Star Trek: Deus Ex

[Morpheus]

Since my last "What to do with these" thread was hijacked, thought it would be better to start a new one on this.

I have had this idea for a long time but due to other commitments including moved house in August, finishing college (will graduate in November and trying to get everything I need to finish done by end of month), working to start up my web design business, working on a new version of my website: http://www.daveslepidoptera.com and working on videos for my new youtube account: http://www.youtube.com/user/DynamixWarePro and several other life things, I have not had much time to do a mod. I have had ideas I have started but had to put on back burner due to other commitments.

Like Wildcat Phoenix, I love Deus Ex, my favourite all time game and have had lots of mod ideas floating around including lots of unused coding, scripts, conversations, textures etc... After graduating, I'll have more time to work on a mod since I won't be starting up my business until January/Feb next year and most of the videos I am working on for my youtube channel, I can do there and then (one day and one night week is all it takes), so I have decided to get back into modding and make a serious go of this.

My mod idea is a Deus Ex mod based on Star Trek. I love Star Trek and have seen every single episode since the first one (all more than twice) and movies more than once, so I have a great deal of knowledge of Star Trek universe. The idea I have is:

- Play as "Ensign" JC Denton from the starship USS Morpheus. You'll move up to Lieutenant somepoint in the storyline.
- Main Characters in Deus Ex will feature in the mod as important Starfleet members such as Starship captains, Commanders, Admirals etc...
- Augmentation system will become "add-ons" for the Hazard suit that JC wears (his trench coat with new textures) Hazard suit idea from Star Trek Voyager Elite Force game
- Infolinks will become transmissions.
- Uniforms will be based on The Next Generation uniforms for Starfleet.
- New alien races
- New starfleet ships including: USS Morpheus, USS Daedalus, USS Icarus and USS Helios
- New Weapons (trying to make a tricorder too which I think shouldn't be too difficult to code)
- New music
- New Textures
- New Maps
- New code for this and that (have not figured what that is yet but I have unused code I can use)
- SP version of MP to use as holodeck maps. Kill an NPC and they respawn, or get killed and you respawn - not figured how to do this yet so this will have to wait.

My main issues (why I have not started this mod sooner, except for what I mentioned above):

- I have some Star Trek ship meshes, but all are either too high polygon count or require too many textures for the UED/Game to handle. If I could get someone to help me with meshes for ships, that would be a great load of the mod since much of the mod will revolve around seeing the ships in action.
- Beam in/out, how to get NPCs and Player to look as if they are beaming somewhere like in Star Trek
- Disintegration. Some weapons in Star Trek can disintegrate something when fired and when you do this with a weapon, it should look like the object turns flaming orange then slowly fades away as well as a sound playing showing its disintegrated.
- Need new weapons meshes but I am not good at making meshes like that, if someone could help, be great.

The last two there have been done already in DS9 the fallen game which uses the Unreal 1 engine, so might have to look at the coding there to see how its done and if I can tweak the code to work in Deus Ex.

My first idea is to do about 4 maps with an intro for a start and see how it goes from there and then I can add on missions and maps as I feel I am able instead of taking on a huge task and never finishing it. I may need a little help now and then, but will be doing most of this myself as I know others either don't have time or can't for whatever reasons, give much or any help to me, but I will require one person to help me with meshes and that is really it.

[flib]

Deus Trex?

[Morpheus]

Deus Trex?

Good one yeah!

[miguel]

Damn, I failed again . It seems that importing human character models is not posible without the right tool and software.
Some anims works good and some others don't. For example: Walking with a rifle (Walking2H) looks like the character is hiding his right arm inside the torso, Reload doesn't work at all, Walking plays shopy. Don't know what's happening cause I've done this before (Zombie,Alien) but not with all the animations. I ended up with 400 anim frames, all are done exept dancing.
Maybe because I'm now using Win7 32 or the mesh converter gets confused with too much animations. The model looks ok though.

I know, you never asked for this but I started doing this because JC looks a bit weird with the Hazard suit. Still working on the textures By the way.

The good part is that now we have an animated skeleton for our foes.

Synce I am an "Alien" nerd, I was thinking of making some kind of highly inteligent biomechanoid that uses weapons. Is that OK for you?
If not; I want more details about the enemy.

Also. Find some extraordinary syfy way to have gun powder based weapons in a Star Trek story.

[Morpheus]

Cheers, well do your best, take your time, can't wait, will credit you.

I am just working on first map but don't have a lot of time because I only have a few weeks to get all my college coursework done as I finish the course I am doing at start of November.

Anyway, I was thinking it would be easier to do a "Riot Cop" brown/orange mask and helmet for space helmet textures for when NPCs, but instead you have TNG starfleet badge on helmet instead of the word "RIOT" and these would be used in areas that don't have oxygen or dangerous environment areas.

I made an "Alien karkian" based of a Karkian but thinner, new idle roar sounds and runs a little faster and can swim a little better.

I don't know about Gun Powder based weapons though (maybe in a holodeck game I have ideas for) but may not need them at moment. I would like a: Phaser and a, Phaser Compression Rifle they are part of any starfleet away team weapons. I can use some TNAG weapons for alien weapons.

Basically at moment I need:

1) Phaser like this Type-II Hand Phaser: http://www.phasers.net/2370/type2dp.htm
2) Phaser Compression rifle like this Type-III Phaser Rifle: http://www.phasers.net/2370/type3abr.htm

The Type-II Phaser must have rechargable ammo (same is how it can be used in Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Game), so it can always be used.

Only thing I don't know how to do is do the whole laser that comes from the weapons when they fire. Red laser for the phaser type II and a gold one for Phaser rifle type III.

3) May need a tricorder mesh but might be able to make one myself.

4) Humaniod aliens (male and female) but nothing too alien like species 8472 or Jen'Hadar. More like a Klingon, Romulin, Vulcan or Ferengi but not quite the same as any of those, somewhere in between or whatever you can come up with.

Only other thing is some sort of alien flying creature (about twice size of a bat) that can fly around and shoot greasel spit and be able to eat corpses like a greasel can.

BTW, since your helping me, you can be in the mod if you like as part of the hazard team, red shirt (or red hazard suit) like JCs I had in mind for (one I PM'd you about) you can create your own face texture for that if you wish.

[Morpheus]

Here is a couple of screenshots of the first map (early build, will be probably change a few things before finishing it) the blue thing you see is a federation escape pod, the blue will be replaced by custom textures which have the ship name it came from, but have not made those yet.

Area with crashed escape pod: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/257/stmap1.jpg

Cave with Alien Karkian (Main entrance): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/stmap2.jpg

Cave from an above second entrance: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/stmap3.jpg

Finally, an early look of a deep chasm inside the cave: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/5/stmap4.jpg

[Suvlaco]

I think you should play with the lighting a little to make it a little more moody and have shadows in the corners, dark spots through the corridors etc to give it some more atmosphere. Otherwise nice work. I had similar ideas to you a while ago, wanting to make a Sci-Fi themed story for Deus Ex... never got around to it unfortunately.

[Morpheus]

Thanks. Still early days so yeah I want to play about with lighting as its not quite right yet (especially in the first area with the escape pod). Still trying to get past the huge freaking BSP holes I seem to be getting in places. Need to edit this in UED 2.0, only used the original editor, suppose the new one might fix the issues a bit.

[Neveos]

Whoa that looks so natural and awesome. Terrain is hard to do in the first editor. I actually like the lighting. Star Trek always had a sort of sci-fi-set look to it. Very good.

[miguel]

Some of my progress

[img][IMG]http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/5343/hazardsuit1.th.png[/img]
[/img]

[img][IMG]http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9399/hazardsuit2.th.png[/img]
[/img]

[Morpheus]

Thanks, looks good better than I could do. Probably won't be able to do more of the mod for a couple of weeks or so, have so much other stuff I have to do first, but defiantly plan on getting back to it when I am free to.

[Morpheus]

Just want to say that this isn't dead, just had to go on back burner for a while until I have other more important work out of the way. I have the first mission idea ready, but it doesn't necessarily have to connect to future missions, so I'll be looking for ideas for the storyline. If anyone has any, be glad to get them, then I can see what I can do with the storyline. Here is the background to the storyline:

1) Set after USS Voyager makes it home.

2) As I said above Play as "Ensign" JC Denton from the starship USS Morpheus (have not finalised design of the ship or its class yet). You'll move up to Lieutenant somepoint in the storyline.

3) You'll encounter Borg at some point in the game, but since they were largely destroyed/damaged when Admiral Janeway killed the Borg Queen and did a lot of damage there, not sure how to portray them, comments welcome on this.

4) There are three other USS Federation ships you'll encounter in the game, USS Daedalus (another Galaxy class starship and sister ship to Morpheus), USS Icarus a Andromeda class starship and USS Helios a sort of cross between a NX class and Andromeda class, sister ship to USS Icarus. Also going to be a new type of shuttlecraft for each of the ships, but not thought that out as I am still in early stages.

I was going to have the USS Morpheus have a type of new warp drive which allows for very long distance travel. Similar to USS Dauntless in Voyager episode but it requires a reset period when it can't be used (an entire day or two), this would be after a certain amount of time it is used before having to be reset (like an hour of use). It can be turned off so that the old normal warp drive can be used, but after this new warp system is used, no warp travel over warp 4 can be done until the new warp system has been fully reset.

In the first mission, your at a planet somewhere in the BETA quadrant, not near Romulan or Klingon worlds. You have to locate a crashed federation ship and see if any survivors are there. After you complete this, not sure, all ideas welcome.

Will have a few holodeck maps (some training, some R&R maps) but still need to work on how to use MP style deaths in it, e.g. if you die, you respawn. ALso you lose all items entering holodeck and get them back upon exiting, so you cannot bring items to and from holodeck maps.

[Morpheus]

If things go ok and I don't mess up anything, should be able to have some screenshots of the first map on here next week, completely different than my first map screenshots. Don't have a lot of time to work on the map, but trying to get most of the first map done (mostly the looks, then I can work on the rest when I can)

[Morpheus]

OK, first few screenshots of early working on the first map from editor. Created the terrain in Terraedit which was useful. These screens are textured mode on editor, have not put in lighting yet, need to put in the new sky textures I have made.

This area is going to have the river around here as a water zone eventually, at moment its just a water texture. Was going to have a lot of this area with trees and bushes: http://imageshack.us/g/204/screen2byn.jpg/

So far this first map is just where you start, not a big map, but next one will be more complex, just have not much time to work on this.

[Morpheus]

I did a lot of research in the past few days about Star Trek and watched the entire TNG series in the past month so have more ideas on what to do on the mod. For the moment I have broken things down to this (all this will be in the first release when I make it which will be centered around a holomatch):

The last map screenshot, that map is out, crappy design and not much of a map.

New Weapons - For the moment it might just be TNAG weapons as they look Star Trek like.
New Meshes
New HUD interfaces
New Music (Probably just theme music for now)
New Sounds and Textures
New Maps (Probably about 4 to start with)

And for the start, I'll be doing a "Holomatch" DXMP type game with a bunch of Star Trek like locations and it will be sort of like Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Holomatch.

I am trying to work on a small single player version of this DXMP "Holomatch" so instead you have NPCs that re spawn when they die instead of other players, but I wasn't sure how to get them to be able to pick up and use weapons or items or respawn after they die. Was going to make it that you can frob an item/weapon/ammo to pick it up rather than right click it and that might help, but as yet not sure if that would help me solve the NPCs picking up and using items.

Another thing I wish to implement is "transporter pads" that when you step on, take you from one part of the map to another, but as yet I can't figure how to do this without using teleporters which when used have the "Loading" text appear when teleporting, whether its another map or a different location in the same map. Really I'd like to have a teleport effect around the player teleporting so it looks the same as when someone in Star Trek teleports, but I'll play around and see what I can do.