Oolite Bulletins

Do you think we will ever get to this level of eye candy?

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclu ... rran/49492

Or in going for something like this would we be serously missing the point?

Why not? We'd ned a few more Griffs and we'd have to let go of the low end machines. If shaded laser shots and fog could be done with oxp's it shouldn't be a problem.

So, they have glowy and shiny and normals and nice textures and so do we, they have nice planet textures and we do in OXP form and will have as standard in the game soon.

They have transparencies and we do not (and not likely to either )

They have nice gun firing effects (but we have lasers and they're straight beams of coherent light so what else can we do?)

They do seem to have astronomically high polygon count ships - and while I'm sure Griff and PAGroove could do something similar just what would Oolite do with such a high poly count model? Plus, until Ahruman's new collision code proves itself, Oolite is still rubbish at big objects because it wasn't designed for big objects.

Personally if Oolite looked like X3 but played the same as it does now, of course I'd be happy (from an eye-candy pov), but Oolite is not a million miles away graphically and I bet it's got the run on gameplay, simply because it has us!

To be honest, despite the very nice graphics, what's most noticeable is the jerky frame rate (and I'm assuming that they used a top-end machine to do the video). I'd make smooth animation a far, far higher priority than that sort of level of greebling and detail.

Oolite full of Griff (or Griff-level) ships would be more eye-candy than I'd ever have expected ...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

So, they have glowy and shiny and normals and nice textures and so do we, they have nice planet textures and we do in OXP form and will have as standard in the game soon.

Boom booms. We need to have those luscious boom boom explosion effects. It reminds me of Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, when capital ships exploded in that game you certainly knew about it! Smaller versions for Oolite ships would be nice (thought the current 'flash' effect would still seem appropriate for missiles)

They have nice gun firing effects (but we have lasers and they're straight beams of coherent light so what else can we do?)

Ah but you have to take into account the [McGuffin] which causes laser light to [McGuffin] in space, so that to the human eye we see a white core beam with nice alpha-blended colour as the surround of the beam. Also the components of the laser will determine how stable the beam is, or whether there is any randomised flicker to the edges of the beam.

Disembodied wrote:

I'd make smooth animation a far, far higher priority than that sort of level of greebling and detail.

Agreed, framerate is king, and I'd sacrifice visual artiface every time to make sure I had a smoothe game.

the major sticky for me is size and scale. X has some phenomenal big things to fly around and it looks awesome. 50km planets just don't hack it in that regard.

ClymAngus wrote:

Do you think we will ever get to this level of eye candy?

No. There are deep limitations in Oolite’s graphics code, and the extent to which they can be plastered over is limited. Getting something like that would require a major rewrite or, more sensibly, adopting an existing graphics engine. I’ve made a positive decision not to do that; maybe someone else will, but don’t hold your breath.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Plus, until Ahruman's new collision code proves itself, Oolite is still rubbish at big objects because it wasn't designed for big objects.

This is the first I hear of new collision code.

The ships could be done, would take forever to make one that detailed though (for example it takes Griff several weeks to make one ship the size of the cobra) and would slow even the best pc's to a standstill, everything else like the lasers/planets/dynamic-lighting can't be done in oolite cause of the graphics engine.

But the X series of games were a dull and boring series of games.
It's a silly place, let's not go there.

Ahruman wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

Do you think we will ever get to this level of eye candy?

No. There are deep limitations in Oolite’s graphics code, and the extent to which they can be plastered over is limited. Getting something like that would require a major rewrite or, more sensibly, adopting an existing graphics engine. I’ve made a positive decision not to do that; maybe someone else will, but don’t hold your breath.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Plus, until Ahruman's new collision code proves itself, Oolite is still rubbish at big objects because it wasn't designed for big objects.

This is the first I hear of new collision code.

Apologies, I thought you'd said you had "improved" collision boxes? (that's all I was referring too)

The parameters have been adjusted a bit, the code is the same (still octrees).

Ahruman wrote:

The parameters have been adjusted a bit, the code is the same (still octrees).

Ah, my bad as they say - c'est la vie

Lucidor wrote:

We'd ned a few more Griffs

Yes, I can see it now.

Oolite 1.80 is powered by Quad-Griff graphics.

Sendraks wrote:

Lucidor wrote:

We'd ned a few more Griffs

Yes, I can see it now.

Oolite 1.80 is powered by Quad-Griff graphics.

Or...

"Well, as you can see this new ship design and texturing is only 0.74 on the Griff-Scale..."

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Or...

"Well, as you can see this new ship design and texturing is only 0.74 on the Griff-Scale..."

The graphics are pushing 0.99 on the Griff-Scale, the dilithium crystals cannae take it captain!

Ha, i think i'll edit my profile so it shows my location as somewhere between 0.0 and 1.0 on the griff-scale
The lighting on those ships is great, is it 'smoothing groups' that allow you to get those long thin highlights on the pipe/tube sections or just propper well though out geometry? whenever i switch on smoothing in oolite for my ships the results are hideous