Deus Siddis wrote:3) Graphics are 90% about eye candy. Otherwise why not use flat shading and geometric primitives for graphics. Then you could play VS on a Newton.
I am familiar with this concept. I noticed that excess of eye candy all too frequently leads to eye ileus, however.
And/or thorough unusability. That's what leads to surrealistic interfaces, from Microsoft Bob to Unity, quite obviously spawned by magpie design - piling together all and any "shiny" features the feathered developer saw somewhere without a single thought about the functionality, such as
caring whether they even make any sense together.
The opposite school of thought, naturally, posits that outside of demo scene, graphics are first about conveying information visually, and next about whatever is added on top of this.
Returning to our mining bases, models in a simulator are supposed to (surprise) reflect the game world. Which doesn't happen at all with, for example, the same trilateral Derivative.
Deus Siddis wrote:I'll try to figure out LoDs myself now, because apparently no one cares about improvement of graphics even this much.
Most strike craft have LoDs already. Sometime before 0.5.0 someone apparently applied a subsurfaces modifier to all the strike craft to create different LoDs of "smoothness". However this is a stopgap, you get a lot more out of your polys when a content creator 'gets his hands dirty' and does them my hand, which is exactly what I do with all models I have made and will make in the future. So you are preaching to the choir here, I am big in to LoDs and have been for some time.
I'm afraid you don't copy.
Let me spell it. My intent to dive into LoDs was not expressed as a cheerful call to join.
It's the messy (as it's implemented now) prerequisite i need to somehow fix the model which, while far from hopeless, doesn't do what it supposed to do.
Though looking again, not sure if it's even possible without a complete overhaul - for one, what i am to do with U-profiles after removing missiles from them? Leave like this?
Derivative model with trilateral symmetry has on it 15 simple models of small missiles, 4 rocket pods and one big gun. Derivative ship stats in game has 2x special/heavy mounts, 2x light/medium and 4x light/medium-missile.
See the problem here? What you get is not what you see.
Moreover, even if it
did have the same hardpoint as depicted on model, their current state, obviously, would not be properly reflected. There are mount meshes for this. Oh, and yes, it's turned with Z axis to its aft instead of nose.
So, we have a ship which could, indeed, fit Unadorned theme with its lean'n'mean consoles+pods scheme very well, but ended up as an isolated oddity, not a part of any style. That is,
what looked like a fairly promising work and with a proper approach could enhance the game world, instead helped to turn it into more of a magpie nest, filled with fragments of formerly cool ideas piled up without any rhyme or reason.
Now you say that while there are shiny things to pile up, rhyme or reason are not even taken into account.
Conversely, me and others above don't want editor oversights this big and learned to see the concept grinding brainstorm as the necessary stage. Because if it was done properly to Derivative, nothing of the above would apply and there were at least two more craft in this style - if not by you, then by other designers picking up ideas from the concept discussion - and instead of one model with obvious flaws we could have the artstyle of a faction, back then.
Deus Siddis wrote:The derivative was terribly crafted by me when I didn't know how to work mesher. Every time I see it in game I feel sorry I submitted it. I didn't know it was still flying backwards though.
It fits if not the existing style, then an underlying concept... and with this it could as well have big "WTF?" in red letters on it.
And it looks like an essentially simple model. The more random elements you add while insisting on throwing the result into a random line of units.csv, the farther it's likely to fall into "square peg round hole" territory. While there's probably an empty square hole somewhere. How it's not obvious?
Deus Siddis wrote:What maintainance it needs?
All present day graphics will eventually look obsolete due to improving standards. Thus graphics have a 'shelf life' before they should be replaced. The more you have the more work it will take to replace them.
Improved textures? It can be done gradually.
Improved models? Maybe, but it's not burning hot if they don't need a fix even before they are added. And what improvements? 6-sided cylinder for a barrel will eventually be replaced with 24- or 48- sided one, but that's about it.
Changing models to random ones having nothing in common? No effort required because there's no need at all.
Deus Siddis wrote:The point is warcraft fields a flood of new content, craptastic as it is, because they have a tremendous budget.
It also works the other way around: it constantly needs new content to sell.
Deus Siddis wrote:The admonisher and vigilance models look nothing like bricks. The pacifier looks like a shark. The purist style is a bit more diverse than you make it out to be. Can you not see any similarities between the above renders of the consequence and the current model of the admonisher?
None except having wings and pods.
Admonisher and Pacifier are not quite bricks, but not far from this - more complex, but... incremental, about as visibly as Plowshare.
Take a structural element, when it's not enough, slap on it another simple element like a box or weapon console, sometimes smoothed to a slope (it got to be armored, after all). Rinse, repeat. So there are visible remnants of older hulls - IMO the prequel set should have ships Purists turned into components of these three.