New base idea

[Mithrandir]

Hi,

Yesterday I was playing VegaStrike from morning to morning and wanted to add something new to the world. I tryed to make ISO equivalent of commerce center first, something like 'community center', but more non-human faction can use them. It's place when pilots can take rest, repair ship, trade cargo and where all services are avaiable, military offices, medical center and so on and so on.

I have model only yet, but I want to ask for your opinion, if pay off to continue with this model, what should I improve or wether I should try something compleatly different.

http://mithrandir.1984.cz/screenshots/cs1.gif

Front view, three ship bays, control tower, navigation aereas

http://mithrandir.1984.cz/screenshots/cs2.gif

Top view, base infrastructure, four landing pads

Thank you for your opinion,

Michael

[hellcatv]

that looks like a variant on the fighter barracks...
a commerce center would probably look more delicate and spindly--

[lee]

That's very nice Maybe add some engines and have it float around slowly, kind of a movable resting and, if needed, strategical operation platform.

[Mithrandir]

I think that 'community center' or 'space platform' are better names than commerce center, but how noble does it look we find out after I add textures

BTW how big should be a base model? (In wings?) What's recoomended textures size?

[Halleck]

The actual size of the model doesn't matter all that much, since you can specify a scaling factor in units.csv. As for texturing, go hi rez- probably nothing lower than 1024x1024.

[reaper]

Also, since it's a base you can probably have more polys, so feel free to make more protuberances or smooth some things. But based on Soviet and other communist countrys' architecture, maybe you want to be going blocky

I would want to fly around it...

[Mithrandir]

Maybe I am deviant, but I like blocky architecture

I started with texturing, but my comp is quite slow and working with 2048x2048 bmp is not very comfortable (I have Duron 800 with 192Mb of RAM and GeForce2 32 Mb)

[klauss]

If you ever have the means, add memory. 192Mb is a little low for working with textures.

Anyway, I was thinking about the blocky idea. If you think about it too, such community would also have a modular approach for building stations, since the station would grow as needed (they would try to avoid building large stations when unneeded, but would have provisions to expand small stations if needed).

So, perhaps a complex network of modules would be nice. And even nicer if, for you to dock, you had to maneuver between the modules. Besides interesting, docking would be quite a trip, if texturing has enough detail.

[ack2000]

Maybe I am deviant, but I like blocky architecture

I started with texturing, but my comp is quite slow and working with 2048x2048 bmp is not very comfortable (I have Duron 800 with 192Mb of RAM and GeForce2 32 Mb)

try using png its a much small image size but with still high quality. I know wings3d doesnt support png. I use png till wings then convert tga just get want I need to in wings3d. If not mistaken you can also use jpg in wings3d which also is a small size.

[klauss]

try using png its a much small image size but with still high quality

Try, but I think the problem is in memory, after the image gets decompressed, so file formats won't matter.
But who am I to argue with trial and error?

[ack2000]

yeah does need to upgrade. just trying to give suggestions on how to work till then

[klauss]

Thiking about it, and completely OT, I have an old PC, Pentium Pro w/128MB and works quite well with big images.
It may be that there are too many services running. Try killing anything not needed. It's hard to tell in a Post how to do that, but I've done it in my 128MB PC and since then, it works much, much better with images.

[Mithrandir]

Well, Vegastrike forced me to upgrade, during next week I get Athlon CPU based computer with 512 MB RAM and GeForce 5 with 128 Mb RAM, that should improve work a bit )

There was idea to add engines here. Do you think is sensible for starbase to have visible engines?