Will the graphic change done only with new shader code or there will be some change in the .mesh and texture too...

Ask about it because i remember that when you have switch the cl alpha with the da red for a patch, it was like hell for a lot of modders...

If similar change are made for rebellion, i can be a good idea to inform us, so we can already begin work on changing our textures...

Rebellion mean certainly a forge tool version 4... this time, don't forget to update the tutorial .pdf ... was not updated with forge tools 3 and info about the texture was not more good...

As from your picture, i see that the lightning system is modified... light come somehow from the left side... and the central big ship cast some shadow on the nose of the top right ship... seem that the da red ( specular ) will finaly render like it need to be render...

I literally said the exact same thing while looking at the second picture.

I dig it.  I do wish a bit more went into changing the backgrounds though.  You can only see minor, if any, differences there.  I love the look of space in sins and I guess its ok if only the ships are getting more "pretty," but I'd love to see some cool new things in space.  Mayhaps even completely unique eye candy on X type of planet or w/e (even if its totally random).  Anyway, I do like how that ship looks at the very least.

FROGGY - any chance we could get like a super short video showing one of the new gigantic ships in battle?  To me, that would be an excellent tease.  Hell, you could even make it look OP by showing it tearing through a cap ship.  I don't care if its super detailed, but even like 10 sec of a short battle would be very exciting.  Thanks.  And thanks for dropping us some pics here and there.  Appreciated.

When it comes to adding things like proper shadows, unit animations, turret rotation and other graphical features from 2003; the party line is:

" it’s hard to justify spending the CPU cycles on a purely cosmetic feature that you’d only see when fully zoomed in. "

But when a minor lighting change is made:

"This is done so that Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion remains state of the art visually."

Ya know--I was told 250 programmers worked for over two years straight on one of the iterations of Call of Duty.  Everyone wanting a full CGI movie mode in Dolby sound and the like go ahead--buy EA games, get a PS3 or whatever.

Sins is a game made by gamers for gamers.  The fact that they have some programming savvy people is what has allowed it to work on a smallish budget with a small company--and they are small compared to the TV commercialed, giant publishing companies.  They don't have dedicated hardware systems tied to their games, publishing and developing houses doing the work for them and dozens of millions to spend on development.

Great games are augmented by graphics--not made by them.  Play through an old version of Freelancer sometimes and you'll be amazed how much fun it is--even with the crude polygonal ships and people (by today's standards).

Released by the biggest software company in the world at the time, Microsoft.  Where is this stand-out game now?  Kept alive by hard-core fans and modders and completely abandoned by Microsoft.  Companies don't always get games.  They usually get "packaging" and profit.

Read a book--where the heck are the graphics and sound!?  The story and surprise is what makes a book--not effects.  For me, the Wing Commander series was one of the most fun games ever--and the graphics were laughable by today's standards.Where is Wing Commander now?  Abandoned and kept alive by fans (no disrespect to GOG).  What took it's place?  Nothing.

I'd trade most games out there now for a good sequel to Freelancer with some of the original development that was intended at first for it.  As an old wargamer, I can see the sort of nuance in Sins that just isn't in most other games.  This is a game by people who know about unit counters, stacking limits, zones of control--etc.  Not some arcade shoot-em-up.

No complaints from me except why did it take so long for somebody out there to make this!?   I also appreciate the fact that this is in the last generation of games that will run on nearly any system--both older and newer--when big companies are speculating that the marketability of PC games is likely to be less profitable.

Lot's of value here for me and considering you won't have paid more than the cost of two releases of some console game for both core games and the expansions combined, it's a great value.

I'm excited to see the work continuing on it.  I'd give you karma but you own it all here

You're right. In all this commotion, we all forgot the most important thing. Books in fact do not have 3D graphics. This has led me to several shocking conclusions and I am still reeling from this shocking realization. A bold new future awaits humanity, Sinperium, and you have led us there. 

Man--I love Harpoon.  That game was epic (I was a submarine nut too).

Well said too Thoumsin.

To me, focusing on graphics and effects over play in Sins is like arguing in chess and checkers about "why there need to be more colors".

Wow, it must've took 5million mind controlling advent to wash that mother ship. It looks very clean!

I wonder if reflection shades comes with that shadow effect. Wouldn't be amazing to see small fighters or Titans reflection off of those ships?

Static screenshots are worthless, I could get the same effect by turning up my brightness.

So damn funny, yet so potentially true. 

In normal circumstances, yes, unmodded sins can only go up to 16, however, Frogboy is using the dev exe and spawning ships so it's very easy to have 38 capital ships floating around there somewhere.  I do that stuff all of the time to test things.

Modding of course can change this number.  In the Distant Stars mod, the number of capital ships you can have during normal game play is 32.

Edit: 33 if you play with the DS flagship minimod and build your 32 caps first and then call in your flagship.  >=]

Thank you Stant, I was unaware of this. I thought that Frogboy have given us extra information. But alas, pics are still awesome .