[Aardwolf]

I'm working on modeling an underlying superstructure for one of my old non-FS cruiser designs (known only as "Simple Cruiser 2")

Here's a WIP shot:



The idea is for a bunch of 'layers' of destructible subsystems:

1. In the holes of the superstructure goes the plating/armor -- fairly thin layers of metal-looking stuff which can be blasted off fairly easily. These would be pof'd as destructible subsystems.

2. Beneath them there might be lighter bracing/scaffolding. Depending on what panel was blown off, some of this might 'cling' to the panel (possibly as subsystem debris), and thus would just leave that panel empty. There might also be some deeper-in paneling in some parts of the ship, which would be under both the scaffolding layer and the plating/armor layer.

3. Under that is the internals; greebly stuff. Ideally a lot of it would be destructible and would have -destroyed submodels as well. Pipes that could be blown open, fuel tanks... some of these more advanced features might require scripting, however. Also, not all of the parts in this layer would necessarily be destructible; some of them would probably go together (pof-wise) with layer 4.

4. The superstructure will basically be indestructible. Until the ship is destroyed, it remains intact.



As for ship debris (once the ship finally explodes), I'm not entirely sure how that would be done.

[stuart133]

WOW 
That looks pretty damn cool. Hopefully one day all models will be like this. One problem though, does the engine support this?

[Aardwolf]

That looks pretty damn cool. Hopefully one day all models will be like this. One problem though, does the engine support this?

Thanks!    

As for engine support... sort of yes, and sort of no. It's definitely doable, to an extent, but making it look really good might not be doable without some fairly hard work being done on the source-code side of things.

[BS403]

great idea hope it works out 

[Nuke]

ive had this idea for awhile but ive never actually wanted to model it, i was gonna do it for the htl ragnarok and valhalla class but decided to go with a simpler exterior structure design. mainly because lattice structures eat polygons to no end. and old installation model i was working on with a bunch of external truss like girders quickly made the polycount so high that i decided not to finish the model.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Really cool yes, but also really REALLY impractical in terms of effort involved in modelling, texturing, UV mapping, setting up the hierarchy and all the crazy POF data and tabling you will need to do. And then on top of that you have the efficiency hit of having so many separate subobjects multiplied by the number of textures used on each one.

Not trying to put you off it - by all means keep going, but definitely keep in mind that what you're doing is very very complicated, and there are good reasons it hasn't and in all probability won't ever catch on.

[Scooby_Doo]

I agree VA... good luck LOL

Also it'll be murder for subsystems too.

[Reprobator]

Very nice idea!
I thought about something like this but not for the same objective, if we had a phisical engine, we could give subobject proprerty like bending value, breakability etc... and when ships collide havign something like we see on racing sim... but i was just dreaming

[Herra Tohtori]

Nice experiment.

However, from an engineering standpoint, poor design.

Use triangles and diagonal struts to make the structure rigid. As it is, it would rely on each individual joint's welding or whatever method of attaching parts together it uses to stay in shape.

If you want to go through the trouble, why not make it convincing too? 

[Aardwolf]

Nice experiment.

However, from an engineering standpoint, poor design.

Use triangles and diagonal struts to make the structure rigid. As it is, it would rely on each individual joint's welding or whatever method of attaching parts together it uses to stay in shape.

If you want to go through the trouble, why not make it convincing too?  

Yeah yeah... I was thinking about adding diagonal struts, but decided it wasn't really worth it from a 'looking cool' standpoint.

I was also thinking I might add some sort of 'spine' which the other stuff would be attached to.

Very nice idea!
I thought about something like this but not for the same objective, if we had a phisical engine, we could give subobject proprerty like bending value, breakability etc... and when ships collide havign something like we see on racing sim... but i was just dreaming

That would be cool, but it's definitely not doable with the current engine. I reckon it might not be doable with any software in real-time any time soon, either. At least, not in the context of a game with other features to handle. Although... "The Force Unleashed" had that Digital Molecular Material thing, which is sort of like this idea, in a sense...

[Reprobator]

well or something like we had in the old viper racing sim for exemple (i m not sure it was called displacement vertex)

[Aardwolf]

A bit more work done on the superstructure modeling, slowly working further toward the back of the original model:





I'm not sure I want to leave some of the parts the exact way they are... the engines (not well shown by either of these screenshots) and the arm-things on the bottom are kind of funny-looking. I don't want to change the overall shape too drastically, but I might end up modifying those somewhat before I go on to them with the superstructure modeling work.

[Maverick]

Man this thing reminds me of the Behemoth from WC3... looks great thus far too

[headdie]

I see where your coming from, the exposed framework kind of helps

[Titan]

Another problem- what about anti subsystem weapons?

[stuart133]

Well would the anti subsystem weapons not take out panels + hidden subsystems, (I would have thought that they could be modelled underneath the panels) whereas main weapons and bombs could take out parts of the superstructure.

[Kiloku]

You know, this gave me an idea for a weapon: A penetrator bomb, which causes little damage to the panel subsystem (if theres some way for the game to identify what subsystem it is hitting) and goes through it, exploding inside, and damaging the ship from there!

[Ziame]

if theres some way for the game to identify what subsystem it is hitting

 Huh? Didn't you notice that when you shoot some subsystem, the game recognizes it being hit?

[Kiloku]

Well, sure. But I mean if the game can use that information to know if it should go through the subsystem (in the case it hits a panel) or if it should explode right away.

[Unknown Target]

You might be able to do this. But doing it without making the engine eat itself every time there's more than a few of these on the screen? I dunno.