THIS IS THE ONLY MOD FOR ORB

[adamstrange3000]

Some years ago I started creating new Scenarios for the game.

In one of them once you construct a Base you are either given or sent reinforcements.

Once I got a hold on the game,I began to mod it and it appears that I'm the only one to have made a mod for the game, which is a damn shame because I really love the game.

At the time that I was working on this,I was able to talk to one of the Devs of ORB.

He had told me that they were working on an Expansion Pack but suddenly because of some in-house politics and other legalities, they were told to stop working on it and the Expansion project was dropped.

This was done without any notice when the team were walking in to work the next morning.

They thought it was a joke.

Anyway though I lost contact with all the player on the forum because Stategy First did the same thing by taking down the site without any notice,I did manage to get the manual and some scripts and tools for the game.

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O.R.B PLANETARY MOD
===================
This mod changes the look,sound and feel of O.R.B.

- NEW SHIP SKINS
- NEW SUNS
- 9 NEW LOGOPACKS
- NEW LOADING SCREENS
- NEW TEXTURES FOR SCENARIO CREATORS
- ALL SCENARIOS WERE MADE TO THE MAXIMUM SIZE THAT THE GAME WILL SUPPORT [Even the 2 player scenarios]
- ALL SCENARIOS ARE DYNAMIC [Rotating Planets,Slow Orbiting Asteroid Fields and Roving Collision Asteroids]
- FRIENDLY FIRE DAMAGE
- DEBRIS COLLISION DAMAGE
- NEW CAPITAL SHIP MOVEMENTS [Capital ships can now move straight up,down or even tumble upside down]
- SINGLE FIGHTER COMBAT [Fighters move in squadrons but break formation when attacking]
- TORPEDO PROBE BLAST RADIUS INCREASED [Not to high,makes the game still playable]

***NEW AMBIENT AND BATTLE SOUNDTRACKS

****ENABLED CAMPAIGN SOUNDTRACKS

SHIPS & STARPORTS MATCH THE DYNAMIC LIGHTING OF THE SCENARIOS [You won't find glowing ships in dark scenarios]

SHIP HEADLIGHTS REMOVED [These are combat ships in space,not sportscars on a dark highway]

GAME SCREEN BORDERS [These have been removed so that the player now has a much better view as well as a cleaner look and feel to the game].


==========================
THE MAPS
==========================
The Planets and Asteroids have been made to look as realistic as possible.

Some maps will have reinforcements [Carriers,Fighters,Freighters or entire fleets] sent in to help you but these maps are race specific.

You must read the OBJECTIVES on all of these maps and if it says "PLAY AS MALUS" "PLAY AS ALYSSIAN" then thats the race you have to play as because you will recieve reinforcements belonging to that race.

If it says "PLAY AS MALUS OR ALYSSIAN",then you can play as either race.

I made these Scenarios to be played with the highest research level already set, but they can be played in the standard mode of researching everything for those who really love long stategic gameplay.

If there are any maps that you want either made into a Single Player or Multiplayer version let me know.


==========================
INCLUDED MAPS
==========================
AGARUS [2 Player] Huge resource field,Combat and Mining Reinforcements.

DETOUR INTO PERIL - RETURN [8 PLAYER] Resource and Pilot addition.

NAMURA [2 Player] Alien attack.

NIGHTSPACE [4 Player] Double Resource and Pilot addition,Alien attack.

RED SKIES OF ORION [4 Player]

RISE OF GAMARA [2 Player] Triple Resource and Pilot addition.

BROKEN MOON BETA RETEX [1 Player] Gravgon's original Scenario but with new Textures.


==========================
MAP BUGS
==========================
The Scenario DETOUR INTO PERIL-RETURN is an 8 player Scenario and was created from the original Detour Into Peril but for some reason,if you try to play it with less than 8 players it crashes the game at start up [at least on my PC] so you must play it with all the races.

The Scenario RISE OF GAMARA at first looks like an 8 player but its actually a 2 player Scenario that was created from the original Detour Into Peril so those "NON PLAYABLE" races that you see in the screen don't even exist.
The Editor would crash if I tried to delete the player slot.

Both of these maps though,are still playable.


==========================
KNOWN BUGS
==========================
I have not tested this mod on other PC's [except on the 2 that i own] but it seems that all the Missile and Torpedo Fighters at times don't want to fire their missiles against the Capitalships on the their first attack.

This may be due to a bug in the game itself.

On some Carrier maps you can't build frigates so what i did was to send in some sort of frigate reinforcments.


==========================
TEAMCOLORS
==========================
New TeamColors have replaced the standard ones.
I have also added a new color to the ship teamcolor...BLACK.

For those of you that like an extra edge of challenge,when playing a Single Player Scenario,give this color to the enemy CPU that you are battling against.

I have a few Scenarios that will have very dark settings and a few Space Scenarios [no fog,just space and stars].

When you play in such map,if you give the enemy CPU this team color,it makes it very hard to see the enemy ships until they get in range and if your fighting dozens of enemy ships it really makes the game much harder.


==========================
SCENARIO MAP PACKS
==========================
The Scenarios in this mod are just a few of the total amount that I wanted to release.
I will be releasing the rest of the Scenarios in packs of 5 and I have a large amount of Scenerios.


==========================
DON'T LIKE IT
==========================
If you don't like the new Capital ship movements:

OPEN THE ORB INI FILE
FIND THIS LINE [body_limit_angles=0]
CHANGE IT TO [body_limit_angles=1]


==========================
***Soundtracks
==========================
PIRATES NEST - rENAMED BATTLE 1 fOR pLANETARY mOD - eXTENDED aND eDITED fOR pLANETARY mOD bY aDAMSTRANGE
Composed by:Pierre Langer, SESAC (50%), Scott P. Schreer, BMI (50%)
Published by: Dynamedion Publishing, SESAC (50%), Freeplaymusic, BMI (50%)


VICTORY PLANET - rENAMED BATTLE 2 fOR pLANETARY mOD - rEMIXED fOR pLANETARY mOD bY aDAMSTRANGE
Composed by:Phil Garrod, BMI, Reed Hays, BMI, Scott P. Schreer, BMI
Published by: Freeplaymusic, BMI, Freeplaymusic, BMI, Freeplaymusic, BMI


CARRY ONWARD - rENAMED BATTLE 3 fOR pLANETARY mOD - rEMIXED fOR pLANETARY mOD bY aDAMSTRANGE
Composed by:Todd Haberman, ASCAP (50%), John Loeffler, BMI (25%), Scott P. Schreer, BMI (25%)
Published by: Habes Music Publishing, ASCAP (50%), Music of Paradise, BMI (25%), Freeplaymusic, BMI (25%)


SOUTHSEA - rENAMED BATTLE 4 fOR pLANETARY mOD
Composed by:Pierre Langer, SESAC (50%), Scott P. Schreer, BMI (50%)
Published by: Dynamedion Publishing, SESAC (50%), Freeplaymusic, BMI (50%)


SANDSTORM - rENAMED BATTLE 5 fOR pLANETARY mOD
Composed by:Pierre Langer, SESAC (50%), Scott P. Schreer, BMI (50%)
Published by: Dynamedion Publishing, SESAC (50%), Freeplaymusic, BMI (50%)


DARKORB - rENAMED MENUDARK fOR pLANETARY mOD
Composed by aDAMSTRANGE

DARKORB MINIMAL BEAT MIX
Composed by aDAMSTRANGE

ORB STRANGE AMBIENCE - rENAMED MENUAMBIENCE fOR pLANETARY mOD
Composed by aDAMSTRANGE


==========================
****ENABLED CAMPAIGN SOUNDTRACKS
==========================
The game has a nice amount of music but normally you will here 1 or 2 of the same Ambient music tracks after a battle.
I've enabled the new Scenarios to play through at random all of the Campaign tracks.

==========================
WHAT I FOUND
==========================
I was able to skin the entire interface of the game but for some reason I could never compile it.
Even though the ingame_ui.res is a Res file and I could compile all the other Res files,the game would always crash when trying to read the newly compiled ingame_ui.res file.

The most disappointing part was that I figured out how I would be able to mod the weapons and other things in the game.
The DBF.Res file controls what appears to be almost every aspect of the game.

I was able to increase the Fighter Missile's attack range by 5 times the normal range.
Normally a Fighter will fire when an enemy is in the "1" or "2" mark but I got them to fire when targets were in the "6" to "8" mark but this would always crash the game.

Even when I lowered the range it would still crash so I had to leave it alone...WHAT A DAMN SHAME.

==========================
MOD INSTALLATION
==========================
Create a temporary folder on your desktop.
Unzip the contents of the Planetary Mod zip into this folder.
Backup your LOGO.RES,ORB.INI and NETCOLORS.INI files.
Copy the ORB.INI and NETCOLORS.INI files from this mod into your main Orb folder [It should overwrite them].
Copy the TEXTURES,SOUND,SCENARIO and MUSIC folders into your ORBDATA folder [It should and needs to overwrite a lot of stuff in there].
Unzip the OrbLogoPack into your main Orb folder [It won't overwrite anything in there] and set your main Orb folder's view to "THUMBNAILS".

Set each of these OrbLogo folder's view to "THUMBNAILS".
When you want to use a new Logo set,just copy the LOGO.RES file and overwrite the old one.
The game's ship logos are in orbdata\textures\logos

Sometimes you can just copy the BMP files into this folder and it will either work or it won't.

Email me if you run into any problems, just want to talk about the game or feedback if you like the mod.

[e-mail]


This is the link to the Screenshots since this site make it so hard to figure out just how to upload them.

Ihttp://s157.photobucket.com/user/adamstrange3000/library/ORB

This is the link to the mod.

http://www.fileplanet.com/186075/180000/fileinfo/ORB---Planetary-Mod

PLANETARY UPDATE:

About a year after finishing the mod,I manage to figure how not only to increase/decrease weapons damage but I also changed the amount of crewmen [or pilots] that some ships need, increased the range of some of the Missiles and Torpedos.

Light Freighters cost less,need less pilots but carry less RU's.
Heavy Freighters cost more,need more pilots but also carry more RU's.

Also the maximum about of asteroids that the editor could give was 400.

I figured out and tested the new feature that I modded into the game to allow 600 but I did get it to 700 to 1000 [1000 I think,but I maybe wrong].

Also with the new ranges on Missiles and Torpedos, the bug of Fighters not firing on Capital ships on the first pass has now been eliminated.

The update IS NOT included in the mod so I'm going to find it one one of my computers because I made multiple backups of it and I will uploade it to an online storage site for you guys.

==========================
WANTED TO DO
==========================

I could not figure out how to add new ships or even new classes of ships

I had planned on creating a new Freighter [Heavy Container Loaders] which would only be avaiable once the player constructed a Military Base.

It would have been slower,much better armor, twice the amount of crew need,expensive but carry 3 times the RU's that the Heavy Freighter carries.

Increase map size like in Homeworld 2 which I also am modding.

I've created some mapd in HW2 that are really,really massive and does not allow for hyperspacing so the player gets the since of traveling very long distances to not only fight but also to mine for RU's.

==========================
MAYBE ADDITION
==========================

I may set up all asteroids including bases to need more RU's to upgrade them,thus making the game longer.

Play this mod with the lights off and the volume up.

Hope You Enjoy It.

[MiraaNoHebi]

There did use to be a mod that gave the Kuylek and the Elathen ships the ability to open a portal like all the other jump capable ships in the game.

Also, archive org has a plenty of the original forums archived( https://web.archive.org/web/20020307135827/http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?category=4 ).

[Jhonis]

So, who was the company that shut them down?
And if only we could find what they did with the expansion they where working on...

[Sarxis]

Thanks for this mod!

[adamstrange3000]

Your welcome Sarxis.
Jhonis, i'm not sure if it was Strategy First or not because its been so long since I spoke to the guy whom I think went under the name of BLACK BOX.

I will soon be posting a link ti the updated file to change missile ranges and other things as well as a mappack with the new textures for the planets and asteroids.