Oolite Bulletins

Jona wrote:

There is probably a joke in there somewhere about wives and pause buttons ... but I can't think what it would be

Sure you can.. you're just not game to put it in writing anywhere the wife might see it..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Jona wrote:

There is probably a joke in there somewhere about wives and pause buttons ... but I can't think what it would be

Sure you can.. you're just not game to put it in writing anywhere the wife might see it..

For the moment I'm mostly harmless ... when I get to dangerous then I'll make all the jokes I want

As an update on progress ... I'm still planning to try this ship out in Oolite as soon as there is something that looks more or less complete ... I've captured the following screenshots ...



Over the last week I've been working on the basic texturing concentrating on the equipment (engines, weapons, etc) before moving on to the overall texturing of ship itself. The top image shows the top side of the ship - here I'm gradually adding detail to the basic colouring although certain sections (the cockpit interior and tail spine) have not even been UV mapped correctly yet.

Below this image are some close ups of a small missile launcher (middle left), an engine and a cannon (middle right) and in the last image the engines and exhaust vents seen from the rear. The underside of the ship is completely untextured at the moment. Let me know what you think .. for me coding is fun, creating models actually relaxing while texturing the models is like a series of repeat appointments at the dentists - normally I try and get the experience over as quickly as possible, but this time I am trying to take my time and get this right.

Hopefully I should have the first pass texturing completed by this time next week and I'll post some new screenshots, possibly with this ship alongside some existing Oolite models to see how the texturing fits in with that for other ships ... and I can start fine tuning the scale of the ship ... this is an interceptor so it should be smaller than your typical Cobra, but I'm not sure how much smaller yet (to be honest if the Cobra is the size of a football stadium it is probably better than transparencies aren't possible ... having the pilot model would probably throw off the sense of scale in Oolite).

That's looking very good..

Hi Everyone,

Just a bit of a progress update ... it's been a bit slow in the last few weeks but I have made some progress with the first ship as hopefully the screenshots below show ...



The top images show the ship in my own game engine with hangar views - the lighting is basic (basically I am spotlighting the ships in the hangar and dimming down the background) but the texturing is far enough along to start testing properly. The other shots are from the modelling tool. Hopefully with a few more sessions the colour texturing will be complete and I can finally try adding the ship to an OXP

Feedback welcome - I'm happy with the model itself, but the texturing is still hit and miss in places.

It looks good to me! Comparing your work to mine would be like comparing something in an art gallery to something that a five year old did with modeling clay... If the specs look good I'll definitely be putting these ships in my Ooniverse. (And if they don't, I may put them in anyway, and just change the specs to suit my game! )

SirArian wrote:

It looks good to me! Comparing your work to mine would be like comparing something in an art gallery to something that a five year old did with modeling clay... If the specs look good I'll definitely be putting these ships in my Ooniverse. (And if they don't, I may put them in anyway, and just change the specs to suit my game! )

Thanks for the very positive feedback ... The model is about done now and I'm going to start creating the OXP in the next week or so (lots of work getting in the way!). Specs wise the idea is to create something nippy and agile ... But at the cost of a small weapons capacity (the model comes with a laser OR a missile launcher OR ... For my own game ... A rocket launcher) and poor protection. That's the idea ... Need to see how the concept feels once implemented and tweak from there.

I would probably do a speed of about 0.4 LM, with a single forward laser, (pulse and beam only, no military,) maybe one missile pylon, probably two Energy Banks, and without the possibility to add military shields either. And then I would probably copy the maneuverability from the Fer-De-Lance. I can't wait to see it in game!

Jona wrote:

Hi Everyone,

Just a bit of a progress update ... it's been a bit slow in the last few weeks but I have made some progress with the first ship as hopefully the screenshots below show ...

...

Feedback welcome - I'm happy with the model itself, but the texturing is still hit and miss in places.

Looks great to me. after seeing how good the model looked, I was a little worried that the texture might not be able to compliment it. No such worries now. Brave colour choice IMO but it works. Good job! (Nice hangar shots by the way.)

One point of concern might be the very visible pilot, which would either make the ship appear very small or very odd in the standard game. But I'd love to see those things flying around in my game

i concur , the ship looks great. cant wait for an OXZ to ry it out... i think SirArian's ide would be a good starting point to set the balance of the ship for oolite..

must get back to my poor attempt at a ship.

Redspear wrote:

Looks great to me. after seeing how good the model looked, I was a little worried that the texture might not be able to compliment it. No such worries now. Brave colour choice IMO but it works. Good job! (Nice hangar shots by the way.)

One point of concern might be the very visible pilot, which would either make the ship appear very small or very odd in the standard game. But I'd love to see those things flying around in my game

I'm cleaning up the model for use in Oolite and the pilot is going to disappear - the windows will be opaque. The main reason is that the scale in Oolite is very different from what I was originally aiming at (I am still getting over a Cobra being the size of a footie pitch!) and hiding the pilot helps avoid issues with the rescaling.

For the hangar ... it's the old version. The new one looks a bit more like this ...

http://youtu.be/c_YGpTvJgSo

I'm cheating a bit - this is rendered in Bryce ... I currently have a few issues with loading the hangar model into my game engine. I could claim this was to test the new hangar layout ... but it was just a bit of fun really.

SirArian wrote:

I would probably do a speed of about 0.4 LM, with a single forward laser, (pulse and beam only, no military,) maybe one missile pylon, probably two Energy Banks, and without the possibility to add military shields either. And then I would probably copy the maneuverability from the Fer-De-Lance. I can't wait to see it in game!

Single forward laser is the plan, but normally there wouldn't be enough room for a missile pylon as well. I'll see how it feels when I manage to get the beast into the game (I am beginning to create the OXP - all the info in the wiki seems to be clear so fingers crossed). As for the rest I will certainly take your advice.

Redspear wrote:

Brave colour choice IMO but it works.

Normally the colouring would be be mainly various shades of grey. The starting point for something a bit different was actually the Griffin Mk II - Griff's models were a real inspiration and I just really liked the added colour ... Then it was just a case of taking it to an extreme to highlight that the pilot flying one of these ships is certainly not trying to hide. Glad it works ... I may eventually try some alternative colour schemes ... and add some wear and tear to the paint work especially around the engines.

Okay ... I'm getting serious about the OXP now ... I've created a version of the model specifically for Oolite and have started scaling it up to fit the game (the postage stamp is more football pitch sized) ... this is a comparison against a Cobra III ...



Smaller as it is a fighter rather than a freighter ... but too small?

I'm also working on the config files and as a starter I'm defining the ship's role as police on the theory this will make things easy to test ... exit a space station, turn round, fire and then wait for the ship to come to me

Which leads me on to ... when creating the ship I was imagining a naval or government fighter, roughly the equivalent of a Viper, but in Oolite you can't replace a Viper! Pirate? Escort?

Coming together nicely
It looks to be Mamba/Sidewinder sized now, so would be fine using the escort or pirate-light-fighter roles. Also, consider the assassin-light role as I think it really looks the part for that.

Jona wrote:

... but too small?

Not at all. I measured 90m width which is equal with a Krait. If you plan two energy banks only then can be even smaller, for example 60m wide like a Sidewinder and the pitch rate can be similar (1.6) also.