Author Topic: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 12/1/21)  (Read 86351 times)

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Offline Dragon

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
Contacting the authors could still be a good idea, though. Some of them could agree to make cockpits designed specifically for FoTG, using RTT and all the nice features FS can do with a cockpit. :)

 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
I'd prefer it if the cockpits were built from the ground up for FotG by the same team here.

However, if I were to recommend getting in touch with a mod team for authentic, quality Star Wars cockpits, I'd recommend the guys at fsmod.com (the Star Wars: First Strike BF2142 total conversion). They're going through a transition right now (they're merging with the Star Wars: Battle Cry team), but they have the most authentic Star Wars cockpits I've seen yet, and they look superb. It might be worth it.
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Offline coffeesoft

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
That would be amazing   :p







 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
If I recall correctly, many "First Strike" models, including the cockpits, are used in the Freelancer mod "Freeworlds: Tides of War".
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Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
Thanks, that's a source I hadn't thought of tapping into.  I'll see if I can contact some of them and find out about their cockpits.

 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
I agree. I played First Strike for a while and it is awesome. Unfortunately the community is dead and the servers are down :( The guys are still working on a Unreal? Engine version i think (as stated above).
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Offline wookieejedi

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
I agree. I played First Strike for a while and it is awesome. Unfortunately the community is dead and the servers are down :( The guys are still working on a Unreal? Engine version i think (as stated above).

Yeah it is much diminished. All the active members are now working on Star Wars Battle Cry.

 

Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
I agree. I played First Strike for a while and it is awesome. Unfortunately the community is dead and the servers are down :( The guys are still working on a Unreal? Engine version i think (as stated above).

Yeah it is much diminished. All the active members are now working on Star Wars Battle Cry.

I reached out to the Battlecry community as they're the current stewards of all First Strike content.  Hopefully we'll get a response.

 

Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
Good news: we've started negotiations with the First Strike/Battlecry team to see if we can collaborate.  We'll be doing a trial swap with a few things to see if we can get the technical bits ironed out and working, and see how much work it'll be to really integrate it well.  If that goes well, I'll be sure to share some screenshots here.

 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
OMG! SO HYPED! Here's hoping. :yes: :pimp:
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Offline coffeesoft

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 10/23/14)
Coooool, good luck  !!  :yes:


 

Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Alright, I wanted to have at least a screenshot or something to show you guys before posting again here, but wanted to at least provide an update.  Unfortunately, the cockpit models are a no-go.  For our purposes, they'd just require far too much re-working in order to be really usable, and we'd probably be better off trying to make them from scratch.

All is not lost, however, because now that the two mods are communicating, we're looking for other ways to collaborate and share resources.  They have a number of good looking ships that we don't currently have, and even besides our starfighters we have a good deal of ships that would amazing in their Unreal 4 engine.

We're still in the trial phase of working out the technical bits, but so far it's a promising development that could lead to some great opportunities down the road.  I promise that as soon as we have something working in our mod, I'll post a screenshot here for you all to drool over.

 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
That's a real shame about the cockpits (I had a feeling they'd require too much work to be usable), but I'm psyched to hear you guys will be collaborating in the future. I'm excited to see what comes of this! :nod:

Honestly, as incredible as the FS cockpits are, I'd rather they were developed "in-house" by you guys to match the ships they're for. Call it my OCD, if you will. lol
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Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
That's a real shame about the cockpits (I had a feeling they'd require too much work to be usable), but I'm psyched to hear you guys will be collaborating in the future. I'm excited to see what comes of this! :nod:

Honestly, as incredible as the FS cockpits are, I'd rather they were developed "in-house" by you guys to match the ships they're for. Call it my OCD, if you will. lol

The main reason they don't work is due to the additional complexity of FSO as opposed to the flight model in the Battlefield games.  We have a large number of HUD elements that need to be displayed somewhere, and it's just not easy to fit them into the cockpit as currently designed.  The other option is to just leave the HUD as-is and overlay it on top of the cockpit, but the existing details make it very difficult to read.

So...yeah - in order to have good cockpits, ideally we'd start with a highly detailed frame that matches the movie shots, then arrange our HUD elements how we'd like them in the dashboard, then build in minor details around those.  Unfortunately, that requires a large amount of work from a talented texture artist, which is something we're short of at the moment.

 

Offline coffeesoft

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Question...

Cockpits should be only indoor mesh  or must be the whole ship ?


 
Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
That's a real shame about the cockpits (I had a feeling they'd require too much work to be usable), but I'm psyched to hear you guys will be collaborating in the future. I'm excited to see what comes of this! :nod:

Honestly, as incredible as the FS cockpits are, I'd rather they were developed "in-house" by you guys to match the ships they're for. Call it my OCD, if you will. lol

The main reason they don't work is due to the additional complexity of FSO as opposed to the flight model in the Battlefield games.  We have a large number of HUD elements that need to be displayed somewhere, and it's just not easy to fit them into the cockpit as currently designed.  The other option is to just leave the HUD as-is and overlay it on top of the cockpit, but the existing details make it very difficult to read.

So...yeah - in order to have good cockpits, ideally we'd start with a highly detailed frame that matches the movie shots, then arrange our HUD elements how we'd like them in the dashboard, then build in minor details around those.  Unfortunately, that requires a large amount of work from a talented texture artist, which is something we're short of at the moment.
Yeah, that's exactly what I figured would be the issue if it wasn't going to work.

It was worth looking into, though. At least we know for sure now.

Question...

Cockpits should be only indoor mesh  or must be the whole ship ?


If it means it would allow us to see our ship's exterior while looking around in cockpit view, I say the whole ship. :nod:

That's based on the assumption we will be able to look around in cockpit view, of course. lol
« Last Edit: February 12, 2015, 04:20:59 pm by Vector Leader »
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Offline zookeeper

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Question...

Cockpits should be only indoor mesh  or must be the whole ship ?

They don't need to include the whole ship. Or rather, the existing ship models can be integrated into any new cockpit models afterwards, so whoever does the cockpits doesn't need to worry about it or try to make them physically exactly compatible with the ship model.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Also, "external" (not modeled as a part of the main mesh) can have RTT technology applied to them, which, if used right, makes for really awesome cockpit view. Basically, instead of a HMD (that's what FS "HUD" probably is, a helmet mounted display), you can have a real HUD and a bunch of MFDs (or have the central reticle as HMD and the rest as MFDs). You can't see the ship (if the relevant part is modeled with the cockpit model), but you can't see its animations such as s-foils. That's something that I'd love to see changed, BTW, it would really come in handy not only for FoTG. Currently, it's either RTT or animations.

 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Also, "external" (not modeled as a part of the main mesh) can have RTT technology applied to them, which, if used right, makes for really awesome cockpit view. Basically, instead of a HMD (that's what FS "HUD" probably is, a helmet mounted display), you can have a real HUD and a bunch of MFDs (or have the central reticle as HMD and the rest as MFDs). You can't see the ship (if the relevant part is modeled with the cockpit model), but you can't see its animations such as s-foils. That's something that I'd love to see changed, BTW, it would really come in handy not only for FoTG. Currently, it's either RTT or animations.

I'm pretty sure you could do both, by using both methods simultaneously. It'd be tricky, but likely possible.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Currently needed and WIP ships (Updated 2/9/15)
Most people who tried to have both "show ship" and an external cockpit reported rather hideous-looking interactions between meshes. It might be possible with a dedicated cockpit and an external model made specifically to work with that cockpit, but I think it might be very hard to pull off.