Hoffmann's Blobs (WARNING - picture links broken :-( )

Active development of content (Art, story, etc.). Content slated for inclusion will be listed in the parent forum.

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strangelet
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Hoffmann's Blobs (WARNING - picture links broken :-( )

Post by strangelet »

check it out - a glowing alien fighter with mah nu "universal organic thing" texture - 100% procedural using c4d noise+shaders.

adds veins and soft tissue in cracks and holes automatically, and has a translucent skin with a muscle pattern underneath. can be baked down for textures (+luma, spec etc)

Image

here's the skin fing...

Image
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Post by dandandaman »

cool :-) hey, maybe you could make some Hoffman Blobs using this? It would be so cool to travel to the system the blobs appear in and actually see them! :-)

jacks, is there more of a description on what the blobs look like?

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Post by pincushionman »

That thing is butt ugly. Rock on, dude.
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Post by hurleybird »

Toltally awesome!

I think VS is missing a race that uses organic ships and has very advanced bio tech :wink:
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Post by peteyg »

The Rlaan are masters of genetic manipulation, and go in for that kind of thing I believe.
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Post by hurleybird »

But do they have organic ships?

unfortunantly, these ships dont look very rlaan. Hopefully well be able to put them in somewhere, because they just look so cool.
Last edited by hurleybird on Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by pincushionman »

It wouldn't need to have a faction... if it were the BEHOLDER!

Or could it be...

Could it possibly be...

No...

Yes...

Could it possibly be...the Lo_Ad fai'led?! (I just had to say it)
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Post by Silverain »

pincushionman wrote:
Could it possibly be...the Lo_Ad fai'led?! (I just had to say it)
Need ATStriker to confirm, but it could well be that fabled and missing ship!
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Post by Nevita »

Seriously, why not the Ancients?

Maybe a few of them are still kicking around and poke their heads in our neck of the galaxy every once in a while. They would be most likely to have organic ships.

From a game perspective, one could code random appearances of this ship every so often, which would provoke a news story detailing "a ship of unknown configuration appeared in the x system and promptly vanished".

That would really add to the atmosphere of the game, IMHO.
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Post by theguyfromsaturn »

Seriously, why not the Ancients?
I think that it is more fun to have the acients as this mystery from the past... you have relics but no more. This being said, we might have this new mysterious and undocumented species, unknow to all other races, and those ships may appear here and there, with unknown purpose.

¿Are they a new race sounding our our space to invade the territory of the other races? ¿Are they, as so many are beginning to speculate, actually ships from the Ancients announcing their return? Nobody knows. And the worst is that in the midst of this war agains the Aera, they might actually turn out to be very powerful and agressive invaders... or maybe not. Nobody really knows.

All that we know is that those ships have been spotted, at an apparently increasing rate, in several areas, by all races, sometimes a single ship, sometimes a small formation, but never has any of these aliens been seen, or their ships come close enough for thorough scans, or even combat... at least that we know of. There certainly have never been any survivors of such a combat to come up and tell the tale.
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Post by hurleybird »

I think that ship would make an awesome beholder.

Or, an awesome new race that is probing our galaxy for invasion.

Now, how cool would it be, if we had some sort of a trigger (a certain amount of time passes, or you get to have a certain net value, or complete a series of missions, or even a mixture of a few of these) that would make these aliens begin a full scale invasion of our galaxy! Of course, most if not all of the factions in vega-strike would be forced to make an alliance against the aliens.

I can imagine a player thinking. 'This game is starting to get a little repiditive, and I'm getting bored' and then all of the sudden 'Whoah, I didn't expect that!' as soon as the invasion starts.

I mean, Why not? It's easy as hell to implement if you already have the models. Just start spawning a whole bunch of ships at the edge of the galaxy, make the aliens have -100 relations with everyone, and let the dynamic universe do the rest!

Either way though, I think the beholder has to go. Having an ultra-powerfull unkown ship, and having a bunch of ultra-powerfull unkown ships appearing at the edge of the galaxy seems a bit redundant.
Last edited by hurleybird on Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by theguyfromsaturn »

Now, how cool would it be, if we had some sort of a trigger (a certain amount of time passes, or you get to have a certain net value, or complete a series of missions, or even a mixture of a few of these) that would make these aliens begin a full scale invasion of our galaxy! Of course, most if not all of the factions in vega-strike would be forced to make an alliance against the aliens.
I agree completely. What would be great, as I mentionned in my previous post is to have sightings of those ships slowly increase (but never to become too common) in number and locations. This should be commented upon in the newscasts... (with people speculating wether they are ancients, aera secret weapons etc...)

Maybe the trigger could be when one race makes signignificant inroads in another race's (or in the case of the Aera if they have blasted a good deal of both humans and Rlaan). Then Wham... it's about becomnig allies with old enemies or dying at the hands of the new. In how much detail are politics and negotiations at the higher levels handled in VegaStrike... would something like this be possible? These new beings would then show in force when their ennemies have weakened each other enough that they think they can take care of them all. ¿Could they have actually taken out the ancients in the same way? (we don't need to answer this... actually we must not, mystery is great in a game like this).

No mention of this race or ships should be made in the documentation either.

Either way though, I think the beholder has to go. Having an ultra-powerfull unkown ship, and having a bunch of ultra-powerfull unkown ships appearing at the edge of the galaxy seems a bit redundant.
I don't know what the beholder is (I haven't had the opportunity to play much VS before my already suffering computer decided to cripple some files that affected it) but maybe they could be related... of course, this whole concept of swarm ships might replace altogether... or the beholder is actually a beacon ship left by the ancients to watch out for their old nemesis, although the ancients themselves might never come back on its warning...

Actually maybe the beholder (if understand something of its nature from its name) might be the first and only supership that the ancients built to contain the "locust" invasion way back when... but it was too little too late. It might still offer some unintentional assistance when it recognises the enemies of old in its neighbourhood. It would be a "critter" hunter... and we better pray we are not confused with the prey.

A whole bunch of hot air, but maybe some ideas sound good to someone beside myself.
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Post by hurleybird »

theguyfromsaturn wrote:

Maybe the trigger could be when one race makes signignificant inroads in another race's (or in the case of the Aera if they have blasted a good deal of both humans and Rlaan). Then Wham... it's about becomnig allies with old enemies or dying at the hands of the new. In how much detail are politics and negotiations at the higher levels handled in VegaStrike... would something like this be possible?
Easily, the entire mission sytem in VS is based on python, all that you need is a trigger (the invasion) which sets the major factions relationships to 100 with each-other, then there automatically friendly towards one another.
I don't know what the beholder is
Its this ultra powefull fighter thing like the steltek drone from the original privateer, very powerfull, but not like it could hold back a huge invasion.
These new beings would then show in force when their ennemies have weakened each other enough that they think they can take care of them all. ¿Could they have actually taken out the ancients in the same way?
Starting to sound a little too much like the Shivan's from FreeSpace...
A whole bunch of hot air, but maybe some ideas sound good to someone beside myself.
Well, they all sound interesting to me, I'm sure others will think the same as well.


Right now I'm wondering what JackS would think of an idea like this. I'm quite excited myself about this entire idea, especially since it would be very easy to put in VS (just need more art for the new race, plus and a fairly simple python script). And it would be oh, so cool.
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Post by Silverain »

Its an interesting twist, which (if implemented) shouldn't be commented on much on the boards. That way, after a long term of play with the factions as is, such a change is as complete a surprise as possible, re-energising the game.
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Post by hurleybird »

Silverain wrote:Its an interesting twist, which (if implemented) shouldn't be commented on much on the boards. That way, after a long term of play with the factions as is, such a change is as complete a surprise as possible, re-energising the game.
Yes, I agree. If it does getr put into VS we should censor all information on the forums about it.
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Post by zaydana »

yeah, we should sensor _most_ information. Although, it would be funny to just leave like 3 posts around in places, which cuold be found using the forum's 'search' function in the future. That way if people are really interested enough to look for information, it would just create more mystery since the posts were missing :P
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Post by jackS »

Nevita wrote:Seriously, why not the Ancients?

[snip] They would be most likely to have organic ships.
actually... no. They wouldn't.
hurleybird wrote:But do they have organic ships?
I think you're turning organic into a misnomer for living. If you ask, say, "do the Rlaan have living ships" - the answer is... not really - some parts of their recycling systems are alive, but the ship itself is assuredly not. If you're asking "are the Rlaan ships heavy on organic components" the answer is yes - organic (carbon based, in this context, specifically the byproducts of living organisms) components and component technologies are used throughout Rlaan engineering. However - some simple reasons why living ships aren't so hot - HEAT

carbon based lifeforms are not, in the scheme of armors (even those we know of now, let alone may yet produce) remotely heat tolerant. Proteins de-nature, sugars decompose, even carbon crystals like diamond (should you decide to consider those "organic" in nature) can be readily enough convinced to become graphite or some other less desirable configuration of carbon. There are also a huge host of issues with living ships ranging from practical hibernation methods when not in use, to feeding, to dealing with g-forces (cappilaries at 30Gs anyone?) to energy dissipation, to all the unnecessary crap to keep the ship alive that would be better spent elsewhere, to etc, etc, etc. Now - carbon compounds, bio-derived or otherwise, have lots of impressive roles to play, but lifeforms make lowsy warships....

I'm not currently interested in increasing the number of species actively wandering around the VS universe. I call this "Star Trek syndrome". I think, as cool as the model does indeed look, that the original hoffman's blobs option is likely closer to what it would be best used for than anything else.
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Post by hurleybird »

...However - some simple reasons why living ships aren't so hot...
You may be right. However, in a game world you don not need complete realism. the only thing that really benefits from 'realism' is the graphics part of the game. What a game does need though, is to be beleivable, and having a game be beleivable. Realism and beleivability may sound like the same thing, but in a game, they do not even need to be connected. For a game to be beleivable, it needs to draw you in, make you a part of the story, and stop you from jumping out of the story. The more you feel like you are a part of the game the more beleivable it becomes.

If I (or most anyone else) see's an organic (or living, for a better term) ship in VS I'm not going to wonder how can a carbon based life form like that thrive in space, and have good armor to boot, and what about those cappilaries at 30Gs! I'm going to think Oh, a living ship, now thats interesting!

In any case, almost everything in VS is completley unrealistic to begin with if you really think about it. If you really wanted a realistic game in space then, quite frankly, it would suck. There is no reason to tie our hands behind our backs by trying to keep everything realistic.
I'm not currently interested in increasing the number of species actively wandering around the VS universe. I call this "Star Trek syndrome".
I completley disagree. I think that VS has too few species right now. The number of interesting and unique species is what made star trek great in the first place, not to mention other games like the star control and starflight series'. What i think we need to avoid is having the VS universe have way to many races right off the bat with little introduction. I think that new races are something that you need to discover. Star control 2, Star Trek and Starflight where very big on exploration. Having a whole bunch of races at the start of the game is now where near as fun as being able to discover those races yourslef.

Sorry for being so argumentive with you lately, but I am just not agreeing with most of the things you are saying.
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Post by strangelet »

i'm afraid i agree with jack - a few well detailed species are infinitely preferable to a zillion vaguely thought out aliens... if i give this thing some tendrills mb it could be a hoffmann blob, and could swim in shoals around your ship or something, mb parasiting your shield slightly...
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Post by wewewewewe »

This could possible be Rlaans extensive race.. The deeper in rlaan space you go, the more of those type of biological ships you will see.
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Post by hurleybird »

strangelet wrote:i'm afraid i agree with jack - a few well detailed species are infinitely preferable to a zillion vaguely thought out aliens... if i give this thing some tendrills mb it could be a hoffmann blob, and could swim in shoals around your ship or something, mb parasiting your shield slightly...
Yeah, different peoples opinions on every single aspect of the game can differ greatly :D

Anyway... I still think its an awesome idea myslef, so perhaps I will go try some modelling of my own, -OT warning!- since I just found a new program to play with called silo, which is more powerfull and faster than max, and maybe easy enough to learn that its within my very limited attention span :wink:

The program cant texture worth a hoot though... but besides that its awesome. It has a free version, a trial version, and only costs $109 for the full version.
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Post by theguyfromsaturn »

These ships definitely look cool, but they don't seem to mesh with the info of the currently known species. But if they are something else, what could they be?
i'm afraid i agree with jack - a few well detailed species are infinitely preferable to a zillion vaguely thought out aliens... if i give this thing some tendrills mb it could be a hoffmann blob, and could swim in shoals around your ship or something, mb parasiting your shield slightly...
It does not need to be a poorly thought out alien species. Just an undocumented one. There is a difference. The VegaStrike universe is great, but in the vastness of such a vast universe, there must be many things that we don't know about... something to keep the explorer in an investigative mood. Something we may later wish we had known about. In any event, just having a few of these ships appear now and then here and there, avoiding combat and sparking speculation in the rumor mills of the newscasts and the bars would definitely add mystery and of itself make the player wonder if there is anything more. The mystery itself could add a certain cachet. There already seems to be the Beholder ship and the nanoplague, but the look of these ships, is really cool and would certainly fit in this category.

And if it is ever decided to include them as a new invasion force triggered by the significant weakening of the cumulative power of all the known races in VS, either in the main game, or in a dedicated MOD, there could definitely be some discussions in an obscure thread among those interested in developing the reason of existence of these beings. Here is a couple of brief suggestions to seed a possible debate:

Different scenarios could be investigated: They might be an extreme case of Aera paranoia that patrol the starlanes identifying potential threats to their very survival (any sentient species capable of space travel) and try to destroy them.... The original aliens might have played the cybord game to the extreme too, where there is no difference between alien/ship. The cautious approach of the original aliens might have become the prime directive of these ships but with time and drift in purpose, they have taken it to its ultimate expression and decided that disinfection and eradication of all threats is the only viable long term solution.

Or maybe, the Ancients fearing some old enemy had devised these living ships as a means to protect the huge volume of space that would represent the most extreme borders of their domains. They created intelligent ships that could reproduce on their own (the size of the volume to protect and the constant maintenace required preventing them to consider standard production methods)... but something went wrong and in the classic Sci Fi cliché the weapon turned agains the master, and since these creatures relied heavily on nanites to exist as pseudo-living entities the nanoplage was devised as a last desperate effort to stop them, thus bringing down the civilisation of the Ancients which also depended greatly on nanotechnology. But now, for some reason, the survivors of the Ancient disinfection have overcome the nanoplague problem (wether by eliminating their dependency on nanites (using biological cells?) or otherwise), And they have come back looking for their long lost foes... or their inheritors which would inevitably live in regions of space infested with the nanoplague. In this scenario the Beholder would have been the only ship that the Ancients might have been able to produce as a powerful craft that was intended to be part of a new fleet built to defeat the threat of the living ships, ships that would not have been dependent on nanotechnology, either becaue the nanoplague had already been released, or because nanotechnology became a weakness when facing the living ships.


I know, crazy scenarios but in my defense I DO come from Saturn. We see things differently back there, mostly because we have to look at the stars through those darn rings.
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Post by hurleybird »

guyfromsaturn:

Well, the hardest part of the Idea is the artwork. Even I could probably script it in with my limited knowlege of python, though it might have to be a seperate mod depending on what other devs would think :wink:

So we just need someone to do the artwork. If no one wants to do this, then I may take up the cup myslef, and hopefully the task wouldnt exceed my attention span.
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Post by strangelet »

my mate had a wicked idea about the beholder. he said it should be crystalline in nature, and have vague forms half-lit writhing inside it's translucent hull.

if i was to make a ship (isnt the beholder sort of tear-drop shaped?) and have like 4 skins each bigger than the other, all transparent with different textures and such, the parralax of 4 transparent hulls inside eachother would look REALLY cool
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Post by charlieg »

strangelet wrote:my mate had a wicked idea about the beholder. he said it should be crystalline in nature, and have vague forms half-lit writhing inside it's translucent hull.

if i was to make a ship (isnt the beholder sort of tear-drop shaped?) and have like 4 skins each bigger than the other, all transparent with different textures and such, the parralax of 4 transparent hulls inside eachother would look REALLY cool
Your ships of late are so cool that they'll surely get included, even if a whole new race needs inventing for them.

Personally I think new races are a good thing. The more races there are, the more there is to discover in game and the deeper the atmosphere. Whilst it is nice to have an entire, well-thought history to each race it isn't always completely necessary and if races get added to the game then I'm sure the sci-fi-writer-officiados around here (JackS & Co.) will manage to come up with something!
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