Development: Waka Ships

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:22 am

Simon B wrote:
I'm unsure if these should replace the previous designs as advanced models, with advanced stats (I'm calling them FeA editions to run them alongside for now.)

I`d vote for letting both versions in as some sort of MkI and MkII, with different stats - one the "older" version, one more high-tech.

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:25 am

Hmmm... I'm kinda leaning in that direction myself.
However - there's a backstory building about the company... I need a commercial or confederate world galaxy 2-4 mainly industrial TL10+ but otherwise not written about... a backwater. To house the company that makes these things.

I just got caught in the xfire of three taniwha-tahi ... that was kinda disgusting! I'll have to figure some sort of scripting so the pirate versions appear by themselves or with only light escorts, it's the military that swan around in fleets!.

Anyway - now the small-craft models are working, the common components can get used for the larger ones... if I keep track of the volumes and roles, I should be able to create an internally-consistent set.

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:27 am

BTW: have you noticed that some of the models is Realistic Shipyards are broken?

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 11:22 am

Simon B wrote:
BTW: have you noticed that some of the models is Realistic Shipyards are broken?

A successor of RS is in the works just now, which will repair all known bugs with the RS oxp.

Do you happen to be on a Linux system? Do you have all the nescessary oxps which RS is dependent on installed?

And, which models are broken and in what way? If you found something new and tell me what exactly, I can and will correct that, too

Cheers

L

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 1:50 am

Probably best to start a thread on updating RS - point me to it.

I have removed RS - but I can go through carefully and document problems if you want. It's just that there are 500 ships there.

There are player ships for which the model does not render ... "nim" I think, though the npc ship is fine. From the same pack, the "mugger" model is backwards, placing the exhaust in an odd location. Stuff like that.

They are easy to spot - play the game and examine the shipyards of every station you can.

I was keeping a list, but seem to have misplaced it. Note: this is OT for this thread - lets discuss this someplace else?

BTW: yep - running Ubuntu GNU/Linux with all listed dependencies.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 7:54 am

The mugger (etc) aren't in RS, but one of the dependency OXPs ("AAACrooks.oxp", although it is also known as "Amen Brick's Pirate Clan One: The Blitzspears" as well iirc).

From the (multiple) times this issue has been mentioned here I think that OXP is the root cause of this element of the problem.

This kind of thing has been discussed in this thread and elsewhere.

Hmm, as a passing thought what ever happened to Amen Brick?

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 9:22 am

Haha! That's right - I was looking for a dat2obj converter to fix the mugger. The non-rendered ships look like trouble with the texture.

There were others - my list ended up filling a couple of sheets before I got fed up. About half were ships I was going to delete for artistic rather than technical reasons. RS is too inclusive for me.

I was thinking of creating a meta-oxp of the best ships only - only internally consistent.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 10:49 am

Thargoid wrote:
Hmm, as a passing thought what ever happened to Amen Brick?

I'd like to know that, too. Months ago I gave him some feedback on his Megaships, which also happen to have a couple of problems. But he hasn't been on the boards ever since. A PM I wrote later is still in my outbox, so I definitely know that he hasn't logged in anymore.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 10:04 am

@Simon B:

Feedback time.

Found some errors in your ship oxps (don`t know which, but perhaps you can do something with the info I provide).

Had downloaded the last versions of your oxps two days ago.

This here was in my error log:

[files.notFound]: ----- WARNING: Could not find texture file "small-engine-specular-tex.png". Used default no textures material instead.
[files.notFound]: ----- WARNING: Could not find texture file "t-nacelle-specular.png". Used default no textures material instead.
[mesh.load.failed.fileNotFound]: ERROR - could not find cm4.dat
[files.notFound]: ----- WARNING: Could not find texture file "small-engine-specular-tex.png". Used default no textures material instead.
[files.notFound]: ----- WARNING: Could not find texture file "cweta-witchdrive-specular.png". Used default no textures material instead.

In the shipyard, the following ship models appeared without a picture of them:

* Mako E
* Mako Ururoa

A ship named "Mango-Ripi FeA" appeared too and had a visible model.

@Commander McLane:

I attempted to contact Amen Brick, too, but same as you. My message to him is still unread in my outbox folder.

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:40 pm

Lestradae wrote:
@Simon B:

Feedback time.

Cool!
There is nothing critical in any of this but the two missing models. I'll have them all fixed in the next release. Some (missing specular and the cm4) I've already seen.

Note - the Waka ships OXP has undergone a substantial revision. It is now split between two files:

wakapiko<date>.oxp - contains the smaller ships, fighters to light traders.
wakatoro<date>.oxp - contains the larger ships and the remaining models which have not been updated. Future update are expected to contain anaconda-like transports, stations and carriers.

Between them they represent a 6MiB download.

I'm dating, rather than versioning, them so I don't make any outrageous claims about how ready they are for production.

Found some errors in your ship oxps (don`t know which, but perhaps you can do something with the info I provide).

Specular maps have been discontinued for some ships - they are quite large for very little effect. I found that using the diffuse maps for specular produces an interesting impact.

I'll have to hunt down the specular entries for those ships and change them - thanks.

Your error log is more informative than mine for some reason - I only get a load of "no DTD found" errors.

cm4.dat is the model for all the "Mako" ships - there are four.

* Mako E
* Mako Ururoa

Mango-Mako has four flavours:
S = standard - white and blue + "mako" image
K = "kill bill" - yellow and black + "bride" image
D = "dark" - red and matt-black + "isis" image
E = "Evil" - lava-red and black + "grin" image

None of the Makos will have a model because the cm4.dat file is missing. The file-name is counter-intuitive because it was originally "cobra mark 4".

Mangō-Ururoa - which is the Maori name for the Great White Shark, thus "Mako Ururoa" is meaningless... I'm somewhat alarmed that you'd find this designation in the OXP.

The old Ururoa for the pirate and alternate-trader had been left in, but it seems I had removed the cm3.dat model...
So... if you want to keep the legacy models, back them up now. If you want to have your oxps working correctly right now, then copy the old cm4.dat file to wakapiko1208.oxp/Models and the old cm3.dat file to wakatoro1208.oxp/Models

A ship named "Mango-Ripi FeA" appeared too and had a visible model.

Well... it's supposed to. It should look exactly like the regular Ripi with different engine and cabin-window configuration.

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:19 am

http://www.hbclinux.net.nz/oolite-rangiwaka.html
... starting a page to showcase the various designs - and, hopefully, I can begin to get all the ship stats more internally consistent.

Contains the wakapiko ships right now.

ZygoUgo · Post by **ZygoUgo** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 12:16 am

Took a nose at those Simon, really cool, quite stylised & smart paint jobs

Simon B · Post by **Simon B** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:11 am

Ta nicely...
There is more than one paint-job per ship and the wings rendering engine does not do them justice. However, the pigs give you an idea.

The stats on the page are taken off the physical properties of the models.

However, I'd wait for the next upload before trying the oxp - there seems to be some tweeking to do.

Meantime - I'm experiencing some wierdess in the Cr calculation in the game. I don't know if this is a bug or an artifact of all the sove-game editing I've done. Right now, I see mo have many megacreds in the bank, but the maintenance overhaul is costing about a gigacredit.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:29 am

Simon B wrote:
There were others - my list ended up filling a couple of sheets before I got fed up. About half were ships I was going to delete for artistic rather than technical reasons. RS is too inclusive for me.

Then perhaps it will be interesting information to you that the RS successor in the works will very probably have a ships deinstaller with which it will be possible to take out ships by name or stats range from the oxp.

And put them back in again later, if wanted, btw.

ZygoUgo · Post by **ZygoUgo** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:15 am

Ta nicely...
There is more than one paint-job per ship and the wings rendering engine does not do them justice. However, the pigs give you an idea.

Edit; Do excuse me, I used to love them when I was a kid

Any way, if you want to use a decent renderer to improve your pics you can import Wings objects into Blender, which I'm sure you've heard of. The scripts are built in already, it's a good raytracer.