarm, because the current build of the mod is very feature-complete. However, there still remain areas that need polish and improvement.
So what have we been doing for the past two years? Our initial plan for the next version of the mod was primarily based on integrating the information provided by the release of The Essential Atlas. As software project tend to do, we experienced some rather strong feature creep, and as one thing led to another, we realised we had a version of the mod that is no longer a mere incremental update. In fact, we have:
- General
- Made numerous changes to improve performance
- Remade and rebalanced the hero system
- Rebalanced tech trees
- Galactic Mode
- Brought our galactic maps in line with The Essential Atlas
- Added new planets
- Entirely rebalanced and remade our core sandbox campaigns (still a work-in-progress)
- Created a new planetary bonus system
- Created a new hyperspace system
- Rebalanced freighters, including the addition of light transports
- Improved the display of research
- Combat
- Improved land combat
- Begun the process of adding infantry weapon models
- New units
- Improved weather system
- Added many new maps in land and space
- Entirely revamped space combat to be in line with land combat:
- New armour, health and shield system
- New weapon balancing and types
- Better display of unit statistics
- New units
- Increase in map size to accommodate the changes
- Improved land combat
Many of these changes, especially those based around planets and maps, have already been mentioned in prior news posts. Check those for more information on those specific topics. As for the rest, I hope I can bring you more news posts in the near future providing examples and details. In the mean time, I'm happy to answer questions you may have here on the forums.
evilbob
13-3
2014
Grey Goo, the next game from Petroglyph
Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on March 13, 2014
Petroglyph has recently announced their next real time strategy game: Grey Goo, which should be published by a mysterious company called Greybox. It should feature 3 new factions and all the good and solid mechanisms that makes real time strategy games fun, such as base building, resource collection and a focus on macro-management rather than micro-management. The game will be Windows only originally and it should be sold on Steam. It can be played online and offline (skirmish) and it should feature a story driven campaign. According to Petroglyph, the game should be available on late 2014 and it will feature soundtracks from Frank Klepacki. For more information, head to Grey Goo's Official Website.
5-11
2013
Petrolution is fully functional again.
Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on November 5, 2013
Welcome back, everyone. Petrolution is working correctly again. We've managed to figure out the server mechanics that were affecting the redirection and they were disabled here. So, feel free to browse the site, submit tutorials, files, mods, etc.
We have a lot of sections about games that no longer belongs to Petroglyph or are not longer supported, but we'll keep them for now. Also, End Of Nations is no longer a MMO RTS, but it is rather a multiplayer online battle arena and it is in the sole hands of Trion. I don't know if we'll add content for this game on our own. Probably not, unless we see some interest in the responses for this news post.
Anyway, enjoy this place and contribute for it to make it even better.
4-11
2013
The site is now browsable.
Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on November 4, 2013
Hello everyone. You may now browse all sections of Petrolution as you used to do some months ago. I've done a little workaround that redirects you into something that works. Unfortunately, the redirection problem persists and it may prevent you from submitting some data, except to edit items, which is a big thing. I'll still try to figure out how to fix it, but the problem seems to be beyond the scope of Petrolution at the moment. Have fun.
3-11
2013
Broken site links
Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on November 3, 2013
Hello everyone. If you've been trying to browse this site recently, you might be noticing that some of the site content looks broken. Our problem lies with a redirection rule of apache that is beyond my scope or it's something I'm not being able to figure out where it comes from. But the content itself is fully functional. Feel free to browse it:
-> Tutorials
-> Mods
-> Articles
-> Maps
-> Downloads
-> Modding Utilities Downloads
-> Community Modifications Downloads
And for anything else, make sure that the link has index.php?page= and the ? are replaced with & until we figure out why things are breaking. Sorry for any inconvenience and enjoy this place.
28-12
2012
Battlestar Galactica at War is back!
Posted by Darthbyron56 at Petrolution News on December 28, 2012
Hey Guys, Byron here. Avid BSG fans will be well aware that between 2010/2011 NBC issued a take down notice of a single BSG mod from Moddb.Since Moddb didn't want to get into trouble they decided to remove all BSG related content from their website.
However, we have started up our Battlestar Mod project again, and hopefully we can continue to develop it without NBC feeling threated by its presence.
So what have we been up to?
Well most of the content used in BSG Colonial Wars needed upgrades. Textures weren't great and most models need re-rigging.
Our Priority at the moment is to re-rig enough units to get you guys a mini-mod by 2013. We are aiming for something small, but quite diverse. We aim to change the graphics of the game so you feel like as if your playing a Total Conversion mod.
As mentioned all models are being Re-rigged, and re coded to be more accurate to the ships shown in the show. We have already re-rigged the Battlestar Galactica, and have put its Flak Shield ability to test against some cylon raiders, and the results are fantastic. The video below from our November update shows you this ability being used.
Due to some set backs re-rigging was placed on hold and minor modding of Factions, Galactic Conquests and Planet placement has taken over at this moment. But I am pleased to announce that we have finally overcome the rigging issues we were experiencing with the rigging process, but I'd like to show you what I've been up to in the meantime.
This video shows the new and updated effects that we are looking to create with our mods Galactic Conquest. As you can see we've taken to offering an accurate representation of a Galaxy by adding in Nebula and Star effects, we've even gone as far as adding Suns to each Galaxy.
The area of space you see in this video is known as Helios Alpha, and is one of the primary Helios for the Tweleve Colonies. It features the following planets:
Icarus,
Picon,
Caprica,
Gemenon,
Tauron,
Zeus,
Peresphone,
Erebos Asteroids.
Let us know what you think, after many attempts at getting the effects to work correctly I cracked it. We are aiming to develop another 3 of these areas for the other Helios' within the Twelve Colonies. You'll also notice some sound updates for the GC.
The mod is well and truly back in production, however as always we must say that Real Life events to come before any modding, so If you haven't heard from us in a while don't assume we are dead, we might just be very busy.
If you want to keep up to date with is visit www.bsgmods.com/forum and register there with us. The forums is quite New and we still don't have many members.
Thanks Guys,
Byron
21-12
2012
Planets by numbers
Posted by Ghostrider at Phoenix Rising News on December 21, 2012
The key theme to V1.3 development is conforming to The Essential Atlas, which involves moving all the planets to their correct locations. In addition, a new theme has been added to this which has implications throughout the mod, some obvious, some hidden: Populations.
Planets vary enormously in their planetary populations, from the trillion on Coruscant to the airless uninhabited moon of Folor, and this now becomes the key economic driver for determining planetary income and industrial output. In general, heavily populated Core Worlds outclass anything else in terms of economic and military output (with a few notable exceptions), while some of the Outer Rim planets are so poor, one wonders if they are worth the military effort to take them. More on this later.
The second major change is fleet populations. Every unit now requires galactic population to build it. The more crew in a ship, the greater the Unit Population. Why? An Imperial-class Star Destroyer has 37,000 crew and requires consumables for 2.5 years. That's over 100 million meals stuck somewhere in the hold, and all this food, together with all the other consumables and parts required to cover every possible eventuality of running a Star Destroyer from spare rank cylinders to deflector shield parts has to be supplied from somewhere. Each planet you control will contribute to Galactic Population, and each land or space unit that is built consumes Galactic Population.
From a Campaign design perspective 2 points are immediately obvious. Firstly, while frigates and below have low crew requirements, the Clone Wars-era cruisers such as the Dreadnaught and the Acclamator Assault Ship are ridiculously crew-heavy designs, and it is not surprising that these designs were relegated to crew training and planetary defense roles out during the Imperial Era, especially with the advent of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer. While this certainly has a high Unit Population, a single Imperial is less demanding on Galactic Population than 2 Dreadnaught Heavy Cruisers, and with considerably more firepower. Yet another example of the technical breakthroughs achieved with the Imperial-class. It's not just a raw demonstration of firepower – it's also more efficient in crew requirements. Population is shown in yellow for negative numbers, such as unit population costs, and green for positive values, as per most planets.
So what defines Galactic Population?
Clearly food surplus is a key requirement to building a large fleet/army, but in addition a vibrant trade network is required to allow fleet supply to move goods around the galaxy to support front line military units wherever they are.
The current system of 10 population per planet is too uniform and simply was not going to work. But what do we replace it with? Answer – a full demographic model of each planet giving a picture of its food production, economy, trade network and industrial output that can then be used to determine a realistic figure for its weekly income and Galactic Population.
Actually this isn't quite as bad as it sounds as I had already started on a planetary demographic model during V1.2 development, but the model has grown and grown and is pretty complex. I'll attempt to break it down into manageable chunks.
Food Production
The first step in creating a picture of a planet and its economic output is food production, the mainstay of most civilisations. Planets are not just lumps in space, terrain is critical to food production, so we listed a set of primary terrain types, all with different features: Grassland, Oceans, Forests, Temperate, Mountains, Volcanic, Desert, Swamp, Urban, Arctic, Barren, Ruined urban and Primordial and Asteroid. To this we add the civilisation factors: Technology Level, ranging from Neolithic/Primitive through to Super-High Tech. I also wanted a measure of Industrialisation and Pollution, which I call Harmony. Planets with high Harmony scores are pretty, grow lots of food and are good for tourism, while planets with negative scores are increasingly polluted.
Both Tech and Harmony have significant impact on food production and industrial output. Low Tech worlds take big penalties for both economy and food production, while the polluting worlds are penalised on food production but have bigger economies and greater industrial output.
Now we apply the Agricultural Level (which is a separate but related concept to the Advantage of the same name) , which acts as a multiplier to the terrain type. While the normal level of Agriculture is set at 1, some harsher worlds (where the planetary description indicates a subsistence level economy) this may drop to 0.5 or 0.25 depending on the local conditions. High levels of urbanisation will also reduce the Agri-level. Planets with good food reserves increase to Agri-level 2 or 3, while 4 or 5 is reserved for the Agriworlds, where the entire planet is turned into a giant farm. The scale of food production varies enormously, with Tatooine's moisture farmers producing 2.3 units of food, up to the giant of Ukio's world farms producing over 200 food units.
We also decided that planetary diameters will have an impact on food production, so large planets have their food output increased, while small colonised moons with lower surface area produce less food. As a bonus, we've taken the planetary diameters and re-scaled the planets visually in Galactic Mode so you can see size differences now, where known.
And finally, we deduct a measure of food that is eaten by the planetary inhabitants, so that big urban worlds are net food importers, with Coruscant's trillion beings eating over 100 food units worth of population.
Trade
The other side of the credit chip is galactic trade. This is based on several areas of industry. First, we take the trade generated by industrial output, which includes mineral resources, general industrial output (with positive modifiers for factory worlds), art & tourism, crime, and population-based civilian demand, so urban worlds score well here. Furthermore, this is intrinsically linked to the galactic trade network, and each planet gets a special "Commercial" ranking depending on its galactic position and access to major trade routes. The Comms rank ranges from 1 to 8, with position on the Big 5 Hyperrroutes (Hydian Way, Perlemian etc) rating an automatic 4. Remote Outer Rim worlds may only rate 1-2, while the super-hubs are scoring 6 or more. This makes a massive difference to the trade created by a planet, and has a major impact on both planetary economy and Galactic Population.
Most of this data remains hidden (actually in a massive spreadsheet used for mod development), but the result is a very personalised planetary economy. Having gone this far, we decided to complete the task by calculating all the important game considerations using this data.
Land and Space slots are now calculated using all the information gathered so far. To build a base you need solid terrain and a local technological culture to build and maintain the base. Key factors for Base size are terrain type and planetary population. Harsh worlds reduce the base size, high populations increase base size. The number of space slots is a combination of local shipbuilding – ranging from general technical skill of the population to specialist shipyards as noted in the planetary advantages, with additional slots for high trade requirements and large colony size. The number of Turret mounts for Planetary Turbolaser Defenses are now biased towards urbanised centres, and low population worlds tend to have fewer turbolasers than high tech worlds. The number and frequency of build pads is often also linked to urbanisation, so don't expect too many build pads to help your troops if you invade a barren planet! And finally, when you capture a planet, you get to steal/plunder all the goods awaiting shipment, so trade planets, mining worlds and planets with medical exports will have higher capture values.
Planets by numbers
If this is confusing, let's illustrate with a few examples; Firstly we collect all the data we know about a planet: Diameter, Population, Terrain types, Atmosphere type, Description. From this we can determine a range of 18 data points that describe the planetary demographics and from with we calculate the number of Land and Space Slots, the weekly income, Galactic Population, Capture Value, Destroy value and a rough guide to the number of possible towers for all those planets with unique maps.
Overall, with 300 planets in the database that's over 5000 data points to determine that describe all the planets in the mod, and 2500 critical data points used by the mod data files. This has then been tested (hence the call for Alpha testers) and re-balanced. While both the economic and population systems worked, the initial scale estimates were a bit high and a quick scalar applied to all values. Incomes now range considerable from negative income scores for barren moons to thousands of credits for the key industrial and trade centres.
Changes to the Campaigns
So what does this mean for the campaigns? Firstly, fleets end up a bit smaller, and Capital-class warships just got a bit rarer as all the campaigns are re-balanced for the population cap. This also has the added benefit of improving game performance due to the reduction in fleet size. Unless you have a large number of Core Worlds or agri-worlds under your control to boost your population limits, those early Clone Wars-era cruisers will end up being unpopular and will put pressure on your research planets to develop more modern and more efficient designs. Overall, the dynamics of play should become even more interesting with this extra challenge.
11-12
2012
An Overview of Battle for Graxia and Lazarus
Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on December 11, 2012
Watch my video on YouTube below about Battle for Graxia and Lazarus one of the Immortals in the game. Battle for Graxia is a re-development of Rise of Immortals and is a MOBA game which is constantly growing in popularity that is available on STEAM now for the open beta.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=438x7CwKjK0
10-12
2012
"Commenor must be some major-league trading planet"
Posted by evilbobthebob at Phoenix Rising News on December 10, 2012
Sited in the Colonies, Commenor is a bustling, arid trade world. Its surface is covered with starports and landing strips for the tonnes of cargo that arrives and leaves, bound for the Core and the Rim. The planet swiftly became independent after the Battle of Endor, but its strategic location means that it's unlikely to stay that way for long.
From an initially defensible landing zone, attackers must choose if they want to push up a ramp onto the upper landing strip, or move out onto the open ground below the small clusters of mismatched city buildings.
Commenor's varied architecture is the result of its trading heritage; a melting pot of many different races and influences. Of course, both the Empire and New Republic would like to make their mark on the planet...
Whoever takes control of this world, it will certainly assure them dominance across the Trellen Trade Route and easy access to the Slice.
10-12
2012
The Road To Coruscant
Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 10, 2012
Two-and-a-half years after the Empire was sundered and beaten at Endor, the war against its successors has stagnated. The New Republic has failed to gain more than a foothold in the Core and member worlds are beginning to doubt its legitimacy as a galactic government. The risk of this fragile coalition unraveling is too great, thus Supreme Commander Ackbar has drafted a campaign to thrust into the fortified Core and seize the galactic capital. This is the Road to Coruscant.
Director Isard acquired the throne a little more than a year ago; however, it took the sacrifice of Brentaal to the New Republic in a complicated coup to put her there. From Brentaal, there are two paths to Coruscant: through Anaxes, or through Borleias. With Admiral Ragab locked in a standoff with Commandant Wermis on the Brentaal-Anaxes front, any movement on Borleias would require reinforcements. The answer came in the form of resurrecting the all-hero Rogue Squadron.
A secret training base was established on Folor, with General Salm in command. There, six new starfighter squadrons will be forged, including Commander Antilles' Rogue Squadron. The reformed Rogues are made up of seasoned pilots with a variety of leadership skills that, in most cases, also happen to hail from key worlds. They are equal parts elite unit and poster subject.
The plan is to temper the Rogues with a series of active duty exercises against Imperial forces in the relatively quiet Rachuk sector before commencing the main offensive. Rear Admiral Devlia coordinates the sector's Force Escort from the capital of Vladet.
When the time comes, the Rogues will rendezvous with the New Republic Special Forces units staging on Noquivzor, along with whatever Fleet elements Ragab can spare. This group will move on Borleias under General Kre'fey. A word of warning: Borleias may look mundane, but the name has been linked to General Derricote, the eccentric bioweapons engineer.
In addition, Isard has a noted obsession with Rogue Squadron, who had previously helped foil several of her schemes. If the Rogues were ever annihilated to the last pilot, not only would it be a personal victory for her, but also an insurmountable propaganda nightmare for the New Republic.
A more conventional victory for the Empire would occur if loyalist forces were able to reconnect the Perlemian, pushing the New Republic from Brentaal, Ralltiir, and, finally, into the Colonies. Such a position would all but spell an end to the New Republic presence in the Core - and any hope of claiming the capital - for the foreseeable future.
Coruscant, of course, is the only prize for the New Republic. Controlling the Palace would secure the Provisional Council's authority, while the Rotunda would allow a senate to convene for the first time in years. The expected battle will be anything but easy: some of the best units in the Empire are garrisoned here. That's why Rogue Squadron will lead the way.
7-12
2012
Recopia: Base of the New Republic Defense Fleet
Posted by evilbobthebob at Phoenix Rising News on December 7, 2012
Situated between the Corellian Run and the Hydian Way, the planet of Recopia is ideally located to strike the other planets of the Core Worlds. This strategic position, and the relative anonymity it provides, made it the base of operations for the New Republic Defense Fleet in the period immediately after the Battle of Endor.
The reason this planet is ignored by the rest of the Core is its geography: sulphurous seas, poisonous fog and a lack of natural resources meant that a mere 200 million sentients call it home. They live scattered across the kilometre-high plateau islands that are dotted across the oceans, connected by bridges or airspeeder.
Due to the sizes of the islands, vehicles cannot be deployed to the surface. Instead, airspeeders and infantry are required of any garrison or attacking force that wishes to take the planet. Any structure on the planet must be carefully chosen to make best use of the limited space available.
The bridges provide choke points and defensible locations, while the small islands end up filled with skirmishing and air-to-air combat amid the lashing rain.
3-12
2012
Our Best Case Yet For Mod Of The Year
Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 3, 2012
2012 has been a transformative year for us. Version 1.2 premiered in March and we've been anything but idle since. After wrestling the engine for years over certain features, we've finally reached a point where our design is beginning to fall into place. There are plenty of updates to reveal over the next couple of weeks, but for now, please help get us into the Top 100 by voting in Mod DB's annual contest. Just click on the wrench and trophy image to visit our page, then click again on the "Vote For This Mod" button in green.
As you may know, Nertea was busy publishing his own mod for Battle for Middle-earth in between modeling our vehicles. Kindly consider voting for The Dwarf Holds, which also had a major release this year.
29-11
2012
Traveling Through Hyperspace Ain't Like Dusting Crops
Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on November 29, 2012
Research has always been an integral part of our development process. No demand has been more of a challenge in that regard than our need to place each planet at a definite galactic location for strategy mode.
When I began the process in the alpha phase of v1.0, there were maybe four official maps available that held any degree of accuracy; all were clearly related by the reference angle. Beyond that were hundreds of raw sources netting thousands of remarks about regional or relative location. Had that been the end of it, my task would have been nearly impossible.
Fortunately, an adolescent Wookieepedia was available to help cut through much of the clutter. And then I found this fellow called Modi, who had translated the askew maps onto a Cartesian plane, allowing me to derive coordinates that could be fed to the engine. It was the Internet equivalent of striking gold - a starting point. Later, JustinGann expanded on Modi's work to include speculative placements, which afforded me a second opinion. The end result was an independent interpretation of the galaxy unique to Phoenix Rising.
It took the single most important update to the canon to void all that effort - for the better. Midway through v1.2, The Essential Atlas hit bookshelves. Every star system that had ever been mentioned was now bound to a region of space 1/576th the area of the galaxy. A great many were placed with certainty. The unprecedented accuracy of the atlas created a dilemma though, as several campaigns had already been finalized for the release. Rather than scrapping them and starting over, we chose to forge on knowing that v1.2's astrography would be flawed. I am pleased to report that the next version will be anything but.
TEA contains dozens of maps, each with its own scale and set of planets. My first step in replotting the galaxy was to composite them at a scale of 1 pixel = 10 lightyears to create a supermap. The digital Mid Rim sector map served as the foundation, since it had no loss of precision from scanning and little artifacting.
With that done, the actual measuring was trivial. The results were better than I ever could have expected: the first planetary coordinates for Abregado-rae came in identical to those already in use. They were not alone. Although I had corrected our most glaring differences - generally those with no frame of reference or cases where TEA chose to reject Rebellion placements while I did not - when prudent in v1.2, our interpretation really held up to intense scrutiny. Only Spuma, which Children of the Jedi had confused with Protazk, and Orinackra were completely off.
The present and final representation of the galaxy is 20% larger than v1.2 and approximately 92 times the area of vanilla. That should be enough space to prevent planetary overlap in all future cases. Several worlds always have to be manually relocated regardless of scale, but not so much as to be a distraction.
As profound as it is to finally have set astrography, a different facet of TEA had an even greater impact on strategic gameplay. The once-sporadic and eclectic collection of hyperlanes was replaced with a vibrant trade network.
In v1.2, we had two kinds of routes: "the Big Five" and "other". There are now four classifications, the most I could objectively derive from official maps. These can be thought of colloquially as "super", "major", "minor", and "trace" routes. Their benefits are scaled linearly, so while traces provide only meager income, they are much quicker than using a navicomputer to punch though an unstable course, as is the case with non-route connections. Obviously not every system can be linked via hyperlane, so we have tried to balance between using intersections and minimizing campaign planet counts.
These connections are now critical to military operations in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. In the next release, fleets will not be able to travel from a planet unless there is an explicit line - we have eliminated proximity jumps. No longer can an invasion bypass Anaxes on the way to Coruscant, players need not guess where to attack and defend, and the AI has fewer perceptions to crunch when executing plans. This is arguably the single best change that has ever happened to strategy mode.
When FoC was released, I never imagined we would be able to deduce coordinates for every star system. If our trials and errors played even a miniscule part in affecting that change, then it was all worth it.
26-3
2012
Revora News - Petrolution
Posted by Pasidon at Petrolution News on March 26, 2012
Oh, hi. Pasidon here. So we got the weekly Revora news stuff back up, and you're all invited. Yay... hopefully that made you feel special. But yea, I will be posting news from all around Revora and you guys here at Petrolution are encouraged to get involved. So if you are involved in a project and want it posted in the news, PM me. Or if you guys want, you can get one active member in your community and just have him send me stuff once a week. Send me project links if they are new projects or get a big update. I really want to see you guys get me some news before this Friday for the big reveal... big PR opportunity for the whole community.
24-3
2012
Version 1.2 In Numbers
Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on March 24, 2012
I had a noble goal when we started work on this version: to keep a record of everything we would change. Somewhere between the advantage revamp and the AI trials, that goal became impractical - nothing was being spared from improvement. So, in lieu of a conventional changelog, here's some analysis on just how different the game is from v1.1.
- 532/577 game object XMLs modified or created for this release.
- 3/7 enumeration XMLs changed.
- 82/82 custom AI XMLs implemented.
- 320/320 LUA scripts edited and compiled for v1.2.
Salvaged variants, along with most legacy units, projectiles, damage/armor types, corruption data, cinematic data, and story props were cut for the sake of optimization. It's hard to track every minor change done for performance, so here are some current benchmark comparisons courtesy of Ghostrider:
2.2 GHz dual-core laptop with 2 GB RAM running Windows 7
v1.1 Loading
Logo - 55 s, Menu - 125 s
Core Worlds - 160 s, 2 FPS
v1.2 Loading
Logo - 55 s (-0%), Menu - 110 s (-12%)
Core Worlds - 120 s (-25%), 8-9 FPS (+425%)
3.0 GHz dual-core desktop with 2 GB RAM and a GeForce 7200 running Windows XP
v1.1 Loading
Logo - 30 s, Menu - 80 s
Core Worlds - 100 s, 7 FPS
v1.2 Loading
Logo - 25 s (-17%), Menu - 75 s (-6%)
Core Worlds - 75 s (-25%), 26-30 FPS (+400%)
This will be the first release where we've completely moved away from my time as campaign designer - and so much for the better. Ghostrider brought his vision of the Thrawn Offensive and Operation Shadow Hand to life, redoing every single unit in the process. We added a brand new historical campaign in Operation Skyhook, and the heroes to match. I can't even venture a guess at how many passes were made to update the sandbox set, but assuredly everything has been optimized. Historical campaigns now get free upgrades to start; we fixed the tech slider for Rebels and the credit slider also finally works properly. We assembled a team of testers, led by Reedek, who spent an unfathomable number of hours poring over these campaigns for bugs. Finally, Ghost drafted a 115-page technical manual to explain the intricacies of the mod.
Aside from name strings, all planetary text, all hero text, and all land text was rewritten. The campaigns all have new intro text. Land stats were put on individual lines and all buildable land units were given descriptions. The master text file added 429 kB. 7 GUI dialogs were modified.
8 Conquest land maps were added and the terrain of every GC space map was spread out to better accommodate pathing. A couple map-related exceptions were caught. 2 Skirmish space maps also made it in. Not to worry; evilbobthebob was only promoted from the testing team at the tail end of our beta phase.
- 326/868 new ALO model exports. +211 model net gain.
- 291/331 new ALA animation exports. +298 animation net gain.
- 958/1402 DDS textures edited. +598 texture net gain.
- 305 TGA icon changes or additions, most hero icons thanks to Invadious.
8 unique Nertea land unit models added: Armored Freerunner, Arrow-23, Heavy Tracker, Overracer, PAS, PX-10, QH-7 Chariot, Talon I. 6 third-party land unit models added: B1 BD, B2 SBD, Greedo, LAAT, Luxury, T-16. Custom single energy bolts sized for damage added. 10 land unit model spin-offs or significant changes: A6 Juggernaut, AT-AP, Digger, Garm Bel Iblis, Guild House, Navy Trooper, Spy Network, Storm IV, T-47, X-34. 21 map props added.
With that said, the release candidate for v1.2 is undergoing a final evaluation by testers at this moment. If nothing goes catastrophically wrong, the release date will be Sunday, March 25th at 00:00 GMT-5.
26-2
2012
Sci-Fi At War Mod Latest Release v0.8
Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on February 26, 2012
A new version of the Sci-Fi at War Mod has been released, we have been informed by Spinobreaker that this may be the last update for a while, so make sure you get this update of the mod and treasure it! Click the download button below to start your modgasm!
title="Download SFAW V0.8 - Mod DB" target="_blank">
alt="SFAW V0.8" />
Also please be aware that some people are having some issues starting this mod up, if you are getting these problems please look at the file ModDB page located here and check for comments. If you have any problems please post here too and when a fix has been found a news post will be posted here so everyone can see the fix.
24-2
2012
Imperial Civil War 1.3 Download and Patch Release
Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on February 24, 2012
Corey posted in our news thread for the Thrawn's Reven mod about a new update, 1.3 back in January. If you haven't tried out this mod yet I seriously suggest you do because it is brilliant!
To download version 1.3 hit the download button below (it takes you to ModDB):
alt="Imperial Civil War 1.3 (Installer)" />And of course for the patch, 1.3.1 which was announced last week fixing some issues in the game, but please note you will need to install v1.3 above before you install the v1.3.1 patch, as the patch does not include the full version, you can download that below and also see the fixes:
alt="ICW 1.3.1 Patch Installer (Steam and Disk)" />Install directly on top of a clean install of 1.3. (Find your Imperial_Civil_War folder and use that as the installation directory). This installer works for both Steam and Disk installations.
Fixes:
-Easy AI difficulty lowered
-Corona collision mesh fixed
-Syca tech level issue fixed
-Thrawn and Tierce ground population fixed
-Corona and Venator balancing adjusted
-Marauder missile barrage removed
-Fixed issue with disabled tactical AI for minor factions in Art of War
-Fixed shadow mesh issue on New Republic soldier
-Changed several icons
17-2
2012
Empire at War 6 Anniversary!
Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on February 17, 2012
That's right everyone, it's the 6 year anniversary for Empire at War and Petroglyph are showing the way on how to celebrate it:
Happy 6th anniversary Star Wars: Empire at War!
Help Petroglyph get 500 subscribers on our YouTube page by the end of the week by sharing this video and the YouTube page, and we will give away 5 signed box copies of the original game to the pool of those who helped make it happen!
http://www.youtube.com/v/djhXqpMXl38
If you want a chance to win a signed box copy of the original EaW game go to the Petroglyph forums here and share the Youtube video above and help Petroglyph get to 500 subscribers for their Youtube channel. Also go to the thread and post your favourite EaW mods so others can see!