Split: ADCK's updated Behemoths

[ADCK]

They look awesome, but pagroove, the windows could be a little smaller.

Be nice to have a few more Behemoths in game, they've been pretty scarce in my spacelanes as of late.

Ya, I think i'll make the windows smaller when i work on them later today.

Was thinking of making optional high-res textures, 512x512 textures on ships this big dont go so well.

[JazHaz]

Be nice to have a few more Behemoths in game, they've been pretty scarce in my spacelanes as of late.

Scarce in mine too. Especially since I installed Military Fiasco, seen far more Leviathans than Behemoths. Think that I could probably do with playing with the populator chances to balance them out.

ADCK, it may be worth checking that out before you release your new OXP?

[Commander McLane]

I think the scarcity of Behemoths in the space lanes is mostly due to the fact that their natural habitat is interstellar space. They are the backbone of the navy and are supposed to fight Thargoids out there, not to cruise the space lanes. And I think more variety in Behemoths wouldn't change that.

So, if you want to see Behemoths in action, do a misjump. Chances are that you will see at least one every time.

[ADCK]

Be nice to have a few more Behemoths in game, they've been pretty scarce in my spacelanes as of late.

Scarce in mine too. Especially since I installed Military Fiasco, seen far more Leviathans than Behemoths. Think that I could probably do with playing with the populator chances to balance them out.

ADCK, it may be worth checking that out before you release your new OXP?

I don't have military fiasco, so am not sure how it works, but compatibility will be a part of my Behemoth oxp in a release after the initial release, But first i'll be looking to make it compatible with Galactic Navy, as parts of Gal Navy overwrite the original behemoths.oxp (plus i've already made a bunch of shadered ships for Gal Navy)

My current release plans are:

*1.0. Initial release. Original behemoth.oxp with new models/textures/shaders Plus 2 new behemoth types as seen in this thread.
*1.1. Galactic Navy compatiblity patch. Includes new models/textures for all Galactic Navy ships, plus a new station in addition the the original retextured one, and a new class of ship "Destroyer" with the rail-gun attachment mentioned in other threads. (The plan is to not have the new models overwrite the originals but work alongside them, perhaps with an overwrite.plist for those looking for replacers) Most of the work on this is already done, but requires behemoths to be completed first... I guess I was kind of working back-to-front here.
*1.2 Thargoids Patch. By this point the Galactic Navy will be way overpowered, and I'll have to even the sides a little. Mostly only in the planning phase at the moment, but I do have a retextured version of the Thargoid Carrier and several Neolite Thargoid retextures I'd like to use here. Will probably be something along the lines of Second Wave.oxp and Thargorn Threat.oxp
*1.3. Content/Bugfix Patch? Adding things I havn't thought of yet, fixing things I've broken, etc. Time will tell. This is where I'd start looking to expand the OXP to include suggestions/requests.
*1.4. Final Release. Possibly-Theorhetically-Mythical-Epic-Future-Stable Release-Version. (PTMEFSRV) There will be cake.

[Sendraks]

I think the scarcity of Behemoths in the space lanes is mostly due to the fact that their natural habitat is interstellar space. They are the backbone of the navy and are supposed to fight Thargoids out there, not to cruise the space lanes. And I think more variety in Behemoths wouldn't change that..

Ah, I'm wondering then if this is a result of a change in the latest versions of Behemoth and Big Ships then?

Certainly I was used to seeing at least one Behemoth active in most systems, sometimes two or more. Now I've not seen one in ages. Same for Galactic Navy missions, where I used to get some fantastic battles with Thargoid fleets vs a full navy force of Behemoth's, Frigates and a range of smaller naval vessels. Now I just get a few Thargoids to hunt down.

[JazHaz]

Same for Galactic Navy missions, where I used to get some fantastic battles with Thargoid fleets vs a full navy force of Behemoth's, Frigates and a range of smaller naval vessels. Now I just get a few Thargoids to hunt down.

I thought the same, but of course the GalNavy missions do vary. It's possible you haven't been getting the big mega battles often because you are getting more of the other types.

[Commander McLane]

I don't use Galactic Navy, so I can't say anything about its influence on Behemoth spawning. But I have Behemoth.oxp installed for ages, and an encounter with a Behemoth in-system was always an extremely rare event. (I'd say in several hundred hours of gameplay I saw three or four.)

In interstellar space, however, things are completely different. With Behemoth.oxp installed there is usually at least one, often two, and sometimes even three of them.

[Eric Walch]

But I have Behemoth.oxp installed for ages, and an encounter with a Behemoth in-system was always an extremely rare event. (I'd say in several hundred hours of gameplay I saw three or four.)

I an sure that the Behemoth is added more often than the Leviathan carrier. (see below) That the Leviathan looks more added is probably because it is added near the witchpoint were the player never misses it.

I have been responsible for changing the addition criteria of both. Original the behemoth was added by the populator as a hunter. I think the main reason for choosing this role was that this is the only role that does not get launched by stations. But this also mend: the more oxps were added that contained hunters, the more rare a Behemoth appearance in normal space became.

Now we got JS it was time to do a more sophisticated addition. Police ships are added in a way that the more stable a government is, the more police are added in that system.
It made sense to change both Behemoth and Leviathan additions to match Oolite internal behaviour:

Code: Select all

if (Math.random() < 0.015 * System.government) addBehemoth()
if (Math.random() < 0.035 && System.government > Math.random()*3) addLeviathan()

Above code gives a 11% chance for a behemoth in a corporate state while a Leviathan just has a 3.5% chance. For a Feudal these values are resp: 1.5% and 1.1%. So an all cases the Behemoth has the higher addition chance.

[ADCK]

Eh, it's galactic navy that does most of the spawning, behemoth on its own mostly spawns ships in thargoid witchspace battles, and only a small chance of them appearing in normal systems (never anarchies)

Galactic Navy adds most of the partolling fleets.


<EDIT> Snap! Eric beat me to it

[Frame]

Ignoring the Wings bug, not all uses of hard edges translate into smoothing groups. The new explicit normals stuff should handle every use. In any case, leaving smoothing off in Oolite is effectively equivalent to making all edges hard in Wings.

Ya I figured as much, but there are some areas i want as smooth (the engines core) and some as hard.
If i set a ship to "smooth" but have hard edges defined will the hard edges still be hard?
Or will i have to split the models up into to subentities for smooth parts?

If the hard edges form closed areas, smooth groups should suffice – export from Wings with smooth groups and normals, convert with ObjToDatTex.py, and set smooth = yes; in your shipdata.plist. For more precise control, 1.74’s explicit normals and Obj2DatTexNorm.py will be better.

ahh i finally understand what you mean,

3d max handels this totally different.. there is no such thing as a hard egde, it only has 32 smooth groups that can be combined which means there is 2^32 0 (4294967296) possible combinations which also is a well known maximum INT max size for 32 bit operating systems... I suppose wings is handling the smooth groups automatic, making the user having to think little about them.

Ans Have you forgotten that Obj2DatTex.py does not handle smooth groups correctly ?

it just increments whenever it hits a new section of smoothgroup in the obj file and even though it belongs to a previous section that had the same group, the increment of the smoothgroup = smoothgroup + 1: renames it to a new smoothgroup..


while I have not looked at what the maximum number of smooth groups are allowed in (wavefront OBJ) file format.

A model of mine that has 6-7 smooth groups for example, now when I read the dat file, it now has 127 smooth groups..


I got a solution, I'll modify the latest obj2dattex.py file, and throw up my suggestion..

but now, the wife is bugging me to come do stuff

Cheers Frame..

[JensAyton]

Ans Have you forgotten that Obj2DatTex.py does not handle smooth groups correctly ?

I can’t forget what I don’t know, and I don’t know what there isn’t a bug report for.

As for 3DS, I’m pretty sure it’s capable of exporting vertex normals.

[Frame]

Ans Have you forgotten that Obj2DatTex.py does not handle smooth groups correctly ?

I can’t forget what I don’t know, and I don’t know what there isn’t a bug report for.

As for 3DS, I’m pretty sure it’s capable of exporting vertex normals.

Cannot bug report since I Cannot log in to bug reporting feature as I used to be able too.. even though the site is added as being in security settings..

as for 3d max 7: not 3ds or max 8 or 9: it does export vertex normals, however the Ooolite results shows lightning issues at 90 degree bends.. that have different smooth groups

however with smooth groups and my modified obj2dattex.py that was of an older version than the current trunk one: the result is perfect representation of what I see in the editor, which was exactly why I started investigating why the current obj2dattex.py script did'nt write only 2 different smooth groups, but whatever the combination of the mesh suggested..

I tried exporting with and without smooth groups to the obj format before converting it to dat with obj2dattexnorm.py still I get lightning issues.

Man I just finished installing a car Radio/cd/usb/bluetooth handsfree thingi.. the power had me confused a tad, so sorry for the rather harsh way of writing :S..

Cheers Frame...

[JensAyton]

Well, I can’t magically divine the nature of your lighting issues, but Obj2DatTex.py has now been updated to copy smooth group IDs directly from the obj without renumbering them.

[Frame]

Well, I can’t magically divine the nature of your lighting issues, but Obj2DatTex.py has now been updated to copy smooth group IDs directly from the obj without renumbering them.

Cool that works.

Wings/max whatever al-ready segmented the smooth groups for you, why do it again... But I suspected that a number larger than 256 would cause mayhem, which is why I my modification included a little crude if() things. appreantly that is one of things that has changed.. ...

Regard to the lightning issues... I'll send you a link to the ship OXP where the lightning issues occur..

Cheers Frame....

[ADCK]

Later today I'll be releasing this.

Just need to work out the documentation.

Here's a teaser pic of some behemoths I spawned:P

(click for bigger view)