[TrashMan]

I know I'm boring...but where does the Galaxy-X then fit?

The TNG era, or the Future Trek?...since it can fit well in both, and it IS both

[Star Dragon]

You are as obsessed with the Galxy-X as I am with the Soulwolf!

   I would say the Galaxy-X is the very beginnings of Future trek cause I see no mission where a cameo of it would work as far as combat goes in my storyline for TNG era. BUT it definately will be eclipsed by more evolved versions in later era of future Trek. I am soo tempted to post a pic of a certainship you would probably love trashman, but I can't do it (hehe)...

   OMNISCAPER, I tried your torpedoes but I could not get then to sucessfully glow. IT didn't recognise teh .pcx's for teh torp .pofs, and when I redid them they do not show up as a point of light, they turn into the whole covered pof?? what am I doing wrong?

[TrashMan]

I've seen the Soulwolf. Great looking ship

But I like the G-X better..After all it WAS the flagship of the Federation 25 years in the future...

Anway, can't wait to see the finishing product...If you need help..I'm game

[Star Dragon]

I thought you were too busy to be a modler for us? If I'm wrong in that case what do you think of my idea I posted above to Omniscaper about how to turret ST ships without destroying the ST look? Will my idea work?

  If so do YOU want the first ship you do to be the Gal-X?

   I can send you the uber textures for it but you have to map it... And slap it on your model...

lt me know,I can send via your email or yahoo messenger SN is Gett_Robo_G_2004  ...L8tr!

edit
BTW: I messed around with that Klingon ship you made, nce, but I can't do anything really cause it only takes two textures I'm limited to existing slots...and textures...

[TrashMan]

I didn't say model....

If you need help with turreting, tbl stuff or something similar...

EDIT: Huh? Two textures?

[Star Dragon]

Unless you decide to do something about it I am going with the Galxy X we have now that is modeled and textured like the other 80 some-odd fed ships... Unless you slap some fed textures on it (if you want me to send them to you I can sort though some) if you help put the turrets on them we'll slip it in.

  ALL the ships (even the ready ones) need placed on them. that means this involves modling (READ IDEA POSTED 3 POSTs ABOVE and tell me if it is feasible) otherwise we are going to have FS style gun turrets all over the models and ruin the look of ST ships... At the moment I have enough converted ships so we don't NEED any made from scratch BUT they all need turrets modeled for them! Or rather take one FS beam turret bowl off a V ship and copy and glue them all over where phasers would be or photons... That's what I am asking for help with.

  I am I comming across alright?

I messed with your Klingon ship and it only takes two textures (trust me, I booted it up in 3dexploration to place the textures on and it only gave me two slots)... So for now I can't really do it justice...

   NOW if only I could hear from OMNISCAPER... Probably has a life... go figure, not everyone can mod 24/7 like me when I'm not at work

screwing around here is Ent-A runnng from KHAN, about to warp just as Scotty got the rear shield back up in time for Khan to blow it away and yet again strike our beloved Connie... Enjoy!

http://photo.starblvd.net/Star_Dragon/5-1-2-1074093080?m=0&pg=4&ro=0&co=1

[TrashMan]

If I were you I would keep me away from high detail texturing.

As for turrets...the best idea to me is to:
1. Either make a long phaser strip turret with 4 gun points at different locations (that way each strip will only fire once for sure)

OR

2. Devide each strip on the saucer into 4 segments as separate turrets - this is tricky, as there's no known way (to me) to make them fire in some sequence

I favor the first one, for it would be far more Trekky like...
I can help you make such turrets if you like.

EDIT: If you're porting from BC, just use C2's Galaxy-X..It's the best model out there...

[Star Dragon]

Sounds good to me! I was just gonna go with whatever is easiest cause there are around 300-400 models I am looking at organizing here! 200+ in chapter 2 alone! (TNG era)... Plus the super secret stuff is quickly escalating so there are a BUT-TON of ships that need turrets!!!

  I will track down the galazy you are talking about and take a look, if it looks as good as you say and we can still get it in RETAIL TREK I will contact him for permission and let you port it

  So in the mean time what ship would you like to work on first? the Old Ent-A or the Ent-f? This will be a test of how your strip idea works compared to just ripping off V beam bowls and making them invisible but placed over teh phaser spots that appearon some of the models like the banks of the Ent-A (which still would be trek like)...  

   For testing purposes Greywolf's Galaxy was armed with Sreds and it lookd fine, but half to reduce the charge up glow by at least half...  I want to try out Omniscapers phasers so I will be dropping in a proper capital ship (maybe one of my favorites like the Segomo) and see how they look in game.

 OOO! I got  an idea how about doing DS9 first? it needs phaser strips and photon/quantum luanchers (hehe never realised I was mis-spelling it by saying "Quantom" lol

   How does that sound?

OH BTW to EVERYONE!!!

   GET PAID if you model and texture some Star Trek concepts from THIS PAGE! These ships are desired adn you get a flat fee, for details go to this site:

http://www.nightsoftware.com/concepts.htm

enjoy! Oh and if any of you go for this PLEASE think about letting us use it in teh mod since it IS a mod and they won't infringe on anyones rights if you decide to do it. (I read their contract as long as no $ changes hands mods are fine, they reserve the rights for products though)...

[TrashMan]

Wow! Getting payed for modeling ST ships!

Send my anone you want. I'll give it a go ant the turret and we'll see how it works.

B.t.w. - as far as the pahsers go, to make them the most trakky like, make them have a warmpu/warmdown of max 1 sec. They allso should be thin, like the AAAf. Use the White.pcx beam for the centre and Orange.pcx for the phaser itself (both are standard V ones)

[KARMA]

45$ for a complete model
30$ for a mesh
15$ for a texture set......
there's something strange to me.......

[TrashMan]

For what I can see, the inventivness in those models sucks...

Half the Klingon models lookd allmost exactly like the Neg'Var (wow..they added a cannon!), B'Rel or the Valdore???
Half the Federation designs loook like the Sovereign...

All in all - more like kitbashes

[Star Dragon]

They are working on a Bridge CommanderII mod for when it comes out they are ready to plop thier campaign in and want new models (their judgement) but I agree with you guys, I don't see much variation. LOL but lets not go there!

  I'm more concerened about getting ships in game finished for the moment but I will certainly look into that suggestion for the phasers , I want them to be as good as possible and if the V pics would work out GREAT! But I do have like 20-30 ST gfx files so they ARE cannon so.. will be experimenting more later.

    I STILL don't undestand why I cannot get the .pof's to recognize the .pcx file Onmiscaper sent with his torpedos, I cannot get them to glow at all! I CAN however cover them with other textures, but they look lame not glowing, I am going back to my Primary Torps for now until I can learn the nuances of secondary weapons ! he he at leat I can make THEM glow! The PCX files he sent ARE correct unless you fundamentally CANNOT make a seconday weapon that glows? or is it cause he was using the HT&L version and in Retail Trek only primary weapons can glow?

   Any ideas?

[TrashMan]

Hmm..are the torpedo's set as ballistic?

If they are then you can use a pof for them...a really, really small box or something. Then, just add to that pof a glow in PCS...that way, every torpedo fired will have a glow...

Should work...in theory.

B.t.w. - if you have cannon textures, then even better...

EDIT: the decision about how to make the turrets is up to you, but I'll tell you the pros and con's of it.

1. Phaser strip is a single turet (4 fire points)
PROS: A strip will ALLWAYS fire one shot at a time
CONS: If you take out the turret, the whole strip is lost (you shoot at one side of the saucer and the part of the same strip on the oder side won't work)

2. Phaser strip split into 4 turrets
PROS: You can destroy a segment of the whole strip, and the undamaged one will still fire
CONS: All strip segments will fire simuntaniusly...

[KARMA]

well I wasn't really complaining about their concepts
actually I agree that they aren't so oringinal ... althought you have to remember that even canon ships are often just kitbashes...on the other hand there are already so many canon refits, variations and shipclasses into the ST universe that I hardly see the point of adding dozens of new ships very similar to each other...btw it's their choice.

what I consider really ridiculous is that they pay the double for a model than what they pay for a whole texture set, when a decent texture set take at least double of time than a mesh, and when it is far easyer to find modellers than texturers.
and I'm also a bit perplex about paying 5+ times for a CG model than for a "low" poly model from the same design, built to be used in game.
And if you guys are right, and they just want to create a shipset for a mod for a game that still has to come, well this makes me even more perplex since it's hard to create a model for an engine when you don't know its specifics...

[Star Dragon]

You got to remember, their comminity has been around longer than us (all the way back to Star Fleet Academy! Remember that game!) so their long time modles have followed theri fmornats and are well established in their techniques (for the  .hog, .sod, .mod, and now .nif files) they do the same basics, but the saving of the model to a different game format is the difference.

   Their limits have steadily been raised ever since SFA and Birth of the Federation, through Armada I & II, the SFC 1-3 series, Klingon Academy, and finally Bridge Commander.

As for getting ready fo an upcomming game many people did that with HOMEWORLD2 . they scrapped their HW1 mod plans when they heard HW2 was comming out and geared for modding it. Maybe they know somethig we don't (like basic sapecifics) but I would assume since I am not contacting them for more info, that at the vey least BCII will be backwards compatible as far as models go...

edit

Hey Trashman I vote for option 1 cauyse it's more trek like

sure more than one strip can fire, but having all segments fire at once is a no no!

If the enemy destroyes the strip all emitter for that strip go bye bye, that I CAN live withand IS more trek like! Watch lots of voyager episodes it happens like that!

  BTW will these NEED to be visible onteh ship or can we make them invisible (invisible texture for the while strip model parts) so it looks like it's comming from firing points WE choose? Different ships have different size shaped strips, but if we make a generic 4 point strip and make it small tiny even, we can put them all over it and give the ship s good rane of fire

but not go overboard! the scorpion class ship I posted a pic of I found out in tech readouits has like 387 phaser emitters! divide by 4 =? over 90 strips?

   strip placing will have to be on a ship by ship basis and what looks logical from  the look of the ship's texturs (overlay them) or from military logic.

  Plus most ships have a dedicated photon module so it will need a special strip made of 2 sets of 2 firing points This is the black rectangle with the two red hatches, usually locatedonteh front betweenth saucer section and the drive section in the middle of the "neck"

  [  oo   |  oo  ]  <-- like that. casue there are only 2 tubes per module BUT they have the capacity to change out ammow and alternate usage SO have the set of 2 firing points a milimeter apart so it looks like is it comming out the SAME hole!) you can shoot out 2 photons  2 quantums, or 1 of each that way by selecting both turret weapons in fred..  This may sound confusing but you get what I am saying right?


any chance of seeeing this in action soon  on a test model? (sreens)?

[Omniscaper]

I beg to differ about the phaser strip problem. I've been tweaking my POF's and I found that not all phaser segments of the strip will fire if the fov is set between 5-20. Now all the segments have a turret normal set to an angle of 45 degrees with an exception to the forward sections so it can still fire straight forward. I'm working on an updated version for all ships.

I am still turretting the Galor and the Jemhadar Fighter for the big battle that was put on layaway.

Star Drogon, Much of the POF's I received have much of their UV's not workin, I'll contact you via Yahoo/AOL for details.

[TrashMan]

Like I said, send me aa model and I'll turret it.

And yes, strips will hev to be made on a ship-to ship basis.
It ould be invisible, but I think it's better for the whole strip to be a subobject.
The exact point(s) of fire won't be quite visible tough, since it will be a little way's inside the strip. The ship will allways fire from that fire point which is facing the enemy best.

Photon torpedo launcher are not strips, rather standard forward facing (very small and flat) turrets with a very small FOV..
Or you can just make them a secondary, but will one then be able to destroy the launcher?

[Omniscaper]

I'm curious what you folks think about my solution to the phaser strip dilemma. I'm still working on an updated POF for a reduced FOV turret system for solving the multi firing phaser arc which works great in my preliminary tests.

My current Galaxy model (you should have observed this already if you have downloaded it) has major saucer phaser arcs divided into 10 objects each arc. Each object is its own turret with FOV settings that I am now perfecting to avoid multiple firing turrets. I dont exectly understand the invisible turrret process.

I would rather not have to get too deep into this TBL issue. I always make my ships with enough subobjects for anyone to make into subsystems. The Galaxy has enough subojects and corresponding damage textures to please the TLB'ers.

[TrashMan]

The problem with that approach is that you must set the exact FOV for each phaser strip on each ship... and to get it right would take ages. And even then, if you make a turn in the galaxy, one strip will fire 4 times, as soon as each turret get's the enemy in it's FOV (which means, he will fire from one strip 3-4 times in a VERY short period) AND the FOV will have to be so small, that fasr enemy ships will get into and out of it before the beam warms up.


I'm not sure wether it's best for the strip turret to be visible. in order to make it look good, it will have to have lot's of polys. By making it invisible, we would loose nothing, so maby it's better that way...

[Star Dragon]

Just slow,

  Ok to drum up some interst I am releasing a SUPER SECRET pic! I won't explain what it is or why it looks that way so just enjoy it and speculate all you want!

  I will give one piece of info however it is for a time frame after Kirk, but before Picard...

http://photo.starblvd.net/Star_Dragon/5-2-3-1076944573?m=0&pg=4&ro=1&co=2