That's just a copy/past of what I've written on the staff board of my mod, so don't ppay attention to names or others...I could not sleep last night...
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...So I went into some brainstorming (which didn't help me to sleep, btw). Ok, I don't want to write a novel, so I'll do it as a list.
ok, you have to assume that I do statements that may be wrong, but for the moment let just say what I was thinking about. I know that things won't work that way...
About atmosphere
That cloudy scene that we already know, well everybody loves it, and I don't want this to be changed (no way!). But what about some improvement? I think that the sky is the place on earth where you can have the bigest ( farest?)sight range. That's not really the case here. So I think of making the maps more transparent. I've already talked of this with max. His Answer? Ok, but we would see the space behind, which is black. There seems to be no way to put this space blue w/o changing the space in all the game (if even it's possible to do so). I thought of another way. In every mission of the original campaign, there are objects layered in this space: planets, nebulaes far away that covers half the darkness, a capella star with a shivan fleet in front of it... Why could we not put big blue squares in the same place? This should need many really big ones I guess (there is probably the problem, but anyway).
That's all for the atmosphere (for now)
Good use of transparency
So, I know there's a way to make transparent colours (invisible in fact). how to use this?
-1 detail improvment on capships. let say we have a cube, mapped as a spaceship. how to improve details on it? the usual way is to lay several cubes or other shapes on it to make it "unflat". No the other way. Let's create another cube, with the same space coordinates than the first one, but slightly bigger (a really small difference). Put the same map on it, but draw loads of green (the transparent colour)lines, squares,..., on it. This should make a nice effect of relief (is that the word?). Right, this should be use carefuly and not anywhere.
-2 Making complex objects with a ridiculous nomber of polys. This is used frequently in many 3d games. You draw the shape on a map, you put the green around it and you map a square. This way you can have a perfect cicle for a radar dish, or a full set of antennas made with only two/four polys (assuming that flat maps doesn't make the game crash, but only shows the map, seen from one side, and nothing seen from the other, you create the exact object at the same place, mirror it and hop, it's done, a flat object that can be seen from each side). This way I can make you a rocket launcher with perfectly round holes (true holes, not black circles), I can make you a complete gatling gun,..., with a minimal number of polys...
-3 THE big part: Making animated objects!
I've seen on the hard light modders forum yesterday a topic about afterburner flames. These obejects are maped with animated maps. Ok. Now assume that you can put these kinds of .ani maps on other objects than afterburner flames (I can't see why we couldn't). Let's take the exemple of, say, a dragon-fly . First we make the model. With the method abobe, we can create a full set of legs with only,well I pointed out 24 polys for 6 articulated legs with natural shape (make it alien with thorns for fun, without any more poly- great isn't it?). Let's assume yhat we only want to aime the wings, for this exemple. No you have to model all the positions youi want the wings to take (much like the legs and arms for the damiens -or max, don't rememer- idea for transforming verytechs). Let's make 5 positions for ach one (from very upper to very down). lets make a side map of it (much prettier). Up or bottom maps can't be used, and front/back should give the wings a unike colour, or strips (ugly, anyway) and let's call it wings.pcx . ok let's export all this to .pof. No animating part... You get it, the model doesn't move, it's the map who does the work. Let's make an .ani map of this: on the firts frame, you delete the 4 wings taht are drown under the upper one, on the second you keep the 2° upper wing, and delete all the others,... No don't gorget to put all the map around the wing in green (transparent). The runing .ani should show a wing that works, shown from the side (dull bec of only 5 frames, but anyway), let's call it flapflap.ani . Now put the .pof and the .ani in thir respective places (where they should work). Now edit the model with an exadecimal editor, Find the wings.pcx and replace it by flapflap.ani .
Well if all the statement above are right, you should have a dragonfly with animated wings in fs2. The map shows only the 3d wing that concur with the current wing shawn by the ani, all others are hidden by the green colour.
Well that's it
-----> So, waht do you all think of my idea?
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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2
http://robotechlan.com/freespace2/
