Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

I think GalCop should be aiming for the imposing/awe-inspiring (not to say threatening) livery more than the cheerful-local-bobby look. After all, this is a legal system where a bounty of just one measly credit is enough to make your summary execution, either by the police or by any member of the public who happens to be passing, entirely legitimate... Evenin' all ... zzzap! BOOM ... mind how you go sir ...

I think that’s precisely why they should be going for the Mostly Harmless look. I believe the term “irony” is applicable. :-)

Maybe a peeling smiley-face sticker, just below the big bloodstain...

Disembodied wrote:

Maybe a peeling smiley-face sticker, just below the big bloodstain...

And a notice on the back saying "Running in, please pass."

Captain Hesperus

...aaaaanyway....

The diffuse map has reached a point where I can either spend the rest of my life tweaking it or walk away from it. I've decided to do the latter ... for now.

So here's the finished Seraphim class GalCop patrol vessel.



And here it is with a quick and dirty normal map and some fancy lighting (more like how it'll appear in-game):



Now then. It's about time I started experimenting with making it into a DAT file.

Deep breath.

Here we go!

Crow

Love it - it's fantastic without the normals and shaders (which is good for the poor folk out there without this gfx support) but WITH the normals and shaders it's just gorgeous.

Bravo.

Looking at it I suddenly thought about that lead pilot - surrounded by the blackness of outer space - all that's separating him from it is a few tens of millimetres of plexi-glass(TM)/transparent aluminium - not one for the agoraphobics!

Looks very good. Special craft!

I've tried running an OBJ through the obj2dat.py script again and I'm still getting nothing - an empty DAT file.

I've e-mailed the files to Ahruman - as he suggested - to see if he can help

Crow

I found out that Oolite has an 800 faces poly limit.

That looks like a pretty complex model, Crow. It might be a good idea to separate the wings - I think those are wings - and the big gun in front into subentity models.

Allready done.

I have:
Main Body
Cockpit canopy (the 'glass')
Pilots
Wings
Gun

I'll add them as sub-objects for now and combine the whole thing when 1.73 arrives and there's no poly limit.

Crow

That looks amazing! Did you manage to get a working dat file in the end?

Mcnope! still waiting to hear back from Ahruman. It could be a while. depends how busy he is.

Mostly it depends how tired he is. :-)

Well, I've had a short break from the Seraphim whilst several thoroughly decent folks help me figure out why OBJ2DAT was giving me empty DAT files.

Turns out there were a couple of things wrong.

I discovered that if I dragged my OBJ file onto the OBJ2DAT script, it gave me an empty DAT file. However, if I used the command line, it worked fine...

Unless... some of my OBJs had variables in that were supposed to be integers (or at least the Python script is expecting them to be integers) but were in fact assigned the value 'off' - this caused the script to have a paddy and strop off.

Ahruman suggested manually editing the OBJ file which is do-able as there are only three or four instances of this error - however I found in the mean time that I can import into Wings3D and re-export from there and the OBJs work fine. Huzzah!

I managed to view my individual objects in game by replacing the BUOY outside Coriolis. So they all work fine and look great (bar some smoothing issues)

...And, best of all, finally, I saw for myself that the reversed glass on the canopy DOES WORK!! DOUBLE HUZZAH!!!

Now I need to study how to make an OXP - Hi ho! Hi ho, it's off to the Wiki I go...

Crow

I think it would look good in a Black/Yellow wasp type colour scheme. Message being "don't mess with me I sting"....
After all it has an insect like look to it.

Well, there we are. I've written my first OXP!

I replaced the Buoy with the Seraphim, adding in the gun, pilots, canopy and wings sub-objects. You can see here, the reversed normal glass working in the Oolite engine.

Now to replace the actual Police Viper and then start looking at shaders!

Crow