Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Developer Blog => Topic started by: karajorma on October 29, 2010, 05:05:44 am
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October 29th 2010 - Is the Theseus the star of this video?
We've been meaning to throw this together for a while now. The Theseus was completed a while back and we wanted to show off some moving pictures of it but in the end we decided to wait until it wasn't the only only amazing new addition to the trailer. Click on the link and feast your eyes on something we've been promising since we showed off the cockpit in Trailer 1 and can now finally deliver.
Diaspora Trailer 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8YjXIPwmW4) - YouTube
Diaspora Trailer 3 (http://www.moddb.com/games/diaspora/videos) - ModDB
Music is by PhRey, our newest composer and keeps with our tradition of trying to use a different composer for each trailer. :D
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Posted to Kotaku. ****in' A, can't wait for this.
want to make battlestar command mission sooo baaaad
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want to make battlestar command mission sooo baaaad
+1'd.
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Flying a bolitho at flank speed through some sort of a Cylon dockyard with a bunch of support ships docked would be pretty epic too..
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Frak me, that's awesome!
Like the Dradis...and the rest.
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Flying a bolitho at flank speed through some sort of a Cylon dockyard with a bunch of support ships docked would be pretty epic too..
You know you want to fly a THANATOS CLASS DREADSTAR, granted it'll be for a later release but you know it to be true. Course a Cylon Pillager ought to be fun as hell as well.
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Shhhhhh. We haven't officially shown those off yet. :p
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Flying a bolitho at flank speed through some sort of a Cylon dockyard with a bunch of support ships docked would be pretty epic too..
You know you want to fly a THANATOS CLASS DREADSTAR, granted it'll be for a later release but you know it to be true. Course a Cylon Pillager ought to be fun as hell as well.
It's time Gaius...Starslayer. Show us the face of the shape of things to come.
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Slayer revealed sensitive information. I'm afraid now we have no choice but to send a squadron of centurions to.. silence anyone who read it.
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Yay, free robots!
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Slayer revealed sensitive information. I'm afraid now we have no choice but to send a squadron of centurions to.. silence anyone who read it.
Can i instead be ... visited by a Squadron of skinjobs, preferably 8s? Much appreciated.
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looks kinda awesome when the Bolitho bites the dust, so close to the Theseus
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so frikking cool!
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Come on now, I didn't give out the blueprints so no need to send the Centurion sweeper teams. If someone can reverse engineer the design from the class name I would be impressed.
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here are my full reactions
(http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jezebel/2010/10/wtfkells.gif)
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The DRADIS is so freaking cool!
:jaw:
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The thruster effects are really cool. Hell the whole damn thing is really cool. Can not wait.
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Come on now, I didn't give out the blueprints so no need to send the Centurion sweeper teams. If someone can reverse engineer the design from the class name I would be impressed.
is that a dare StarSlayer? :lol:
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Front page of Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/29/yes-please-now-please-diaspora/).
Now that's a nice way to wake up in the morning! :D
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Front page of Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/29/yes-please-now-please-diaspora/).
Now that's a nice way to wake up in the morning! :D
You're welcome!
Told you I was going to send in tips.
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Yeah. I did notice who tipped them off. I was a little surprised at how badly the reviewer seems to want the game though. Nice to see we have fans outside the community. :)
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Are you kidding? Anyone who sees this and doesn't want it has severe issues with appreciating greatness.
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me rikey.
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:eek2: My brain keeps telling me I'm looking at a latest-gen engine, not one that's a decade old.
NNNnnnnnggg....
Nup, still can't believe it's FSO.
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Domo arigato Battman
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here are my full reactions
*Snip*
That's about right. The DRADIS and icons are awesome.
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Woooow. That is looking polished! I actually got chills at the end.
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Great work, guys! :yes:
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Edited the first page to point out who did the music. I'm wondering how many people noticed that it was an original piece and not actually from the show. :D
I did hear a few comments asking which episode the stuff _Max_ did for BtRL was from. :D
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Yeah I picked up it was original, but then I've listened to every single BSG piece of music 120312830129 times.
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Edited the first page to point out who did the music. I'm wondering how many people noticed that it was an original piece and not actually from the show. :D
The movie is awesome ! And it's also very motivating to listen to the music with such beautiful pictures :yes:
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Just watched it on my phone, and can't wait to get home from work to watch a billion more times. That Raptor cockpit....dear gods, it's beautiful.
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Its coming along nicely. i am concerned that you will end up getting trouble from bsg online though.... :blah:
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Its coming along nicely. i am concerned that you will end up getting trouble from bsg online though.... :blah:
There is no need for that concern. Fact. Won't go into how exactly I know this at present, but suffice to say the two games are different enough for them not to see as us any sort of a threat. We're more like friendly neighbors than serious competitors.
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If they say anything it's because this mod will be better by a thousand-fold. :P
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Frankly I'm not a fan of comparisons like that because the two games will be quite different from the ground up. We do appreciate your confidence in us, but it would be best to keep off from criticizing any of the games too much until they're actually out.
Plus, staying on their good side can't hurt either :)
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Edited the first page to point out who did the music. I'm wondering how many people noticed that it was an original piece and not actually from the show. :D
The movie is awesome ! And it's also very motivating to listen to the music with such beautiful pictures :yes:
Congrats for the music ! I love it.
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Edited the first page to point out who did the music. I'm wondering how many people noticed that it was an original piece and not actually from the show. :D
The movie is awesome ! And it's also very motivating to listen to the music with such beautiful pictures :yes:
Congrats for the music ! I love it.
Thanks ;o) Glad you like it.
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Looks incredible guys.
Fantastic job, can't wait for the release, DRADIS looks awesome.
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I notice an awful lot of missiles seem to make it through Theseus' flak screens. What happened to the Cylons having to fight for every hit? :P
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Yea flak efficiency is being worked on, afaik. It should actually serve other purposes besides looking cool by the time we release.
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I notice an awful lot of missiles seem to make it through Theseus' flak screens. What happened to the Cylons having to fight for every hit? :P
The crew of the Theseus is still in training. With enough time and front line missions, they'll build up enough experience. :P
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The firing code for the CIWS was still in development when the video was taken. Wait until you see it in the fully operational state.
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I spy RTT-ed DRADIS... how much of a performance hit is it?
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This can't really be our old engine anymore...can it? Unbelievable. :eek2:
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My eyeballs just officially melted out of my face- damn you dev team, now I'll have to fly blind.
You guys are awesome. Btw.
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Great. Now I'm gonna need a towel...
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I think it's time to get on to some critique now that most of the oggling is done with. :)
First, I'd like to say that ship model and texture quality is really good. This is where Diaspora stands above current FS mods by far. However, effects wise Diaspora is a bit behind the quality bar set by ships. The explosions don't really look lively, though this is often a matter of taste. Still, I prefer the explosions that are currently in mediavps, and both sets were done by Nighteyes.
I don't like the explosion effect with debris in it. It looks silly to have debris effect every time the explosion triggers no matter what it impacts or whether it impacts anything at all. Though with scripting you could have more than one explosion effect per weapon, useful for missiles really. I would also suggest to take a note from mediavps and add a bit of flavor to nukes and ships going boom.
As was said before in this topic, CIWS wasn't functional. It's too bad because I really would have liked to see it in action, right now the ships were really pummeled by hundreds of missiles while player watches helplessly. Well, something to expect in the next trailer then. :) It however got me curious as to what new coding does Diaspora CIWS need, can someone shed some light on that?
Some aspects of the trailer makes me a bit worried about gameplay, but it's hard to draw conclusions as the project is still WIP and things like unfinished CIWS makes it all the more difficult.
Still, great trailer and I love to see the new stuff and how FSO can look with exceptional modeling and texturing. This'll be one of the projects that can finally make FSO justice, don't screw it up boys. :)
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Yeah I think some BP2-style flashes for missile detonations (especially for nukes) would be great.
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The Cylon missiles and the fighter guns look pretty good, but the Theseus has some big problems.
It's not just CIWS, the heavy flak doesn't appear to have any effect either. Scripted explosions, way out there, and doesn't look near as impressive as the heavy-and-close storms of fire and shrapnel the show gave us. (Pegasus in The Captain's Hand, for example, or Galactica in Scattered.) The big gun rounds at the least need very visible tracers like they had in the show. (And for that matter, don't appear to match the rate of fire you can spot in Scattered, though it matches up okay with Galactica in the miniseries.) I'll grant maybe it has more to do with the suppression barrage from the miniseries, but it still doesn't seem to have any effect on anything that passes through the fire. Certainly not missiles.
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The Cylon missiles and the fighter guns look pretty good, but the Theseus has some big problems.
It's not just CIWS, the heavy flak doesn't appear to have any effect either. Scripted explosions, way out there, and doesn't look near as impressive as the heavy-and-close storms of fire and shrapnel the show gave us. (Pegasus in The Captain's Hand, for example, or Galactica in Scattered.) The big gun rounds at the least need very visible tracers like they had in the show. (And for that matter, don't appear to match the rate of fire you can spot in Scattered, though it matches up okay with Galactica in the miniseries.) I'll grant maybe it has more to do with the suppression barrage from the miniseries, but it still doesn't seem to have any effect on anything that passes through the fire. Certainly not missiles.
I believe at the time that the videos were made, the code hadn't yet been added that allows secondary weapons to take damage from explosions (like flak). I can reassure you that in trunk Diaspora, although we still have some tweaking to do, the flak screen does indeed make a difference against both missiles and fighters. And what the flak misses, the CIWS often doesn't. :)
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i'm working on "realistic" flak screens myself for quite some time, and i can tell you, it's a pain to set up properly.
There's also the balance issue.
Regarding the trailer, it's a trailer of a WIP, not an video of the final product. I'll wait with critics when R1 is out... :P
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The Cylon missiles and the fighter guns look pretty good, but the Theseus has some big problems.
It's not just CIWS, the heavy flak doesn't appear to have any effect either. Scripted explosions, way out there
They may look like that but they definitely aren't.
The big gun rounds at the least need very visible tracers like they had in the show.
Those are quite clearly visible in the trailer.
but it still doesn't seem to have any effect on anything that passes through the fire. Certainly not missiles.
Splash damage impacting missiles was only recently implemented. Probably old footage.
WATCH COMMITS NOOB
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Splash damage impacting missiles was only recently implemented. Probably old footage.
Exactly that, most of the footage was actually taken 1-2 months ago but we only recently managed to get it all together in a trailer, due to our trailer guy getting himself drafted :)
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Those are quite clearly visible in the trailer.
I actually watched Theseus closely, and no, it's not.
The Bolitho has white smoke trails similar to those seen for anti-capital fire in Resurrection Ship, yes. (Though they are not nearly as persistent as the ones from Resurrection Ship; maybe the trails you see from main battery firing in Scattered?) But you should clearly see tracers from Thesus' main battery in the background, and they're barely visible. When main battery fired on the show, it was big and very visible even at long ranges. In Resurrection Ship, during Pegasus' kamikaze run, and in the suppression barrage in the miniseries, even at long range you could track a shot until it hit something or detonated. Here, it's barely distinguishable from CIWS fire in the show and you lose the individual rounds very easily. (For that matter, Bolitho's CIWS was firing, and those should probably be punched up a bit too. They were barely distinguishable.)
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Those are quite clearly visible in the trailer.
I actually watched Theseus closely, and no, it's not.
The Bolitho has white smoke trails similar to those seen for anti-capital fire in Resurrection Ship, yes
Yeah that's what I was thinking of.
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What is NGTM-1R talking about? Tessie main batteries shoot rounds with trails in the video, trails are defined in the tables currently, and I saw trails when I played my build of Diaspora an hour ago. :)
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All artillery has trails. Flak on the other hand doesn't. Some of the big guns on the Sobek fire flak and others arty (changeable of course).
As for the code. The shockwaves damage bombs options were added around the time the footage was taken. So depending on the footage it may or may not be in there. More recently the rate of fire code was developed. The CIWS weapons were all using a placeholder version in all of the footage. While the heavy flak from the big guns won't change much the added light flak (not there at all in the footage) from the CIWS system fills in those gaps nicely and allows for an overlapping heavy/light flak field before going to KEWs (only there at placeholder fire rate) for the real close in stuff.
So the code is there now and the tables updated to use it. You just haven't seen the power of the fully armed and operational battlestar.
Also the Bolo final conversion/tabling hasn't happened yet so it's CIWS hasn't even been implemented. That might be tonight's project.
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Flak has gone through a lot of iterations to avoid the AI's tendency to have a "walking carpet" firestorm effect.
Right now we have light and heavy flak that do splash damage on missiles, and artillery that has a trail and tracer effect.
Flak itself doesn't have the tracer as it's almost instant-hit.
CIWS has also had some recent tweaks to its rate of fire so it's a lot more effective now.
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Can I assume that render to texture is working now? Based on Dradis. Can I also assume that nameplate generation will benefit from your progress? :)
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Can I assume that render to texture is working now? Based on Dradis.
You can.
Can I also assume that nameplate generation will benefit from your progress? :)
Not really sure what you mean by that?
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I think he sort of expects magic render-to-texture powered nameplate generation.
Which is not on the tables.
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Ah, that. Nope, that's not in, we do our nameplates manually. Just as well as that way I can do cool stuff like bake lighting on them, etc :)
Having said that, I intend to release nameplate source files (PSDs, mostly) once R1 is out coupled with short instructions on how users can make their own nameplates easily. We want Diaspora to be modder friendly, after all :)
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And damage decals?... not sure If that's how it's supposed to be called.
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Damage decals not planned. In fact, Zacam a while back ripped out the old defunct decal code so any decal code will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
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Right now we do separate damage maps which are then used for destroyed subsystems, debris, etc.
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Yep. Damage decals will need a major addition to the existing texturing pipeline.
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A few versions down the line, will FS2 interpret a nameplate request from a .FS2 file and generate a capital ship nameplate?
Not to detract from the trailer, there's a shot of a Viper pulling in from the left of frame, was that scripted somehow or is it a facet of lateral thrust?
edit - late reply :o
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A few versions down the line, we might have the make-coffee and make-sandwich sexps.
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Everything in the trailer is at least a month old. I took a couple of shots myself (the MK II ones are the most easily recognisable). The video Newman took is much older than that.
The result is that a lot of that stuff has been fixed already. Still, keep the crits coming as it's always good to spot stuff we can fix at this point rather than at release.
Some aspects of the trailer makes me a bit worried about gameplay, but it's hard to draw conclusions as the project is still WIP and things like unfinished CIWS makes it all the more difficult.
What worried you? To be honest we had very little actual gameplay in the trailer as the only shots of the player ship firing were external (and you're meant to play the game from inside the cockpit). In addition we're still working on balancing things at the moment so if you have a specific concern I'd love to hear it.
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What is NGTM-1R talking about? Tessie main batteries shoot rounds with trails in the video, trails are defined in the tables currently, and I saw trails when I played my build of Diaspora an hour ago. :)
That there are shots without trails, which still ought to visible. Flak ones for example. I even gave you episode references in case you needed them, and you don't know what I meant. What kind of a BSG fan are you? :P
Basically I think that the capital gunfire looks really unimpressive compared to the very cinematic sort you saw on the show. Larger, brighter projectiles, anticapital fire with brighter and longer-lasting trails. Even the Cylon missiles could stand to have slightly brighter and longer trails.
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To fully replicate the smoke trails from the show, it'll require the use of Pspew in weapons.tbl to drop smoke bitmap particles. We're currently using regular trails which IMO is an ugly solution since smoke is a volumetric phenomenon which is best represented by a billboarded screen oriented quad, not an oriented quad facing away from the viewer.
The problem is that there are so many projectiles flying around in the missions; Raiders firing nukes, Vipers firing dogfighting missiles, batteries shooting from both the Tessie and Sabazius, Basestars (The worst offenders) liberally flinging out so many missiles that we're hitting the object limit... I did experiments with this and the particle subsystem ballooned to 180ms to calculate it all which came out to 5 FPS. Absolutely ridiculous. :lol:
It might be better with the go_faster changes since particles are no longer drawn in immediate mode and use glDrawArrays. But really even with just our models, we're still over a reasonable frametime budget. So stitched trails we use. :no:
It's funny that you question how much of a BSG fan I am based on this issue when particle smoke trails are something I really wanted in this game and heavily investigated in the graphics code. I even plan on optimizing particles even more sometime, perhaps using the draw_instanced_EXT extension in the OpenGL 3.0 spec or use dynamic vertex buffers for batched quads or maybe even engineer a GPU-based particle system.
So yup, you called me on it. I'm not a very big BSG fan. :blah:
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Look flak can't have trails for engine reasons without more major code changes (well it could but would look darn stupid). There are plenty of trails from other weapons. Remember the trailer wasn't so much about the weapons effects (those have been seen before) but about the Sobek and DRADIS.
Heck a lot of that footage was taken with broken normals on firing points thanks to a PCS2 glitch that made most of the normals point toward the rear of the ship. There is so much fire going on around the Sobek that no one on the team noticed. If I hadn't been testing the new code it probably still wouldn't have been noticed.
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Sabazius
The what now?
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Sabazius
The what now?
Just a name for a Bolitho class ship appearing in a mission.
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one little thing i'd like to see
arcing basestar missles, even just for nukes, make them look more epic, so the player knows what they really don't want to have to be left uf to just the flak screen. theyy're fired up and down, go up and down a bit, then gradually turn around and hit the battlestar from above and below.
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one little thing i'd like to see
arcing basestar missles, even just for nukes, make them look more epic, so the player knows what they really don't want to have to be left uf to just the flak screen. theyy're fired up and down, go up and down a bit, then gradually turn around and hit the battlestar from above and below.
Like a VLS setup?
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one little thing i'd like to see
arcing basestar missles, even just for nukes, make them look more epic, so the player knows what they really don't want to have to be left uf to just the flak screen. theyy're fired up and down, go up and down a bit, then gradually turn around and hit the battlestar from above and below.
Like a VLS setup?
exactly.
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one little thing i'd like to see
arcing basestar missles, even just for nukes, make them look more epic, so the player knows what they really don't want to have to be left uf to just the flak screen. theyy're fired up and down, go up and down a bit, then gradually turn around and hit the battlestar from above and below.
i requested this months ago, and it was almost instantly rejected. :(
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Um, what? That's exactly how basestar missiles behave. They're fired from the arms, go up/down a bit, then turn towards their target.
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It's also how missiles in WiH behave. AKA the wonders of free flight time.
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wasn't it said that "arcing" would require doing a lot of math, and was rejected on that?
i'm not talking about the standard missile behaviour.
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wasn't it said that "arcing" would require doing a lot of math, and was rejected on that?
i'm not talking about the standard missile behaviour.
What you're describing doesn't sound any different from VLS behavior on, for example, the Narayanas in WiH. Unless you mean sustaining the arc around the target instead of going straight for it after the free flight time?
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wasn't it said that "arcing" would require doing a lot of math, and was rejected on that?
i'm not talking about the standard missile behaviour.
What you're describing doesn't sound any different from VLS behavior on, for example, the Narayanas in WiH. Unless you mean sustaining the arc around the target instead of going straight for it after the free flight time?
What i requested was, that the missile with an "arc-value" flag, is fired like a standard missile, but approaches the target in an arc.
That was the original request from a few months back, and i recently requested it again, with a minor change.
Say, your target is behind a large object, you can get lock, but when you fire the missile, it will go through the object in front.
With the "arc" flag, the missile would fly around the object.
The request was rejected sadly, but i understand that this is really math intensive.
To bad, no smart missiles...
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What about having the missiles turn VERY gradually (turn radius of maybe 400m+, could need some T&E to figure out the right stats) as they go toward the battlestar. that would give the desired arc effect, not need too much coding work (I think, can different missiles have different manoeuvrability) at the expense of possibly having trouble with manoeuvring targets smaller than a battlestar..
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What about having the missiles turn VERY gradually (turn radius of maybe 400m+, could need some T&E to figure out the right stats) as they go toward the battlestar. that would give the desired arc effect, not need too much coding work (I think, can different missiles have different manoeuvrability) at the expense of possibly having trouble with manoeuvring targets smaller than a battlestar..
It will also have the hilarious effect of preventing the base stars from even hitting the battlestars at close range, and, in certain range brackets, causing them to shoot themselves!
Not what you want, sorry.
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blahblahblah I can't read half the post
So yeah, you have any intention of addressing my other concerns besides the shortness of the trails? I mean, I even suggested they should at least be brighter and more opaque so they look like the smoke trails in the show. Surely that's not that hard.
Look flak can't have trails for engine reasons without more major code changes (well it could but would look darn stupid).
I didn't ask for that. I didn't ask for flak to have trails at all, so what the hell are you talking about?
I want the capitals to fire larger, brighter shots as flak and for the CIWS, so they're more visible, and you get the proper curtains of pretty yellow death effect.
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I suggested they should at least be brighter and more opaque so they look like the smoke trails in the show. Could that be done?
Look flak can't have trails for engine reasons without more major code changes (well it could but would look darn stupid).
I want the capitals to fire larger, brighter shots as flak and for the CIWS, so they're more visible, and you get the proper curtains of pretty yellow death effect.
This is getting overly pissy (lolpocrisy!). Keep it down. I have included a version of your post I think would be more constructive in this one!
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I bow to the wisdom of the Batts, man.
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**** it, dude. Let's go bowling!
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Everyone be nice now - I'd hate to have to moderate. Here's an old blooper video to make you all feel better: A whole afternoon wasted (http://www.youtube.com/user/DiasporaGame?feature=mhum#p/u/3/TsBCtATuCaI). Incidentally, that's our official YouTube channel, which ideally all our videos should end up on in the future.
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:3
More comedy please.
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simply awesome.... please go on guys!this project reminds me the old BTRL times... (in a positive way) :yes: greetings from italy
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LOLz
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ahh I see I have some unhappy customers :P
lets address the issues:
The explosions don't really look lively, though this is often a matter of taste. Still, I prefer the explosions that are currently in mediavps, and both sets were done by Nighteyes.
the mediavps explosions would look extremely out of place here, its BSG and needs to look like the show, the look we decided to go for is like the miniseiries, and like Resurrection ship episode(gotta love the effects there :)).
fighter explosions in the show arn't so lively, its usually a fast burst of flames, and IMO the ones we have now look 90% like in the show...
I don't like the explosion effect with debris in it. It looks silly to have debris effect every time the explosion triggers no matter what it impacts or whether it impacts anything at all. Though with scripting you could have more than one explosion effect per weapon, useful for missiles really. I would also suggest to take a note from mediavps and add a bit of flavor to nukes and ships going boom.
with the amount of cylon missiles exploding, its pretty hard to make an effect that won't look overused... can you remind me please how I can use 2 effects for one weapon exploding?
here I agree, the trailer didn't show capship flash when they died, I'm currently implementing it for the rest of the fleet, and don't forget I was the one who asked for the weapons flash effect to be implemented :P my main thought back then was for the nukes in Diaspora...
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ahh I see I have some unhappy customers :P
lets address the issues:
The explosions don't really look lively, though this is often a matter of taste. Still, I prefer the explosions that are currently in mediavps, and both sets were done by Nighteyes.
the mediavps explosions would look extremely out of place here, its BSG and needs to look like the show, the look we decided to go for is like the miniseiries, and like Resurrection ship episode(gotta love the effects there :)).
fighter explosions in the show arn't so lively, its usually a fast burst of flames, and IMO the ones we have now look 90% like in the show...
I don't like the explosion effect with debris in it. It looks silly to have debris effect every time the explosion triggers no matter what it impacts or whether it impacts anything at all. Though with scripting you could have more than one explosion effect per weapon, useful for missiles really. I would also suggest to take a note from mediavps and add a bit of flavor to nukes and ships going boom.
with the amount of cylon missiles exploding, its pretty hard to make an effect that won't look overused... can you remind me please how I can use 2 effects for one weapon exploding?
here I agree, the trailer didn't show capship flash when they died, I'm currently implementing it for the rest of the fleet, and don't forget I was the one who asked for the weapons flash effect to be implemented :P my main thought back then was for the nukes in Diaspora...
We could remind the coders of this request i did a long while ago:
Addition to $Impact Explosion: to allow the usage for multiple explosion animations ( defined in
Weapon_expl.tbl ), which would add a bit of difference to flak weapon explosions.
If possible, with an additional flag in the weapons table that defines alternate explosions to one weapon.
and adjust, as needed. :P
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You can already do as many impact effects as you want with scripting. For example, mediavps use "capflash" effect for beam impact in addition to an explosion set in tables. It's in the flashy weapons cfg and that part of the script should be relatively easy to adapt for other uses.