SWRP total conversion mod for Distant Worlds Universe

[Kainan Wolfe]

Hi folks. I own the game Distant Worlds Universe and can develop mods for it (already done a few). Distant Worlds Universe is a space grand strategy game, similar to Stellaris in a lot of ways, but a bit older and 2D instead of 3D. I've been thinking about making a SWRP Chaos-themed total conversion mod for it and at the moment I've decided to check interest for such a project. The mod would contain:

• All the SWRP major factions, each with unique units, shipsets, flags and whatnot
• Custom government types to go along with them, each with its own advantages and diplomacy effects
• A SWRP galaxy map with some of the more important planes added in (the rest would be randomly generated, as though the game supports up to 1400 star systems, I would not have the time to add each and every planet on SWRP in there, manually)
• Custom resources
• Acustom tech tree complete with custom ship components and buildings as well as faction-unique techs (later on)
• Custom sound effects
• A campaign-style series of story events for the SWRP galaxy scenario
• New, custom planet types (possibly)
• A custom interface (possibly, but much later on)

Please post below if you would be interested in playing this mod, or if you would be willing to help develop it (the game is fully 2D and uses transparent .png images). At the moment I am only checking for interest, but if I get enough feedback from people, I will start work on the mod.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Holy poodoo yes.

Uh, but to be honest I'm afraid I can't contribute much to any sort of development, besides maybe writing stuff.

 

[Kainan Wolfe]

[member="Cyrus Tregessar"] Writing stuff will certainly be important, especially when it comes to adding in lore to the galactopedia (ingame wiki-like thing). Would also need help from the various factions in the form of resources such as faction logos, naming conventions and whatnot. Will prolly put up some forms for people to fill in.

 

[Mythos]

I'm down!

 

[Kainan Wolfe]

Ok, I've given things a bit more thought and have come up with something of a development plan that I'm going to outline here. Be aware that changes may occur.

• Faction flags:

Faction flags will have a 2-color scheme and will consist of a background color and a colored logo. There are 22 available colors within the game, giving me 484 possible combinations to choose from. Unfortunately, these are hard-coded into the game and there is no way that I know of to change them, other than messing with the game engine with a hex editor, which would be really complicated and difficult to do, so I am limited to the colors that are available, which are these:

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There are, unfortunately, no blacks or grays, although I will experiment with full-color logos in an attempt to see if I could circumvent this issue, although I haven't tried this before and don't know if the game will render them correctly, if at all. If this fails, I will have to use what is available.

• Faction Characters:

Initially, I will only add in the leaders of each faction as custom characters and let the game generate random ones to fill in the other roles as necessary, although I will eventually make it so that each faction has its own custom characters drawn from the pool of each faction's members on the SWRP forum, using their correct portraits. This is to get the initial setup done and get the basic factions in as quickly as possible so that I can set up diplomacy biases, governments and whatnot, without having to worry about them later. I may eventually add galactopedia entries for each of them, although given the number of characters we're talking about, this may not get done simply due to the amount of work required.

Also, not every character will make it into the roster, due to game engine limitations (there is a cap on the number of characters I can add into every faction) and I will only add in the types of characters that the game needs and allows (ship captains, admirals, generals, governors/politicians, scientists, spies). Then, there is also the volume of work that this would take.

• Minor Factions:

Some minor factions will also be added in. These will be set up on the galactic map with a single planet as their territory and will start with less advanced tech than the major factions which the player will then have to research if they choose to play as them on the custom galaxy map. Subfactions of major factions will be added in as protectorates of their parent major factions and will use the shipset of their parent major, to cut down on workload.

I can not, unfortunately, add in every minor faction as it would not only take a metric ton of work, but there is also a hard cap on the number of custom races/factions I can add into the mod, which is set by the game engine and can not be altered.

• Minor Factions - Pirates:

In Distant Worlds Universe, pirate factions are playable and have their own unique mechanics within the game. Some of the above-mentioned minor factions may be added in as pirates, if they are criminal organizations within the SWRP forum.

• Government Types:

Custom government types will be added into the mod as needed, to reflect the style of government of each faction (IE: Separatist Council, Galactic Republic, Jedi Council, Sith Autocracy, Lightside Monarchy, etc). Each custom government will have advantages and disadvantages and will also affect diplomatic relations with other factions, in addition to faction/race bias.

• Custom Resources:

Custom resources (kyber crystals, the restricted materials, tibanna gas, kolto, bacta) will be added after races and before the galaxy map, so as to allow the game to randomly distribute these to the game-generated planets and avoid having to manually add them to thousands upon thousands of planets, dust clouds, etc.

• Ship Sets:

Much like Stellaris, Distant Worlds Universe has a number of different classes of ships. The appearance of these can and will be customized and each faction will get its own custom ships, although there is only one ship type per class. Also, the AI-run factions will randomly name these ship classes from an available pool of names that is unique to each faction, when it auto-generates designs. There is nothing I can do to circumvent this and make the AI choose the correct name for each sub, unfortunately. I also can't add custom ship classes, as these are hardcoded into the game and another limitation is that there can only be two starfighter images for each faction (one fighter and one bomber), as the game will reuse these for different types of fighters. This can not be changed, unfortunately.

Within the game itself, there are multiple types of ships and stations, some civilian and some military. The classes are as follows:

Civilian:
Will pick these from civilian ship designs in the factory, some designs may be reused (AKA some factions may use the same light freighter as another faction).

- Small Freighter
- Medium Freighter
- Large Freighter
- Passenger Ship
- Mining Ship
- Gas Mining Ship
- Construction Ship

Military:

- Escort (Will use a corvette sub from the site)
- Frigate (Will use a frigate sub from the site)
- Destroyer (Will use a cruiser sub from the site)
- Cruiser (Will use a star destroyer sub from the site)
- Capital Ship (Will use a battlecruiser sub from the site)
- Carrier (Will use a hangar-emphasizing battlecruiser from the site)
- Troop Transport (Will use a light cruiser sub from the site)
- Military Resupply Ship (Depending on available fleet tender sub, otherwise I will make one up)

- Exploration Ship (These are in a category of their own, kinda' treated as military ships by the game, except they operate like the science ships in Stellaris and have certain mechanics unique to them. Will use an alternate corvette design from each faction's subs for this one).

Stations:
These will all use station subs from the site. Some may be modified arbitrarily by me, in order to fill out classes required by the game in situations where the faction has not subbed anything that fits said class.

- Small Spaceport
- Medium Spaceport & Military Station (Game uses the same graphical asset for both)
- Large Spaceport
- Resort Base Space Hotel
- Research Bases (Game uses the same graphical asset for all types of research stations)
- Mining Base
- Gas Mining Base

There will be no super star destroyers, unfortunately, as there is no way for me to add them into the game. While I could use an SSD model for the capital ship class, due to the game's unit scaling system, they would appear shrunken down and the size of a regular star destroyer. There is nothing I can do about this particular issue, though I may be able to add in a Death Star that players can obtain via story events due to a comparable superweapon class existing within the unmodded game. This will be done later in the mod's development, though.

• The Galaxy Map:

The galaxy map will be done after all the factions and resources are finished. It will be a max-size map with 1400 star systems and I will at first only add in faction capitals, then slowly make my way towards adding as many of the SWRP planet subs as possible (amount of work required is a limiter, so I will prioritize canon systems and subs that play an important role within the respective factions).

Each faction will have a territory that matches the layout and size of its territory on the SWRP forum. Custom planet types may be added at this point (IE: ecumenopolis).

• Story Events/Campaign:

Custom events will begin to be added once the galaxy map reaches a reasonable degree of completion. When that happens, we will have a discussion here and come up with a storyline which will be implemented into the mod. There are some limitations to what can be done, however the details will be discussed when we reach this point, as it is pointless to do so at the moment.

• Custom Interface:

A customized skin for the interface will be made once the campaign and all of the above features are finished and implemented within the mod. At this point, the mod will be considered feature-complete, although development will continue on implementing further things.

• Galactopedia Entries:

These will be implemented gradually over the course of the mod's development, although not everything may get a galactopedia entry due to the amount of work it would take, so I will prioritize important stuff (basic lore for each faction, govt types, resources, new planet types if added).

• Custom Tech Tree & Ship Components:

A custom tech tree, with faction-unique resources and components may be done at this point. I say may, because there are certain issues with modding the tech tree which I have not yet figured out how to fix (IE: custom techs showing up as invisible empty spaces within the research screen).

If I can figure out a way to fix that issue, I will do a custom tech tree, but this is very late on the development roadmap due to that specific bug.

• Custom Sound Effects:

Some custom sound effects will be added into the mod (IE turbolaser sounds), although gradually and these are not a priority aside from said turbolaser sound. What I will add depends on the amount of time I have, as I would rather use it to add more characters.

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• Community Assistance:

In order to help with gathering required info (AKA links to subs, faction logos, faction lore, etc), several forms will be created, which members of the various factions can then fill in and post in a thread that will be made specifically for this purpose. This will help a great deal with implementation of various things and save me some time, allowing me to concentrate on actually working on the mod, instead of searching for things on the forum.

Additionally, if any people with good Photoshop skills are willing to help out with the various shipsets and graphical assets, there will also be a dedicated thread for this purpose, once development of the mod starts.

 

[gdsryrox]

Oh yes I’d love to play this, will have to do some research into the game, as for contributing what sort of help will you need? [member="Darth Tacitus"]

 

[Kyrel Ren]

[member="Darth Tacitus"]

I'd be down with playing this. Would even love to see some old major events like the Great Galactic War pop up in game

 

[Kainan Wolfe]

[member="gdsryrox"]

There'll be threads put up for that in a few days, once my schedule clears a bit.

[member="Kyrel Ren"]

This might be possible, however I wanna' get the basic framework done before I touch any events or story stuff.

 

[Srina Talon]

I admit I'm out of my depth with this but it looks amazing! It looks like you've already done a ton of work. I look forward to seeing what happens <3 [member="Darth Tacitus"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

[member="Darth Tacitus"]

I've never played this game before, but what you've posted is enough to draw my interest - this looks fun! I'd be happy to contribute however I can when I have the time. I know modding games can be a bear, so I wish you the best of luck.

 

[VildarnTentoria]

I always enjoy a good strategy game, mod, and Star Wars theme. Good luck if you decide to go through with it. Maybe just starting with a simple clone wars and galactic civil war mod would be best though?

 

[Kainan Wolfe]

Ok. I've started the preliminary work on the mod (IE setting up folder structure, etc). I think tomorrow or the day after that, I will put up the collab thread with all the forms people will need to fill and post, to help me with information gathering. Once I have all that, I will begin work on the factions.

[member="VildarnTentoria"] I've made mods for this game before and have messed around with all of the features except custom planets. Only thing I still haven't figured out how to successfully mod is the tech tree, hence why I'm putting that part off until after the other features are completed. With the game's graphics using 2D .png images for ships, planets and almost everything, I think that this project is doable, especially with community help. Modding this game isn't particularly hard, all you need is Notepad++, Photoshop and to be careful about properly formatting a bunch of text files. It is incredibly modder-friendly.

 

[VildarnTentoria]

Sounds like you should be able to do it easily then.
Ive never played the game but I do believe this mod should exist.
The question is who would win? Lol

 

[Kainan Wolfe]

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update. Work on the mod is slowly progressing, I'm currently doing some basic work whenever I find the time, however it will be a while before any big updates will happen due to me being busy with IRL stuff and trying to get back into RP.