I'm back, so Bengal first, spirit?

[chuck_starchaser]

Thanks; but remember, there's no such thing as a "free launch"
Here's a launch tube:



OPEN SESAME!



What's the new launch-land system? Real landing gear and physics?

[chuck_starchaser]

Started working on the inside...



The first level below the control tower is the landing bay at the end of the landing strip in front. If you look hard enough, you'll see two elevator shafts in the corner, leading down to the main ship gateway room. Here's another angle...



Thing is, space is kind of tight. Those green boxes in the middle are one of the four sets of 3 launch tubes; and they really are in the middle of everything. Too close vertically to the landing bay above, and almost too close to the bottom of the ship for ships to pass under them.
Ships need to pass under them to get into them, and also on the way to the back. I'll be putting a ship corridor leading back to the launch bays in the back "wings".

Haven't decided where ship storage is. 100 fighters could be packed in 69's, like sardines, I suppose

Here's the launch tubes from the outside...



... never mind the precarious look of the ship's exterior; parts of it are temporarily removed, since I'm working on the interior. The three tubes on the "wing", for instance, are mounted onto the ship's hull, which is metallic and smooth-rounded; but above and below there are green panels... that's armor that covers the hull in most places. I know you're asking "why model the hull if you're going to cover it with armor?"; well, the thing is the armor won't cover all of the hull; it's just panels; but don't worry, eventually I'll optimize the poly count by removing any portions of hull that can't be seen.

Ah, almost forgot, the 40 torpedo tubes; here at the front. Count them. They are 141 cm (about 5 feet) diameter, each.



I'll have separate launchers for missiles.

Update:

Here's the interior ship corridor; it passes under the launch tubes, and at the far end it rises as it turns left to go into the wing. It's bigger than it looks; trust me. About 20 meters wide, the flat part. The slanted part is another 10 meters; I think I'll put like a boardwalk, or maybe a fastwalk.

[klauss]

50k seems a lot for a WCU context. There is bound to be big battles, with that and probably some other capships, and lots of fighters.

Try at least having a 20k LOD (probably by loosing some greebles), and a 5k one (hm... probably MKruers base? with some minor midifications?)

Also... the bigger LOD would probably have to be divided into multiple subobjects.
I'll go into the details later... when I have figured it out... but has something to do with dynamic lighting.

[chuck_starchaser]

Sure, no problem. And the multiple subobjects I was already planning on it for a different reason. Managing GPU load WRT the rooms inside. Only two rooms, maximum, need be in the videocard at any one time (counting the exterior as a "room"). The launch tubes should also be subobjects, if only to avoid repeating the geometry 12 times in the file.

BTW, I'm totally unhappy with the control tower and bridge and the 2 cylinders. If I have any energy tonight, I'll redo them from scratch.

[mkruer]

whats with all the launch tubes?

[chuck_starchaser]

Donno. What about them?

Here's new tower in progress snapshot...

[chuck_starchaser]

New tower in place. I'm finally starting to see a resemblance to the Bengal.
Yeah, I wasn't happy with the previous tower, and I figured nothing short of a design from scratch was going to make me happy, and then it wouldn't be the Bengal, so I said heck, might as well just model the original exactly. I might still greeble it a bit; but first I'm going to go for original look. Modelling the hull and armor separately will, of itself, generate complexity and greebling necessities, and I'd rather be driven by necessity than try to "come up" with greeble ideas.

[spiritplumber]

SUPER shiny... I'm not too sure about the forward-facing launch bays on the wings though; did we ever use them in game? I always thought we landed on the main launcher...

[chuck_starchaser]

No, we never saw where any of them were in-game, but we know there are at least 9 launch tubes (there was a sign you pass by, that read "Launch tubes 6 to 9");, and more likely 12, as the ship is symmetric and so they probably came in a multiple of two. Finally, since the sign mentioned 3 tubes, obviously you had to go a different way to get to any other set of three. And trying to fit six on the side is an exercise in futility. They just don't fit.
Besides, we need room for ship storage and maintenance; and let me tell you, it's pretty tight in there...
The strip at the front is officially the "***landing*** strip", but apparently there's at least one ship elevator/lock there that can take you up into the landing bay, and you can take off from it. I think that's from Academy.
Lastly, there's supposed to be a "launch bay" or two, somewhere; but I'm not sure where to fit them. Probably in the "wings", as well.

I mean, I hope it is as obvious to you as it is to me the "wings" aren't wings. With a flat front like 50 meters high...
So, in fact, if we didn't have launchers on them, they'd have no use at all.

Question:
Have I got the back of the tower right?



I'm asking because I have no pics of it at all; I just tried to guess what's there from the sketch in Clawmarks.

BTW, from a post in crius:

Hey guys, using the information that you have provided about the turrets on the Bengal class, here is what I have come up with.

* 8 dual Laser Batteries (Heavy Anti-Shipping Guns mounted on the wings)

* 1 single Laser Battery (Heavy A/S gun mounted on the belly underside)

* 7 triple Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Concordia SuperCruiser model near the bridge superstructure)

* 14 dual Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Ranger and Concordia class CVs)

* 1-2 Flak guns (as seen on the Kilrathi Saga and SNES WC1 ports)

* 40 missile tubes (used for CSM and space-to-ground munitions. In or around 2634/2635, these were also converted to fire torpedoes).

What do you guys think?

Sounds good to me; so if there's no objections I'll put in facilities for Dragon1's list. The gun placements in the Clawmarks schematic cover some of it, though not all; but I have some ideas where the rest of the weapons could fit. Well, 2 flak guns I'll put back in there where the engines are, as a last ditch line of defense against heatseekers.

[mkruer]

Not to get into a huge discussion about this, but I don’t think "launch tubes" means "ship" (fighter aircraft) launch tubes. I would assume launch tubes would mean "torpedo" launch tubes. Personally I think this is a much more reasonable assumption. Up until WCP none of the WC ships had launch tubes. In fact I see to recall that all ships launched off the flight deck, and I think there was even an animation on it. This is all subjective but I think it’s much more reasonable. Also I like the cleaned up version of the tower, the armor plate looked a little unnatural.

Other then the tube issue, keep up the good work.

[chuck_starchaser]

Not to get into a huge discussion about this, but I don’t think "launch tubes" means "ship" (fighter aircraft) launch tubes. I would assume launch tubes would mean "torpedo" launch tubes. Personally I think this is a much more reasonable assumption. Up until WCP none of the WC ships had launch tubes. In fact I see to recall that all ships launched off the flight deck, and I think there was even an animation on it. This is all subjective but I think it’s much more reasonable. Also I like the cleaned up version of the tower, the armor plate looked a little unnatural.

Heard it from the horse's mouth :

(And heck, even your supposed facts about Wing Commander I alone are wrong -- the original game launches its fighters out of launch tubes, not bays. You run by a sign that points to "TUBES 6-9" and then shoot out a fighter sized trapzeoid tube (that has no external runway to speak of).

http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=19496

So, no; no confusion; 12 (ship) launch tubes; *PLUS* 40 torpedo launch tubes.
Here's another of his posts on the subject:

Every launching scene on the PC version of WC1 pretty much showed your ship launching through launchbays. Or is that not what you were referring to?

You shoot out of an individual launch tube in the PC version of Wing Commander I -- you run past a sign for "TUBES 6-9" in the 'red' part of the takeoff sequence and then you find yourself in a small enclosed tube rather than a large bay (it's the size of your fighter and has no external runway like the 'landing' area). We know there's 9+ tubes, too... which lines up just fine with the smaller, similarly shaped launch areas in the 'wings' of the 'Claw on Academy.
Still what do you base your launchbays on? I can't remember that I have seen any launchbays on the claw at all. Well their where these bays on the 3do (or what console it was) version but that ship was also so complete different from the other versions.
Super Wing Commander (and parts of Wing Commander Academy) use the two mid-ship bumps on the side of the ship to launch fighters. These may be what Fatcat is referring to (though he's wrong in that they're *not* what's used in Wing Commander I PC).
There's a third way of launching from the Tiger's Claw, too -- from the PC version's landing area. SNES Secret Missions features an extended takeoff cutscene in which your fighter is raised on an elevator to the 'front' bay before gliding down, externally, the length of the carrier.

The 40 *torpedo* launch tubes and other weaponry are discussed elsewhere in that thread.

Now, basing dimensions on official ship sizes, I went with trapezoidal launch tube widths that would fit a 20 meter wing-span. I could not, however, fit such tubes anywhere in the Bengal. I had to scale them down until wingspans of up to 16 meters only could fit, to be able to fit the tubes at all. And even so, I can barely fit 3 on each side. They must be in at 45 degrees, because at 90 degrees their lengths don't fit back to back in the width of the Bengal; and more than 3 on each side would eat at the space needed for the elevators connecting to the landing bay...

There's only one place, therefore, where those other 6 tubes could be:

http://www.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/larsbengal03.jpg

I think it's no coincidence...


Now, this is what I call a "ship shape" mesh



Don't worry; the rest of it is still there, but in other layers; I've just been working on the main hull mesh for the past 24. Now it's pretty much perfect, IMO, and ready for splitting down two separate evolutions: The hull and the armor. The cleanup already paid off: Found that the original mesh's bottom tapered continuously upwards from back to front. But according to all images and diagrams, it was supposed to stay flat going forward, and only begin tapering upwards at mid-course through the landing strip's length. Once I fixed that, A) it looked much more like a Bengal, and B) created tons of extra space inside, which was badly needed. Now there's enough clearance under the launch tubes for most ships to get through on the way to the rear sections.

[Zeog]

Hey guys, using the information that you have provided about the turrets on the Bengal class, here is what I have come up with.

* 8 dual Laser Batteries (Heavy Anti-Shipping Guns mounted on the wings)

* 1 single Laser Battery (Heavy A/S gun mounted on the belly underside)

* 7 triple Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Concordia SuperCruiser model near the bridge superstructure)

* 14 dual Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Ranger and Concordia class CVs)

* 1-2 Flak guns (as seen on the Kilrathi Saga and SNES WC1 ports)

* 40 missile tubes (used for CSM and space-to-ground munitions. In or around 2634/2635, these were also converted to fire torpedoes).

What do you guys think?

Sounds good to me; so if there's no objections I'll put in facilities for Dragon1's list. The gun placements in the Clawmarks schematic cover some of it, though not all; but I have some ideas where the rest of the weapons could fit. Well, 2 flak guns I'll put back in there where the engines are, as a last ditch line of defense against heatseekers.

No, no objections from me.
FYI, here is some inspiration for the weapons, that I've found recently.
An excerpt:

[chuck_starchaser]

Wow! Gorgeous! Looks like it could solve any problem...
I really like the destroyer there, too...



Inspiring indeed; I think I'm going to model the guns too.

Spirit, do you have any reference pics for those single and dual laser batteries, dual and triple heavy laser turrets, and flak guns? We shouldn't be using just anything we can steal from Vegastrike; we should have cannons in good keeping with canon

More than that, I'm offering to redo ALL turrets and weapons for WCU. Shouldn't take long. I guess I could use all the original Privateer pics as references, but there must be a lot of WC reference pics I don't know of. So, anyone having pics of WC guns and turrets, please shoot them my way. If you don't have my email, I won't post it here where it can be mined by spammers; but PM me and I'll give it to you privately.

[spiritplumber]

I don't have anything except, in wc3 and wc4 they used dual-gun turrets and in WCP they used single-gun turrets usually.


Right now WCU uses three types of turrets:

- Ball turrets for fighters.
- Dual-gun turrets for small capships.
- Quad-gun turrets for big capships and bases.

There's a terran texture and a kilrathi texture for them. If you want to redo turrets, please do my current intention was to have a generic gun barrel mesh for them, as it's cheaper polygon wise... some ships have tons of turrets so they should be as simple as possible.

The ship pack has some original turrets in it, see the thunderbolt, longbow and ranger.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yeah, ok, I just looked at the ranger, longbow and thunderbolt, and the guns are just square sticks. Well, the ranger has some octagons that I presume stand for spherical shapes. Now, I appreciate the fact that we may have a lot of guns and turrets in a given scene; but on the other hand, beautifying the guns is one cheap shot way of adding detail to the game in the short term, since they get reused a lot. Besides, I'm sure a lot of people remember what the guns looked like from the original games' art, manuals and what not, and would probably love to see them again, rendered exactly like in the original art, plus some extra little details. And we've come a long way from the days of DOS and 4GW; the VS engine can handle something better than a square stick for a gun; but I'm willing to start a yey-nay voting thread for each poly I add
Seriously; let's have well done to canon cannons.
I see tons of stuff in the shippack under subunits. Anything I could use as biblical reference there?

Okay, starting with the guns needed for the Bengal. The post I quoted mentions:

* 8 dual Laser Batteries (Heavy Anti-Shipping Guns mounted on the wings)
* 1 single Laser Battery (Heavy A/S gun mounted on the belly underside)
* 7 triple Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Concordia SuperCruiser model near the bridge superstructure)
* 14 dual Heavy Laser Turrets (like those seen on the Ranger and Concordia class CVs)
* 1-2 Flak guns (as seen on the Kilrathi Saga and SNES WC1 ports)

Where can I find pics of those triple laser turrets on the Concordia supercruiser? Good pics, I mean.

[chuck_starchaser]

GUN PARTY !



All 30 battery and turret locations marked by spherules.

Spirit, the locations won't need to change, so if you want I can upload a bfxm preview tonight that you can use to place the turrets and batteries and torpedos and launching andlanding points in units.csv.

[spiritplumber]

Please do, that'd be great! If you can tell me the unit scale, that'd be even better.

This said... that's WAY too many guns for something playable; the Claw would be able to atomize just about anything.

What I was thinking was, for capships, we should have anti-fighter turrets and anti-capship turrets.

[hurleybird]

Wow Chuck. I just found this thread, you've become some kind of modelling machine or something...

EDIT: I wonder if we could show this to the guys at wcnews? Certainly would require some subtlety if we did, but this is something Wing Commander fans should see.

[spiritplumber]

I prefer "rub it in their noses" to "subtlety", but it's definitely the Artist's call.

Wonderful work, too! I'll start punching it into the engine... any preference on which turrets should try to shoot at capships and which at fighters? (Taking a bolt from an anti-cap turret will probably kill you unless you're in a pimped-out Orion)

[chuck_starchaser]

Hey, thanks, but really this is still 50% mkruer's work; only the control tower is redone from scratch. Anyways, I'd rather rub a playable "WC1 Remake" on the wcnews crowd's noses, than do it one polygon at a time, and giving them a chance to overanalize and negate piece by piece while building up a whole case against our work. Best thing is pretend they don't exist. That's my policy, anyhow, FWIW. And, BTW, what you see here is nothing yet, really. As you can see the hull is *VERY* simple and low poly still. The idea is this:
I've now copied that mesh onto another layer and started modifying it to become the "hull" proper. The hull will be slightly smaller, shinier metal, smoothed and rounded, but with exoskeletal ribs and hardpoints.
This is a pic of the beginning of hull work...



None of it is "hull"; just strips and cuttings to use as reference.

The original mesh then becomes the "armor" proper. The armor stays the same size, but gets cut up into discrete chunks, most of them rectangular, but with many holes and gaps. It will be flat shaded and low poly, except that the edges of each plate will have a slight bevel.
So, through the holes on, and gaps between armor plates, you'll see smooth and shiny hull metal underneath. For instance, guns' bases will protrude through octogonal holes on the armor, and you'll see tiny pipes and cables running on the surface of the hull, and disappearing under the shadows of armor plates. Then scaffold walkways on top of the armor leading from the tower to the gun mounts, only visible at close range.
Then, at the back, the hull becomes an open frame where the engines mount; --there will be no armor between the engines, and instead, a lot of greebles and pipes around and inbetween the engines, and a bit of electric blue inner lighting baked in. So, it will look like a jungle of complexity between engines, suggesting to the observer complexity that extends inwards.
I think it will look superb.
Plus, we'll have the whole ship interior to play with. We can use that to generate cinematics, or to have the player be able to walk around, to the bar, to the launch tubes, or whatever.
IOW, this is barely the beginning work

Anyhow, I just woke up; fell asleep after work; so I'll try to put a file together in the next hour or two.
I used two turret balls: 22 meters and 24 meters in diameter, respectively, reflecting the two sizes seen on the Clawmarks diagram. Beyond that, I've no idea which guns are which type, but I could try to guess the distribution and annotate a sketch of them.

Oh, and BTW, the Bengal is a "Strike Carrier", like something between a carrier and a cruiser. It IS supposed to be a formidable fighting machine.

[chuck_starchaser]

Ok, here's the file, in obj format.
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships ... galWIP.zip

[chuck_starchaser]

Here's my suggested placements:



Oh, yeah, Spirit; scale is 10. The model is 70 units long, representing 700 meters.

22 and 24 meters refer to the diameters of the balls, nothing more.

[chuck_starchaser]

Sorry, there was an error in that obj file. I had to re-upload it.
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships ... galWIP.zip

Attention Blender users. If you got export to obj blues with the new Blender version, I just found that the export error I was having went away when I highlighted the ship in object mode, and then clicked the "Highlighted Objects" option in the export dialogue.

EDIT:

Question: Was a Bengal ever shown docked, or docking, with another cap ship or station? I'm asking because I'm thinking of putting a cargo hatch on the belly, near the heavy lift, service elevator inside, behind the launch tubes; but I wouldn't want to show the hatch in the wrong place, if there's canon already about where one should be.

[mkruer]

Hey, thanks, but really this is still 50% mkruer's work; only the control tower is redone from scratch

Really? Could have fooled me. It looks to have changed so much. What version did you use? The Bengal - Strike Carrier (WC1).3ds File? I think that as the most up to date one. I am judging that by the tower underneath the hull.

Also a few more things to comment on.

Looks like the junction between the flight deck and back of the ship (behind the main tower) also changed. The reason why I went with a flat surface for that entire part instead of cul-de-sac look was judgment call. Using my 10+ years of drafting I am 99.999999% sure that angel is impossible if both views (top and side) are to be true. In the end either that surface is perpendicular (top view) to the flight deck or slanted (side view) to the flight deck. I took the slanted approach because it looked better IMHO then the flat back and because from my experience what was done on top, the drawling error is a rooky mistake (not taking into account of the slant on a surface.) With the give information, neither is wrong.

On to the launch tubes, just because I am interested, where did you get the depth of the hanger. The way you have them now, there is no way to get this ships into them other them lowering them in from the top. If they were slightly shallower (Just enough to fit a second ship behind them) then you could load them from the back which would make more sense from a logistics perspective. All the fighters ship would go down an assembly line, and veer off (left or right) into one of the tubes. If you fudge it, I think you could get away with it.

The ones on the side are a little more interesting. Those would have to slightly shorter as well to get the ships in otherwise you run into the engines. If the space allots, I am wonder if this tubes would be stacked on the edges not laid side by side. This would eliminate the engine conflict.

Finally I am think that all the tubes would have doors on them so when closed they are indistinguishable from the hull of the ship (less of a target)

[chuck_starchaser]

Hey, thanks, but really this is still 50% mkruer's work; only the control tower is redone from scratch

Really? Could have fooled me. It looks to have changed so much. What version did you use? The Bengal - Strike Carrier (WC1).3ds File? I think that as the most up to date one. I am judging that by the tower underneath the hull.

That's the one; you'd made a .obj version for me. Yes, everything has changed but most of the time by nearly infinitesimal amounts. Again, the mesh is now cut up differently; more "squarely", favoring quads to tris; but I got there by slicing the original, deleting old vertexes and rejoining. So, again, it's sort of the same mesh, just tiled differently. I needed to re-tyle it to be able to do the hull/armor separation effect I want.

Also a few more things to comment on.

Looks like the junction between the flight deck and back of the ship (behind the main tower) also changed. The reason why I went with a flat surface for that entire part instead of cul-de-sac look was judgment call. Using my 10+ years of drafting I am 99.999999% sure that angel is impossible if both views (top and side) are to be true. In the end either that surface is perpendicular (top view) to the flight deck or slanted (side view) to the flight deck. I took the slanted approach because it looked better IMHO then the flat back and because from my experience what was done on top, the drawling error is a rooky mistake (not taking into account of the slant on a surface.) With the give information, neither is wrong.

Totally; well, the diagram in Clawmarks is chock full of rookie mistakes. If you look at those tanks in front of the tower, they look farther back on the side view than on the top view. Thing is, the drawing was probably not meant to be a serious, to scale drawing. It's like when you get on a plane and there's a diagram of where the exit doors are; you wouldn't take that drawing and try to build a 3D model of a 747 based on it. All that the Clawmarks diagram has going for it is that apparently is the only one available. But I'd consider any painting or pic of the Bengal as more authoritative, if less revealing, than that diagram. But even them disagree a great deal. Here's a shot of the references I've been using...

http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships ... ences2.jpg

...and if you look at the top view on the bottom left set of pics, you'll see where my forward slanting sides come from. Though, my reason for choosing that had more to do with this hull/armor thing than either functionality or esthetics, and I'm not necessarily settled on it; I might change it yet again. I think there's plenty of freedom in that area, as all the references seem to disagree right there, it's a modeller's bazaar.

On to the launch tubes, just because I am interested, where did you get the depth of the hanger. The way you have them now, there is no way to get this ships into them other them lowering them in from the top.

I got their depth from being horrified about their shortness
Seriously; like, now they are like 80 meters long. How much acceleration could you impart a ship in just 80 meters? This whole thing of having launch tubes makes absolutely no sense, and I'd get rid of it at the first opportunity, but apparently this is the way it has to be. This being so, the shorter the tubes, the more blatantly they show off their patent absurdity.
And the way ships will go in is from the bottom. Elevator/ship-air-lock combo thingy. I was just too lazy to model it and add it at the time I made the tubes. In any case, the elevator/lock has 2 independently mobile parts as well as a stationary part, and only exists in my head so far; but it will have to be a subunit made of yet more subunits, for all the animations. But I could at least have made a hole in the floor of the tubes, for sure, to show how the ships will go in. If you look inside, you'll see the ship corridors pass right under the tubes. That's where the elevators will be. Plus 4 to 6 in the landing deck, going down. I finally figured out what's in those crude oil tanks, btw... *ships*. Can't waste any space...

Finally I am think that all the tubes would have doors on them so when closed they are indistinguishable from the hull of the ship (less of a target)

Actually, I got the doors, or "the door", rather. Problem was, I made the door as an object with a reference point on the hinge. Another object for the hydraulic pistons that open and close it. So, I gave them a parent-child relationship to the tubes, so that when I move a tube, they move with it. Unfortunately, they don't get copied when you copy a tube. To make a long story short, I ended up with 6 tubes sharing a single door. But so be it; I'll procrastinate the boring stuff for now... then get a prescription and deal with them all at once