Oolite Bulletins

Looking cool Simon They've got a great chunky armoured feel to them. Personally I will rename your Constrictor to something else as I would put your set alongside Griffs, I like the Constrictor being a different design (experimental) to the current Navy vessels (as yours will be them once implemented). I likey alot though!
Thinking about it personally, it would be good to have the Constrictor of the mission to appear now and then as a tough pirate/extremely rare hunter, yours could appear in game several space-months later as the Navy's revised and improved design, the Navy's new spec being that it had to be able to effectively catch and destroy the other. A Navy hunter/seek and destroy strike craft
And I thought your Thargoid battle ships were a most tasty interpretation (with that blue, maybe it even seems a little steam-punkish!) although there are some good shapes in the expansions as it stands, would seem a shame to throw those away. Not so sure about the different orientations yet, I'll have to see that to make my mind up.

ZygoUgo wrote:

Thinking about it personally, it would be good to have the Constrictor of the mission to appear now and then as a tough pirate/extremely rare hunter, yours could appear in game several space-months later as the Navy's revised and improved design, the Navy's new spec being that it had to be able to effectively catch and destroy the other. A Navy hunter/seek and destroy strike craft

I always thought that you destroying the only prototype buried the whole Constrictor project for good. Two reasons: (1) with the prototype lost, the research would be set back months; and (2) you destroying it effortlessly in your stock Cobra III painfully proves that the whole design was flawed in the first place. Therefore the project would be scrapped wholesale.

That doesn't mean that the navy wouldn't continue to develop other superior ships, perhaps even based on what they learned from the failed Constrictor project. But the Constrictor clearly is a failure, and therefore is the way not to go for the navy.

That Viper looks wicked, but it seems to me that your Constrictor doesn't really match the overall general shape of the original model. The side outlines taper towards the front at a much lower angle than the original's awkward-but-distinctive 45°. In addition, the straight side outlines behind the diagonal ones look too short, and not parallel. As a result of these things and your model's larger height, I would have to say that your Constrictor has a very different look from the original, which I might describe as a square pancake with two corners cut off.

That said, I felt very conflicted as I typed the above because that is a REALLY amazing model you have there, especially the detail work on the underside. The model just didn't scream "Constrictor" to me. The Constrictor has without a question not only THE most ugly-ass shape but also the most distinctive one among all of the ships in the original set, so I guess my biggest issue is that your model seemed just way too good-looking for me to associate it with that thing.

I very much hope that model finds use somewhere, but I feel that to use it for the Constrictor would pull it down from that special place in my heart which I hold for the ugliest ship to exist in my Ooniverse. Just my two cents; great work regardless!

Commander McLane wrote:

I always thought that you destroying the only prototype buried the whole Constrictor project for good. Two reasons: (1) with the prototype lost, the research would be set back months; and (2) you destroying it effortlessly in your stock Cobra III painfully proves that the whole design was flawed in the first place. Therefore the project would be scrapped wholesale.

The Constrictor is a bit of an enigma, but the destruction of one of the prototypes does by no means signal the end of the ship. The in-game mission Constrictor was a test-bed for a new shield generator (from the mission screen:- "a new model, the Constrictor, equipped with a top secret new shield generator"), so it's loss would not hold back development of the ship itself.
The concept of a fast interceptor/fighter would continue to be developed, and production models with full (reliable) shields and full armaments would still be produced, albeit after a short delay.
In some Ooniverses reverse-engineered 'copies' are highly desirable to Bounty Hunters and production Contrictors would inevitably fall into pirate hands, or be requisitioned by GalCop to deal with a major crisis such as a pirate insurgency.

Thanks for reminding me of the shield generator thing. I played the Constrictor mission a long time ago, and my memories are blurred. I was under the impression that the whole ship was supposed to be superior.

So, you blowing it up only proves that the new shield generator—insofar the pilot got it to work correctly in the first place—was still less than perfect. Which means that the developers still could get another test model out in the open after a while, and eventually the model could go into production.

Which also means that the rare Constrictors that you eventually will meet don't need to be exactly the same model as the lost prototype. It could've been developed further in the meantime.

BTW: I am a little tempted to suggest that the new shield generator could be what we're seeing in NPC-shields.oxp. There's a part of me that would like this type of tie-in with a loose end of the Oolite story. However, another part wouldn't like to see the NPC-shields only on one rarely seen ship type...

Commander McLane wrote:

Thanks for reminding me of the shield generator thing. I played the Constrictor mission a long time ago, and my memories are blurred. I was under the impression that the whole ship was supposed to be superior.

So, you blowing it up only proves that the new shield generator—insofar the pilot got it to work correctly in the first place—was still less than perfect. Which means that the developers still could get another test model out in the open after a while, and eventually the model could go into production.

Which also means that the rare Constrictors that you eventually will meet don't need to be exactly the same model as the lost prototype. It could've been developed further in the meantime.

BTW: I am a little tempted to suggest that the new shield generator could be what we're seeing in NPC-shields.oxp. There's a part of me that would like this type of tie-in with a loose end of the Oolite story. However, another part wouldn't like to see the NPC-shields only on one rarely seen ship type...

Can't you do both. Just a little bit of shields to all NPC's for the effect, while the rarely seen ship type has the full amount and if possible, it glows in a different colour giving the player feedback that there is something special going on. Also if Oolite 2.0 implements NPC shields, the OXP would live on for the special and rare ship(s)

Gimi wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Thanks for reminding me of the shield generator thing. I played the Constrictor mission a long time ago, and my memories are blurred. I was under the impression that the whole ship was supposed to be superior.

So, you blowing it up only proves that the new shield generator—insofar the pilot got it to work correctly in the first place—was still less than perfect. Which means that the developers still could get another test model out in the open after a while, and eventually the model could go into production.

Which also means that the rare Constrictors that you eventually will meet don't need to be exactly the same model as the lost prototype. It could've been developed further in the meantime.

BTW: I am a little tempted to suggest that the new shield generator could be what we're seeing in NPC-shields.oxp. There's a part of me that would like this type of tie-in with a loose end of the Oolite story. However, another part wouldn't like to see the NPC-shields only on one rarely seen ship type...

Can't you do both. Just a little bit of shields to all NPC's for the effect, while the rarely seen ship type has the full amount and if possible, it glows in a different colour giving the player feedback that there is something special going on.

That's of course a possibility. It would need the collaboration of whoever is designing the Constrictor 2. He would have to implement the shield script, and a custom shader for the glow effect in another colour, perhaps even a different glow effect. I would love to have a glowing sphere around the ship instead of the glowing hull, but I don't know whether that's even possible.

Commander McLane wrote:

I would love to have a glowing sphere around the ship instead of the glowing hull, but I don't know whether that's even possible.

Can you activate a flasher by script? A flasher slightly larger than the ship, positioned at 0,0,0 and 'on' for just a second when each laser strikes would give this effect.

Smivs wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I would love to have a glowing sphere around the ship instead of the glowing hull, but I don't know whether that's even possible.

Can you activate a flasher by script? A flasher slightly larger than the ship, positioned at 0,0,0 and 'on' for just a second when each laser strikes would give this effect.

Some problems: what if the ship has other flashers as well? You can't activate only one flasher, it's all or none. So, if it's for example a Viper, the big flasher would show up every time the police lights are switched on. Not good. But there's more: rapid on/off isn't trivial and looks ugly. The ship can get hit far more often than once a second.

I've tried it with flashers, but the results were less than convincing.

T'was only a thought

Skinned it ... this uses 4 materials, so this will mean 4 glow maps, hmmmm... I wonder if I was clever enough to avoid overlapping the same color light on each map. I'll only have 2 or three colors, so I could use different channels for colors as well as material ... need to take a closer look.

If I concentrate on one for too long, I get burnt out, and this was a long one (Constrictor clocks up a bit under 4000 triangles!)
Thus - cobra varients:


... probably collect them in a separate oxp.

I have uncovered the navy OXP and my original conversion notes from neolite ... so this may be the way.
Need to read how materials were used to put the names on the behemoths

The Black Albatross wrote:

That Viper looks wicked, but it seems to me that your Constrictor doesn't really match the overall general shape of the original model. The side outlines taper towards the front at a much lower angle than the original's awkward-but-distinctive 45°. In addition, the straight side outlines behind the diagonal ones look too short, and not parallel. As a result of these things and your model's larger height, I would have to say that your Constrictor has a very different look from the original, which I might describe as a square pancake with two corners cut off.

Mine's a bit bigger than the original and you are right, I tapered off the design to favour a more rakish nose. I think griffs does this too and I also did it to the Iguana (go look).

With reference to this and others it may work better as an ng (re-imagined) version of the original constrictor... perhaps someone could design a mission where the player has to steal one? (Or support an NPC stealing one?)

That said, I felt very conflicted as I typed the above because that is a REALLY amazing model you have there, especially the detail work on the underside. The model just didn't scream "Constrictor" to me. The Constrictor has without a question not only THE most ugly-ass shape but also the most distinctive one among all of the ships in the original set, so I guess my biggest issue is that your model seemed just way too good-looking for me to associate it with that thing.

Which pretty much describes my feelings too. It's almost too cool. I think this model is marking a watershed in my design abilities ... compare with the neolite ships before: those now look primitive and barely worth mentioning to me. Also look what happened to the cobra-cutter (is that the right one: I keep confusing the name with the courier) above... that's quite a different way of building to when I started even this set ... compare it with the neolite version from the companion set.

Note: I skinned the sb-constrictor as heavily worn ... which is also not right. At least the mission pic of the ship should be clean and the worn out look because of what it went through to get away (almost get away). All those exposed pipes etc is supposed to signal "this ship is not finished": you don't want them on a cambat ship. Still, we'll see how it goes.

There is a constrictor in the re2dux oxp - have you looked at that?

These new ships look stunning Simon, there's something about that Constrictor that makes me think of some sort of scary skeletal demon bird or something! Really awesome!

Have just updated the re2dux set this counts as a pre2 release - not the vipers though.

... The fer de lance in the dark

Some of the ships are still a bit clunky on the lighting ... I've made a separate glow-map for them so if someone wants to improve on them they can do this easily and as easily send me the resulting greyscale image. If I like it I'll use it - you can have credit printed on the texture.

I also did a set of cobra varients.

... (above) the green one is supposed to be a cobra rapier, the red one is exactly the same with two extra engines - I've taken the liberty and called it "cobra cutlass". That oxp comes fully functional and it also has the clippers. The stats may not be quite what you are used to - I made them up due to lazyness (optimised clipper for speed and rapier for manouverability, cutlass goes for brute force).


Oh yeah - here's that constrictor, if I havn't already.
(the oxp sets up a player-only test ship, you'll have to modify a save file to get it.)

Griff wrote:

These new ships look stunning Simon, there's something about that Constrictor that makes me think of some sort of scary skeletal demon bird or something! Really awesome!

Funny you should say that... during my hiatus I did experiment with skeletal and arthropoid repeating designs and some of what learned did go in to some of these designs ... you see it in the tendency to have repeated small structures.

I have to make a lot of faces type "hole" which gets tedious ... that constrictor is probably the most complex so far. Probably about as far as I can safely push the complexity for oolite. Not to say that I won't try other things.