[Sheepy]

so you have like 1 to 9 ... then if/when it reaches the last one it simply loops back to #1 again, would that be possible?

[Liberator]

Since an Alpha is available through the use of TGA why not have an Alpha Transparency for the part of the ship in question and use a second texture with only the part in question used.

[StratComm]

Because alpha-transparent tga's are a lot bigger than the 256 color pcx that would be needed do whatever you'd need with a nameplate, and will work the exact same way.  And the way Nico's proposed would only involve an optional 128x128 8-bit texture or so to accomplish, as opposed to two huge maps of which both must be used.  It's a quite simple decision actually.

In truth, having nameplates on a fighter seems a bit excessive to me in the first place.  It's not like the flight crews are too worried in advance about what position within Beta wing they will be flying in to paint a new ID marker on the fighter.  That aside, in the case of reinforcement wings, I'd almost rather see them come in with a fresh 01, 02, 03 etc than having them actually continue to add up.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Sheepy
That sounds like a cool idea, im suprised no one has tried it before, also im curious to see how the heavy version is coming along

It's not coming along anytime soon, I'll first complete the ezechiel C ( main lod is almost finished, just a few polys to map in the cockpit ), then I'll take a look at Karma's Fenris ( new mapping, I believe it deserves it ), then I have a couple ideas I wanna try out.

Originally posted by Sheepy
so you have like 1 to 9 ... then if/when it reaches the last one it simply loops back to #1 again, would that be possible?

well, with XX, you'd go up to 99, I think that's way enough so you never have to worry about reaching the last one

Originally posted by Liberator
Since an Alpha is available through the use of TGA why not have an Alpha Transparency for the part of the ship in question and use a second texture with only the part in question used.

Bah, I was replying post per post, but noticed StratComm already replyed. So to sum up: exactly what he says: to save space.
As for the name plates, I agree that new wings should start with fresh numbers, but that's beyond the point, not my problem, at least. What I want is just avoid having all the Ezechiels in existence being numbered 01 So it's decided, I'll do that green panel thing. That'll even allow me to put numbers ( or anything else ) wherever I want on the ship.
The rest is up to fredders/coders.

[Taristin]

Good 'nuff.

[Bobboau]

a bit off topic, but I did mention that we fixed the old z buffer error with green transparency, it should also work with alpha chanels that make parts completely transparent

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Sandwich
WHY MUST YOU POST COOL STUFF WHEN I TAKE A FEW DAYS AWAY FROM HLP!??!?!?!?!?!?!?

Venom, I'm.... speechless. She's beautiful.

Although I think that the black-on-white lines would be better off grey-on-white...

Impeccable timing, wasn't it?

[Nico]

Mmh, wanted to try it ingame ( early fly if you want ), so Woo converetd it for me. Pb is, PCS doesn't like it:
"Stack overflow protection was engaged,
please correct the errors in this model (too many polygons in the same average location). "
Conversion works fine with Woomeisters' converter ( he calls it "woomeisters super htl modelview" ), but autofacet won't work, which makes the ship either w/o smoothing at all, or with one single smoothgroup ( which of course leads to ugly things in some places )...
So what's wrong with PCS again?

oh, a few pics, to make the bums happy ( with full smoothing ):




See? it works, and woomeister reports no performance hit at all with two of them on screen ( plus one old version ).

[mikhael]

Very impressive. I think you need to convert that for Iwar2, now.

I'd do it except for that small problem of the maps disappearing.

[Nico]

Shock

You learn something new everyday, for instance, while max usually gives the triangulated polycount, when you're working in poly editing mode rather than mesh editing mode, it gives untriangulated polycount. So that eze above is a bit "more" heavy on the poly count than I thought
4391 polys to be exact.
Hargh.
Gotta have to make some severly optimized lods

[Rictor]

Amazing work Venom. To see it ingame, its just so incredible.

[Woolie Wool]

*drools some more*

Originally posted by Havock


take away the wings and you have a dildo with thrusters strapped on

Shut up.

[Bobboau]

nah, that'll be ok, talk to kazan, see if he can get a more informative error mesage, like roughly were the problem polys are.

[Nico]

That's cool, nice and all, but what I want most is some help for that smoothing pb

edit: didn't see your message when I posted that, Bob.

[Bobboau]

well for that, you'll need to get PCS working, and for that you'll need an error mesage better than "two out of the 5000 polys in your model are perfictly aligned to **** you, but I'm not going to tell you wich two"
PCS does suport auto-faceting wich will fix the smooth groupe problem.

ah, and I didn't see your edit when posting this
you know you may want to try messing with the scaleing factors, there are some models that if I changed there size would convert but otherwise wouldn't

[Nico]

As my edit said, the post was directed to the other people commenting the screens, not at you

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Nico

4391 polys to be exact.
Hargh.
Gotta have to make some severly optimized lods

Have you tried Max's optimize modifier?  I only recently learned about this one, and it can do wonders. Or completely ruin your model, either or.

[Nico]

yeah: it sucks. Don't even need to try on that mesh, with concave shapes like that, it's bound to **** up.
It's much better to make a lod from scratch and, in the end, much faster, actually.

[Woomeister]

Fixed it. There was some kind of geometry error blocking PCS from converting it.

[Nico]

mmh, but with just ambient lighting and no shading whatsoever, it's kind of hard checking the smoothing groups.
K, since my laptop seems to be able to run FS2 fine, what SCP files should I get to try that out myself?