Star Trek: Birth of the Federation MOD

[captaindusk]

I totally agree. It fits the Gorn perfect. Can't wait to play the mod.

[Karstedt]

I like the idea of less ship support. I always felt the whole "big fleet" thing didn't really fit a Star Trek themed game. Besides, I'm partial to having a smaller number of ships and getting attached to them. It always irks me when I have to maneuver a huge fleet to counter the amassed horde of AI ships, only to lose half of them due to the sheer firepower that is brought to the fight.

It's just too bad the combat engine isn't a little more sophisticated though. Longer battles may just end up in a lot more eventual retreats because ships will function at 100% until they blow up, giving ample opportunity to run. Without a way to effectively force encounters or disable/cripple ships ability to run I can see a lot of of frustrating encounters with raider ships that you can't kill (even with a superior ship) and won't go away.

[severenth]

we will eventually balance this out, but as combat is only one part of the game, there are still many other ways to take a ship out

[MrD]

All this look wonderful.
A new interface with an excellent coice of colours that gives you a feel for the race.
The reduced number of ships will force you to think even more about what you build and where you send your fleets.
Incredible.
But I have a question (seems I always do, I know): will the Gorn replace the Ferengi, and therefore inherit their limited forward beam arcs, while the Tholians get the wide ones from the Cardassians?
(as the image from the new interface indicates)

[jonboylondon]

All this look wonderful.
A new interface with an excellent coice of colours that gives you a feel for the race.
The reduced number of ships will force you to think even more about what you build and where you send your fleets.
Incredible.
But I have a question (seems I always do, I know): will the Gorn replace the Ferengi, and therefore inherit their limited forward beam arcs, while the Tholians get the wide ones from the Cardassians?
(as the image from the new interface indicates)

No visa versa and wont be an issue i believe


JBL

[MrD]

No visa versa and wont be an issue i believe


JBL

I was hoping you'd say that.

[severenth]

Hi anyone interested in using new fonts within BOTF

May have cracked this one.

Each empire has 4 font files, but the 9 pt font can be ignored as it contains race colour and is used on map screen (unless you want to change colour, that is). Sadly, can't change colour on the larger fonts, (I think 15 pt, 20 pt and 28 pt) as these are just grey and colour is added elsewhere within BOTF.

However, if you open them with a hex editor and remove the first 260 Bytes (forgive my lack of technical expertise, but to me that's the first 16 rows of 16 double digit hex numbers, plus the first 4 double hex digits from the 17th row) and save the file with a tga extension, you will be able to open it in Photoshop, or any graphics editor that can handle TGAs.

You will then see an image file with grey letters on a black background in a green grid/matrix. The tricky bit is replacing the characters with letters of equal width, but I have started this with simple cut and paste. Have also used lighter shade of grey to brighten characters and it works!

You need to save as 16 bit tga first and then, using your hex editor add back the 260 bytes removed earlier at the beginning of the file and now save it as it's original filename.fnt.

Winrar it back into stbof.res and away you go!!!

Have only changed A-M in upper case so far, but it works with new characters and brighter.

Hope this is of some interest.

Just to confirm above method. I have successfully substituted Ferengi 15 and 20 pt fonts so far for Gorn interface in Birth of the Federation Mod and just have 28 pt to do.

Works very well and will allow me to use same font on screen graphics, buttons etc, to give a unified look.

Only thing I'm not so sure about is whether fonts can actually be made brighter. What seems to happen if you make characters brighter, is that the game has a max level for brightness and simply makes any unconverted characters correspondingly dull.
Once I've done 28 pt font, I will incorporate in Gorn interface and update the buttons done so far with new font and then post it in the Mod thread.

Regards

Pigman

So we now have the first mod with completely new fonts

[jonboylondon]

So we now have the first mod with completely new fonts

I love it when a plan comes together...!!!!

Pigman your a Diamond.....!!!!!

Here a sneaky peak at plans we have for our next borg mod!!!

[Pigman]

And just to prove it


Regards

Pigman

[beepo]

That looks awesome. Cool keep us posted when the mod is released.

[jonboylondon]

For further visual previews please find below and again a fantastic job Pigman.....10/10....




- The Tholian Assembly

[Pigman]

Thanks JBL

Have just symmetricalized the tholian pic if it helps


Regards

Pigman

[eber3]

Once again I'm very impressed with your work Pigman! I really like that Tholian font as well.

[Tethys]

This should be an excellent mod from what Im seeing so far

[Pigman]

Eber3 said

Once again I'm very impressed with your work Pigman! I really like that Tholian font as well.

Thanks Eber3, I really appreciate the feedback and now that I've managed to put new fonts in for Gorn and Tholians and put a tutorial on the following page,

viewtopic.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=687

anyone can do same in their mods. No need to now just stick with the 5 that we were given by the games designers.

Regards

Pigman