Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Scooby_Doo on June 23, 2012, 05:57:03 am
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Using Cybot078's (from wcnews) Wing commander 2 starbase as a template for this. I de-rounded quite a few things and added some more details.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase2.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase3.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase4.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase5.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase6.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase7.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/starbase8.jpg)
Measures in about 1.5km tall and about 3.3km diameter. Unforunately it takes quite a few textures (23?) in all and I used every trick i know of to cut them down, but it's got so much surface area. This is meant like the starbase Torog, only one per mission.
Oh and it's not 100% complete as I'll probably have to do some minor fixing here and there. The six main arms will be able to dock a docking bay so you can dock ship to the docking bay which is docked to the base (if that made any sense)
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Wow. Awesome. So that's what you've been working on lately? I guess the texture count shouldn't be a that much of a problem, there was only one Starbase in most WC2 missions anyway.
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Reallly a nice update scooby :yes: I always hated those balls in the original model
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While I normally don't like the round shapes in WC2 designs I think they can look OK on stations, so I didn't have a problem with that one.
But I agree that Scooby's version looks much better.
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This is very cool.
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While I normally don't like the round shapes in WC2 designs I think they can look OK on stations, so I didn't have a problem with that one.
But I agree that Scooby's version looks much better.
I actually prefer the WC1/2 era designs over the 3 onwards, though back in the day I did play them as they came out so 1&2 formed my view of the franchise. I especially loved the relatively smooth and elegant look of the ships.
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Unforunately it takes quite a few textures (23?) in all and I used every trick i know of to cut them down, but it's got so much surface area. This is meant like the starbase Torog, only one per mission.
Fuuuuuuck. Learn to UV map bro!
Torgo has like 80+ textures when you count all the normal/shine/glow maps with it. That's bloody absurd.
You make all these cool starbase models but then make them nearly unusable with the texture count. It's such a waste.
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Unforunately it takes quite a few textures (23?) in all and I used every trick i know of to cut them down, but it's got so much surface area. This is meant like the starbase Torog, only one per mission.
Fuuuuuuck. Learn to UV map bro!
Torgo has like 80+ textures when you count all the normal/shine/glow maps with it. That's bloody absurd.
You make all these cool starbase models but then make them nearly unusable with the texture count. It's such a waste.
I explained this over at cic. (this was about the 22km dreadnaught and one of the reasons we didn't go that route)
I tried (and still am with my own stuff) to keep the texture scaling level among all the ships. For example: a warning logo is the same size on a small fighter as it is on a massive bomber. When you start dealing with such a massive size difference (compare Torgo to the clarkson) you'll need a lot of texture space for the really really really big ships. Take the Torgo for example, there's some 19 textures just for the hull, and that was after I did some massive optimizing/cheating.
One of the reasons why there are such massive ships in freespace2 and it's mods (like Inferno) is they use tiling/repeating textures. While it looks good for some occasions, this leads to cringe worthy textures. Imagine wallpapering a kids room with MLP only to have both corners have the ponies head cut off or just having the head, yuck. Also repeat tiling doesn't give you the nice uniqueness that you can get from having each inch on the ship have it's unique texture area.
Also more on a technically note, the normal map shaders don't like tiling, you'll get some really screwed up effects with it.
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That is no excuse to use a massive number of textures...
Nothing is.
Objects of this scale are generally seen far away, where you do not need to scale up texture space, or up close where you cannot see the whole damn thing and it doesn't matter anyway as everything up close is a blur mess nomatter how hires your textures are...
Better to make the damn thing actuly usable and not make performance abominations
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Disregarding the texture issues, it's a very nice model.
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Think I have a solution for that. Reduce the uv-size down by 75% (four of the original texture space's will now fit into one). Then take the base texture map and reduce that by 75%. It shouldn't effect the quality that much. I just remember I did that with the Coral sea for the same reasons.
The only sore point is it won't have the bathroom tile texture. Since the model has curved surfaces everywhere and the tiling is in a row, the two just won't work. Unless I can figure out a nice way to warp/distort/perspective change the tile texture without making it look bad
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While I normally don't like the round shapes in WC2 designs I think they can look OK on stations, so I didn't have a problem with that one.
But I agree that Scooby's version looks much better.
I actually prefer the WC1/2 era designs over the 3 onwards, though back in the day I did play them as they came out so 1&2 formed my view of the franchise. I especially loved the relatively smooth and elegant look of the ships.
I also started with WC1 and instantly loved its style. That's why I liked it that much that Origin dropped that round and too colorful style again after WC2.
But of course that is a matter of personal preference. Most people like WC2s visual style.
Concerning the texture thing: What I like about Scooby's textures is that they look good from far away AND when flying close. Even such monsters like the Torgo base. Most big FS ships don't look good at close range.
I admit that the very big ones use a lot of resources, which is a disadvantage. But for me it's worth it.
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Great model! , but as for your texture things.. since it has large areas of similar areas you can make them overlap uvmapped with no to minimal loss for quality and as a added bonus you can make it all run seamlessly without the somewhat tedious texture edge stops that could happen with tile mapping. c:
Looking forward to see more most certainly!
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Well I got the hull texture count down to 5. I'll keep the original higher-res version as backup just in case.
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Well I got the hull texture count down to 5. I'll keep the original higher-res version as backup just in case.
Okay this is reasonable (and usable) :P
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Great!
Is that thing going to be armed, and if yes: with what?
I could imagine it would have some laser turrets (6 or 8 or something like that) but it could also rely solely on ships defending it, like the Torgo base.
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Well I got the hull texture count down to 5. I'll keep the original higher-res version as backup just in case.
Okay this is reasonable (and usable) :P
+1 :yes:
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Great!
Is that thing going to be armed, and if yes: with what?
I could imagine it would have some laser turrets (6 or 8 or something like that) but it could also rely solely on ships defending it, like the Torgo base.
In WC2, it did have some light flak guns (IIRC).
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Alright who wants to beta test this thing? There's 6 docking points on the top. I've included a simple pylon section for them as placeholders. Down the road I intend to make several different styles of pylons that can be mixed and matched with this starbase and other starbases to come. For fighter bay's this has quite a few bays, 20 in total. I know there's a few things missing like hud icons, but that's secondary.
I'd prefer to get all the bugs ironed out instead of having to do several patches.
http://scoobydoo.freespacemods.net/Release/BETA-Epsilon-08-19-12-BETA.7z
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OK, the first problem is that FSO doesn't support 20 fighterbay paths, only 10. If you ask me, it's high time to bump this limit, so don't remove the bays yet. Communications subsystem is awkwardly large, and it's destruction would look bad. Other than that, the base looks really good. Also, I'd like to see a version with a few strategically placed laser turrets, in WC2 this thing had 4 Flak Cannons.
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Actually you can restrict which fighter bay path you want it to use, so I assume it lets you use all 20. Unless it assumes that there are multiple fighter paths for each bay.
Comm units are not destructable and for the turrets.. four flak cannon's won't nearly enough
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It's not about paths that actually are used, debugger throws an error if there's more than to paths, and the ones above the limit don't work.
For the turrets, I'd say that about 15-20 laser turrets placed so they'd have all-round coverage of the station should be enough. Pre-WC3 turrets were rather abstract, so that'd be a good approximation of the station's defenses in WC2.
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Can a fighterbay have more than one path? I can't remember offhand from saga. If so I can cut the number of bays down to 8 (4 of them from the large hangars and 4 from the center ones of the smaller launch tubes)
edit: nevermind... i answered my own question, and yes they can.. excellent.
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Yep, more paths work fine. I usually put four path in the smaller bays, and 6 to the bigger ones. Just take care that the path-points have enough space between to ensure a clean launch without collision, otherwise you get a crowd. Funny to watch, but pointless :p
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It's not a number of fighterbays that's relevant, it's the number of actual paths. Fighterbay subsystems are fine (the launch tubes should each have it's own subsystem). The problem is, no matter how many bays, only 10 fighters will actually launch at a time, regardless of what you do.
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I never tried more than 6 in a launch wing, because I also added no more then 6 paths to a single fighterbay subsystem. AFAIK that limit of 10 is a matter of the Source Code.
Also, to be honest, where is the need to launch so many at a time ? Can you even group a wing with +10 ships in FRED ?
If you want to have a massive one-at-a-time lauch, create multiple wings, split them up on different fighterbay subsystems, and via fred you can even specify which fighterbay-path they shall take.
Story wise, if you have a model with limited fighterbays, it would be a bit unrealistic to launch so many at a time. Just my 2 cents though, I don't want to hurt your imagination :p
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It's not that you need to launch 10 ships at a time (though being able to launch two flights of 6 ships at the same time would be nice), but that all fighterbays can function. Also, restricting bay paths via FRED doesn't change a thing. FSO will not parse more than 10 paths on a model. Period. Number of fighterbay subsystems, number of ships that are launching, paths per fighterbay subsystem are all irrelevant.
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In My days back at Saga I had no troubles making the big carriers with 2 fighterbays and with 6 path's each. However, of course I never launched 10 flights in the same second. On the other hand, where is the problem making them delay 1 second ? Not that anyone would really notice... If that's the limitation, not more than 10 paths used in the same second, so all I can say "so what ? " :p
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If that's the limitation, not more than 10 paths used in the same second, so all I can say "so what ? " :p
You still don't understand. It's not 10 path used in the same second, it's 10 paths per model. If you launch 2 six fighter flights a second apart, at least two fighters will collide/"stack". The only thing that you'll get from putting 12 paths on a model will be a debug error. And if Saga didn't encountered this, they either didn't ran debug, or managed to remove that limitation in their builds.
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That what I was talking about. I used more then 10 paths, while we still used FSO builds. I'm pretty sure it worked, because I made the banthkara with 12 paths and another one too, forgot which, I think it was the starbase. Debug here and there, does it work ingame or is crashing ? If debug is just *****ing, and it works ingame, what gives ? ;) Still, better ask the SCP. Though I cannot imagine they lowered the number of paths within the last year.
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If debug is just *****ing, and it works ingame, what gives ? ;)
If you willingly ignore debug warnings, or even worse, errors, you are definitely doing it awfully wrong.
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Debug is NEVER "just *****ing". Whenever it gives you a warning, it basically means "Proceed at own risk". We can only guarantee that FSO is stable when the data fed to the engine is valid. If you feed it invalid data, you're pretty much on your own.
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I'm pretty sure it worked, because I made the banthkara with 12 paths and another one too, forgot which, I think it was the starbase.
Sure, it worked. The debug warning (my mistake in the previous post, that's not an actual error) can be skipped, and I don't think this one affected anything else. However, did you ever check (in FRED or in game) if any fighter ever flies down bay11 and bay12 paths, or if they appear in "Restrict arrival/departure paths" menus? I'm 99% sure the answer is no. Unless something changed recently, FSO will simply ignore any fighterbay paths above 10.
My point is, there are fighterbays on the starbase that will never, ever have a ship use them, unless there's a limit bump.
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Alright kids behave :p
Anyways for the moment I'm texturing the Predator. I'll get back to the base in a while :)
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What's Predator?
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/predator2.jpg)
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Looks like a really heavily updated version of Excalibur. The only issue I have with it is that both lasers and tachons are much too small (at least, if it's about the size of Excalibur).
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It's a Avenger, excalibur, dragon combo
Actually the gun mounts are the same size as the excaliburs.
2 heavy mass drivers
2 regular plasma (currently the tachyon guns are there) [or perhaps cloudbursts]
2 something (laser, meson...etc) on the wingtips... maybe the tachyon can go on the wingtips.
The excalibur is a superiority fighter, while the predator is a heavy fighter.