Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Developer Blog => Topic started by: newman on January 24, 2009, 11:49:27 am
-
January 24th 2009
Here's another update for you folks, this time not as huge as the last, but we thought you might appreciate a few new screenshots. This time we'll show more of the raptor cockpit, done by yours truly, a wip shot of a viper mkII cockpit being worked on now by Lt.Cannonfodder, and a shot of two basestars pummeling the crap out of the Pegasus, because you can never have enough of those :)
Since this time the task of updating the dev blog fell to me, I figured I'll talk about what I know here - in this case a bit of info about the raptor cockpit. One of the first things you notice about doing cockpits is that it's completely different then doing any sort of ship. When doing game models, compromise is always the name of the game; make things less detailed so they can be run in real time by the computer, while attempting to make them seem more detailed then they actually are. However, as I soon found out, the cockpits don't tolerate compromises well - any attempt to skimp on details becomes an immediate eyesore.
The main difference to doing ships is, you see the cockpit from a very close distance all the time, meaning any attempt to save on polygons or texture counts/sizes will probably look horrible - in fact, what you're seeing here is the third iteration of the cockpit, with more details modeled, and the texture count increased to make things look more detailed. Some of you might still notice some "rough edges" on the cockpit in these shots as well, since there are still things I mean to improve upon before our first release.
For the moment, the polycount of the cockpit is 8557 triangles, and will be increased a bit before the release due to some details still missing. The textures will have some detail added too - for the moment it's using two 2048x2048 textures covering everything but the forward screens; the screens themselves are 1024x1024 textures, one for Dradis and the other for the rest of the forward screens.
You might have noticed in the videos we released that some of the screens are animated; for the moment it's a simple 4 frame animation that might be improved upon before the release. The center screen will house a working Dradis, we've still got some issues to fix before it will work correctly but we're getting closer - we had to leave something for the next trailer.. :)
(http://diaspora.hard-light.net/images/screens/screen_015_pegasus.jpg)
(http://diaspora.hard-light.net/images/screens/screen_014_raptor_cockpit.jpg)
(http://diaspora.hard-light.net/images/screens/screen_013_raptor_cockpit.jpg)
(http://diaspora.hard-light.net/images/wip/wip_001_viper_cockpit.jpg)
-
Mate.. broken links; I'm afraid
-
Fixed.
-
Thank you ! ;)
-
I AM SO HAPPY :P :P
:o AHH H MY FACE IS BURNING UP!!! too bright!!! :mad2:
-
A pity you can't actually be the ECO. I want to! I love support roles. And that raptor cockpit looks very good. But doesn't the ECO thing also have an Dradis?
-
All the screens seen in the show appear to be multi mode. What they display changes fairly often. So just imagine that the ECO isn't using DRADIS in that one. :D
-
Is the DRADIS functional, as in, it replaces the standard HUD radar?
-
Although pretty much outside the scope of FreeSpace and its associated engine, it would be quite neat to have an interactive 3D cockpit where simple controls could be operated via a point and click interface, much as in modern flight sims (X-Plane, for example). Regardless of wheter on not controls can actually be manipulated on screen, certainly any changes to ship operation will result in some visual change in the instrument operation. This will be more than enough in my opinion.
-Thaeris
-
Nuke's been working on something like that using scripting.
-
Really nice good work :yes:
Amazing awesome
-
Speaking of Nuke's work, has some method of preventing the canopy from disappearing when looking about been devised? I recall watching a few of his videos on YouTube where this would happen when looking to find a target.
-Thaeris
-
Huh?
I don't recall ever seeing that problem.
-
May i?
Nuke doesn't use the same method to show the cockpit ingame.
Nuke use a show-ship flag while i guess disapora use an external cockpit pof file.
Using an external pof file doesn't make the problem we could see on nuke's video.
-
Does the separate pof get illuminated awesomely if there's light-sources nearby (er go if there's a big explosion or a glowy shot passing right in front of the hull, does the lighting apply to the cockpit model?)
-
Now that you mention it, that's true. He (Nuke) DOES use the method as described by Reprobator. This is why the canopy was so poorly visualized as seen in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEu60IjiGfI&feature=channel
-Thaeris