Author Topic: Executor Speculation  (Read 11060 times)

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Offline Luis Dias

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Executor Speculation
A "Lodded" Executor seems like a brilliant idea. Having it hyperjumping right into our own corner of space with lots of ISDs in "front" of it would be a terrifying sight indeed :)

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Of course, that's not to say a fully detailed Executor wouldn't be awesome, and I don't think anybody in FoTG would object to including the model if it was made. :) If anybody makes it, the "background" model could be re-used as one of the LODs. As for balance... I wouldn't bother. It's the friggin' Executor. The right balance for that ship would be "blows up everything but the Death Star". On a second though, scratch the latter part... :) I imagine that in game, it'd mostly be used in "cutscene" missions anyway, and, perhaps, as a "Get out NOW!" cue on some Rebel mission that goes badly wrong in the end. I can see quite a few of uses for a detailed Executor, if anybody actually had the skill and strength to make it.

 

Offline CountBuggula

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Re: Executor Speculation
Of course, that's not to say a fully detailed Executor wouldn't be awesome, and I don't think anybody in FoTG would object to including the model if it was made. :) If anybody makes it, the "background" model could be re-used as one of the LODs. As for balance... I wouldn't bother. It's the friggin' Executor. The right balance for that ship would be "blows up everything but the Death Star". On a second though, scratch the latter part... :) I imagine that in game, it'd mostly be used in "cutscene" missions anyway, and, perhaps, as a "Get out NOW!" cue on some Rebel mission that goes badly wrong in the end. I can see quite a few of uses for a detailed Executor, if anybody actually had the skill and strength to make it.

True.  I think the main idea was that the time and effort would be better spent elsewhere, but we wouldn't turn down an amazing executor model if someone did it for us.  As for mission ideas, XWA had several missions featuring the ship, and if I remember right, it was mostly as you described - escort ships trying to escape past the giant monstrosity to get to the hyperspace point.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Executor Speculation
Wasn't there something exactly like that in X Wing Alliance, or was that just an ordinary ISD? I haven't played that game in 15 years...

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Yes, precisely like this. Vader jumps in with his SSD, the Rebels crap their pants and scatter. He does seem to have this kind of effect on people. :) That sort of mission is something I'd like to see. Ideally, from the Imperial perspective, because it'd be a bleak day for the Rebels, especially if the SSD wasn't underpowered like in XWA. :)

 
Re: Executor Speculation
In the Endor missions of XWA, bitmaps of ISDs were used as background elements.
And in one of those, you have to take out the Executor's shield generators (but unlike in RotJ, this happens before the DS' shield generator is destroyed).
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Offline Deathsnake

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Re: Executor Speculation
The Executer from Warlords?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVLAEXr5guM
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Models from Warlords were used before, but only as placeholders. They're not detailed enough. :) Now you see what's the problem with making an Executor for FoTG.

 
Re: Executor Speculation
hmmm I m not part of the team but maybe I can find some good model and ask permission from the author to use his model, ill convert it and pofit to make it work in game... I m sure I can find some model with an acceptable poly count and textures.

just how many polies and texture resolution are we talking about? I m not sure at what quality level is this mod settling at currently...
« Last Edit: June 18, 2014, 03:01:49 pm by assasing123 »

 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: Executor Speculation
just how many polies and texture resolution are we talking about? I m not sure at what quality level is this mod settling at currently...

We're probably talking somewhere around 5k-25k vertices. The texture resolution would then be anything from 1024^2 to 4096^2. We have no specific requirements, except that of course the closer to the camera we can put it, the better.

 

Offline Nagrach

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Re: Executor Speculation
There are some beautiful Versions of the Executer for Empire at War... but, I fear that they doesn't look that good upclose. Maybe some of the SOASE Mods?

Found that after a little bit of googling: http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=8&key=517
« Last Edit: June 19, 2014, 04:28:03 am by Nagrach »
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Anything from RTSes is too low-res to look good in FoTG. Remember, this thing is gonna be about 17.5km (at least according to Wookiepedia, on-screen measurements give something like that).
That SSD from SciFi-3D looks good, though. If you can get permission to modify the model, you could try using it as a starting point.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Executor Speculation
Found that after a little bit of googling: http://www.scifi3d.com/details.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=8&key=517

The problem with models like that is that they usually require a massive amount of work to adapt them to the necessities of FSO.
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Oh, and that too. But given how massive undertaking modeling this from scratch would be, it's one place where it could actually be a good idea. Still, the amount of work will definitely not be less that for other ships in the mod, probably more, actually.
Ultimately, though, as long as licensing is in order, how a ship was made doesn't matter. If it works and looks good, then it's good.

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Executor Speculation
As cool as Fractalsponge's models are, that's getting way far out into diminishing returns land. Even if it turned out that it was modeled and textured in a game-efficient fashion (which seems doubtful), it runs into hard engine limits (it's supposed to have something like 2000 turbolasers) and game design issues (what do you do with a ship that can't be beaten?). I think a nice efficient background model would be a much better fit for us.

 

Offline Nagrach

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Re: Executor Speculation
 Final (for now) hull bumps, with mapping. 650,000 polys with all 4 quadrants with modeled bumps.   :warp:
That sounds a little... eeh... excessive^^.

Well modelling it myself? Would be an Honor for me, but its years since I used blender, and I never came close to your Quality. Even If I had the time to do so :/.
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
As cool as Fractalsponge's models are, that's getting way far out into diminishing returns land. Even if it turned out that it was modeled and textured in a game-efficient fashion (which seems doubtful), it runs into hard engine limits (it's supposed to have something like 2000 turbolasers) and game design issues (what do you do with a ship that can't be beaten?). I think a nice efficient background model would be a much better fit for us.
For turbolasers, remember that there's no actual movie evidence of just how many weapons it has. Therefore, we can apply some artistic license and make a loadout fitting into the game limits (and what works). Also, it's possible to set a single turret to imitate, say, 10 turbos at once (dunno what's the firepoint per turret limit), provided they're single-part. There have been ships with over 100 turrets made for FSO, and they worked. In theory, 2000 guns isn't impossible, though I don't think it needs that many anyway.

As for the game design, there are plenty of ways of using a ship that can't be beaten, or requires an entire fleet to do so. XW:A had missions with the Executor, and it did work quite well, though their version was only 8km long. It could also serve as a story device, Executor is the Vader's flagship, afterall, and other ones were also used by important people. You could also make a campaign just out of taking out such a ship with some neat trick.

As for polycount, detail boxes and normal maps. :) Also, don't worry too much about it, since polycount isn't critical for FSO anyway, and there isn't going to be more than one SSD in most missions featuring the ship anyway.

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Executor Speculation
We would at least be in the high hundreds of turrets (and most turrets are multipart in FotG) if we hoped to achieve a reasonable density to make it actually feel like a ship and not an inert brick in space. The ISD has over 70 with just a tiny fraction of Executor's surface area.

It's totally fine to fantasize about it, but I don't want to get people's hopes up about having a fully realized Executor. It isn't a team priority, it might not even be possible, and there are lots of more useful ships out there that could help us a achieve a more dynamic and well rounded ship set.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Executor Speculation
Well, people interested in working on the Executor aren't on the team, so it's not like it's taking away from the resources. :) It's one of the few ships from OT not yet in FoTG.

Anyway, Esarai's Amaterasu has, IIRC, 164 turrets. If you equipped the SSD with a good coverage with large, long range main turbo batteries (perhaps Death Star-style), it could, perhaps, do with about 70-100 anti-ship turrets. Small AA turrets might be done as clusters single-part turrets, and if you gave it 100 clusters of 10 turrets, you'd have 1000 AA guns in toto. I think that should do. :) Especially if the turrets are equipped with powerful weapons, which would have to be the case. Huge anti-ship turrets would probably be concentrated in the "cityscape" part, so would most of the AA, while white armored parts could have much lower coverage, relying on fire from cityscape and the "side trench" of the ship, as well as the very fact they're armored.

Also note, the Executor's armament might not be as mighty as it's size implies. It definitely shouldn't be able to destroy Home One in a single salvo, because it definitely couldn't do that during BOE (otherwise it'd be one short battle, wouldn't it? :) ). Might have to do with it's stern guns not being able to reach it, but I think that near-inpenetrable armor should be just as important as an impressive array of weapons. In fact, that would be keeping with the "WWII in space" vibe of the SW. Naval battles should last quite a while, even if the odds are ridiculously skewed.

 

Offline headdie

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Re: Executor Speculation
If you are going to make the ship a near background model you wont be needing anti fighter turrets or probably torpedo launchers on the ship as it will be too far away to see objects of that size so that will cut down on the turret number.

tbh I would be happy with this, while recreating scenes in the EU such as several battles in the X-Wing series of books and the likes would be cool taking into account things like

1) Game engine limitations
2) Time taken to create the asset in the first place
3) Focus of the project which i understand to initially be the OT era
4) Balance issues

this would be a nightmare to make a reality.  Also what could happen is that a reasonable quality BG model could be later upgraded to make workable as a centerpiece for a mission
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