Uncharted system Delta X09 background

[safemode]

Deep in the jump network branched off of distant systems in aeran space is a lonely jump node, nestled in a system of long dead planets from a star that had long ago died. The jump node is tumbling around in orbit around the 4th planet, now rocky and cold, covered in cracks and crators. One could imagine distant time when it was much like earth. (when we get the code in we'll make it so this jump doesn't show up on sensors or maps). It becomes obvious that few if anyone has been in this system in a long time, and this jump hidden by the radiation given off by the dead star's last breaths, has probably never been spotted with it so close to the planet. You decide to make the jump. An amazing blue wormhole opens up and you find yourself in this system.



Nebula's surround you everywhere. (the units) . Your sensors and nav system show giberish. is there anything in this system? Are there enemies awaiting? Or is the discovery that will change the tides of war resting somewhere deep in this system that seems to have last been navigated by an ancient race.



ps. this system is supposed to be _huge_ bigger than Sol, but with less textures. You're supposed to have picked up nav coordinates from an ancient artifact, that led you to the jump that got you into this system. It also gives you a coordinate to goto once in the system. Your sensors are supposed to be crazy from the radiation given off by the nebulas (both the nearby unit ones and the background) your only targetable thing is the coordinates in your nav computer. You are supposed to have to spec for at least 10 minutes, before you even begin to notice a star getting closer. etc etc. etc. of course none of this is contingent on the use of the background. it's just how i imagined it used.


I popped it in place of green_* to test it out and it looks nifty in cephid_17 too It's my first one so there is a lot of fine-tuning needed.

Fullsize images are 2048x2048 png files. I am upping the spheremap generating code to generate 1024x1024 spheremaps, the current is 512x512.

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[safemode]

how about this one that doesn't look so flat?

New Right image

[bgaskey]

Great . To add more depth, you could overlap some of the nebulae.

[safemode]

The background aside, i'm gonnna go a slightly different route with it.

I was wondering if anyone with modelling experience could model up the Relic Gate.

the idea behind the relic gate is that it is a circular double helix. It's bigger than a normal gate. It's inner radius is at least twice the size of a normal wormhole's outter radius. Various ornamental designs with alien religious undertones can decorate the outer radius.


The idea of the texture would be an obsidian like material with various red light patches... these would be pieces of the structure that glow red, not little lights.


I also need ship sized statues. Ideally these would look like robed figures, no facial features. They can be somewhat off-hominid in form. Ideally they would appear to be offering themselves. these will be spaced in the corners of an imaginary cube, facing the Relic Gate.

In addition to that, any other various xeno-religious statues would be cool, and various debris of similar nature would work too.


edit: you dont really need to worry about polygon count here. There will be no ships simulated, no numerous planets rendered. etc. So all we'll have to worry about is these things. so we should have plenty of power to play with higher count models.

[Xit]

Do you really mean a circular double helix? I mean it could probably be done, it just seems needlessly complicated, I thought of making a crude mock up or cheating by just texturing a torus but even that seemed quite time consuming... It could look interesting, I just wanted to check in case I've interpreted this wrongly...

what you're suggesting might look something like this

[safemode]

more like a twisted ladder that connects on itself to form a circle. The rungs of the ladder can be as complicated as the modeler wants.

they dont need to represent the actual molecules to the T. Though, if the modeler is feeling up to it, that may look neat in space


It's supposed to be extremely complicated though as far as compared to everything else in the VS universe that is usually utilitarian. These models that i described were built as a sort of religious symbol as much as it is anything else. No cost was spared in their creation, and it was extremely important that it be done to the highest quality.

Most load in systems is felt by the number of ships, number of planets, number of other crap in the system. All of the load in this special system comes from these artifacts.. So we have plenty of poly's to play with.

[Xit]

Well now that you put it like that...

here's a very simple mock up, I'd probably make the real thing with about 4 - 10 times as many segments, obviously the segments could be more rounded and detailed too



This looks flat on one side but it actually rotates evenly through 360 degrees all the way round, this will be less of a problem with more segments and more repeats.

Let me know if you like it

[safemode]

looks good, maybe make it less wide (the rungs shorter) and a bit less thick. then we can worry about all the extras

[Xit]

Well I shortened the rungs, which makes it look a great deal larger and less dramatic, and started doubling up the number of rungs. I then tried increasing the rotation from 1 turn to 4 but I wasn't hugely pleased with that. Manipulating most of the dimensions after rotation is awkard but not impossible...

I might try putting it into VS as a ship, just for kicks

[safemode]

well it looks less dramatic because you're missing all the extras.

perhaps round the rungs and cut them in half with a gap between the two halves. The split between the rungs can be randomized, simulating the different molecules that they represent.

On the outter bands, detail can be added. Little rectangular out-croppings or indents. whatever floats your boat to make it look technical, Maybe even script written all around it.

The textures then would have the different rungs ends (near the gap) light in red. Most of the rest of the texture would be mechanized obsidian. The rungs light changes when the gate is unlocked....but not until then.


this thing should be at least 2 maybe 3 times the size of a normal wormhole gate. In the game it should be spinning and flipping.

[Deus Siddis]

Before someone starts modeling high detail statues of what I'm guessing is one of the three extict or thought to be extict races, it might help to get some word from JackS or whoever has this knowledge, on what this species is like biologically and how they appear physically. This information seems to be absent from the wiki.

[safemode]

this isn't any race in the great PDF.

I invented this race as one of the ancients that no evidence exists of because they only existed in this system, they never left and nobody ever came in. They were uber religious and their religion was based upon the reason of why there where put there.

The whole story is still being hammered out in the authoring forum, but the gist is that this was a species of ancient that weren't whiped out in the initial cleansing. They lived for many thousands of years until a star in the nebula whiped them out. A catastrophe they knew was eminant, but their dogmatic faith kept them from fleaing.

I dont want to give too much away here. And in reality, the story is going to change somewhat as to why there are in this system, depending on how we hammer out the details of various happenings in the authoring forum

[Xit]

Here it is doubled up, it's worth noting that the inner and outer loops can't be separated due to engine limitations, but this probably wouldn't be an issue anyway. For the time being the rungs will stay square, to preserve clarity of angles... In time I could substitute these for some pseudo nucleotides to make it look like some advanced analog of DNA, but really before that I need to know if the basic frame will need any changes, how many rungs is enough? Would a triple helix be better?

[safemode]

triple may be interesting.... could possibly represent a more "pure" form of life. So far though, i like the looks of it. The pseudo-nucleotides would be a cool touch. Then it's just a matter of texturing it up so it looks bad ass.

Basically, this is a marker to a religious site, so it doesn't really seem to do much. but it does, (though that's not revealed in the game)..


With the gate done, there should be 6 religious icon statues, the size of ships, at the centers of the 6 faces of a cube that circumscribes the gate.


This is the most important combination in the system. Various other debris can be modeled and strewn about.

Rather than a planet, i was thinking a large hunk of debris could be floating around and it could contain a functional docking bay. So i'll need a large mangled looking space station to handle that.

This system is gonna be so cool

I have quite a few ideas revolving around this system for 0.5.x Can't wait.

[Xit]

Done some work on the gate, been starting from scratch with a 180 segment triple helix, which isn't too bad in itself

It has around 10,000 polygons, some fraction of which will be culled.


And then I've made some simple nucleosides, just starting with the ones known in teran DNA - but at around 400 polygons each these may be too complicated for a good scale (at least on the triple helix) as

400 polys
2 bases in a pair
2 helices
x 180 segments
288,000 polys, could be cut to 144,000 by having a nucleoside every other segment, but still may be too much. This doesn't take into account any texturing yet.



finally, the joins to the ring are cr@p. I haven't yet figured out a good way to make them without using flat edges or throwing lots of polys at it.



I might try different things to get the nucleoside polygons down but the connections are a real problem, I might be able to get round it by welding one side of the polygons into the base of the ring or it might require a total redesign.

Any suggestions (particularly about the style of it) are welcome

[safemode]

the neucleotides can be arbitrary. It's not like it's our DNA it's representing. It's the "ideal" DNA that it represents. So dont worry about being too exact. I like the tri-helix design. And i like the size of things. But i would cut out every other rung, halving the total number of rungs. Perhaps experiment with stagering the rungs for each half of the helix, or keeping them in sync. Whichever looks best.

Also, the balls at the end of the neucleotides aren't necessary. A simple rectangular end is fine. We can then color the texture the end of the rectangle and make it glow, etc. The same goes for the trianguler end things you got there. Just make everything the same rectangular piece you use to build the hexagonal parts.

Also, why do the rungs have so many segments? surely than can be made into simple rectangles so that the number of triangles per face is 2 rather than 2 * segments. In any case, i wouldn't worry about the number of triangles right now. we're not going to have to worry about rendering much of anything else, while a normal system has to bother with dozens of ship models and planets and such.


You really have it just about nailed. The hardest part is going to be texturing it.


For the religious statues that make up the 6 points around the gate, I'm being intentionally vague because i dont know how hard it is going to be to get the modelling of them done. They're supposed to be about as big as a large ship. They can either be symbolic or figures. I thought the most dramatic effect would be robed faceless figures, standing in space offering themselves to the gate. But i'm not really going to be picky about it. As long as it can be textured up to detail the significance of itself, be it with the figure statues or with symbols meant to signify some mysterious importance, i'd be fine with it.

If nobody can texture these things, maybe i can see if pyramid is interested. Though he's busy with lots of other stuff right now.

The other cool thing might be modelling the debris in the system. That will be totally left up to the modellers imagination. Think floating half-destroyed mega-monastaries and various other un-discernable debris. Some space-oriented, some having belonged on the surface of a long destroyed planet.

One of the debris should be done as if you were building a ship. It needs to have 1 working docking bay. This is what we'll use to give the player whatever we end up giving him for having completed this compaign of discovery. Via docking with this artifact. Again, this is totally up to the modelers ability to decide how these things look. They need not look like anything else in the game. But i'm aiming for religious zealotism. Maybe work the triple helix into the design or in some way. Most of the detail will be in the texturing, so hopefully that will piece together the religious aspect where the meshing leaves off.

thanks a lot btw, so far this is cool.

[Xit]

Also, why do the rungs have so many segments? surely than can be made into simple rectangles so that the number of triangles per face is 2 rather than 2 * segments. In any case, i wouldn't worry about the number of triangles right now. we're not going to have to worry about rendering much of anything else, while a normal system has to bother with dozens of ship models and planets and such.

Hehe well spotted, they're placeholders for the random rung length idea which I probably won't be using now, so really the ring can probably be culled down to 2000-4000 polys, making room for more smoothing details later...

I'll cut the offending balls off (which represent oxygen) as they add 100 polys each, so that could save roughly 18,000 polys, but I'll see if I can save the triangles (Nitrogen) without giving it a non standard look, as they only add 20 polys each, or a Y shape of rectangles may be more standard at 40 polys.

[Xit]

A bit more of a standard shape now, with some improvement on poly count. The Y shape uses 72 polys, 31 more polys than the triangle did in the regular version, in the cut down version it uses 31, the same as the circle.

428 polys


or

285 polys


The lower poly version can't be detail textured due to stretching artefacts but I think it's the way forward for now, should be fine with solid colour.

[safemode]

we can make them the glowing pieces in the texture. thus eliminating the need for details.

[Turbo]

In any case, i wouldn't worry about the number of triangles right now. we're not going to have to worry about rendering much of anything else, while a normal system has to bother with dozens of ship models and planets and such.

I would think the limiting factor for the renderer would be the number of polys visible on screen at any one time, not the total number of polys in the system. But if the greebles are glowing and featureless they don't need a lot of polygons. They could be triangular in cross-section, which fits well with the triple helix you are considering.

Nice model work, Xit!

Turbo

[safemode]

the religious monuments surrounding the gate should probably just be large symbols. The exact nature of the symbols doesn't matter. It just shouldn't be a copy of a previously existing symbol.

so we need 6 ship sized 3d symbols. Maybe with some damage (chunks missing maybe). These will be positioned around the helix gate at the ends of the 3 axis of the gate.


I would consider the gate to be practically complete. I'm really satisfied with the work xit has done thus far.

Then we need debris from the artificial planet and space stations. Debris can be any size. One piece has to be big enough to have a docking bay.

Then we'll just need someone to texture these guys up and post 0.5 I can start working on getting the this system functional.

I'm hoping, after some discussion with the higher ups, that this system and it's backstory (which is being shaped in the authoring forum and is quite different from the one described in this thread), becomes a huge over-arching plot in the VS universe. I dont want to give much more away until everything is settled.

[Xit]

Hehe I have not even begun to do all the work on the gate yet, I still need to get all the nucleosides fitted in, and then do all the rotations and then texture it, but at least I've found ways to standardise it and make it a lot easier to do.

But thanks, I have here a rather crummy testing mesh, which looks horrible and lacks detail (read spoilers) just to test how much the expected poly count will cause a slowdown. It didn't cause any framerate drop for me but I need to see how real computers handle it. The poly count is 117,000 for this waste of space. I'm hoping my second Opteron will come tomorrow to speed up the modelling process (sadly wings can't use more than 1 core, it seems...)

(Also since it has no center I figure maybe it could be used in some clever testing of "framerate drops when X big thing takes up the whole screen due to suspected overdraw")

Interestingly I accidentaly left in a completely separate ring, and neither mesher nor VS seems to mind, which is a good thing, the end product will be better for it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WJNT68OE 7.5MB, replacement for fighter_barracks.bxfm

[safemode]

that mesh didn't helix-ify. There was only one rung and all the circles were parallel.

The defense system was somewhat more efficient than the barracks. Since the barracks likes to destroy itself trying to kill you after you bounce into it... the thin pieces of this mesh easily avoided the floating turrets

[Xit]

Hehe yeah, I noticed there seemed to be a lot more docking points in use too, it might make quite a logical shape for a base if only the volume could be increased a lot...

I may get the helixing finished tomorrow if I get my essay finished, this mesh is just meant to have a huge poly count. What was your frame rate like?

[safemode]

never changed... somewhere between 150 and 100