[Taristin]

Wow, it took a long time, and 3 modders , but the dream is now a reality...

[Sandwich]

Wow, those are some great pics there, Aldo - thanks bunches!   I won't even dare to ask what those ships are it's fighting...  
But tell me, what is your opinion of it's firepower? I see you've got a nice number of beams going off there, so what do you think? Is it overkill?

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[LAW ENFORCER]

there is just something odd about it, I don't know what it is its just odd.

(its diffrent from anything we have even encountered! We need to completly wipe it out!!!!! - Terran pilosiphy  )

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
Wow, those are some great pics there, Aldo - thanks bunches!   I won't even dare to ask what those ships are it's fighting...  
But tell me, what is your opinion of it's firepower? I see you've got a nice number of beams going off there, so what do you think? Is it overkill?

Not sure... I tested against my own custom ships, and somewhat stupidly fitted Mjolnir beams, so they sliced it in half fairly easily.  I think it's fairly well balanced, when you take into account the number of craft it can pour into the battle.

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by aldo_14:
...I think it's fairly well balanced, when you take into account the number of craft it can pour into the battle.

Meaning its beam power is pathetic, right?  

EDIT: *bump*

------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[This message has been edited by sandwich (edited 09-05-2001).]

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
 Meaning its beam power is pathetic, right?    

EDIT: *bump*

A wee bit.... although it wasn;t a particualrly well balanced battle.

[Sandwich]

Good. I didn't want it to be yet another user-made supership, but a ship that could have realistically been included in the game by  .  

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Ace]

The original models (and the renders) are great! But I have some gripes on the in-game version.

1) Tile the main Vasudan texture by far less

2) New texture for the fighterbay "landing area" don't just use the default Terran one. (now merging some Vasudan ones together for the same effect as the Terran one would be great though)

3) The ship I thought was by far smaller in size, where only 1 Ursa could launch from the bay at a time... The current scale and texture tiling makes the ship seem too large for a lightly armed carrier...

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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
 http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by Ace:
The original models (and the renders) are great! But I have some gripes on the in-game version.

1) Tile the main Vasudan texture by far less

I responded to this already by ICQ, but I'll post it here for the thread. I, and many other people, feel that the sense of scale is greatly enhanced by having textures repeat more. The individual generic hull plate is therefore made smaller, and the whole ship seems larger in comparison to a ship with less tiling.
I can certainly see the point you made on ICQ, how at a distance the textures seem to blend together and loose detail, but guess what: that's exactly what's supposed to happen when you get farther away from something - even in Real Life™.  

 

2) New texture for the fighterbay "landing area" don't just use the default Terran one. (now merging some Vasudan ones together for the same effect as the Terran one would be great though)

I'd love to do this, as it bothered me, too. But I insist on staying with the original FS2 textures and not creating any new ones for this ship. I have my reasons, which I can explain if anyone is curious, but it's not to go into here. Anyways, if you'd show me a texture or three that would make a nice Vasudan-looking runway, I'd be happy to oblige.  

 

3) The ship I thought was by far smaller in size, where only 1 Ursa could launch from the bay at a time... The current scale and texture tiling makes the ship seem too large for a lightly armed carrier...

Couple of points I want to make about this one.

1) The ship is 1.8km long (the Hatshepsut is 2.1km for comparison), and is meant to be a full-sized Vasudan carrier. I don't know what sense of scale you had of the ship before, but 1.8km is the size.
2)Hmmm... lightly armed carrier... as opposed to a heavily armed carrier? Also known as a destroyer/battlecruiser/take-your-pick?

Seriously, though - The carrier's defenses are quite extensive, but it's offensive power is definitely no more than an Orion, say. It's not supposed to be. The whole carrier-concept revloves around the smaller, cheaper battle-units (planes, fighters or whatever) serving as the primary offensive force. Carriers do not need and should not have extensive offensive weaponry, otherwise they aren't carriers - they're battleships with big bays. And just because the carrier's weaponry is "weak" doesn't mean that the ship has to be small... that seems to be a silly assumption.

Ace, you know me - I mean no offense at any of this rebuttal, so don't take any, m'kay?  



------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Ace]

What I meant by the distance losing of detail at a distance (and as I said on ICQ) is that in the FS engine it looks horrid. (FS doesn't have blur effects like Starlancer or I-War 2 designed to handle such tiling at a distance well, though SL's texture blur is really blunt and bad looking and IW2's is nice and subtle)

Anyhow, as we both pretty much concluded the problem is that with the FS engine's polygon counts, you can get enough detail into a ship to make it seem it's proper scale.

In my opinion, tiling a ship more is a rather crappy solution, trying to add the proper detail and variation of textures to add the detail to make it seem the proper scale is what is needed.

Sure adding more of the same texture in a tile repeat works, but it's bland and lacks details which can be gained by adding more to the model, detail which counts.

Edit: I believe that the lesser of the two evils (either blasting poly count until FS can't handle it or bland tiled textures without the high poly and texture count for variation) is keeping ships like the Volition designs in the style of texturing. It may not be "as massive and A1-SUPAR" as you'd wish, but it fits with how FS is designed and feels, even if you disagree with it.

On the ship size, I thought originally you planned it being less then a 1km, I'm underinformed on that  

Also I take no offense at all from your rebuttal, I'd be annoyed if you didn't make one.

It's just that I'm very much opposed to "WELL TILING MORE MAKES IT MORE REAL" which is a rather haphazard, lax, and cheap way of adding detail which should exist to give the sense of scale. (details which most of the FS2 ships lack...)

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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
 http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/

[This message has been edited by Ace (edited 09-05-2001).]

[Sandwich]

Well, I won't be overlong with my reply, so as to let others put in their 2 cents.

The ship was always planned to be approximately the same size as the Hatshepsut. I'd be interested to find out where you got the 1km impression, though. For curiosities sake, of course...  

As I look at the in-game pics again, I can see that the only one that really show the Amaunet, the 3rd one, doesn't do the ships geometry justice very much... It's a near-straight on shot of the top of the ship, with no lighting to speak of showing off the contours. The necks look singularly bland, as does the stripe down the center of the head. While I admit that the top is less detailed than the bottom, it's not quite as bland-looking as the picture makes it out to be.

Anyway, once the POF is complete I will look into the "Import extended data" option in PCS and see if I will be able to do reskins easily. Unfoutunately, the geometry (I think) has to remain the same, otherwise the import doesn't work.


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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Nico]

I don't really like big tilling either, to be ho,nest, coz that makes the map too repetitive, which I don't like much. Anyway, I don't think the model itself lacks details, apart, as you said, on the top, and that for my part never "jumped in my face" (I never noticed).
Btw, I just noticed... it's kindda inspired of a mon calamari vessel from starwars, no?

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
Btw, I just noticed... it's kindda inspired of a mon calamari vessel from starwars, no?

Hmmm... perhaps unconciously(sp?), since it actually started out with the head part attached to the body, and no necks. But that just didn't have the hoover feel to it, so I added the necks.  

IMHO, LucasArts made the MonCals in their games much too symmetrical...



------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
Well, I won't be overlong with my reply, so as to let others put in their 2 cents.

The ship was always planned to be approximately the same size as the Hatshepsut. I'd be interested to find out where you got the 1km impression, though. For curiosities sake, of course...  

As I look at the in-game pics again, I can see that the only one that really show the Amaunet, the 3rd one, doesn't do the ships geometry justice very much... It's a near-straight on shot of the top of the ship, with no lighting to speak of showing off the contours. The necks look singularly bland, as does the stripe down the center of the head. While I admit that the top is less detailed than the bottom, it's not quite as bland-looking as the picture makes it out to be.

Anyway, once the POF is complete I will look into the "Import extended data" option in PCS and see if I will be able to do reskins easily. Unfoutunately, the geometry (I think) has to remain the same, otherwise the import doesn't work.

Partly my fault.... I forgot to save some earlier screenshots, and had to delete some wher I was testing it against a ship I've promised not to show just yet, so they are pretty crappy.....  it does look really, really good in-game however.    I'm working on the LODing justnow, but maybe you could put up the beat version?

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
it's offensive power is definitely no more than an Orion, say.

Which is as well armed as any ship in the game.... 3 BGreens and 3 TerSlashes is pretty hefty.

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by aldo_14:
I'm working on the LODing justnow, but maybe you could put up the beat version?

I assume you mean the beta version?   Theoretically I could, but I don't have a server to upload to that can handle any sort of downloading bandwith to speak of... hmmm...Setekh, where are you? Catch me on ICQ, will ya?

 

Originally posted by Shrike:
Which is as well armed as any ship in the game.... 3 BGreens and 3 TerSlashes is pretty hefty.

Perhaps my statement was confusing. I didn't mean to say that it was equal to the Orion, I meant to say that it is most definitely less powerful then the Orion. Plus, all of it's firepower is spread over the whole ship. The most effective battle it could wage (fighters/bombers not included...) would be against 2 or three cruisers surrounding it. That way every beam cannon would be able to have a nice target. But even then, remember that it's armed with SVas'es and VSlash's, which aren't very heavy - they just look impressive and scary.  



------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[aldo_14]

More images, trying to get a giood size comp between this and the Heptsheahbsabutheteshattehetshabut-

 
 
 
 

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by aldo_14:
the Heptsheahbsabutheteshattehetshabut-
 

  repeat after me: "atsheptsu"  

hmm, isn't that a new fighter?

[Sandwich]

 @you two....    

Hat.....Shep.....Sut
Hat...Shep...Sut
Hat..Shep..Sut
Hat-Shep-Sut
Hatshepsut!  

Nice pics Aldo!

If anyone can give me a few Kb of server space, I can put up for you all a bare-bones POF version of the Amaunet so that you can view it in MODELVIEW32. I might even include the table entry so you can put it in a mission... But it will be a non-functional version, with no turret data or subsystems - just for looks. Anyway, lemme know if you want a pre-release of this sort...  


------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
 @you two....    

Hat.....Shep.....Sut
Hat...Shep...Sut
Hat..Shep..Sut
Hat-Shep-Sut
Hatshepsut!  

Nice pics Aldo!

If anyone can give me a few Kb of server space, I can put up for you all a bare-bones POF version of the Amaunet so that you can view it in MODELVIEW32. I might even include the table entry so you can put it in a mission... But it will be a non-functional version, with no turret data or subsystems - just for looks. Anyway, lemme know if you want a pre-release of this sort...  

I still have the Beta version with 1 LOd, table and path /subsys data, I can put that up on my site if you want.