Oolite Bulletins

Just so I've got something to post - (very) early pic of the work I'm doing on the anaconda. (blow off the cargo bay door in the game and you'll be able to see the cargo hold inside).

ramon wrote:

Whoa, dude! Check out those bigass mega-exhausts, man. "Pimp My 'Conda!"

Captain Hesperus
"Oh, dear Giles. He's at it again!"

Again I find myself wishing for subentity deathactions or AI
In order to messageMother: CARGOBLOWN
AIMother:
CARGOBLOWN = ejectCargo

Which would eject a nice stream of cargo from the hold, should you define the ejectposition inside the cargohatch.



To throw a bad egg: (sorry)
The ship does look very unbalanced though...I imagine it would fly in loopings as the thrust vector is not along the axis of the craft (or its centre of mass for that matter)

crikey!

how many vertices were needed to get the exhausts that good? or is that the benefits of the SMOOTHING command?

she looks like a surprised caterpillar in that second shot

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

should you define the ejectposition inside the cargohatch.

Yeah good idea, not sure if the cargo pods inside will be to the same scale as those ejected though, I've not looked at the model of the cargo pod yet.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

To throw a bad egg: (sorry)
The ship does look very unbalanced though...I imagine it would fly in loopings as the thrust vector is not along the axis of the craft (or its centre of mass for that matter)

You're quite right, the boosters are way too big at the moment and stick out too far. I'm more pleased with the chamfering of the edges of the main ship but if I'd just posted that people might not have even noticed. I'm working on quite a radical change today which (hopefully) I'll post this evening - if it's to everyones liking I'll carry on with it, otherwise back to the drawing board.

Killer Wolf wrote:

how many vertices were needed to get the exhausts that good? or is that the benefits of the SMOOTHING command?

The boosters are only about 120-160 faces (16 sides). It's the smoothing command which has them looking like that - although the picture you see is a render from MAX and I'm not sure if Oolite will handle the smoothing quite as well. (Although (again) it was because of MAX that Giles wrote the smoothing command in the first place)

ramon wrote:

Those exhausts would make excellent laser cannons too.

better?



I should be getting my scifi textures from http://www.3dtotal.com/ tomorrow or Monday, then I can texture this ship up a beauty.

@ramon - If I weren't a man and already married, I'd marry you. I want an Anaconda <looks up Anaconda stats>, then again, maybe not.

Good job, tho'!

Captain Hesperus

For some reason, I particularly like the recessed windows. They look like something from the 70s or 80s, not the “streamlined” space ships you see too much of these days. Very appropriate.

Oh, this might be a little anal-retentive, but while the replacement project is in its early stages you might want to consider conventions for things like position lights.

quite right too. I'm not a fan of the new streamlined look either.

Anyway....more detail needs adding so let's open up the debate again: Do I add in things like fuel scoops & escape pods (even though the actual ship may not have one).
Also on the smaller ships should I put missiles on the outside - ala frontier, or keep them inside. My preference on missles - inside, but as for fuel scoops - outside (if a ship doesn't have a fuel scoop installed you could always say that's where it goes - a bit like spare slots for hard drives & cd players on a PC?)

EDIT: Agree about the lights too. Already had that in mind.

That really does look the business, Ramon. I like what you've done on the edges - I was playing around with a Mamba trying to give it the DW Cobra treatment and I ended up doing something similar. It makes the model that bit more interesting without adding too many extra polys. I've also discovered the fun of recessed windows - they're quite easy to do yet again it makes the model more interesting.

I'm glad you noticed the edges, I think that's the best bit even though it's only a subtle change. I'd love to see your Mamba, I'm a big fan of your work so post it up here....please.

ramon wrote:

Anyway....more detail needs adding so let's open up the debate again: Do I add in things like fuel scoops & escape pods (even though the actual ship may not have one).

If you do put escape pods on, can you model multiple pods? It seems a bit odd that there is a huge ship like an Anaconda, where crew might be scattered across it's length and breadth, but yet when it dies, only one pod kicks free, simply because only one pod can be installed. If one pod is a concrete limit then it's gonna be a bit of a squeeze if it's an identical pod that's fitted to a Cobra Mk. III

ramon wrote:

Also on the smaller ships should I put missiles on the outside - ala frontier, or keep them inside. My preference on missles - inside, but as for fuel scoops - outside (if a ship doesn't have a fuel scoop installed you could always say that's where it goes - a bit like spare slots for hard drives & cd players on a PC?)

Yeah! That'd be great, to be able to see missiles racked up under a light fighter's hull, while something frigate-sized has room to spare to store them internally. Running lights would be a good addition, kind of like a long range visual identification system.

Captain Hesperus

Looks good, Ramon!

Would it be too much to ask to scale the model up from what the present Oolite/Elite Anaconda is? To make it as big as the cargo hold size would suggest?

I'd love to see this project also take another look at the ship sizes and resizing them as necessary...