Author Topic: 2010-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year  (Read 55450 times)

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Offline Dilmah G

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Seconded.

Kobrar, go shoot yourself mate.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Also, yep, I don't think i've seen the Raptor yet. I saw that overly sexy ultra detailed mega shuttle. . . But can't remember a Raptor.

Ummmm. I posted three pictures with the 3rd person view of the combat Raptor in this thread. :D
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

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Offline newman

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
To be clear on something, I don't think my work is perfect. There is always room for improvement. Kobrar44 does make one, and only one valid point - the insides of the racks do look a bit low res. When I was building it I was making it as similar to Zoic as possible - and believe it or not this is pretty much the way they did it. This is partially the reason they retconned the thing - the original didn't work with closeups too well. Now in a game you have limitations and making every area of a an over 2km long ship look crisp can be tough - but I think I've done well here and apart from the insides of the racks I'm pretty happy with how the entire ship looks like. The low rez-ness of the racks is something we've discussed and there is a possibility that the interiors of the racks will get their separate map to solve this issue. As for the normal maps, kobrar suggests that the racks themselves would look better with them and you'd get some "paneling" going on. If he had any experience with texturing he might know that low rez normal maps aren't something that looks good, and that glow maps + normal maps don't mix too well in fs2. Secondly he appears to hate the entire ship because there's no normal maps, ignoring completely the fact that this ship is almost entirely smooth surfaced and there are very few areas that would benefit from having normal maps. Even so I did make normal maps covering those areas, but the game has a shader bug that makes the engine shade things wrong if you're using uvw mirroring. The basestar, due to it's symmetrical nature, uses uvw mirroring on some surfaces and until that shader bug is fixed the normal maps, which don't do anything really critical for this ship, will stay out. In the mean time however we wanted to show off some screens, my deepest apologies to kobrar for not consulting him first before releasing them, rest assured we will never release anything again that doesn't meet with his expert approval first.
Seriously though, every piece of work can be discussed in a civilized manner. But when you literally work your ass off on something for months and then someone of this level of experience calls it "toilet paper" then I'm sorry but I'm not going to go easy on that.
He does have one chance to make himself not lool like a complete idiot - build and texture a better basestar. Simple as that.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2010, 01:49:17 pm by newman »
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I tend to agree.

I've never had any problem with people criticizing Diaspora and saying what should be improved. Constructive crits help make the game better for everyone. Nothing Kobrar posted in his initial post was constructive in any way. And anyone who is going to come onto the Diaspora board and insult months of work from someone no doubt 100 times more qualified than him is going to have a serious problem with me.

So Kobrar, you have one month to deliver screenshots of a working, normal mapped version of the retconned basestar from seasons 3 and 4 or you will be spending the month after that banned from HLP.

Let's see you put your supposed talent to the test.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Yeah. That does put things into respective. I for one do not approve of the attitude.
 
Kobra
I'm out. . . <dragons den>
 
 
 
 
And H :) apologies I missed the Raptor as I was blinded by the BEAUTY of the Basestar.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
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Offline newman

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Kobrar44, if you want to back out I'll take your apology and personal assurance that from now on you will stay out of the Diaspora boards to Kara and see if I can talk him out of banning you. If not, I will be anticipating february 15th with great interest. Your choice.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline Kobrar44

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I said I've made similar textures... not model. Textures seem to me like simple color with some noise. And that is within my power. And I said that model is at advanced level[right, not average], I agree, but... It is not 'damn PRO' and normal map HAS to make up for it. At short distance, cos for larger distance it looks better. Look at lights texture-does it look right? Simple rectangle painted on smooth wall-is it level of quality you're going to release? The thing that sucks or, more likely-is not present-is normal map. I am not saying I'm better. I'm disappointed, cos so far you've been showing us awesome things and these 'awesome shots' look really cheap. Why? I think I've already told you. I'm sure I expressed myself too... emphatic and I apologize. It really looks for me like toilet paper but I guess I should have used more polite words.
And one more thing. I am not sure if raider racks were simple holes in baseships wall and if anyone could post screen from tvseries, I would be grateful, cos that thing looks bad for me as well. And I am not saying I could teach you. I am saying I realy don't like your screenshots. Is my statement clear?

I can accept your challenge, but I wouldn't expect anything above 'ugly'. That means, except textures, my work would be far worse. I guess textures would be 'just' worse. Maybe I've made myself look like an idiot, but new model is always a new experience :D
Oh guys, use that [ url ][ img ][ /img ][ /url ] :/

 

Offline newman

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I can accept your challenge, but I wouldn't expect anything above 'ugly'. That means, except textures, my work would be far worse. I guess textures would be 'just' worse. Maybe I've made myself look like an idiot, but new model is always a new experience :D

Mr. Toilet Paper rides again! This is getting tiresome. As much as I love taking professional advice from such an obvious expert, let me explain a few things really quickly. The basestar textures are very far from being simple, the whole ship was modeled and textured using a lot of references of the zoic version and I dare say it's actually quite close to the original, as far as a game model can make it anyway. Since you admit yourself that you cannot do better, I'd say you've failed the challenge Kara gave you. Read Kara's last post again and check your shiny new custom title if you need clues on what's going to happen next.
Also, if you want someone to take your apologies seriously you might not want to call their work toilet paper again while you're doing it.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2010, 03:47:04 pm by newman »
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline Aardwolf

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
* Aardwolf attempts to express an opinion not too dissimilar to Kobrar44's, but in a tactful, constructive manner:

If the SCP guys could get detail texturing support into the engine (possibly in time for a re-release, if it's the sort of thing that would delay the initial release), then you could have a nice balance of whole-model UV and local tiled plating...

Basically, it'd use a second texture, probably using the same UV coords as were passed to the vertex shader, but significantly upping the tiling in the fragment shader. It would modulate /overlay the diffuse and specular color, and would alter the normals (possibly a weighted average); it might also add to emission if it had its own emission map. Thus the close-up bits of the huge basestar could still look detailed, even though the main UV only gives maybe a 10x10 texel region for 'em...

I believe this idea was posted/mentioned elsewhere on the forums, and a link to the Infinity engine's implementation was posted, but I can't seem to find it, so here's the article itself.

 

Offline Commander Zane

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Looking at the first close-up picture I was like: :)

Then I saw the second one and went: :jaw:

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Few of my thoughts regarding Kobrar's quite rude remarks about the Base star:

-Comparison of an in-game screenshot using in-game detail model and in-game practical textures and a state-of-the-art production renders from Zoic using hell of a lot more detailed models and sure as hell more detailed source textures is hardly relevant. Relevant would be how good it looks in-game at a typical gameplay distances, and I would casually wager a guess that you would normally want to stay a hell of a lot further from this ship in your fighter...

-The JPG image has a lot of compression artefacts in it. I wouldn't call it the ultimate depiction of how the model and textures look in-game. Also, no movement.

-The diffuse texture looks fine. Baremetal surfaces like that of a Basestar tend to look fairly uniformly gray to distance. You have to go really, really close to see the small detail in a baremetal surface, and no graphics card in existence supports such a resolution quite frankly. A more sophisticated material system would potentially allow marking parts of the model as material X and it would then automatically use the surface detail in tiled mode combined with the UVmapped textures of the model, but so far we have no such thing.

-The lighting effects like glares and reflections are achieved with specular lighting and environmental mapping, and we have no way of knowing if the thing is shine mapped yet, or if shine maps are active. Also, it seems like there is no skybox or other background elements apart from retail stars in the mission in question (in other screenies there seems to be a background starfield), so the lack of environmental reflections is not surprising even if they were active, which we also can't know.

-Kobrar's statement about normal maps making everything magically better is patently false and I believe good indication of his general understanding of FreeSpace modding or 3D modding in general. Yes, normal maps when correctly utilized make a model look better. No, it's not good practice to add imaginary normal mapped detail to parts of ships that don't have them in the reference. Sure, you can get a nice model with nice textures that way but it won't much look like the original.

The deck and Raptor cockpit look magnificent. And the other screenies of the Base star taken from further distance truly show the amount of detail in it. I don't even want to know how many polygons those curved surfaces require to be that smooth...
« Last Edit: January 15, 2010, 06:08:54 pm by Herra Tohtori »
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Henry you jus meed me plik ahiom.n.
 
To och txt.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline newman

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Thanks for summing some things up for me, Herra. After this many months of work on it, when a noob who obviously has no idea what he's talking about claims that he's not very good but can replicate that work easily because it sucks, I kinda get worked up an lose my patience. You're right on the money for the most part there. I'm going to answer your questions as best I can in a private message.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline FraktuRe

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I wish I had the patience to get back into 3d modeling, but I never bother :(

But having done some before, I understand just how amazing your work is :)

also, I want a custom title!
Or something.
There’s nothing like the truth skewed into the mind of the insane.
- Fraktured Reality
The artist formerly known as Cl1nt.

 

Offline The E

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Then do something awesome. Or something stupid.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Thaeris

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Awesome is preferable to stupid.

...As you might have guessed, the majority of titles seem to be in relation to rather rash acts. Again, finding a way to make yourself useful would be a good start...
"trolls are clearly social rejects and therefore should be isolated from society, or perhaps impaled."

-Nuke



"Look on the bright side, how many release dates have been given for Doomsday, and it still isn't out yet.

It's the Duke Nukem Forever of prophecies..."


"Jesus saves.

Everyone else takes normal damage.
"

-Flipside

"pirating software is a lesser evil than stealing but its still evil. but since i pride myself for being evil, almost anything is fair game."


"i never understood why women get the creeps so ****ing easily. i mean most serial killers act perfectly normal, until they kill you."


-Nuke

 
Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
While I can see the point about the inside of the racks looking a bit bare, I think the fact that the racks work makes up for it and then some. Not to mention just how smooth and deadly the whole basestar looks. Excellent work! :nod:
'yo my domestic skillets, who put swarm torpedoes on the Tev bombers?'
~Nighteyes

 

Offline Deckard

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
Someone said Deck?.. Anyway, remarkable screen shots and keep up the good work!!.

P.S: Besides those slots texture which I understand is still a WORK IN PROGRESS. The later 3 words in caps obviously go to that guy lecturing Newman on how to work his awesome Base Star for this game.

I'm around and Cheers!
-------------------------------
Deckard a.k.a The Silencer

 
Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I tend to agree.

I've never had any problem with people criticizing Diaspora and saying what should be improved. Constructive crits help make the game better for everyone. Nothing Kobrar posted in his initial post was constructive in any way. And anyone who is going to come onto the Diaspora board and insult months of work from someone no doubt 100 times more qualified than him is going to have a serious problem with me.

So Kobrar, you have one month to deliver screenshots of a working, normal mapped version of the retconned basestar from seasons 3 and 4 or you will be spending the month after that banned from HLP.

Let's see you put your supposed talent to the test.
I expect nothing but another bull****-comments from Kobrar. So he soon will have the chance to think about what he wrote here.

 

Offline Kobrar44

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Re: 10-01-11 - Kicking Off The New Year
I'm far faster-I've already done it. I understand my mistakes and I sugest you stop this offtopic, because since HT post it is pointless[I mean, HT said everything there was to say]. I have already made fool of myself and now is your turn. And you are somehow making good use of it.
Oh guys, use that [ url ][ img ][ /img ][ /url ] :/