Bridge Commander Maelstrom Mod (BCMM) WIP

[bsilver2988]

Love this! Been away for a while. Glad to see this up. Thanks for posting!

So far it worked great up to the first save and then it crashed. I feel like I remember that being a known bug? Clean install with patch and no enabled mutators. Just loaded and played.

[A.Q.]

Is this really real?

[Mario]

Optimizaiton -- I can't get this to run above 30 frames per second on a Ryzen 7 1700 / GTX 1080 Ti

To be honest you could have a supercomputer and performance won't be much better. The game engine is old and works better on older hardware.

You can improve performance via windows tweaks (such as what you mentioned), switching ingame to low color depth and turning off damage fx.

As for Jimmy there's very little he can do aside maybe from switching to more low quality models.

[President Magikarp]

To be honest you could have a supercomputer and performance won't be much better. The game engine is old and works better on older hardware.

You can improve performance via windows tweaks (such as what you mentioned), switching ingame to low color depth and turning off damage fx.

As for Jimmy there's very little he can do aside maybe from switching to more low quality models.

In this case, it was strictly a Windows 10 issue, likely caused by an update, because even my stock 1.1 install started acting up overnight. After the compatibility tweaks, I'm having no problem running at 60+ FPS with 4x MSAA and 16x AF enabled at 1080p.

[King Class Scout]

60 FPS *shakes head* i've only seen two pieces of footage like that, and one of them was a somehow upconverted segment of a 75 year old or more Tom and Jerry short.

you should post the tweaks you did, not just for high end card users, but for everybody.

[Mark McWire]

Thank you for pointing out a fix so quickly! Which file do I have to edit to get this functional?

DockWithStarbase.py in AI/Compound

[President Magikarp]

60 FPS *shakes head* i've only seen two pieces of footage like that, and one of them was a somehow upconverted segment of a 75 year old or more Tom and Jerry short.

you should post the tweaks you did, not just for high end card users, but for everybody.

Done. Let me know if that helps.

DockWithStarbase.py in AI/Compound

It seems I only have the pre-compiled .pyc file. Do I need to get the .py from the SDK in order to implement this?

Going back to the mod itself, I've found another glitch that's easy to reproduce -- using the Olympic-class bridge in Quick Battle breaks the scripts. Once you've finished a fight, you can't change your ship, any friendly or enemy ships, or start/restart a scenario.

[King Class Scout]

thanks for the tweaks.  if I can improve it even a hair without having to custom build a 2000 dollar comp with refrigerator grade cooling JUST to get a good framerate, that'd be nice.

and yes, pull the uncompiled version from the SDK if you have to.  as for the olympic bridge *is slightly jealous* look for tab/space typos in the scripting, or if something "adjusts" the scripts

[Mark McWire]

Done. Let me know if that helps.

It seems I only have the pre-compiled .pyc file. Do I need to get the .py from the SDK in order to implement this?

Going back to the mod itself, I've found another glitch that's easy to reproduce -- using the Olympic-class bridge in Quick Battle breaks the scripts. Once you've finished a fight, you can't change your ship, any friendly or enemy ships, or start/restart a scenario.

The AI script contains the entire docking sequence. At the beginning, the collision between the ship and the station is disabled and reenabled at the end.

The problem is much deeper here. I only changed this original script as a workarround. The source of the problem seems to be in the engine itself or in another script, because reenabling the collisions between ship and starbase should not freeze the game (my problem).

BTW: I cannot upload the script directly, the forum software dont allow .py files. You can use https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzrwizt2lfky5e2/DockWithStarbase.py?dl=0 from my repo.

[Lurok91]

It's good to see players still willing to try and improve this     As Jimmy mentioned earlier, we perhaps spent too long making this available and in interim many switched to STO and other games.  Game limitations aside, as Mario noted, I imagine primary bugs/issues anyone will encounter will be scripting ones (broken or misdirected links, etc).  I spent better part of a year going through all the clean install Maelstrom scripts  to try and make as playable as possible

[King Class Scout]

yo, magikarp, you ended up using splash, I got a dead link!

edit: took the extraneous fru-fru out of the link that was mistakenly put there.  switching to XP3 compatibility ALONE fixed framerate issues.  now you gotta tell us where to look in the graphics card settings to get it to actually do 60 FPS.  older stuff is usually limited to 30 FPS

[President Magikarp]

The AI script contains the entire docking sequence. At the beginning, the collision between the ship and the station is disabled and reenabled at the end.

The problem is much deeper here. I only changed this original script as a workarround. The source of the problem seems to be in the engine itself or in another script, because reenabling the collisions between ship and starbase should not freeze the game (my problem).

BTW: I cannot upload the script directly, the forum software dont allow .py files. You can use https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzrwizt2lfky5e2/DockWithStarbase.py?dl=0 from my repo.

That file seems to have completely disabled the ability to dock with the Starbase in the campaign. I'm going to edit the file and attempt the alternative script fix with the exception check and see if that does anything.

[FekLeyr Targ]

What you guys have achieved wit the SPMod looks very impressive in action. :-)

A minor complaint: I've noticed that the videos are cropped at the top and bottom. Personally, I'd prefer the videos to keep their original aspect ratio in order to keep the image intact.
(4:3 footage can be letterboxed in HD resolutions. That's what the TNG Blurays did.)

[Lurok91]

Good point      If was a first-time game playthrough I would prefer original ratio too but wanted these videos more as an archive of visuals which look better widescreen, I feel.  Anyone else is welcome to post their game-playthroughs at original ratio 

Current videos recorded via Win10 gamebar on Nvidia GTX970 (planning to upgrade soon or change to AMD as on Mojave Hackintosh)

[timelapse]

Can anybody point me to a download link for this? I recently installed a copy of BC on a computer as part of a retro gamming kick and stumbled upon the playthrough videos on YouTube while remembering all the cool mods I used to have back in the day and I would LOVE to play the great campaign with this great looking overhaul

[BleHz0r]

God i love this modding community.

now i just gotta figure out how to play this game in 4k. xD
GIMMEH TEH MOD, BRO!

 

[Blaze53]

Hot damn, an honest-to-God overhaul. I'm actually really excited to see this released! I just wish NanoFX worked properly, then this would be downright amazing.

I think the only thing that looks off to me in all of this is how the "lipsync" works... especially with Picard. When his mouth is fully open he looks like he's doing that fake-Shakespearean declaration of love for Lwuxana... but with emotionless eyes.

[JimmyB76]

I am still going through this.  There are a couple bumps along the road and my OCD brain overanalyzes overthinks every small possible aspect, it drives me insane because I want everything to be as perfecdt as possible lol
I am still going through the missions one by one, trying to smooth things out.

Also, I work 2 jobs and busy busy busy days fly by. I try and buckle down on this as much as I can.

One cool thing - people have always asked about playing Single Player Campaign missions on a different bridge, other than Galaxy and Sovereign bridges.

And in BCMM, it works!

Kinda............

There is a script called Active Bridge Changing - I cannot at all remember who wrote that up and gave it to me.  It isnt available anywhere as far as I know.  What it does, is gives the ability to instantly change your bridge while in a QB battle. 
So apparently it kinda works in BCMM for SP bridges!

Of course, extra characters (Picard, Korbus, Data, Vulcan,etc) will be in fucked up spots on any bridge other than stock.
But that is to be expected, on non-stock bridges, extra character placement was never done.
So that is a bug.  But if you can ignore that, everything else works.
And honestly, extra characters aren't very long in the missions that they are there for anyway. 

Another bug - you can switch your bridge and go from there  on that bridge and complete the mission.  Unfortunately, the game will switch back to the stock bridge.  And after that, when next mission loads, nothing happens when clicking Active Bridge Menu.  Soooo then you would have to quit the game and reload that next mission from the Mission Menu itself.
Pain in the ass, I know...       


Anyway, Intrepid Bridge in SP

[JimmyB76]

Kiska's ass looked fucked up on the Intrepid Bridge lol   

Anyway - here are the bugs of the extra characters.  They work hitting F6, just in fun places lol

Captain Picard and Data

Also, Korbus. But when he is on the bridge nothing happens hitting F2 so that's kinda broke at that point lol

[JimmyB76]

Nebula Bridge v2 in SP
Sidenote - I always preferred Nebula Bridge v2 over v3, it is just a personal preference...
Nebula Bridge v4 (Lurok's bridge)  I can't seem to find.  He may not even have that on his end anymore... I'll have to check.