RFC: Fancy classics

[Lestradae]

* drools on floor *

* slowly claps *

Looking forwards to this ...

[JensAyton]

Understood - but why not just have a high res diffuse map as well?

Well, quite. There’s nothing stopping you from using eight 4096 × 4096 texture maps for every ship, now is there? :-)

[DaddyHoggy]

Understood - but why not just have a high res diffuse map as well?

Well, quite. There’s nothing stopping you from using eight 4096 × 4096 texture maps for every ship, now is there?

And at that point my PC would have a frame rate in the same region as a powerpoint presentation...

[Star Gazer]

Guess the Ships (Again)
See if you can do it without looking at the tags ...

...constrictor
mamba
sidewinder
gecko
krait
python
adder
...???

[Simon B]

Guess the Ships (Again)
See if you can do it without looking at the tags ...

...constrictor
mamba
sidewinder
gecko
krait
python
adder
...???

I'm a failure! But at least it means you didn't look at the tags.

OK I can kinda see how you got those ... so:

Hint:
I have not done these ships before.
All the ships have their type stencelled on the side.
Two of them have a picture of their type.

Take them in order:
1. The Constrictor is sometime noted for looking like this craft - I chose to emphasize this with the paint-work. Note - I have modelled in conspicuous fuel scoops and a forward laser mount.

2. The most quirky looking ship - caveat: the windows are 2m tall. I had a bit of a soul search about that because it tricks you into thinking he ship is half the size. (All the others I've tried to keep the windows under 1m.)

The regular model also looks like an origami experiment - I kept the feel.

3. This is the easiest remodelling - sleek and expensive-looking. Need a replacement for the Novell-SUSE logo. It was just too hard to resist...

4. I've always been puzzled by this one - kind of like an armored car. The patterned skin is "crocodile". Now there's a candidate for normal-mapping.

5. This is probably the second most notorious ship in the game. Once met, never forgotten. Yes, it's the "other pointy ship" and I've ever kept the color-scheme. Look closely at the spikes... see the guns tucked in there? Now ... which ship comes with two forward lasers - standard?

Could almost be a (failed?) galcop-police proposal. It fits so well with the stable of vipers that I'm tempted to do a patrolcraft version.

6. A slow freighter - looks like a python - sort of. Would probably benifit from a yellow and black patchwork like the far-star, though the zebra on red is actually quite hard to spot. This is the same color ad background as #5 - but #5 uses several other layers to get that lustre.

7. Once you've got the pattern, this one should be easy. Comes in two colors - I've departed from the standard because the standard colors are boring.

8. There is no number 8 because I've already posted the model under another name - so which one is missing from the set?

If nobody gets them [now I'm going to go sulk.

[Captain Hesperus]

1: <EDIT AFTER SEEING HINTS> Bushmaster?
2: Cat (Cougar)
3: Ghaival? (sp)
4: Salamander
5: Iguana
6: Monitor
7: Ophidian

Captain Hesperus

[Simon B]

Here's what I spent some time on while languishing on Waiheke Island. Paradise is so incomplete without broadband...

The following shots were taken from an Acer 4315 laptop (intel 965 graphics, 1024MiB RAM and iCeleron Mobile CPU + Ubuntu 8.10. Set the shaders to minimum and turned off Compiz-Fusion.) unless otherwise noted.

This is a deliberate test on a low-spec machine. Also see that it is an old-ish build of Oolite.

I have posted thumbs for the screenshots which, even scaled down, are still quite large.

Adder and Python from an Asp mk2


Very first view of the new ships - well, OK, second - first time I didn't get my finger on "print screen" fast enough due to shock and awe.

Busy Space

Shot of a busy station from the new FDL. I like to see bits of my ship when I look out the windows - though it's not always appropriate.

I notice that the screen rotates about the viewpoint and not the ship's (0,0,1)! So I try to keep the view positions close to the centerline.

This shot has been stored as proof against all those who complain that many high-poly ships make machine slow ... there wan no hiccough at all rendering the above, even after engaging. Just the hesitation on transitions... which was no worse for the number of ships.

There are 15 ships is scanner range and a lot of them are on screen. They average more than 500 polys each (very conservatively - some of those ships are sidewinders and the galcops are just shy 700. The average is dragged down by the coriolis...)

Flying Formation

In formation with a Python escort group. That's a sidewinder off to port and a mamba starboard. The cobbie foreground is the player ship.

BTW: this group just went round and around the station for a long time before docking.

Pod Scooping


Dicovery, worth the closer look - a cargo pod about to enter the cobra mk3 rear hatch.

The pod scoops-up neatly to enter the rear hatch or the belly doors - it's creapy when something works this well. Notice that the pod is to scale with the cobra!!!

Well Done!


Yes - this is minimum shaders. The shot is the coriolis station and nav-beacon taken from just above the limit of altitude. Included just so I can congratulate Ahruman and contributors - this is awesome!

I discovered this effect after diving for a stray cargo pod - saw it blow up, thought: "why did it blow up? - doh!", and hit the brakes. Now I cannot see which way is up: instrument flying time. That red altitude bar had just a single pixel or so width... the sky above is blue with clouds and the stars, station, etc slowly emerge.

Clouds from underneith?! I mean - how often would a player venture so close to a planet?

Maybe it would be worth setting a station inside planet atmosphere just to get players down there? It could be a giant airship say? Very Gernsbach!

Mamba Encounter


I was concerned to see how the mambas looked in the game - I was expecting to have to revisit the model. However, they turned out better than I expected...

Note the mamba in the scanner displays the classic shape, while the one inset shows it's updated side. The craft changes shape as it turns - a semi-mesmerizing effect.

The model fits so well with the original that the exhaust-plume location matches. (This is from before I'd adjusted the plist.)

Even the colar-pattern is working OK - ("cow pattern" <sniff>) though I'll do a second livery for the escort methinks, the current one is a tad piratish...

Thargoid Sighting

... these Thargoids were scattered across the sky, I pasted them together for comparison - there is a shot there for each angle - but I had trouble getting close. Also failed to get a shot which included a laser hit.

This one is not on low spec. I can get this on the acer, but it's not worth it.

Thought1: give the thargoid a ball-turret in the middle of the madel (will that work?) so they can shoot in any direction regardless of orientotion - beam emerging from the closest point on the hull.

Thought2: must get test script running - or womp up a nigh-invulnerable ship (hmmm... call it "the Tick"...)

[Simon B]

Neolite Special Edition:
Mussurana Void Yacht "Righteous Dragon"
Humbly tendered...

[Simon B]

I know you folks like EVA shots - so me and our CEO suited up to take a look at some of the other craft floating about there.

Both these feature on the "guess what it is" list so I won't go into details.

... you have to see the suited figure next to the object to get any idea of scale. Even so - it's hard to believe that this guy is right up there.

This is the big spike-gun off the red-and-white ship, the lighting produces an almost organic feel to the structures. Notice the way the spike comes to a split point - I wish I knew how I did that - the ship is smooth all the way.


Galcops said we were doing our eva too close to the station so we had to move. About here should do he trick... our CEO still has radiation burns from his last foray by a set of exhaust-vents, so he settle for inspecting the aft elimination grill.


Not an EVA shot, but nice anyway. This is what hyperdrive looks like from the outside.

BTW: I'll wait a bit before revealing the mystery ships - for bonus points - identify the missing ship, and point out the model (it's presented earlier in the thread).

If you cannae wait for the official reply - just hit "quote" on the post nad read the tags.

[Turanga Leela]

WOW!

[Star Gazer]

I'm a failure! But at least it means you didn't look at the tags.

OK I can kinda see how you got those ... so:...

...I was only trying to match them against the most basic set of ships from the original game, and I certainly did struggle to match them!!

Now I know you were modelling some of the extra ships, they make much more sense!!

...by the way, they are really excellent models, don't lose heart because of my stupidity!

[DaddyHoggy]

I too had a panic and had to resort to reading the tags - they're not ships I would recognise - however, I don't care - these ships are beautiful!!

[Captain Hesperus]

I was nearly right....

Captain Hesperus

[Simon B]

When I put Aegidean Special models through the script, all the normals turned out inverted! I managed to flip the normals in the advanced menues in wings and now cannot remember how I did it!

[Simon B]

Hint for Ubuntu (and many othe debian derivs no doubt) users contemplating normal maps ...

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install gimp-normalmap

... this converts a greyscale height map into an rgb normal map ready for use.

I understand there is also a version for people who are still enslaved by MS stuck with the GIMP windows. So, at least, you don't have to buy photoshop.

Now I just need the fragment shader... (sigh).