[brandx0]

I think the sheer amount of comments along the lines of "It's too short/fat/skinny/long" have shown that people actually do care about these things.

[TopAce]

While seeing renders. That's all you have then. If they're in game, it's got gameplay, a story, some interface, music, sounds, and lots of other things. You can't comment on anything else while seeing only renders. A game isn't only about graphics.

[brandx0]

Of course it isn't, but my contribution to the game is solely graphics, that's my department and that's what I do. Of course I'm going to push to create the best graphics I can because I trust the other people in the project to take care of the other things.

[chief1983]

It sounds like you think that this is somehow holding up our progress too, when I can assure you that's not the case.  Currently Brand is our primary modeler, he's one guy doing this in his spare time.  Most of the models we've received have at least required his attentions before being ready for conversion, so pretty much every POF we have has gone through him at some point.  It has nothing to do with too much attention to detail.  The hard drive crash didn't help either, but that again is unrelated to the amount of attention paid to detail.  That was just unfortunate.

[TopAce]

It sounds like you think that this is somehow holding up our progress too...

I didn't want to imply that, but I still think the amount of time we spend analyzing itty-bitty details is an overkill.

I'll leave it as that.

[WOLF_Angel]

It is those "itty bitty details" that can make the simplest of things interlock correctly and give the gamer the more rich experience.

Good example:  if you ever played Call of Duty: World at War, or either of the Modern Warfare.  there is grim and blood on the hand holding your gun.  You can read German propaganda posters in some boards.  These and MANY more itty bitty details, make the game a rich environment that most games take for granted as far as stopping and looking.  Then you look at games that but far less attention to detail and you get something that seems like Final Fantasy.  The cinema scenes are great, but the actual game seems to have little detail in it.

In FotG, we are in space so there is little to reference to make it a higher caliber experience for the gamer to get involved.  so nit picking on the ships is rather important.  That is just from an artistic representation stand point.  Forget the technical "making everything look right".

[chief1983]

You know, considering the length of the game, I though FFVII had pretty vivid worlds

And yeah, thanks for pointing out that fact.  Hopefully our models will be of a detail such that we don't need separate ones just for cinematography purposes.

[TopAce]

Wolf: Comparing a commercial product to a community-developed mod is unfair and therefore unnecessary. Not only are there more developers during the development of a commercial game, they do that for a living (for good money), they are well-trained and experienced in their professions, there are more testers, they have real-life(!) references to work with, and one can continue this enumeration until infinity. FotG, on the other hand, is a community project that its developers do in their spare time, for free, there is no force holding them back from taking month-long pauses or quitting the team will not cause any financial problems. Hell, we aren't even talking about existent or once-existent things. Remember that there's an apparent conflict between the EGVV and ESB in relation to the Nebulon? That cannot happen in a World War II FPS, so even in this regard, the developers of CoD have an easier job.

[chief1983]

TopAce, I'm sorry but that's not really true.  There are many mods and indie projects that have surpassed the bulk of commercial products in terms of content quality.  We probably have just as good, if not better references than the TG developers had when they made X-wing and TIE Fighter.  I bet they didn't even have access to the studio models themselves, not that they could have ever come close to that level of quality with the technology available at the time.  And just because the X-wing/ISD/etc can't actually fly in space, doesn't mean there isn't a very real representation of it, that many fans are probably intimately familiar with.  All it would take to make a good version of the EGVV is a decent analysis of the studio models.  Someone even asked Brand for ortho renders of his models because he's been doing such a good job on the details, in a fairly short amount of time for most ships.  If we had a converter with as much experience as him we'd probably have a full fleet by now, so our attention to detail isn't really what's holding us back.  Even if he learned conversion himself it'd just slow down the modeling process and take away from the spurts he spends working on the ISD.

The EGVV authors probably didn't have access to studio models either, the book is somewhat old and the models were probably not on tour at the time.  If they were, they were probably just looking to make a buck rather than generate a real technical document (on that note, I bet the Trekkies get a better representation from their Technical Manuals).

[TopAce]

If we had a converter with as much experience as [Brand]...

And here's where my argument against comparing a commercial product to FotG comes into play.

[chief1983]

But how?  Your argument is about too much attention to detail, and I'm saying that's not even causing a problem right now.  You're just saying we should stop doing something that no one else minds and is a non-issue anyway.

[TopAce]

I was refering to my particular argument against comparing us to a dedicated game developing company that I wrote in response to Wolf's comment about CoD.

[chief1983]

Nothing wrong with that.  Just because it takes us longer doesn't mean we can't produce a similar level of quality.  Several mods have already proven that to be the case, and in areas where we may have to cut corners, like voice acting, it's more understandable than in others like model quality.

[Thaeris]

I'd like to comment on the VA of the TCs I've seen for FSO...

For the most part, they're surprisingly good. The VA staff really cares about what they're doing and makes their best effort to produce a good sound, despite the fact that they probably don't have access to studio-quality equipment.

And for what it's worth, the VA done for the BtRL demo was exceptional...

[chief1983]

I'm just saying that with all the time we have spent, I don't want VA to be the thing holding us up. Especially if we're just going for a multiplayer/tech demo release initially and not a campaign or something.

[swashmebuckle]

This bickering is pointless.  Now, Brand-X will provide us with the appropriately proportioned models by the time this Total Conversion is operational.  We will then crush the prequels with one swift stroke!

[Thaeris]

At once, Sir!

[WOLF_Angel]

Nice Swash!

I agree with Chief.  Just because they are not "a commercial company" does not mean they can not do commercial quality.  BtRL was on of the better space flight sims I got to tink with.  (I just wished it was finished instead of dropped).  By comparison I can think of several examples of horrible games in the same category made by "real companies".  Free Lancer was not exactly the greatest of games.

Chief, the team is doing an awesome job!

[CountBuggula]

Nice Swash!

I agree with Chief.  Just because they are not "a commercial company" does not mean they can not do commercial quality.  BtRL was on of the better space flight sims I got to tink with.  (I just wished it was finished instead of dropped).  By comparison I can think of several examples of horrible games in the same category made by "real companies".  Free Lancer was not exactly the greatest of games.

Chief, the team is doing an awesome job!

Just off of the top of my head I can think of several mods that were better than many retail products:

Desert Combat
DLA (ended up getting hired by Bioware to make commercial products)
Day of Defeat (ended up getting purchased by Valve and remade into DoD:source)

There's no reason at all to have low expectations just because it's a mod.  These guys have proven that they're able to put out amazing work - let's continue to support them to do so.

[spaceranger]

Just off of the top of my head I can think of several mods that were better than many retail products:

Desert Combat
DLA (ended up getting hired by Bioware to make commercial products)
Day of Defeat (ended up getting purchased by Valve and remade into DoD:source)

There's no reason at all to have low expectations just because it's a mod.  These guys have proven that they're able to put out amazing work - let's continue to support them to do so.

Must add Moviebattles 2 ... best SW FPS team oriented action in a vid (and multiplayer/network only)

Carry on!