Development: Arachnid SB

[Simon B]

It often happens that I'll post something which is puzzling me, and soon after I discover what it was.

However - one should still reply, you may have different ideas about it to me ;)

That is such a small change, I'll upload it when I have a bigger change to go with it. Meantime, it's easy enough to fix for yourself. Make that like_ship into your favorite cobra.

To convert to OpenStep format - the shipdata.open file in the oxp was just the shadycobra with names changed. I obviously did more than that because I just get a big nothing... probably my best be will be to rip the cobra mk3 section out of the classic ships and alter that.

And... yeah - I wondered if anyone would see the batman reference.

For all that neither batwing nor cylon raiders provided inspiration for the acachnid, I'm kinda chuffed that it keeps being compared to very cool designs. :D

[Simon B]

Great - still not updated the oxp online, but shall submit one to the wiki will all the proper knobs on.

Conceptual change - the cargo is set to 5TC with a possible +4 with an expanded cargo hold (there is an unused 2TC in each nacelle ;) )

The idea is that the rich kids can have lux accomodation if they want - while those more strapped can still horse-trade for their travel expences.

Also working on a gun-mount. Something fancy for that "small subentity" to create an off-center firepoint a la Imperial Courier. But - does it work for players?

But all that is tweaks.

[Simon B]

Sanity check:

Nope - I was insane!

Code: Select all

Does this mean I no longer need seperate dat files for different skins? (i.e. I can use the same model with different illumination maps?)[/quote]
Apparently So... still unable to use openstep though.

To reskin an existing ship, just point the dict entry at a complete one, then use the shader entry to swap out the diffuse maps. You can reuse effects that way too.

[Thargoid]

If you want to see an example of the reskinning without new models, have a look in my new Second Wave OXP.

[Simon B]

what can also look cool is if you use the diffuse map to color the specular, unfortunately i couldn't find a colourful example so this ship with it's grey/green murky texture will have to do:

Code: Select all

// Calculate the basic ship colour & add in the specular effects 
   vec4 color = diffuse * diffuseMap + (specular * diffuseMap * 3.0) * specIntensity; 

here, just multiply the specular by the diffuseMap and in this case then multiply it by 3.0 to really make the effect more notcable.

to break down this line:
the 'diffuse' value is being calculated by the light macro and it's basically the amount of shadowing effect to be added to the colour value depending on how the poly fragment is pointing to or away from the lightsource.

the diffuseMap value is the colour of the relevant pixel from the texture map

the 'specular' value is being calculated by the light macro and it's basically the addition of the lightsource colour to the final colour depending on how the poly fragment is pointing to or away from the lightsource.

the light macro i keep talking about looks like this:

Code: Select all

// Calculate the contribution of a single light. Ought to be a function, but OS X's GLSlang implementation isn't sufficiently clever.
   #define LIGHT(idx) \
        { \
           vec3 lightVector   = normalize(gl_LightSource[idx].position.xyz); \
           vec3 reflection   = normalize(-reflect(lightVector, v_normal)); \
           diffuse += gl_FrontMaterial.diffuse * gl_LightSource[idx].diffuse * max(dot(v_normal, lightVector), 0.0); \
           specular += gl_LightSource[idx].diffuse * pow(max(dot(reflection, eyeVector), 0.0), specExponent); \
        }

[Simon B]

Kapapo
Now that I know more about modelling and texturing...


Its hard to see much of the detail - so here is a bare metal one:


Since it is smooth, I sha'n't bother with the normal maps.
I'll have this out in an oxp soonish.

[Simon B]

In the game ... download the beta oxp at:

http://www.hbclinux.net.nz/oolite/katapo.oxp.zip
... not managed to test the shaders.

[Zireael]

The ships look wonderful - can I find them anywhere? What's their specs?

[Mauiby de Fug]

Cmd. Cheyd is hosting various of Simon B's oxps on his site at http://deephorizonindustries.com/oolitesimonb/

[Zireael]

The page looks nice, but everything is in tar.gz (I hope my program can open those). What happened to good old zip or rar?

[LittleBear]

If you google 7Zip, you can get a free extractor that can unzip tars as well as zips.

[Simon B]

Argh - have I not uploaded the new katapo?

I think the old arachnids are in www.hbclinux.net.na/oolite.html

.tar.gz is used in preference to zip because the standard zip program does not handle multiple files ... I'm not as clear on this as I used to be though. The tar program combines all the files into one, which is then compressed with zip. Modern versions of winzip are supposed to handle them... but 7zip works better anyway ... or install tar and gzip.

However: I've noticed that there is not much of a saving for oxps ... which are mostly losslessly compressed images anyway. The only compressable bits are the directory metadata and the plists ... which are only a few k anyway. Has anyone worked out how big the advantage in distributing oxps as zip files actually is?

[Commander McLane]

Has anyone worked out how big the advantage in distributing oxps as zip files actually is?

For all of us who use Box.net it's the only way to distribute them at all. Box.net simply doesn't accept the upload of a folder (what an OXP basically is), so this is my main reason for using zip, regardless of the compression (OXPs with big scripts and plist, like Anarchies or Cataclysm, shrink about 20% when zipped).

[TGHC]

That explains something to me then, as I understood it ZIP's were originally designed to reduce filesize when memory and broadband speed was an issue, nowadays it isn't and I have often wondered why we still ZIP files for the sake of saving a couple of seconds.

I use a programme called "The Extractor" which is so easy to use, just drag and drop multiple files, and tell it where to put them, but it won't do tar.gz files AFIK

[Simon B]

http://www.7-zip.org/
... from what I can see, The Extractor is proprietary software. 7-zip is GPL, use that instead.
I am not strongly motivated to enable non-FOSS software.
The risk, of course, is that some people will not be motivated to use my OXPs: I see that as "fair enough". In fact, I am rather flattered that people like my OXPs enough to install software for them Right now I seem to be short on bandwidth ... I am not having a good time with the old internet access thing!

For more information see:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html