Oolite Bulletins

Did the Monitor and Monitor II tonight (which I added using values seen in the Wiki -- it's basically like the Monitor but a little faster at the expense of not having room for a cargo bay expansion). As I thought I might before, I made the Monitor II have different hull lights, but also made it smoother and cleaner looking, and made the under side brighter and more reflective, and also made the area around the engine not painted, whereas it is painted on the original Monitor. This way they look reasonably different despite using the same model. Their base colours remain slightly red and blue, respectively, just to create some mixing of colour to create the final looks. The exhaust looks nice now too, slightly illuminating the area around the engines (but I didn't post a screenshot of that).

Here are some examples of those two.

Keeper wrote:

Now, if only I were any good at creating textures from scratch... the Cat needs work. Anyone care to have a go? I've also re-introduced a Monitor II, only making it blue and shinier than the regular Monitor. Obviously when I get round to doing random colouring, it means the ships will look mostly alike unless I have the colour tint map applied on top of an extant colour. I think I'll put different hull lights on the two different versions, so that'll be something.

Yeah, that cat in general is pretty bad, I have some free time over the next and I'm tempted to redo it model and all.

The problem with the cat is that the original shape it really awkward and fat, despite it supposedly being a fighter ship it is fat and unwieldy.
In my absence I've been doing modding for games like TF2 and making commercial high poly models of cars - hopefully I'll be able to do a better job of the cat this time.

It's nice to see my baby getting a bit of love though

An hour and a bit later...






yes, I like this cat a lot more

Hey S9... back in your workshop, cutting and welding again?

Cody wrote:

Hey S9... back in your workshop, cutting and welding again?

Well, I'm trying to get back into shipbuilding, this seemed like an interesting exercise to see if I still can.

I should probably add some more greebles, pipes and panels to the cat, but I've just got to be careful not to upstage myself too much, I don't want to end up re-making my entire shipset.

It's nice to be back making new stuff again though

Staer9 wrote:

I don't want to end up re-making my entire shipset.

<chortles> That can happen... be careful.

Ooh, that thing looks MEAN!

Nice looking model Staer9

Update of the Mussurana. Notice the areas where the paint was scraped off, showing bare silver metal underneath. I managed to make a colour tint map that maintained that scraped-paint look regardless of what colour the ship is made to be. Added an engine texture to its engine bay, and engine glows, including on the inside walls of the nozzle. A little laser heat glow dot for good measure.

I like where this is going. Maybe Staer9 can make a custom MonitorII model too. So that the Model is also a little different. The Cat and Mussurnara are also looking good.I like the exhausts on the Cat.

Well, I've just finished going through all the ships, in terms of specular appearance, engine glows, weapon glows (where possible), lights, and random colours. That is with the exception of the Ophidian; because Griff has made one, albeit with different specs, I have just commented out the Ophidian in my Staer9 installation).

Has anyone fixed the in-flight views of any of the ships? Most of them need work in that department. I could have a go at it if no one else has done so yet.

Well, although the in-flight views still need adjusting, why hold up your enjoyment of at least seeing the updated ships in your Ooniverse?

So, here you go:
Link removed; a newer version is available later in this thread.

(Remove your existing Staer9 Shipset OXP folder.)

I'll send this on to Staer9 so he can update the first page link as well.
Maybe someone then can update the photos in the Wiki too...?

Version 1.1 is an update made by Keeper with Staer9's blessing:

* Features new specular maps, specular values, and altered textures for all ships.
* Uses ahruman's shaders for random colour schemes, engine and weapon glows, and hull lights.
* Some other alterations, e.g. size of exhaust reduced on some ships to keep them within the model.
* Includes Staer9's fix for the Bushmaster's engines, and a fix for the Iguana's subentities.
* Adds a Monitor II, with specs from the wiki.
* Removes the Ophidian, as it is redundant now that Griff has released an Ophidian (albeit with different specs).

The ships now will react to light much better, looking shinier where need be.
The main thing is the random colour schemes.

Issues:
* The in-flight views of player ships still need editing. These are the same issues that V1.0 had.
* I haven't yet seen the Bushmaster in action (only on the spinner), so I can't guarantee its exhausts will look perfect yet.
* The Cat's right gun model has inverted faces thus it does not display properly. Staer9 has designed an entirely new Cat that will make this issue moot once it's released.

NOTE: If your system doesn't support shaders, you may not want to bother with this version (other than the new Bushmaster engine model), as the colours that had been on the ships have been removed or greatly reduced in order for the random colouring to be applied by the shaders.

Right, I've downloaded the update, and installed it. Do I need to remove the original Staer9's Shipset? I assume so, as it has a similar name (just not any spaces).

JazHaz wrote:

Right, I've downloaded the update, and installed it. Do I need to remove the original Staer9's Shipset? I assume so, as it has a similar name (just not any spaces).

Yes. Sorry; I removed the spaces, apostrophe and parentheses from the name as those characters really shouldn't be in a file name.

Thank you for the early Christmas present Keeper