Oolite Bulletins

Well it's not invisible if you know how to find it, but we'll just think that there is no readme..

Simon B wrote:

Preferred predator stuff for fighters this time - it's not just a matter of getting animal prints in there.

Fair enough! Have you considered "dazzle" camouflage at all? I don't know how well this might work in Oolite: it was intended not to hide the ship itself but to make it hard to calculate distance and heading. Probably not much use for small dogfighting craft, really, but maybe the behemoths might find a use for it...



By the way, Griff... that Cobra III is stunning!

What about just a very shiny black ship with a few stars on it?

Simon B wrote:

Sidewinder - second variety
... it struck me that it is the big triangles which give the sidewinder it's distinctive shape - if these are indicative of large, body-centered, delta-wings, then I can cut out the center triangles and fill the space with cabin and engins ... which puts the blunt-nose back.

Note the leopard cam - compare with the mamba earlier Griff.
Is the snow-cam over metal better?

WOW! This is the first time that I could imagine a sidewinder being mean. Before, those ships were laughable for me, and I was confused why so many ships would use them as escorts. Those new models definitely say why they are good as an escort!

Strangely, this time I'd consider the metal look a bit better - because it's consistent throughout the ship, while the cam version is being ruptured with the metal-look of the ships main body. I guess if that would also get some repainting, both versions would be a good addition.

Maybe it would be an idea to not throw away the earlier Sidewinder idea...I'm not sure if those should be different models of the same ship, as the hull now is very different, but I guess it could be used for a different ship type, as you mentioned the salamander yourself. That earlier sidewinder seems to be more in accordance with the power I'd expect from a sidewinder, while the newer versions really look dangerous.

Screet

Wow wow wow, All these new ships puts Oolite on a new level!

wackyman465 wrote:

What about just a very shiny black ship with a few stars on it? :twisted:

Sillouettes - you spot the outline against nebulae etc. Though this effect is not as strong in Oolite as it is in real life.

In NZ there are two, otherwise identical, birds - one is jet black, the other is black-and-white. The black one is pretty rare ... predators find them easier to see at night.


At night, the b&w one simply does not look like a bird.

Consider snow-cam as the opposite - common sense tells you that the best cam will be pure white right? But common sense also tells you the Earth is flat:

... notice that the most visible part of the soldiers is the balaclavas?

If you could rely on a pure monochrome background, then pure color would be good cam. Unfortunately you get dirt, shadows (including your own), other objects, and so on. The idea is to make the soldier look like an unimportant bit of background - which is as much psychology as anything else. If you are expecting a particular cam pattern for eg. it's easier to see. Tigers are very hard to see, and they are bright orange!

Experimenting, I've found the hardest ships to see are very dark red broken by mat black cam-patterns. The ship can be very close and be barely a sense of presence.

However - matt-black ships are pretty close to invisible. I have yet to do the cloaked asp mission.

The red&green thargoids are pretty hard to spot though. No exhaust plume.

The other thing a ship can do to make themselves hard to target is talk to you ... put lots of yellow comms chatter in the middle of the players HUD - that's the trick.

Note: the first sidewinder's snowcam has been deliberately broken by making it symmetrical in x. This actually makes the ship easier to see than not having cam at all!

However - all this talk of making craft harder to see... what with space being the size it is, visibility is the main problem. Some of those fighters are so thin that they vanish when they flip edge on.

Some craft want to be noticed - a freighter needs tenders, and escorts, to see it. Have you seen long-haul trucks at night - rows of lights like a xmas tree?

I'd like to make the big boats lit up like that - but switch off when they get in trouble.

Fer de Lance
Remember how I was explaining why the Fer de Lance was hard to do... then I had an idea?

The idea was to make it sword shaped...


(As before, the textures are incomplete. Same reason.)

In this First Impression;

Part 1 kept closely to the profile - you can see how I used the wire frame as a guide.

The trouble was it looked sort-of empty ... in the middle.

(The "pregnant" side profile is an illusion - the screenshots insist on emphasizing the blacks.)

Part 2
... the answer was to fill it in with something - twin engines would do the job.

Now that works pretty well ... except ... well, it looks like the Blackbird from Galactica. I can fix that by shifting the engines to the hilt/wing tips.

Second Impression:


... the cost is that the old profile is pretty much left behind.

The obvious modification is to make the nacelles stubby - hence the inset.

Again, an almost universal wow. The fer-de-lance is my least favourite so far. It's a hard one to re-imagine, really. The idea you have come up with is a lovely design but it doesn't scream FDL at me for some reason.

A couple of additions to the main chassis could bring it closer: see yellow lines on top and left views:



Just an idea. Loving your work and really wishing I could get shaders on my PC.

Selezen wrote:

Again, an almost universal wow. The fer-de-lance is my least favourite so far. It's a hard one to re-imagine, really. The idea you have come up with is a lovely design but it doesn't scream FDL at me for some reason.

A couple of additions to the main chassis could bring it closer: see yellow lines on top and left views:

I see what you mean - that's what I was attempting with 1st Impression part 2. Filling in the side triangles more would help, you're right.

Just an idea. Loving your work and really wishing I could get shaders on my PC.

The good news is that you are looking at the models shaderless ... I've set myself a poly limit of 800/model, most are under 700, and the preview oxp has no shaders at all.

The only thing you'll lose are the colorful reflections.

Simon B wrote:

I'd like to make the big boats lit up like that - but switch off when they get in trouble.

*Makes note to expose switchLightsOn/switchLightsOff status to shaders (and JS)*

(Currently, you can do what you want with flashers, but not glow maps.)

Simon B wrote:

(The "pregnant" side profile is an illusion - the screenshots insist on emphasizing the blacks.)

Have you considered a darker background? :-)

Ahruman, if possible, could we also have firingECM available to shaders too, maybe it could work the same way as the lasertemperature binding does, cycling from 100% to 0% per shot. It might be fun to have crackles and stuff coming off the hull/subentities when the ships are ECM-ing

@Griff - that's a fab idea if doable!

@Simon B - I do like the new FDL - I prefer 1 to 2 but I have two reservations - the FDL is supposed to be the lap of luxury - the beam width of your version puts me more in mind of a narrow boat than a luxury power-boat. It is just a bit too BSG like I'm afraid and while I love the sword idea I'd make the nose pointier and less stubby.

Wondeful ships though - keep it up!

how about maybe something like the blitzspear from 200AD's Nemesis the Warlock?

Griff wrote:

how about maybe something like the blitzspear from 200AD's Nemesis the Warlock?

I think you'll find you're an order of magnitude out there Griff! Irrespective of that though - that's pretty cool and quite FDL (and even has the camo discussed earlier!)

- mangopare from the rangiwaka ship collection. The design is based on the Nemisis ship - credo!

(Is the strip even still running - I liked the old progs?)

@Ahruman: the darker background doesn't help. I've tried tweaking the contrast in the GIMP but it's quit tricky for a quick snap. The chosen views are pretty harsh too ... I could fiddle the lighting, but I think you're better off seeing the ships under makeup light so to speak. Just so long as we realize that, on stage, everything softens.

What I really need is in-game shots.

Right now I'm a bit exhausted after that sidewinder... which is why I'm presenting incomplete designs. This is the advantage of FOSS development - you get to tap external creativity.

I can distribute the obj files of the "in development" ships in a seperate archive if there are modellers who want to take a crack at them?