Elite Strike pre-release patch!

[chuck_starchaser]

Anyways, I think Halleck's question got lost somewhere, about sorting...

[klauss]

I thought it got answered: no need to sort, no need to cut, no need to nothing.

[Halleck]

Great!

So, should I try to use pontiac's "cockpit exporter" plugin or something? Or is there a simpler (and up-to-date) procedure documented somewhere for getting cockpits in-game?

And no, chuck, we have no wheel station yet.

[chuck_starchaser]

Allright, this dashboard is tentatively final. I've tried to follow klauss' new directives; --namely, all the buttons, time compression, fuel gauges and the three little triangles are a single material called Functions. Here it is highlighted:



The radar still has its own material, as before, called Radar:



The VDU on the left has its own, called LeftVDU:



And all the rest is the first material --BaseMaterial:



When rendered from the pilot's perspective, it looks like:



And I added a bit of sides and bottom so one can turn the head:



And it's pretty lightweight --about 1 k tris.

The files are here:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/FFE/dash/FFEdash.zip

Next is the wheel station...

Uhmm... There's a bit of surface area to the right of the fuel gauges... Was that used for anything? I can't remember. Or, is there anything I forgot? And/or, do you want a frame or roof or wall in the back with a door and/or a seat?

By the way, I was thinking, for the third dimension on the radar display, what you could do is display the targets' vertical lines after 3D rendering, rather than onto the radar surface, maybe... Or better yet, lines in 3D space. OpenGL can do it; I'm not sure whether we have the interface for it...

[chuck_starchaser]

Here's a shot:



6k tris.

The file:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/FFE/whee ... elstn2.zip

The central part, with the sliding doors and elevator would be a sub-unit.

EDIT:

Here's a rough city we could stick a starport on:



Do you have images of starports, with plan views?

[Halleck]

Wow, this is fantastic stuff chuck!

I think it might be a bit premature to work on getting the cockpit into the game, but I'll get started on that station as soon as I can.

As for doors: I'm asking for them to be left off right now, it will probably be a while before there is proper support for such a thing in the engine (perhaps ogre will increase our capacity for animated meshes.)

As for the starport: I'm not quite sure how this would fit in-game, but we could certainly use it to produce 2d station backdrops.

There are a few screenshots of starports that I posted to mobygames; this one and this one are the best so far, but they don't show it from a particularily helpful angle- I can try to get a better angle later.

[chuck_starchaser]

Glad you like it. You should get Ryder to texture the station, he's very good and fast, to boot. The greebles don't need to be textured; there's too many of them; I produced them with discombobulator. Just a flat color for them.

I'd never played Elite, only FFE. FFE has more interesting spaceports.

[Halleck]

I was thinking about those greebles- do you think it's neccessary to LOD this mesh? Most of the elite strike models are incredibly low-poly so this probably won't be much of an issue. I don't have much experience with LODs so perhaps you would have a better idea.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yeah, I can make one in a cinch.

[Halleck]

Cool.

I don't know how to reference LODs in xmesh files though. It would be nice if someone could explain this and/or cite a simple reference mesh.

Then, we can add this info to HowTo:Add Ships#Multiple Xmeshes and the nonexistant HowTo:Add LODs.

[chuck_starchaser]

Cool.

I don't know how to reference LODs in xmesh files though. It would be nice if someone could explain this and/or cite a simple reference mesh.

Then, we can add this info to HowTo:Add Ships#Multiple Xmeshes and the nonexistant HowTo:Add LODs.

The instructions how to import LOD's with mesher are in the wiki; I've never done it myself, but I think it's no rocket science. I think Klauss mentioned there's a parameter somewhere for at how many pixels on the screen the change of LOD's is supposed to happen.

Sorry I'm a bit delayed, now; I thought I'd do one more thing to the wheel station, namely, to assign a different material to the greebles, so that they don't come up in the unwrapping. Then I found that some of the greebles looked of a strange color, and upon further investigation, it came up that some of the overlapping doodads created by the dicombobulator script were of the same height, and the videocard didn't know which to display. Started to delete some of them, and there were copies of the doodads of a whiter material underneath. That's one strange feature of Blender I don't quite get to grips with: Some of the scripts leave a copy of the old stuff behind. I ended up highlighting everything and deleting, only to find identical copies underneath, several times. But then, some of the doodads went away. Which is okay; I didn't like them much. I'll try for better ones.

[hellcatv]

The simplest mesh with LOD, eh?

I'd say you try some of mamiya0taru's ships from Privateer Remake---check out the centurion or the orion--those have some pretty serious LODs

use the mesher to convert the bfxm to a series of xmesh --- within each xmesh the LODs are listed and referenced (0_3.xmesh is the 3rd lod of the 0th mesh)

[Halleck]

I'd say you try some of mamiya0taru's ships from Privateer Remake---check out the centurion or the orion--those have some pretty serious LODs

Cool, I'll have a look.

use the mesher to convert the bfxm to a series of xmesh --- within each xmesh the LODs are listed and referenced (0_3.xmesh is the 3rd lod of the 0th mesh)

Yes, I know about the naming scheme, but we need clear documentation on how to list and reference LODs within the xmesh file.

If I can figure it out, I'll add it to HowTo:Add Ships.

[chuck_starchaser]

Looking better, I think. Just a snapshot; still have stuff to add like some greebles on the arms, some antennas, traffic control lookouts...

[Halleck]

Nice.
Keep in mind that flat, wide greebles seem to be closest to the style of the original station texture.

Here is a quick comparison (to greebles on your previous model):

[chuck_starchaser]

Well, I guess it depends how much you want to keep exactly to the original. I thought of actually making the station round but then changed my mind since I thought that would break too much canon. But when it comes to small details, it seems too obvious to me they weren't trying to suggest a parquet tiling of L-shapes, but merely that it was a pattern that suggested the most technical complexity with the least number of texels, which was important to them because texture mapping was done in softwate, pixel by pixel, and all the textures had to fit within a few K of cache. Notice the pattern of windows lights was the same but mirrored flipped in each of the 10 sections.
That was the reason also most ships from that era had similar tilings of maze-looking square and rectangular patterns. It's a sort of texture that "tiles well", meaning that the eye least notices its repetition. But the intent is to suggest complex structure, with the least resources.

If you want I can make that same pattern with actual geometry and copy it onto all the walls. Would you like me to do that? Me I prefer to capture original intent, rather than copy exactly; but it's your mod.

Anyways, what I was thinking was: we could have a normal map with parquet patterns on the surface, under the greebles, and a color that matches the color of the greebles so as to NOT make it seem like we're trying to grab attention with them. Just make them be subdued, subtle, but be there; but it's up to you. Or if you prefer them smaller or something, just say the word.

There was a problem with the original dicombobulation pattern I put in: Too big surfaces, and too much overlap. That IS a technical limitation we have to consider: Overlapping surfaces cause the same pixels to be painted over and over, slowing the rendering. What I found, also, was that discombobulator was putting bottoms to the boxes. So I did a new pass, making smaller doodads, deleted the bottoms manually, then deleted or edited overlapping boxes. But they also looked a bit too abstract and indistinct, so I edited some of the roofs to add variety.

And, in any case, originally I just wanted to give you a quick and dirty wheel station to get the ball rolling, --since, IMO it can't feel like FFE without the right dashboard and the wheel station-- but then thought I could take 2 more minutes and use discombobulator to add a few greebles and make it look nicer; and got carried away; but it's still not my intention for this to be a final Wheel Station. Just thought you needed one like in a hurry. Don't feel you have to keep it when something better comes along.

EDIT:
How's this? Made them smaller, like 70% as big, and shallower yet, like 50%. And of course, we'd have a bit of a pattern like the original, as bumpmap; the buildings sitting on top of it.

[Halleck]

I like the idea of a bump/normal map to get that pattern. I agree that more complex greebles can be appropriate now that the technology supports them.

Actually, my initial goal for Elite Strike is to get the ships and stations in, with relatively few embellishments. My priority is to get all the original models from Elite in, then the frontier ships, then FFE, but submissions don't neccesarily have to come in this order.

I would like the art style to most closely resemble a mixture between some of the pc/acorn/amiga elites (with solid block coloring) and Frontier (with leanings towards simple coloring). I don't really like the FFE style of texturing everything. If we were to go down that path to its logical conclusion, we would wind up with another vegastrike or wing commander game. I'd rather explore the stylistic opportunities that the Elite universe offers us.

That said, I'm not averse to models that look a bit less "crude" or "primitive" than the originals... but keep in mind that the whole low-poly asthetic is a key component of the Elite art style.

I'm more open to embellishments on the frontier/FFE art set than the classic Elite ships. My opinions on art style may change in the future though, especially if I see art submissions that convince me to go a more generally elaborate route.

That said, beggars can't be choosers. Even with these guidelines in mind, I'm probably going to accept any models of sufficient quality that fill gaps in the game.

[chuck_starchaser]

I assumed Elite Strike was to be to Elite what Privateer Remake is to Privateer. PR doesn't look at all, to me like "another Vegastrike". The style of ships and stations of Elite IS different from Vegastrike's, not to speak of having a better flight model. And you could distinguish it from VS by having more detail. But it's your mod, so I'll just make an LOD, and upload the file.

EDIT:
Here ya go:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/FFE/whee ... eelStn.zip
Greebles are material 2, so they don't get mixed up when texturing.
The LOD file is there too.

Here's a rendered shot of the final thing...

[Halleck]

Great, and thanks again.

BTW... weren't you going to re-do the greebles on the station arm? Also, what about those blank panels?

If we are going the embellishment route, it's best to keep things consistent and go all the way. I hope I didn't create a misunderstanding with my last post- what I mean is that if you are going to greeble it, you should greeble it all the way.

If you really want to declare this model "finished" then I guess it will be fine, but since we're doing a few revisions I thought I would bug you one more time. If you don't want to make any more revisions, though, just say so.

And I am basically going to consider this my final wheel station; it looks great, and I don't see why anybody else would want to redo it.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yeah, ok, I'll do that after work. I was toying around with an FFE Eagle, also.
Just the top surface for now. I haven't got a good reference shot from the back, and can't remember if the bottom line from the back was straight or curved or what kind of curve...

[Halleck]

Okay. Keep in mind we already have one, though:


I also have the Mk. 2 and Mk. 3, but I haven't put them in-game yet.

[chuck_starchaser]

Not there yet but it's coming...

[Halleck]

Looks great!

Do you have any opinions regarding texturing? I don't think we need anything too fancy... but solid color blocks might not be appropriate.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yeah, for the inside walls, I'd probably try and use Strangelet's armorizer, make it greyscale, keep it as a bumpmap, or make a normal map.

Above and below the entrances I put a cabin for traffic controllers...



... that needs a few pixels of light in the glow map on the wall behind, to look lit inside.

For the outside wall, I was thinking of my old Metablack honeycomb:



If you like it, here's the diffuse texture...



... and the specular...



... or you could change yellow to blue in Gimp and make it look like solar arrays...
The above textures are tiling, btw.

Front, back and the sides of the arms need a lot of windows. On the front and back the recessed grooves are for rows of windows. You could make the diffuse color black, specular a mid-grey, and for the glow map cut and paste strips of this one:



But I haven't mentioned textures yet, have I?
Some very subtle metal finish I suppose. Most important thing though, is to put a Detail Texture on it, just a tiling perling noise so you see graininess as you get closer. Got one here:

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... 5833#55833

But even plain colors would look fine, as long as there's a radiosity baking on it. Tinypaintings wrote a howto in the wiki pages, but I haven't taken the plunge and tried unwrapping yet...

And, like I mentioned, the greebles use a separate material, as it would be a nightmare to try to unwrap them and texture them. I'd give them a darker shade of grey than the inner walls, as, without texturing, they won't be able to benefit of radiosity baking; but you could boost specularity on them to compensate; but as an untextured, plain color; but make them participate of the detail texture, which I believe needs no uv coords; but I may be wrong.

I could try and texture it, but I don't know how long it would take me to learn the unwrapping process...

[chuck_starchaser]

Here's the latest:



9404 tris.

The LOD is in there too, and it's 136 tris.

And the file:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/FFE/whee ... nJan25.zip