Oolite Bulletins

Well it's horses for courses really, being a bit of a texture head I kind of like my bulk head doors and plexiglass screens not to be the size of a football pitch if you know what I mean.

That said I'm the kind of git who pastes cargo boxes into holds to get an accurate idea of hold space. Speaking of hold space if we're "upgrading the classics" how about picking hexagons or squares for the cargo? Pentagons don't fit together worth a damn.

My 50p's worth of crap advice:
Scale down the new cobra to take into account miniturisation of parts, and up the "add on cargo hold" capacity of the existing cobra to show the replacement of bulky old parts with minaturised new ones. It's called a cobra after all, not a Moose.

As a side note I think the entire game needs to be "gone through with a scaling ruler" to be honest. We need a team of scale regulators to take on the OXP's. It's a pity we don't have hull points for mounting equipment.

Simon B wrote:

KZ9999 wrote:

Referring to the issues about the over sizing of ships in the game in relation to human scale.

I don't think the hugeness of the ships compared to humans is such a big deal - it's the way different craft are out of proportion with each other which gives pause.

Even converting to feet does not make this go away - and the meter scale makes other things, like insystem distances, more effective.

I have posted a comparison of scales, including a rescaled-to-be-more-consistent cobra mk3 ... the question asked is: does it make sense to use a reduced size mk3?

There were also questions asked about the boa relative scales and the fighters. And Ahrumen suggested that some of the ships could benifit from more bulk ... a scale-up to meet the original specs. I understand this also affects the amount of damage a ship can take (though I can just up the density to compensate IIRC).

The questions have met with zero interest ... however, I think they are important ones in terms of the feel of the game.

By default, I am staying close to the current specs.

Personally, The Cobra Mark III is the ship of the game - and I'd leave it the size it is - massively (apparently) over-scaled as it appears to be compared to many of the other ships.

It's quick for it's size (big engines?) - you can get an extra 15 TCs of cargo into it without apparently altering its external appearance, it can take mil lasers all round, and a whole host of additional equipment without compromising it's basic shape at all. Let's not forget it has cabins for potentially two crew who can live very comfortably if need be for a long-time.

By all means release a scaled down version - just don't call it the Cobra MkIII because it won't be.

And please let us not forget the brutal game-mechanics reason for the ships being oversized: If they were smaller, you would never be able to admire their beauty. What is to admire about three or four pixels?

So, please, could we just lay to rest this rather tiring 'the-ships-are-too-big-compared-to-humans' discussion? - Yes, they are; and everybody knows it. And they are deliberately so for a reason. What's the point in having a beautifully detailed textured ship if you have to literally ram it before being able to make out any of the details? There is none.

Therefore: The measure of how big ships are in the Ooniverse is not the size of RealLife™ human proportions. It is how much detail you can make out on your monitor if you are in a (game-wise) reasonable distance from the ship in question.

OK my other reply post was a little arg!

So I'm refining......

I can see your point but I think there is some middle ground to be found here. If people are just willing to think outside the box for just 5 minutes.

Sure fighters are small, that's why they might be difficult to hit. (Ever tried taking out a merlin)? What I'm saying here is size could be used to enhance the game.

Rather than sticking with a nice safe DUPLO lego world.

Enhancing in which way?

We have already small, medium, and big ships; and some super-duper big ships, which you can install according to your taste.

Much of the debate here is about the ship sizes in comparison to the size of a human body. Okay, an interesting debate, but quite frankly, I don't care.

Putting a human body on a planet would produce equally silly results to putting it next to a ship, just in the opposite direction. And I also don't care.

We all know that the scales in the Ooniverse are hopelessly messed up. Ships and stations are too big (although differently so), planets, suns and moons are to small, distances are too short, the speed of light is too slow. Yes, we know. We have discussed it again and again here; I can't hear it anymore.

And I see only one way to deal with it: Live with it. You can't reconcile the different scales. If you assume that ships' sizes are in feet instead of meters, you must assume as well that planetary and solar radii are in feet as well, simply because they live in the same space as ships. So you are shrinking the already ridiculously small planets and suns again by a factor of three. What you add in 'realism' on one side of the scale (ships), you automatically remove from the other side (which wasn't realistic in the first place). So what's the point? You haven't made the Ooniverse more realistic, but you have just slided the unrealism-scale toward the planets.

And you cannot change the gameplay-reasons which led to the deliberate (I say it again) size decisions in the first place. Realistically sized ships and stations would be practically invisible in front of realistically sized planets. Realistic journeys over realistic distances would be nothing but utterly, utterly boring. I simply don't see why we should aim at that.

The best we can reasonably achieve is a balance of sizes within each category. Big ships have to be big relative to small ships. Small ships have to be small relative to medium ships. Small and medium ships have to be tiny relative to stations. Big ships have to be not-quite-so-tiny relative to stations. And that's basically it. Small planets have to be small relative to big planets. Small and big planets have to be small relative to suns. And that's basically it. Short pilots have to be short relative to tall pilots, and nothing else. Pilots of any size are independent of ship sizes, as they are independent of planetary sizes, because you simply cannot make them the correct size for both their ship and their homeworld.

And this is why I don't see room for enhancements, as far as the size of humans is concerned. If we are only talking about enhancements as far as ships compared to other ships are concerned, I am with you. In this department there is definitely room for enhancement.

Well kind of in this climate I'll take any agreement I can get. (I personally think there's a lot to be said for having a "yard stick" to measure ships by and personally it brakes my heart when I see a good texture on a good ship with a windscreen the wickerman could happily look out of without feeling cramped).

But I digress, your not going to sign off on that one so we'll not even bother going there. Also its hard to argue with someone who honestly doesn't care. That's fair play. So ship issues which make some logical sence;

The problem we have now is fighters with tardis innards. Sure they are small (Merlins for instance), but in this game they appear to be like mosquitos clad in platemail armour and brandishing a bren gun. Tool them up like a 10 metre square battleship.

OK so 2 choices; turn some of the fighters into medium size ships, maybe take a small speed, pitch, yaw, hit but they get to keep the cargo space and the lovely textures.

2; turn them into proper tiny fighters are difficult to hit but die quick, have more limited weapon options and they're sized to be one man with to cargo pods strapped to his ass. Buut you take a big texturing hit when designing one.

OK how does this enhance the game? We'll firstly you don't get instantly chewed apart by a ship you can't see which is packing a mobile blackhole dispenser. But think of the terror of flying into a cloud of them? low hits low damage but they slowly pull your ship out from under you if you don't swat them quick.

For the fighter pilot, imagine having your view screen swamped larger ships as you pick pirate fighters off it's hull?

Good scaling coupled with lightly logical ship programming would open a fair few doors which future OXP'ers could exploit.

Just thoughts.

I love the fact that people assume the strip of different colour across the from if the ship is a viewscreen. Who's to say it is? Seriously with today's science we can have infra-red cameras enhancing the view of a road so you can literally drive without headlights (although thatwould be illegal due to the traffic risks). Using the same scanning media that satellites use, CCDs (charge-coupled devices) means that we don't need to rely on a *highly dangerous* slab of transparent material mounted into the front of the ship. Consider that this ship may inevitably be faced with combat, and all of a sudden, this big [insert sci-fi name for essentially, glass] sheet becomes a liability. Is it as tough as the duralium skin of the ship? Can it withstand a direct three-second hit from an unshielded military laser? If not, then all you need to do to kill the enemy ship is shoot out his forward viewscreen. Hell, with some other type of scanning media you can do away with any kind of external viewport, leaving the hull completely intact but for fuel scoop/airlock/pod bay doors. You don't even need the cockpit near the front or even facing forward. Inertial compensators and artificial gravity (which must exist in some guise if the ship is able to travel at near light speed) remove the sensation of motion (or even generate a false sense of motion, should the cockpit not be centrally located or forward facing) so you could be sat facing a wall, the other side of which are the engines and still be able to pilot the ship as effectively as if you were sat at the pointy end.

This arguement has stemmed from the ship texture of the Cobra Mark III, more specifically the band across the front panel. Here's a solution, take the texture, and edit it so that the 'veiwscreen' is proportioned more to your liking.

my Cr 0.02

Captain Hesperus

I have to say I would be a fan of a slight rescale, so bigger ships and stations seem more impressive, but that's as far as it goes vessel wise.
I do think the extra moons and planets that get added are too close though, I'd double their distance.

If I may add a bit of a redirect here:

Recap


Notice the two cobra3 models?
Which one fits better?

Notice the boa and boa2 models?
Should the boa2 be scaled down or the boa scaled up? (Boa2 should be slightly smaller than boa1 ... but similar length.)

The anaconda displayed is about 10% upscale from the one in your oxp. Much bigger and it will be a trick to get it in the dock. Is this uitably impressive or is the smaller edition more reasonable?

The gecko displayed is actually about 10% too small ... should it be left or scaled up?

------------------------
Notes:

The cobra3 has focus here because it's (apparent?) scale discrepancy is something most everyone comments on - thus requiring rather more post-design justification than usual. I submit there are no good game-design reasons for this models scale.

All signs point to the cobra3 being designed to the scale of the cobra1 and someone says "wait, it needs to be bigger" - a 2x bigger figure is plucked out of the air ... maybe due to cargo cap comparisons. The rest of the game had to fit around that.

The current neolite model has chunks cut out of the underside which reduces overall volume and the lines suggest a slimmer ship too. This may be enough - personally I'm thinking along the lines of something between the big and little one in the pic.

While there are good game-design reasons for most of the traditional models, there are also known mistakes - like the anaconda cargo cap.

The strip across the bow of each ship is almost universally interpreted as having something to do with the lifesystem. It need not follow the front viewport exactly, after all, moders ships have a similar stripe over the window areas for aesthetic reasons.

However, if the strip has nothing to do with the life section or windows, then why have it at all? I believe that this is intended to indicate front windows.

In the neolite skins, I've got rid of it and tried to keep my explicit front windows inside the 50-200cm range. The Worm is comanded before floor-to-ceiling windows while fighters have narrow, highly inset, views.

However, I am not totally restricting pilot views to the modelled panels. The front panel informs the center of the forward view - true - but the actual view position is usually a bit forward of this to avoid having too much of the ship block the sky. (Which is something which needs comment btw. the last oxp release also fixed the viewpoints.)

I have thought that perhaps I should just do the modest rescaling I feel justified anyway, but release a "traditional scales" oxp on the side. That way, people who care can have it either way.

Concept Test cum Reality Check
(Images are thumbs, linked to 512x512 maps.)

The following height map has been created for the Gecko model:

... white is high and black is low. Only colors inside panels will count. The resulting normal map will be (guessing here) determined by adjacent colors. So I created a (#808080) grey layer to act as the middle and used seperate layers for raised and lowered bits. Merged the lot and set it to greyscale.

The normalize filter in the GIMP has been applied to make a normal map:


For completeness - here is the corresponding effects map. Note - no green no alpha.


I am hoping that someone with the appropriate tools will apply these to the gecko model and report back. If it is even half-way reasonable, I'll do the rest of the ships and release v1.0 of the oxp ;)

Thanks.

The front strip could be a "sensor band", rather than a window (transparent bits of hull + lasers = dangerous).

My own general preference would be for big ships to be big, medium ships to be medium and small ones to be small, but gameplay trumps the lot. We'd really need to playtest the different sizes to see if combat becomes a chore.

My vote goes for smaller Cobra3 and as big an Anaconda as can be docked onto the stations (naturally, we might increase the size of the stations / station docking slits themselves as well).

I second Wolfwood.

I'd say keep the Cobra's about the same size (Mk3 a little bigger), make the Anaconda's so big as to barely fit into the docking slit.

I would not be opposed to make the docking slits and the stations in general a bit larger. I've always considered Coriolis stations at least to be rather smallish, given the number of ships, beings and cargo that seem to fit inside it (technically infinite ATM, I know).

This would have the advantage of making docking a bit easier for new Jamesons. OTOH, it should still be impossible to dock a Cobra sideways - that would take away all of the challenge. I can live with a Gecko or Adder fitting in at any angle.

My 2 cts.

-Oz