Oolite Bulletins

I was meaning that as a model in its own right it would look more like some submersible vessel along the lines of what the Moray is supposed to represent. Rather than trying to copy the original Moray I was suggesting that model reversed would actually be a better replacement.
Purely subjective.
Besides, if the 'tail' was extended it would keep the basic form of the original without being restricted to the misformed box it hails from.
Might be worth a go..?

I don't explain myself very well sometimes.

People who expect a sub to be long and thin need to look at a wider range of more modern subs. In sci-fi, have a look at the classig Thunderbird 5 and the more recent Deep Angel.

The latter is closer to the design concepts I was considering - they have a large supercavitating sub/aircraft-carrier. The Angelus also has wings and a blunt-front design.

I was thinking of a sub cum surface craft I like the idea that it supercavitates under water and hydroplanes on top.

To be fair - the angelus is longer, and has the wrong shaped front for it's speed. The best shape is very blunt - almost like a hollow-point bullet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitation

Also bear in mind tha the moray was not supposed to have been very successsful as a sub. Perhaps it had trouble selling because it doesn't look like one?

There has been stronger support for this design than against it, so far. And it's good to see people telling me what it is they like/don't like. Even when your arguments get rejected, they inform the creative process on future models.

You'll be able to see the discussions on previous ships affect the later ones for eg. And look at the difference between the 1st impressions of the FDL and the final model? (I've been flying this around the game ... I got a tweak in the plist then it will be in the next release with these others.)

I have not been able to get the shuttle's wings to appear in the game. Could just be a broken model and I'm just too distracted to read the logs right. Can someone have a look - give me a second pair of eyes? Thanks.

It is very tempting to recreate ships along my own ideas instead of staying with the canon. However, we can all do that in oxp - which is the proper place. I set out from the start to do a shipset which could reasonably replace the original set for everyone - and set rather restrictive guidelines for the process.

One of them was that the design process needed to be public. If there is general disike for a model, it gets scrapped no matter how much I, personally, like it. That first cm1 model, the early FDL designs... the boa owes it's look to feedback.

The FDL departs the most of all from the Elite model. That design, I see, as setting the extreme limit that I can go. All the other designs will stay well inside that.

So we won't see any more super-smooth ships ... well, maybe one, but not so extreme.

I'm on the downward leg now. I have some scripts, a lot of shaders, and the oldships oxp to do.

Do people want stations? I have a multi-subentity coriolis... my personal take is to do a basic makeover of the station models and a stations oxp to do the standard SF variations - torus (I know - there's already an oxp for this) coke-can, dumbell, mir etc. I'd thought of grading them to tech level and political environment... maybe take the world descriptions into account so worlds in civil war have armed stations (to discourage takeover bids).

What models besides ships should be included - I don't think asteroids...

Note: no shaders or fancy effects have made it to the oxp stage .. yet. Anyone who wants to wark on those - be my guest (griff - that Gecko needs normal map indents around the engines and bumps over the grills and cockpit windows ... otherwise it's a smooth ship capiche? You do great work but less is more.)

I am planning the textures to make effects, spec and normal mapping easier - so I keep different specular areas to different layers where I can, all the flat bump-mapping is done on the base layer, and I'm keeping the lines which made the actual bump-map itself - so the burned-in bumpmap can be replaced by a normal map.

Ships which don't need all-over shaders - say, can have their special effects areas moved to a separate texture to save on bandwidth. I've made sure that parts affected by engine-heat, hull&cabin light etc are different entities - so the diffuse map for them can just be cut and paste if need be.

Lots of the grills have something behind them to glow - I put the grill itself on a different layer so the effects map can just color a solid blue (say) on the area then paste over the grills to block out the non-glowing bits. The under-grill shading is also separate for the same reason.

See how much planning is needed?

I love the new designs Simon B.

I noticed the shift towards a more 'lumpy' and 'organic' looks that E:F and E:FFE were trying to invoke with their newer ships. Were you trying to invoke that in your designs?

One thought though. I, and no doubt a lot of other people, run Oolite on fairly low spec' systems. When system starts to get busy, lots of ships or stellar material, the game starts to chug. While I love the new designs that you and the others are coming up with, I can see them putting a lot of load on my poor little laptop. While I could play the game in strict mode, I'd hate to miss out on all the cool stuff that is being done.

Perhaps there should be a lower complexity versions of the designs that the game could switch to in times of high load. After all, in the middle of a laz-fest, you're too worried about protecting your ass to worry about simpler design of the ships.

I don't know how much work that would be to implement, but I'm putting it out there as an idea.

KZ9999 wrote:

I love the new designs Simon B.

I noticed the shift towards a more 'lumpy' and 'organic' looks that E:F and E:FFE were trying to invoke with their newer ships. Were you trying to invoke that in your designs?

No - though I'd love to do organic designs, we are talking about 1000s of polys there. The closest I got was keeping the "vein-y" lines in the FDL.

The tharglet is quite simple and I'm having a go at a more organic look for that.

One thought though. I, and no doubt a lot of other people, run Oolite on fairly low spec' systems. When system starts to get busy, lots of ships or stellar material, the game starts to chug. While I love the new designs that you and the others are coming up with, I can see them putting a lot of load on my poor little laptop. While I could play the game in strict mode, I'd hate to miss out on all the cool stuff that is being done.

Fear not - I too have a low spec laptop - Acer 4315 - celeron-mobile and i965 graphics - Ubuntu 8.10. It will not run shaders without a lot of stutter, so I switch them off. I also switch off the compositing features of the desktop. No need to run in strict mode. So far these ships have been fine.

If you are running a recent XP (SP3) or Vista on a similar spec machine then you have my pity but not sympathy. Those OSs are well-known resource hogs, and my opinion about what you should do with them is well known and vented elsewhere...

However - most will not render in 1.65 ... use 1.71 or more recent.

Perhaps there should be a lower complexity versions of the designs that the game could switch to in times of high load. After all, in the middle of a laz-fest, you're too worried about protecting your ass to worry about simpler design of the ships.

There are simpler models for the FDL - because I was worried about exactly that - the FDL uses three high-for-oolite poly entities - not counting gun nozzles and quirium pipes and whatever else I feel like sticking in there.

Doing that generally would double the number of models and textures. The textures themselves make up the bulk of the bandwidth in the package and each low-res version will need it's own plist entry.

You'd also get a jarring note if extra ships get spawned in the middle of combat (likely with some oxps - and Thargoids) when the ship in front of you suddenly changes shape.

Mind you - a shape-changing craft may be interesting ... when it's spawned it flips through several shapes before setttling on one - shoot it and it flips to a nasty combat ship etc.

Hmmm ... Scarcraws new pilot figure is interesting - I could make a female version, and use the reverse normals trick to make Wonder Womans glass Cobra...

Aside: if someone wants to make a low-spec edition of these ships - you have my blessing. I doubt it will be needed except for anchient machines - where IMO the existing edition should be played anyway. Such player know they have an old computer and accept that there are things it won't do.

Cobra mark 3


... here's what you've been waiting for.

That's the basic design - there are some tweaks I can see ... eg. that line across the nose, underside, has to go. Need to check the Japanese - it's supposed to spell "cobra".

The tail of the comma part of the engines (back view) is a shadow.

IIRC there is just an escape capsule and the boa2 to go - then all the ships are done. Need to paint the alternate models where they exist, put in the extra FDL, and work out which models want lights all over. (One will be the anaconda.)

Put in the gun models - add twin-gun variations to choice NPC ships. But that's all decoration.

Nice work SimonB!!
Maybe it would be nice to add some turrets to the bigger ones (Anaconda ect) especially now that turrets in player ships are functional

Ark wrote:

Maybe it would be nice to add some turrets to the bigger ones (Anaconda ect) especially now that turrets in player ships are functional

And why not ramp the engine power and energy banks of the Cobra III up to 200 % while we’re at it? ;-)

Disembodied wrote:

The revised MkI gets my vote! And Frame: your fancy Adder looks sweet too... 8)

(Edit: didn't realise that the Fancy Adder was Frame's ... :oops: )

Which fancy adder? The blue one in this thread is mine.

I would suggest not modifying the stats of any ship (with the possible exception of the Fer de Lance). Leave it to an OXP writer who wants to make his favourite ship the best in a 7 lightyear radius.

I like the Cobra Mk3 redesign. It stays with the concept, but does a subtle updating. The colour scheme will have a hard time competing with Griff's textures though .

As for the Moray, I think here is an opportunity to roughly keep the original shape but make it very rounded, like a proper submarine.

The Cobra III is looking good! As regards the Moray, I had an idea which might make it look more "aquatic" and help recreate the hunchback look ... then again it might be an ugly kludge. How about a forward-set dorsal fin?

Simon B wrote:

Which fancy adder? The blue one in this thread is mine.

Frame provided a couple of links:

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn18 ... ective.jpg

and

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn18 ... derTop.png

It took a few seconds to ponder it and then I decided I love the new Cobby3!!! It's the classic ship and you've maintained the classic design and yet improved it. As part of the "replacement classic set" it's a winner - of course i'll still be wanting Griff's...

Can anybody tell me while we're at it where exactly does the Cargo Bay extension go? Is it internal, external or a combo of the two? Would the ship's exterior reflect that all these extra things could be bolted on at a later date? i.e. the cargo bay extension, energy bomb (as per description in DW), aft, port and starboard lasers, fuel scoop. Surely there'd be something to indicate where these things might go? (bolt holes, recesses, etc...)

Also, is the plan to complete replace the original set with Simon's work? Or make it a semi-automatic oxp i.e. default "yes" to Simon's ships unless you set a flag in the config file and will strict mode give you the original ships too?

Really got to go - better half really wants to use the PC!!!

Really like that Cobra, I want both sets when they're done It's like Simon's are the commercial/trade standards, and Griff's will be the extra expensive armoured versions.
Think that's how I'll try and implement it anyways, it would be a shame for either to go to waste.
Actually, what if they start off as Simon's but change to Griffs when you buy military grade armour?