[Flipside]

Well, I've been playing Freespace 2 again, after a bit of a break, and theres a few things that still bug me about the 'atmosphere' of the game..

I think that part of the problem is the fact the game was years ahead, in what it wanted to achieve, to what computers were capable of at the time. So, rather than the feeling of being a light fighter, skimming over the skin of a Goliath, you feel more like a Hill walker on one of those slopes that's at just the 'wrong' angle. So that when you get from one side of the Destroyer to the other, you actually think, 'thank God I'm finally there', instead of feeling exhillerated. This is also, in part, to do with the speed/size of the ships, but nothing can be done about that without breaking the campaign.

Secondly is the quality of the models themselves, and the fact that the technology didn't exist to provide the quality of model for ships this big. I know that the models are being hi-polied now, and the work done is incredible, but, and I'm not going to make friends for saying this, should we be doing it yet? Bobboau's added features for allowing ultra high detail using Lods. I'm not sure, but I think he's planning to add seperate Lod distances for Subsystems from the main ship model, though I may have just wishfully imagined that ('sides, he's probably far too busy with textures at the moment ). So, itn't it possible that, say in 3 months time, somebody will have to pick up all these hi-poly models and work on them again to make use of the latest possibilities etc? I suppose they can be edited 'on the fly' but that never strikes me as the best way of doing things.

Anyway, just a few thoughts

[Night Hammer]

Originally posted by Flipside
I think that part of the problem is the fact the game was years ahead, in what it wanted to achieve, to what computers were capable of at the time. So, rather than the feeling of being a light fighter, skimming over the skin of a Goliath, you feel more like a Hill walker on one of those slopes that's at just the 'wrong' angle. So that when you get from one side of the Destroyer to the other, you actually think, 'thank God I'm finally there', instead of feeling exhillerated. This is also, in part, to do with the speed/size of the ships, but nothing can be done about that without breaking the campaign.
 

[WMCoolmon]

I'd like to see more high-poly fighters. They look good in the ship selection screen and not a whole lot of improvements over the LOD system have been done as far as optimization is concerned. Ships move so fast relative to fighters' size that (in general) a subsystem-LOD system would be worthless for most of them.

And there is a lot of improvement that can be done with a little greebling *points to Perseus pictures in his sig*

[Flipside]

I was thinking of it more as an extension of Bobboau's system. So that when you are, for example, skimming over a construction yard or equally large object, you could have massively detailed subsyste

- at this point of sending the post, my computer reset, please ignore.

[Flipside]

Well, I was thinking more along the line of expanding Bobs system, so that if, for example you are near a construction yard or the like, you can have highly detailed construction areas which can Lod independently of the main shell of the object. Also, for those of us working on Terrain mods, it's handy to be able to keep the Terrain as detailed as possible and Lod the buildings as subsystems.

My cxoncern with the models is, for example, say Normal mapping ends up implemented. That alone would make a lot of the panels people have patiently bevelled redundant, and possibly wasting GPU time. I'm just concerned that is what will happen.

[WMCoolmon]

Normal mapping can always be made to supplement, rather than replace, details on ships. Modelled details will always be far superior to normal maps (Um, in the near future anyway. ) If/when shadows are implemented, those details may be useful to have around.

[WeatherOp]

Originally posted by Flipside
I think that part of the problem is the fact the game was years ahead, in what it wanted to achieve, to what computers were capable of at the time. So, rather than the feeling of being a light fighter, skimming over the skin of a Goliath, you feel more like a Hill walker on one of those slopes that's at just the 'wrong' angle. So that when you get from one side of the Destroyer to the other, you actually think, 'thank God I'm finally there', instead of feeling exhillerated. This is also, in part, to do with the speed/size of the ships, but nothing can be done about that without breaking the campaign.
 

Yep, Running down the Colossus from a whole pile of Shivan fighters, because your wingmen are dead, and hoping you can get to the side of it, where a whole lot of turrets are at.

And that brings up another question that probley has been brought up , shouldn't the big ships have more turrets? But, once again you couldn't do anything about it, without breaking the main campaign.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Well the only thing about big ships, is, that you'd think they'd at least have guns that could fire from one length of their hull to the other. A lot of the smaller guns can't do that.

[Pnakotus]

Or guns that travel fast enough to hit a ship travelling at 15m/s. Follow a TerHuge one day: they're SO SLOW barely moving targets can evade, just by driving in a straight line.  It's so very, very lame... but noone wants to speed them up.  Well, except me, obviously.

[Taristin]

Sarny did once, already. It made the ships much more deadly, though. And it probably affected the campaign.

[Pnakotus]

If you changed both at once, there wouldn't be a problem.

Also, many people say 'it makes ships more deadly', but I wonder if anyone experiments?  In my experience, the caps can now actually score hits on fighters, but their weapons are so weak that it doesn't matter.  It doesn't seem to affect the counter-bomb fire, since bombs don't maneuveur at all.  If you're within 500m of a cap, you SHOULD be getting chewed to bits.  

[Wanderer]

In my attempts with dozens of simple test (dummy) missions the greatest problem has been wingmens and hostile fighters survival as they tend to go down very fast if capship weapons are properly upgraded. I mean to use these (TBL File , Pof needed) but not in FS2 campaing or in other already completed campaigns as these rip the balance to pieces. These needs some of SCP effects to work properly (mainly thruster effects and laser glows).

Weapon i mean to replace the terran turret with is especially deadly against fighters as i wanted to have a shockwave for it (mostly only for effects) but this shockwave also happen sort of a dampen flight controls for short period of time.

In general those changes are not very large, they just bring capship weapons on the same line with the fighter weapons (perhaps a bit more powerful, but capship weapons tend have only one firing point compared to fighters having from four to eleven firing points) in a way they should be IMHO.

[WeatherOp]

If a Cap-ship had Kaisers instead of the Huge turrets, they would kick your butt.

[Wanderer]

Wouldn't that be just fair.

In standard FS2 it is more dangerous to attack against Medusa with one prometheus R in its turret than to attack against (not beam or missile equipped) capships. Only dangerous weapons capships have are AAAf-beams and missiles.

[WeatherOp]

Attacking a Ursa would be more dangerous, since it's got the Kaiser.

[Dark RevenantX]

Virtual Displacement Mapping would be a smashing idea!  Don't you think?  We only have to wait two years before it can be run on a decent framerate!

[Flipside]

Thing is I suppose, when a card is powerful enough to support those kinds of shader techniques, it'll be powerful enough simply to render the polygons and have done with it

[WeatherOp]

I've started a thread on GW on my thought, is this about what some of you were thinking?

Here

[Roanoke]

I find Normal Maps look odd 'cos you have what appears to be a very high detail model but with a nasty low poly outline shape.

[Flipside]

Well, I'm going to wait and see how shaders perform on my card, I have a GeForce5600, and though it supports shaders, sometimes I get absolutely horrific slowdowns. That may be down to the programming in the game, or possibly theres a slight difference in the way ATI cards and NVidia ones handle shaders.

Either way, I sometimes wonder if shader support was thrown in as pixie dust on some cards that can't really handle them.