[starlord]

As far as textues ae going, this is only experimental.

I think we're aiming for a pearly white/ shiny texture for those ships, like the TOS battlestar galactica.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The Saxum Light Fighter (TOG)







      Finished LOD0. Not entirely happy with the fuselage, the side drawing and the front on drawing don't really correspond quite correctly. So some of the details are a little off, but whatever. Fighter comes in at around 6000 polys, the jpeg say 7000s but that's because there's actually one and a half fighters there. Yeah, I got a little carried away. UV Mapping is going to be a ***** with the assymetrical gun. I'm going to have to UV map most of it, then mirror it, then delete the gun from one side and UV map the gun and the non-gun area (not to mention all the inside and overlapping areas that I put in). And I dunno why the sides of the wings look wierd like that when it's triangulated. But anyway.

     
     Next up I gotta finish a fighter or two for the Battletech MOD which I've started. Then I might do another fighter, maybe RL, maybe another TOGGie. Who knows. After I do a fighter or two more I might try to model one of the Leviathans.

[starlord]

Really nice, angel: Indeed it's the saxum and it's huge under portion. I always woundered how this fighter could land.

However, as far as wierdies go, the spatha is really on top. How can a pilot line his shots with that fighter? The guns look oblique.

[gevatter Lars]

An quiet interesting design and a well done model.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Really nice, angel: Indeed it's the saxum and it's huge under portion. I always woundered how this fighter could land.

     Maybe the tail fin folds up.
     Or maybe it doesn't land on a deck but is instead just grabbed by some docking arm. It is space after all. While the ships may have antiartificial-gravity the landing bay doesn't necessarily.

[starlord]

true: Aside from the arcus, no fighter is truly designated as a planetary lander.

[starlord]

What do you think would work as a texture? We don't have much info regarding fighters colorwise. I remember seeing a few in jacob where they mostly were grey with shades of red (TOG) and grey/tellow/blue (RL).

Also, regarding the leviathans, I'm thinking of making them pearly white with glistening windows, a bit like star destroyers and TOS battlestars/basestars as they correspond to an 80s kind esthetics where ships are supposed to make you gape in wounder BOTH esthethically and capably.

[Akalabeth Angel]

What do you think would work as a texture? We don't have much info regarding fighters colorwise. I remember seeing a few in jacob where they mostly were grey with shades of red (TOG) and grey/tellow/blue (RL).

Also, regarding the leviathans, I'm thinking of making them pearly white with glistening windows, a bit like star destroyers and TOS battlestars/basestars as they correspond to an 80s kind esthetics where ships are supposed to make you gape in wounder BOTH esthethically and capably.

       Hmmn, odd, the counters in Interceptor are the exact opposite. The Renegade Fighters are white with red markings whereas the TOGgies are yellow/gold . . . wait, no, that's wrong. They're not even consistent. Some rebs are white, some are yellow, some TOGgies are white, some are yellow. Wierd. And the KessRith fighter is purple of all colours. (Fluttering Petal) http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/64543?size=large

       Personally for the ships I might go for more of a blue/grey. They're always greyish blue in all the cover art (Wake of the Kraken, Shannedam County, the Briefing etcetera). Whereas the counters for the game has them blue or yellow/brown again http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/43137. I wouldn't go pearly white for a number of reasons:
      1. If they're too white it might wash out the windows. A greyer hull would make the windows pop out more. I also wouldn't throw windows all over the ships. I mean it depends on the ships, but some look like they have windows in only a few spots (like on the underbelly). If you look at the box art right: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/43135 the RL Battleship in the background has  a few windows, and a field places where its just slabs of armour.
     2. Also the game is called Leviathan, and Leviathan in mythology is a huge undersea creature. So one might think of the Leviathans as big undersea creatures battling eachother. (incidentally the most famous Leviathan is the Kraken, which is itself another undersea creature).
     3. If the ships are all the same colour, it might look boring. I'd try to vary it a little bit.

     That being said, something whitish is probably okay because, the games were intended to emulate Star Wars at first. But I dunno, would you want something that looks just like Star Wars and BSG or something that looks a little more unique and on its own, with its own flavour sorta thing??
 
     But texturing's a ways down the road . . . there's lots of time to think about different things in the interim.

[starlord]

Regarding the ships, what you may see on the counters might be "nude" ships: For instance, the 12 primary interceptors (RL and TOG) pictures show internal systems (not the case with the later models). those colors you see may be the component's colours without the painting.

Anyway, jacob screenies are here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/renegade-the-battle-for-jacobs-star/screenshots

As for the leviathans, I Think it would be good to stay with the "star wars/battlestar" textures type. Leviathans are old ships, they should IMO correspond to a kind of 80s estethics, and the small shiny windows might provide a sense of scale. But we have time to discuss this, as blue-grayish is quite nice also.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Regarding the ships, what you may see on the counters might be "nude" ships: For instance, the 12 primary interceptors (RL and TOG) pictures show internal systems (not the case with the later models). those colors you see may be the component's colours without the painting.

     No, the counters themselves aren't cutaways.
     The Fluttering Petal for example, is pretty much this colour in the counters: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/renegade-the-battle-for-jacobs-star/screenshots/gameShotId,240665/

Anyway, jacob screenies are here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/renegade-the-battle-for-jacobs-star/screenshots

As for the leviathans, I Think it would be good to stay with the "star wars/battlestar" textures type. Leviathans are old ships, they should IMO correspond to a kind of 80s estethics, and the small shiny windows might provide a sense of scale. But we have time to discuss this, as blue-grayish is quite nice also.

       Yeah I got Jacob's Star off of . . .wherever, HoTU or something but haven't tried it out yet. There's also a few novels I might pick up which should give a good idea of the universe though, I imagine they're likely centurion-based stories for the most part.
        The shiny windows is of course a good idea, but as I said keep in mind that they would be more noticeable on a less-white hull (more contrast). But anyway, until someone learns to texture that won't be so much of a problem.

EDIT - But yeah, I need to play JS to get a better feel for the universe or at least the game you're trying to emulate. I'm only familiar with the board games.

[starlord]

Actually, despite appearing like this in the holospace preview, the petal will be blue/yellow/green when you fly it ingame. 

[Akalabeth Angel]

Actually, despite appearing like this in the holospace preview, the petal will be blue/yellow/green when you fly it ingame. 

        Hmmn, I dunno. Maybe the Petal is only purple in KessRith service.

[starlord]

Perhaps the colors vary accorting to the units (or legions).

[Akalabeth Angel]

Perhaps the colors vary accorting to the units (or legions).

    I'm sure they do.

    I showed my Saxum to the guys on the yahoogroup and one guy said he might be interested in getting involved, apparently he's got some low poly versions of some of the interceptors.  But haven't seen anything about 'em yet.

   
     On a related subject to the last few posts one thing he mentioned was, "it would be cool if a person could choose their squadron colours like in Dawn of War". I think, theoretically, it could be possible that a person could basically UV Map each fighter to have specific areas where like they all use a common texture. Which in turn might be cool.

      Freespace2 to my knowledge doesn't have any sort of potential to have some built in colour picker, but I think a person could basically provide a bunch of different colour files like "primary trim" and "secondary trim" and allow them to choose which ones they want, and install those so their fighter (and all allied fighters) will have those colours. Or they could of course, also just adjust the colours themselves if they don't find something that's really suitable.

       That might be pretty cool. I'll have to look into how exactly to do the whole tiling textures bit.

[gevatter Lars]

I think there is a texture replacement function in FRED. So if a ship has different texturemaps you could exchange them when building the mission.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I think there is a texture replacement function in FRED. So if a ship has different texturemaps you could exchange them when building the mission.

      Oh yeah, I think I tried it out for nameplates once though it didn't work so well (my textures that is). But yeah, that would be cool. If the ships all had designate areas of trim, a person could make different squadrons different colours of trim. And maybe even different logos (though that would require all the ships to probably be the same colour? Or wait, maybe not.
     Though I think the logos is more/less setup already with the logos and the nameplates. I'm not sure if that's more multiplayer sorta thing though.

[zircher]

I mentioned this in the Renegade Legion Yahoo Group, but I think it would be nice for the player to choose the primary, secondary, and trim colors ala Dawn of War or MechCommander2.  I don't know if Frespace supports that level of mucking around with custom colors, but it would be nice if it could be done.  Similarly, perhaps something could be done with the decals so that RL or CommonWealth units could be choosen with specific color schemes and squadron symbols.
--
TAZ

[Akalabeth Angel]

I mentioned this in the Renegade Legion Yahoo Group, but I think it would be nice for the player to choose the primary, secondary, and trim colors ala Dawn of War or MechCommander2.  I don't know if Frespace supports that level of mucking around with custom colors, but it would be nice if it could be done.  Similarly, perhaps something could be done with the decals so that RL or CommonWealth units could be choosen with specific color schemes and squadron symbols.

       I'm guessing that the primary colours bit probably wouldn't be possible. When you say Primary you mean the overall colour of the ship right? Thing is, well, that could be possible, but that would mean the ships would all be tiled instead of having their own UVMap. By tiled I mean, just a texture that's thrown on top of everything. As opposed to a specific texture for that fighter, which could include additional details to match the shape of the craft (so like panel lines, etcetera). Unless maybe a fighter could have two textures, one with the details, and one with the "primary colour underneath (so the detail layer would be transparent in a lot of ways).
      Another problem is that tiling ships instead of giving them their own map is harder on the game engine I think. So, therefore potentially slower.

      But, I could see just possibly like, having trim for the ships. Similar to how the original Jacob's Star game looked. RL was grey with green and blue or whatnot, Toggies were grey with red and orange or something like that??

[Akalabeth Angel]

The Idis Medium Fighter (TOG)






        Not the prettiest fighter of the bunch, but easy to do. Relatively.
        I don't know why the default lighting/render gives me that weird shadow in the middle. But whatever. And yeah, it's not quite exact. The EPC barrels are bigger than they should be, but they seem like pretty powerful guns so what the hell.

[starlord]

Very nice: This one's a real arrow!

Regarding interceptor colours, this looks very ambitious. However, if it can be done, why not? this'll give the player yet another interesting possibility.