Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: mikhael on February 29, 2004, 01:00:32 am
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I personally think the show and the ship design were crap. However, someone might like these pics. They're pretty big, so they might make a good reference for someone who wants to build the Serenity for FS2, Freelancer or Iwar2.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=49
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god damn that is an ugly ship
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Yeah, it wouldn't suck so much if it weren't for the gooseneck leading up to the bridge.
Meh. I figured someone could use the pics. Its not often you find such good reference material.
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yeah it's cool :D
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Well... it could have looked very cool actually, it could have...
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it's not supposed to look good. it's a recycled, retrofitted freighter.
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it still doesn't look like that, it looks like someone tryed to make the most unrealistic design for a ship they could without makeing it look too alien
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I like it, seen to much of these massive, uber-smooth ships - specially designed to all be mass produced or something. Farscape could get away with its ship looking like that because it had a reason. Enterprise and so on have vague histories of ship design.
Indeed, this one has a real 'Falcon like feel to it - held together by the seat of your pants kind of thing ;)
It might not be pretty - but it seems practical!
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Oh, come on, sticking random pieces of garbage on a ship doesn't qualify as innovation. Or making it look jury-rigged together. This just looks like ass.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Yeah, it wouldn't suck so much if it weren't for the gooseneck leading up to the bridge.
Agreed. Boy, I thought it was actually kinda cool, until I saw the side-on view. Oh, I'd love it if it were flattened out. But true, great reference pics. :)
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Oh, come on, sticking random pieces of garbage on a ship doesn't qualify as innovation. Or making it look jury-rigged together. This just looks like ass.
How would you describe jury rigged then? If not sticking random pieces onto a ship to make it work. Everything you know is based on previous references to other sci-fi ships... none of the technology exists. Who are you to say what it should look like?
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Actually, everything I know is based on how things work now, extrapolated at times into what might work at some point in the future. Y'know, the way things always have and always will work. You can't nail a bunch of tin cans together to make a car, and (more importantly) taking a fairly dull basic design and putting more jagged plates on it doesn't make it look like something that was scavenged together any more than putting a spoiler on your compact fools anybody into thinking it's a racecar. I spend quite a lot of time scavenging, it's how I get a good bit of my stuff. When that involves replacing parts and the replacements I find weren't really initially intended for the function in mind (which is always the case, really), the resulting look is very distinctive. It does not make the things look like slightly uglier versions of the originals.
The original Star Wars films were relatively good at this, because they were designed in something of the same way- stick what might be a coolant system there, radar dish here, gun turret here, and so on. They were big, shapeless, and looked ungodly complicated, but looked like they'd do their job, at least until they suddenly caught fire for no particular reason (no really serious imbalances or anything like that thing has, etc). Most of them had big random stubs of machinery poking out of them doing God-knows-what function. It was like the space version of the Mad Max cars. That's what scavenged equipment looks like. Give or take an art department to make sure the thing won't make your eyes bleed.
Of that thing, I'd say the cockpit and rear engine were all right, maybe the bottom section too if they really can't do any better than that block, because at least it doesn't look like a part of the original vessel. The rest looks like they stuck brown roofing tiles on a perfectly serviceable vessel. Which... come on, there's no reason in the world you'd ever do that, and if you can't come up with a more imaginative texture you need to find another job, plain and simple.
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Nothing of this time can really be applied to starships though can they? Look at the Millenium Falcon, that thing was supposed to have a "rough and rugged" look wasnt it? It wasn't top of the line and Solo isn't exactly the richest bloke around when we first see the ship. That said - it still looks fairly true to the original design without looking cobbled together. It might be fair to assume that since we're talking about something that is supposed to be airtight to enable space travel - anything you bolt onto it is supposed to be fairly true to the original design or else it's just not going to work.
I'm not saying that the Serenity is perfect by a long shot. But it does (for me at least) have a weathered look that implies heavy use if nothing else. Look at the hull of the ship at any rate, the panneling is - for the most part - smooth. It has vents, solar panels and a few other things that stick out apart from the ship.
Suffice to say - the basic design may be dull, but it looks a lot more functional than some of the other trash that has been thought up. I never said it was anything more than functional.
Edit: As for the texture designs - in some places you have a point, in others you don't. Look at the top down view - specifically the starboard engine. It looks like it was once shiney and metallic but has been blasted by sand / whatever during atmospheric flight. I don't know the specifics of the ship but it does at least look like it's merely used. Not painted any particular color.
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Yeah, except that it doesn't. The more I look at it, the wronger it looks, but the less able I am to explain precisely what's wrong about it. It just looks like a new vehicle retextured as an old one, really.
And I don't care about dullness. Well, that's a lie, but dullness is forgiveable. I-War's designs were the most boring I think I've ever seen, but there were solid reasons behind the shapes of most of 'em (the technical blueprints of the Dreadnought were impressive, either they really knew what they were doing or they even better at BSing than I am). Hence, I-War is forgiven. And they fixed that in the second one, anyway, even though they ****ed up other things.
And like I've said, I've got nothing against the main engine there. In fact, it's at least one thing they got right- it looks like it was designed for a completely different ship and then bolted on there. And it's an interesting design, and the textures aren't horrendous... now, if only the design guys could have taken that skill and applied it to the rest of the ship instead of calling it a night and having their twelve-year-old kids finish up it woulda turned out all right.
Huh, maybe that's it. It looks like some poor modeler did their best with a concept some twelve-year-old drew. I think my last thread in the art forum shows that's not a good idea.
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Mmm, well as I said I don't know what the ship is designed for (atmospheric flight, FTL travel, jumping through realities..).
The largest issue is the obvious fact that they sat down and said "right, the show is called Firefly - the ship must look like a firefly" and went from there. Fortunately they didn't give it wings in the conventional sense of the word. I'm actually beginning to get issues with the two "jets" either side of the ship.. I'm guessing from them that it is atmospheric flight capable.. but it looks incredibly stupid, if they removed them and flattened out the gooseneck it might look suitable. I dunno, the actual "surface" of it looks alright but the hull itself needs things fixing on it - that at least I agree with...
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From the top it looks like a sort of bastardized Patcom. Not brilliant, but ok. But from the side..... makes me want to vomit. It's sodding abysmal. It looks like, I dunno, a constipated goose or something.
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If the sucker was flattened out, it wouldlook pretty cool, albet generic. Right now it's just original and ugly (strange how those two adjectives can go together so well)
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Good point really, ship designs are becomming rather standardised - there just doesn't seem to be any need.
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Originality isn;t hard, it's just that good originality is a *****.
As an aside, the design for the Millenium Falcon was originally derived from a hamburger. George Lucas didn't like the original (which became a rebel corvette or freighter I think), and - in a discussion over lunch - held up a half eaten hamburger and said 'make it like this'.
Of course, (one of) the reasons Star Wars ships look like they've been cobbled together from hunks of scrap is because they were. I think the Death Star surface, in particular, was cobbled together from chunks of plastic battleship kits and whatnot.
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Ok, I'm a fan of the show, so I probably have a biased opinion on this, but while the ship is ugly as hell, it's old. They said that they stopped making ships of it's kind like 12 years or something before the show started. The two jets on the side are for atmospheric flight, and can rotate for softer landings like a Harrier, but they also do most of the flight in space too. The "main engine" as you're calling it was mostly used for quick acceleration much like the warp engines in Star Trek.
And there's also no need for it to be sleek or pretty. It's a freighter. They haul stuff. So it's big and bulky.
Anyhoo, you should really watch the show. It's pretty good entertainment.
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Is this the Wild West in space one I saw awhile ago?
That was such a BLATANT rip off of the old west, I couldn't stand it.
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Wasn't it supposed to be nigh on invulverable or something?