[Nico]

honestly?

[gevatter Lars]

Not realy..but who cares ^_^

[BanditLOAF]

I always had the feeling that the Kilrathis caps from WC3 were screaming at me:

"We were designed to be round and scary, but then someone had forced us to try this with 6 straight lines. Don't blame us for this !"

So in my opinion the desgin was killed through the low poly restrictions.
I agree with Nico, that adding a few things at the surface don't make the WC3 kilrathi cap ships look like that much better. The contour will still look like somewhat from a pupils first geometry lesson.

In the manual the WC3 ship design was described as scary though asymetric elements, that seems to make the ships bigger than they are. The Kilrathi cap ships from WC1/WC2 were mostly symetric. I think the asymetric elements should be kept as a development of the Kilrathi ship desgin. So there would be some breach to the older designs. But I also think the ships should become more round.

Since I am not familar with 3D desgin programs I tried to sktech a wildly changed fralthi 2 model to show what i mean.
Since I also can't sketch very well, the model looks weird and the changes are too drastic, but maybe you can catch the direction of the changes I would suggest.

Howdy,

The popular 'rumor' in 1994 was that Wing Commander III wouldn't use "old ships" because it couldn't display rounded surfaces. This wasn't really true - WC3 didn't use old ships because that's not how you design a video game. Somehow, this rumor has expanded to "why Kilrathi ships look different" in recent times.

So, lets get the record straight: there are plenty of tricks for using low poly models to display "rounded" lines... and WC3 certainly used these for things like the Arrow. What's more, WC3s high poly cut scenes could do rounded edges very easily.

The reason for the change in "Kilrathi style" is due to two things. One, a radical change in artists. People like Dennis Loubet were gone, and the art team was taken over by younger men willing to learn 3D packages. Two, a conscious decision to go with the "knives" look for the Kilrathi ships. The 'blurb' in Victory Streak about asymetry and whatnot was part of the initial design documents for Wing 3 - they sat down, decided the Kilrathi ships needed a more unified. unique look and went with that. There was never a situation where someone developed a "round" Fralthi that had to be 'scaled down'.

(The "symmetry" you like in the original games *was* a technological necessity... the game stores only half a graphic and mirrors it. It's a trick that they used to fit twice as much art on a floppy disk. WC3 didn't have that limitation.)

[Bakhtosh]

@BanditLOAF:

mmh... interesting.

So the change of style from a mostly symmetric look to a look more like knives/claws/fangs was a decision of new artists. But if I am looking at knives, swords etc. I noticed a point and a blade. The blades are mostly bent.
So I still think, that there were some limitations in the WC3 engine which made the models more blocky than the artists would liked. The trick they used for the arrow were used very limited and only for small parts of a ship. So I think they couldn’t use them on a larger scale which would be needed for a more rounder Kilrathi cap ship design.
I admit, that this just a wild guess

Apart from the reason there is definitely a very big breach between the WC1/2 and WC3 Kilrathi cap ship design. It is much more noticeable than the changes of the confederation cap ships. From my point of view this looks strange if old and new ships are both used in a game.
Another point is that I never liked the WC3 Kilrathis cap ship design, because for me it looked like the models should be more round, but aren’t. I thought the reasons were low poly restrictions but even if it’s not true the models are looking cheap.
I can’t imagine that a Kilrathi ship designer would build a ship, that looks more like a thing from a geometry lesson than like a scary pointed blade…

So I would like a compromise. I whish the WC3 Kilrathi cap ships would be redesigned a little bit, so that they don’t look such blocky and don’t build such a big breach compared to the WC1/2 ships.

My sketch was not a suggestion how the Fralthi II should look like. The sketch didn’t really look like I wanted it to look like (I simply can’t sketch).
I only tried to show in which direction I personally would make some small design changes.
The sketch itself was too radical. I do like the 3D image someone make from my sketch (for the design itself not particularly as a Fralthi II design). But the curved arms at the stern of the ships were looking too strange. I would know keep them curved instead of the original edged design but I wouldn’t make them round itself any longer (if someone can understand what i mean...).


I really would like to see a redesigned Fralthi II from Nico. It will be probably better than anything I could sketch or think of.

[Nico]

Originally posted by BanditLOAF

(The "symmetry" you like in the original games *was* a technological necessity... the game stores only half a graphic and mirrors it. It's a trick that they used to fit twice as much art on a floppy disk. WC3 didn't have that limitation.)

You sure? coz that's obviously not possible on most views, only top/bottom and front/back. Sounds most dubious to me.
Or you mean they made all the "pointing to the left" frames and the games mirors for the right ones. All the 2D games do that actually, and most dn't bther about symetry ( hop, link's sword goes for his right to his left hand! ).

[psych]

I'm saying this now, to anyone who wants to redesign the existing WC3 ships. If you plan on doing it just so it can be in this mod, don't bother, because you will be wasting your time.

As far as new fanboy redesigns of vessels in this mod, there will be none. No debates, no polls, no "differences of opinion".

[Bakhtosh]

That's fine with me.

You don't have to like every single model to like the graphics alltogether.

And a game isn't just  graphics. I't also mission design, story.
Most parts I saw from the mod were looking very promising.

So I don't like a few models. So the mod won't be perfect but 'only' nearly perfect


Besides...
10 different people - 10 different opinions. You simply can't fullfill every whish.
You have too choose.
I've seen enough fan projects who tried to fullfill everything and failed because the plans gets too complex.

[gevatter Lars]

About the ship designs and changes...personly I think that WC 1+3+4 ships fit good together...only WC2 is different.
When you look at the WC1 ships, they where mostly as blocky as the WC 3+4 ships and remember...most of the details we "saw" back in that days of playing WC1+2 came from our own imagination and not from the real graphic...cause they where only pixel on screen.
WC 3 was the first time we realy saw the models in 3D...not prerenderd models where your imagination does more work than the graphic itself.

Beside that all as Bakhtosh said...10 people - 11 different opinions.
But about redoing and upgrading some model like Lynx has done it with the Fralthi II is a thing we should realy think about, cause there where some limits to the WC3+4 engine when they made the ships ingame and I would be more then happy to get my hand on some original drawings for the different ships and do them in the way they where meant to be.

[Bakhtosh]

Originally posted by gevatter Lars
...When you look at the WC1 ships, they where mostly as blocky as the WC 3+4 ships and remember...most of the details we "saw" back in that days of playing WC1+2 came from our own imagination and not from the real graphic...cause they where only pixel on screen.

The WC2 Kilrathi cap ships are the roundest from all WC games - that's rigth.
But the WC1 Kilrathi cap ships aren't as blocky as the WC3 models.
Even if you take the imagination out of relativly few pixels into account, you can see, that the WC1 Kilrathi cap ship models nearly all have some big round or bent elements. For the Sivar, Dorkir or Lumbari it is clearly visible.  But even the Fralthi and the Ralari have some big bent elemets at wings or arms. Only the Snakeir seems to have nearly no bent elements.  But even the snakeir wouldn't look as blocky as the WC3 models because the silhouette has more different elements than the WC3 models.
To take the imagination factor away a bit you could look at the silhouettes in the original claw marks (the one with Kilrathi Saga does not have all of the original content). There you can see, that the things I described above for the WC1 cap ships are true.


Keeping the original WC3 has a advantage. No one yould say they don't look like a Kilrathi cap ship from WC because you have made some changes or addition. You could always answer, that you only imported the design from the original WC3.

[Lynx]

Here's the ace skin for the dralthi IV.

[Zarax]

Awesome! Keep up with the good work guys!

[Nico]

No, stop now!

sorry, always thought that expression was stupid: "keep up with the good work"
Nothing against you Zarax, random rant.

[psych]

Hey Lynx, that's cool.

Maybe you should have some psychological warfare symbols as well? Since the main Dralthi Ace in WC3 was Deathstroke and he's frankly .  . . a nutcase, maybe you can have some severed human head on the wing, or a bunch of human skulls to establish kills, or a cool phrase written in Kilrathi font "Abandon All Hope"?

[Nico]

Originally posted by psych
"Abandon All Hope"?

cliché

[gevatter Lars]

Smells like chicken....

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Nico
No, stop now!

sorry, always thought that expression was stupid: "keep up with the good work"
Nothing against you Zarax, random rant.

I would say something else but i have to cope with my limited english...

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Lynx


Here's the ace skin for the dralthi IV.

Whooo, that's nice. Is that in-engine?

[Tolwyn]

Since some people have been complaining that we don't show any pictures lately I decided to play through the first mission and take some pictures while I was at it.

[Gloriano]

Looking good:)

[Tolwyn]

and here one of in-game planets plus Hellcat V