Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - Standalone => The Babylon Project => Topic started by: Deepblue on August 12, 2004, 02:29:35 pm

Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 12, 2004, 02:29:35 pm
New thrusters this time.
(http://server6.uploadit.org/files/DeepblueWA-NewEngine2.jpg)
(http://server6.uploadit.org/files/DeepblueWA-NewEngine1.jpg)
Click here to download. (http://www.freewebs.com/expeditions/NewEngines.rar)

EDIT: Forgot the modified aurora.
DOWNLOAD! (http://www.freewebs.com/expeditions/aurora.rar)
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: TopAce on August 12, 2004, 02:36:00 pm
Will this work without the Babylon mod?
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 12, 2004, 02:41:01 pm
Yes.
But it was made specifically FOR the B5 mod.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Trivial Psychic on August 13, 2004, 12:24:11 am
What's up with that background?  Whatever it is, its causing the planet to get a black outline.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 13, 2004, 01:05:51 am
Deepblue, finally you have actually hit the bull's eye. Can you please try to do your best in updating all R2 thruster effects? I am sure there is room for improvement. As far as I can remember, we're still using R2 thruster effects at the moment...

Please leave the weapon effects for now, I don't want you to do it for nothing since we have Lightspeed working on them. Lets look at the weapons effects issue again when we're actually looking at what Lightspeed has managed to pull off. Thank you.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Sigma957 on August 13, 2004, 01:59:37 am
Wow, I like those thruster effects :yes:
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Col. Fishguts on August 13, 2004, 02:32:53 am
Cool....very close to what is seen in the show.... :yes:
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: IPAndrews on August 13, 2004, 09:07:02 am
:yes: From me too.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 13, 2004, 01:17:26 pm
I did all the thrusters already. BTW the "Kestrel" should have blue engines and the crew shuttle should have yellow engines.
Oh yeah, and the crew shuttle needs to be resized. In one of the season 4 episodes, a psi crew shuttle had 4 black omegas attached to the bottom at once. With the current size you could only fit one.

One more thing. The aurora really needs glowmaps for its engines.

BTW I'm glad you like them.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 13, 2004, 02:07:12 pm
Yeah and in one of the episiodes we see Whitestar carrying several fighters, making it bigger than it should have been.
Inconsistencies we have all seen. Crew shuttle in my opinion is good as is.

Deepblue, looking at sizes of the thruster effects. Shouldn't the sizes be 512x512 and 256x256 instead of 500x500 and 250x250?
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 13, 2004, 07:52:39 pm
Hmm, does it matter? I use nice round numbers because its easier to center things using a grid in graphics programs.

As far as the shuttle goes... I'll just resize it myself then...
;)
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Trivial Psychic on August 14, 2004, 02:39:35 am
For maps, it's always best to use powers of 2 for map dimensions, because of the way memory addressing is done (I think that's how you say it).  Basically, if you make it 512 by 512, then your computer will allocate enough memory space to accomodate a 512 by 512 image.  But if you make it 513 by 513, then it'll treat it as if it was 1024 by 1024, preventing that much extra texture space in your video card's RAM, from being used for other textures.  Its for efficiency.  If you remember Lightspeed & co.'s hi-res fighter maps, part of that ongoing project is to resize the maps for these fighters to be powers of 2 in their dimensions, though from what I hear, something like 512 by 1024 is alright too.

Later!
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Eternal One on August 14, 2004, 04:06:30 am
Quote
Originally posted by Deepblue
Hmm, does it matter? I use nice round numbers because its easier to center things using a grid in graphics programs.

As far as the shuttle goes... I'll just resize it myself then...
;)


You should always use powers of 2. Otherwise there's a possibility of rescaling them, depending on a lot of factors.

Also, any effect sized 512x512 is an overkill. That equals 1MB of memory. And we have memory problems as it is. 256x256 is the top limit we use.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 14, 2004, 04:13:41 am
Yep. I've already resized the effects to 256x256 and blank maps to 128x128. Since they're blank, they probably could be even smaller.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Setekh on August 14, 2004, 09:00:05 am
Dude, those glows look just right. Nice background, too. ;)
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 14, 2004, 11:09:11 pm
Thanks for the info, I'll go ahead and resize mine and you can do the same to yours easily. And again, thanks for the feedback
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 14, 2004, 11:16:58 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Yep. I've already resized the effects to 256x256 and blank maps to 128x128. Since they're blank, they probably could be even smaller.


64x64 is what I resized them to. I actually tried to do some fancy stuff with manual secondaries and rays, but in practice it didnt look good so I made them blank. The SCPers should really think about getting rid of those maps altogether and making it so that the game displays the glow all the time, but when it is at optimum viewing angle it should render like the original glows thus getting rid of the annoying intersections we have to currently deal with. Plus it would help with memory usage. Less effects to load.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: IPAndrews on August 16, 2004, 03:37:38 am
64x64. That's... small! Isn't that overkill. Or should that be underkill. Well you get the idea. I'm concerned we've gone from too big to too small now. Great effect anyway. Love it to pieces.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Eternal One on August 16, 2004, 03:42:02 am
Quote
Originally posted by IPAndrews
64x64. That's... small! Isn't that overkill. Or should that be underkill. Well you get the idea. I'm concerned we've gone from too big to too small now. Great effect anyway. Love it to pieces.


I think he's talking about the glow maps.

I don't even understand why they exist. Blank glow maps do absolutely nothing.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Gloriano on August 16, 2004, 04:18:49 am
Very nice :)
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Slasher on August 18, 2004, 05:07:44 am
I agree, this looks great.  It is the closest I've seen a thruster glow resemble the one in the actual show.  Keep up the good work. :yes:
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Xaphod on August 18, 2004, 10:34:07 am
Wierd.. in the other thread you talk about wanting to add more detail than was present in the show to the 10mm gun - something that was basically a blob, yet here you want to replace my more detailed thruster glows with a much simpler radial gradient.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 18, 2004, 08:54:17 pm
It had some "star" effects in it, but they are too transparent to see...
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: IceFire on August 18, 2004, 11:20:14 pm
Wow those look good!
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Xaphod on August 19, 2004, 07:03:27 am
Quote
Originally posted by Deepblue
It had some "star" effects in it, but they are too transparent to see...

Ah, sorry..

I change my statement to "something that looks like a much simpler radial gradient" then.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 19, 2004, 07:12:04 am
While I didn't quite agree with Deepblue regarding weapons effects, I do think those thrusters effects look a bit better in-game than older R2 ones.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 19, 2004, 08:23:01 pm
One more update (Made set 1, set 2, and set 3 thrusters more interesting and closer to show. I also made thrusters for the Omega [you can assign thrusters in the ship table I believe]).
Click the link at the top or this (http://www.freewebs.com/expeditions/NewEngines.rar) one.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 19, 2004, 11:09:20 pm
It is not possible to assign thrusters in ships.tbl. There can be only three, one for each original species.
Unless this has been changed in fa2_open and I am not aware of it?
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 20, 2004, 12:00:38 pm
I just noticed while trying out those new thrusters that with some models thruster glow is not properly centered.

For example Thunderbolt seems to be fine but Aurora and Badger thruster glows are slightly off. Perhaps that was designed with old effect in mind because this is the first time I ever noticed that.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 20, 2004, 01:34:38 pm
I fixed that (I thought) in my updated aurora at the top of the thread.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 20, 2004, 01:39:31 pm
We prefer team members fixing bugs in our own models, just in case. :)
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 20, 2004, 01:47:24 pm
NP.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 20, 2004, 01:48:15 pm
Oh yeah, and the old effect was slightly off center so that could be why.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Slasher on August 20, 2004, 03:33:58 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Mr. Fury
I just noticed while trying out those new thrusters that with some models thruster glow is not properly centered.

For example Thunderbolt seems to be fine but Aurora and Badger thruster glows are slightly off. Perhaps that was designed with old effect in mind because this is the first time I ever noticed that.


You just noticed that?  Haven't you ever used SCP's cool chase cam view?  It's readily apparent there.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 21, 2004, 01:02:09 am
With old thruster effect, no I didn't notice it.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: IPAndrews on August 21, 2004, 03:22:50 am
You're probably safe using Deepblue's Aurora. Fixing the thruster glow error involves changing about 4 numbers in PCS. E1 though, would be able to recreate the work, in a nanosecond.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 21, 2004, 06:16:58 pm
Uh, forget my aurora, modelview didnt save my adjustments and I dont have PCS so go ahead and do it yourselves.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Deepblue on August 21, 2004, 06:19:50 pm
NM, forget that, the changes were saved.

EDIT: I hope you have a better aurora in the works... ;7
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Fury on August 22, 2004, 02:46:56 am
Not at the moment at least.
Title: Yet again more stuff...
Post by: Kosh on August 25, 2004, 02:35:11 am
Nice thrusters (and beutiful framerates ;))