I think it is pretty certain that there is going to be no I-War 3. As such I decided that I want to not make a fan-made sequel to I-War, but to do a total standalone remake of the original I-War with better graphics and new features, similar to The Black Mesa game and the original Half-Life.
I decided upon the Unity engine(I know how to use it and it makes developing games faster).
Essentially, all the graphics are going to be redone(improved star fields, ship models, ship textures, effects, planet textures). I want to keep the gameplay and story almost exactly the same, and only add features that won't interfere with the gameplay and story, such as the command section cockpit modeled in 3d(like in I-War 2).
After deciding that I actually want to do this, I've begun searching for resources and art to keep this total remake true to the original I-War. After looking through the I-War directory, I've managed to get:
- all the original briefings, debriefings, and dialog
- all original sound effects
- textures for all bridge views
- reference images for ships and bridge interior
- all cutscenes(they need to be redone in newer format)
- ship textures(in .PIX format, but the GIMP plugin I'm using to open them doesn't work)
- I've also managed to find concept art for the cmd, eng, sep, and nav views
It's all in the /psg/resource folder if anyone wants to look at what is in there.
What I will need would be the 3d models of the ships so I could build detail onto them. I think I found them, but they are in .smg and I don't know what I need to open them. I tried looking in I-War 2 for Lightwave files for the original ships, but I came up empty. If anyone has any 3d models or any resources that might be helpful, I'll take them.
Because the forum at i-war2.com appears to be inaccessible(you need an account, you can't create one either), I'm going through the forum via web archives to see if anyone posted some models.
EDIT: I've found .pso model files and .ftu and .ftc texture files for all the original ships in the i-war 2 resource.zip file. I also managed to find a post on converting them to usable formats and have succesfully aquired most ship models and textures to be used as reference.
I can't post any links at this moment for some reason, but if you go to the i war 2 forum in the web archives under the 3D modeling section there is a post called "fun with pso" by Jasper who describes the process and made some converters which can still be downloaded.
Post edited January 23, 2014 by bglen