Oolite Bulletins

Useful observations:

Disembodied wrote:

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

that's a pretty big sensor strip ... still wishy-washy.

Of course - if there were a way to get that impression to a player more reliably, you'd be on to something. There have bees some attempts - look at Griff's cobra again. You'd have to pattern the strip so it's obviously not a window area - ani provide some indication that the lifesystem is reasonably sized.

It's moot for neolite anyway.

Any idias for what the strips of glowing blue are?

My own general preference would be for big ships to be big, medium ships to be medium and small ones to be small,

Which, see pic, is actually what got designed. There are generally three size classes, all with fairly consistent scales within their groups. (If you take into account the anaconda mistake that is.)

The only sour note is the cobra3 which seems to be a big ship with small-ship stats.

The anaconda error is something which enhances the game - it's cool to have one outsize craft.

but gameplay trumps the lot. We'd really need to playtest the different sizes to see if combat becomes a chore.

Interesting idea - of course resizing is simple if you have wings and the dat2obj script. Have a go.

Simon B wrote:

Any idias for what the strips of glowing blue are?

Er ... part of the reactionless drive-train? Mass-converters? Dynaflow flux-tubes? Something like that, probably. It usually is.

Simon B wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

My own general preference would be for big ships to be big, medium ships to be medium and small ones to be small,

Which, see pic, is actually what got designed. There are generally three size classes, all with fairly consistent scales within their groups. (If you take into account the anaconda mistake that is.)

The only sour note is the cobra3 which seems to be a big ship with small-ship stats.

The anaconda error is something which enhances the game - it's cool to have one outsize craft.

I like the enhanced sense of scale these changes would bring. I would love to bring a ship in to a huge station, or to feel dwarfed as a massive Anaconda glides by ... but bits of the gameplay start to change, too. If docking bays get bigger to accommodate bigger ships, then manual docking becomes easier, for example (which might be no bad thing – it would make the game easier for Jamesons to get into, for a start: but still, a different game).

The biggest change would be to combat – and not just for the player. Even if humans can handle fighting small ships, can the NPCs do the same? Reports from people flying the (anomalously, possibly mistakenly small) Merlin might suggest that they can't. It's currently a finely balanced game: making alterations to fundamentals like ship size could mean that great big chunks of the program would have to be stripped down and rebuilt to make it work again.

I think this is potentially a really big change, that goes way beyond aesthetics. I want it, but I fear it. It's very possible that it would need a lot of playtesting, by a lot of people – including, for preference, a lot of people who haven't played the game before, haven't developed mad Oolite skilz and don't know what to expect.

Disembodied wrote:

...for preference, a lot of people who haven't played the game before, haven't developed mad Oolite skilz and don't know what to expect.

I don't entirely agree here, I think you need a mix of new and old testers (in terms of experience, not age!). Then you can define what is possible, but difficult, needing experience to achieve, and balance that with what is simple and encourages the newbies to get involved with the game.

As for this whole issue of scale and the size of everything, I do very much like the idea of trying to convey 'bigness' in the game. Flying alongside an Anaconda should be an intimidating experience for the new pilot, and the stations do need to convey a sense of the size required to do the job they do.

Griff's Trade Station (aka Constore etc) is "Big" - it certainly feels much bigger than the normal game stations. But something like an Anaconda doesn't feel that big because you do have to get pretty close to it before it fills your viewer - now the tetra-screens in YAH - they really do feel big - mainly because you're never sure how close to get to them before they clip you during their tumble...

Star Gazer wrote:

I don't entirely agree here, I think you need a mix of new and old testers (in terms of experience, not age!). Then you can define what is possible, but difficult, needing experience to achieve, and balance that with what is simple and encourages the newbies to get involved with the game.

That's why I said "including" ...

Star Gazer wrote:

As for this whole issue of scale and the size of everything, I do very much like the idea of trying to convey 'bigness' in the game. Flying alongside an Anaconda should be an intimidating experience for the new pilot, and the stations do need to convey a sense of the size required to do the job they do.

I totally agree – but this is a change that (potentially) goes way beyond just altering the graphics. If we end up with ships we (players and NPCs) can't miss at one end, and ships we (players and NPCs again) can't hit at the other, we'd have great visuals and atmosphere, but no game.

I don't want to be negative here: I'd love to see a better spread of ship sizes. I just think it could be a very complicated deal to make these changes to the game as well as to the graphics. Players have to be able to fight NPC ships. NPC ships have to be able to fight the player, and each other.

Right: lets make this official...

Bushmaster


Cat/Cougar


Chameleon


Ghaivial


Iguana


Monitor


Ophidian


The missing ship is, of course, the

Salamander

... was the Sidewinder. Scaled up, adjust the viewscreen, and a new skin.

These ships are coming to an OXP near you soon - I don't want to put them with the standard lot right away. Don't want to call them "old ships" neither. I know - neolite-companion.oxp ... stay tuned.

Bonus... it has been impressed upon me that the Fer de Lance should have a tidier skin - fdl owners are proud ad would never let their beloved craft get into the state I've shown. Well all right, how about:

Disembodied wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Any idias for what the strips of glowing blue are?

Er ... part of the reactionless drive-train? Mass-converters? Dynaflow flux-tubes? Something like that, probably. It usually is. :)

Great - now I'll have to go reverse the polarity of something involving tachyons.

The biggest change would be to combat – and not just for the player. Even if humans can handle fighting small ships, can the NPCs do the same?

It would appear so ...

The smallest player ship in the set is the asp mark 2 - which the npcs have no trouble hitting. The smallest ship is the gecko - I've seen galcops take one out. It's trickier for a player because it's so slim it can hide behind a comms message.

It's the kraits and the fdls give me the biggest trouble... mostly from kamakazi tactics - just like before. Which way will he break? Do I toss a coin? Wait: I know: rotate 90degs: whichever way he goes, it will be 90degs to m... he rotates to match?! Who wrote this AI!

Note - you can fly any of the ships by editing a save file.

Sweet! Vast improvements all round. The Salamander doesn't look like a spaceborne clam any more! And the Cat – finally it looks like a ship to be afraid of. It always was a ship to be afraid of, but now it looks like one too! I love the Iguana, too ... Is the neo-Iguana a bit shorter and stockier than the original? It looks more powerful, somehow ... meaner, too. As it should.

Simon B wrote:

The smallest player ship in the set is the asp mark 2 - which the npcs have no trouble hitting. The smallest ship is the gecko - I've seen galcops take one out. It's trickier for a player because it's so slim it can hide behind a comms message.

It's the kraits and the fdls give me the biggest trouble... mostly from kamakazi tactics - just like before. Which way will he break? Do I toss a coin? Wait: I know: rotate 90degs: whichever way he goes, it will be 90degs to m... he rotates to match?! Who wrote this AI!

Note - you can fly any of the ships by editing a save file.

That sounds like excellent news. I may have been overly nervous. If the AI is robust enough to cope with the size changes then I'm all for it!

In that regard, to answer your earlier question, I'd vote for the smaller of the two Cobra IIIs. I don't think it should be so much bigger than the Cobra I. The extra cargo capacity can be largely explained by a superior drive system and a more efficient internal layout.

I think the Boa should probably be scaled up. The Gecko, as shown, looks a good size. If the Galcops can shoot them through all that coffee and doughnuts, then I'm sure I can too.

Will there be any modifications to toughness based on size? I think it's probably important for the big ships, at least, to be made harder, since they'll be taking more hits from longer ranges. Although again that's something that probably needs a bit of playtesting.

Disembodied wrote:

Sweet! Vast improvements all round. The Salamander doesn't look like a spaceborne clam any more!

These are all formulaic models - I posted the short howto earlier (I hope).

The fire-storm paintjob was one of my first modifications to oolite, before I ever started modelling.

And the Cat – finally it looks like a ship to be afraid of. It always was a ship to be afraid of, but now it looks like one too!

I always thought the cat looked like an origami cat-head or a maneke neko ... or some combination, vis:

I love the Iguana, too ... Is the neo-Iguana a bit shorter and stockier than the original? It looks more powerful, somehow ... meaner, too. As it should.

I know what you mean - it's the skin that does it.

The neo has exactly the same proportions in the overhead view - but it's flat across the bottom - which would have halved the volume had I not scaled it up. So it is longer and wider and about 2/3 the thickness.

Of course, I could have just doubled it's density...

Re the viewports. Given that the crosshairs are in the middle of the screen and that when you fire the laser goes from the bottom of the screen right into this crosshair implies that this is a fake view anyway - since either you'd be looking pretty much down the barrel of the laser (tiny parallex) or somehow the laser was angled upwards slightly to hit "some distance" in front of the ship something that was in the centre of the crosshair.

I've always presumed that the viewports were sensors non-window type devices - easy to overlay all that augmented reality stuff then.

I'd do away with "windows" in the classic sense completely - then people couldn't argue about the size of the window and therefore extrapolate the size of the human sat behind it.

Hi Simon
Here's the gecko running in rendermonkey with the normal map you linked to earlier applied to it

Looking good!
sorry about the model appearing to move closer then further from the camera, i couldn't work out how to rotate the model evenly by adjusting the camera position values without getting this effect.
It's really annoying that there isn't a way to get obj's into shaderdesigner without using that 3dstudio max plugin, i had another look at lumina, http://lumina.sourceforge.net/
it does seem to import obj's quite happily, maybe this would be a cool linux shaderdesigner alternative? i couldn't get anything to appear in it though, mind you i wasn't following the tutorials that closely

I know, it looks great! all the more amazing when you realise simon hasn't been able to check it yet since we can't find a linux glsl shader development program.
One thing i might suggest is to not to make the grills so bumpy, a quick reduction in the contrast levels of the greyscale height map you generated the normal map from will fix this

Oh man, Simon, every time I visit this topic I'm more and more amazed!
Splendid job!