ChrisReid

Patient fans seem to be pretty impressed by WC Saga's new Strakha model, so the Saga team pulled it out once again. They've released a small divx video that shows the ship entering and exiting its invisible state. Lars modeled the fighter originally, and ScoobyDoo reworked it for the Freespace 2 engine. The goal was to simulate WC4's CGI cloak effect in-game, and this looks pretty close. Grab the clip for yourself here.

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Original update published on August 16, 2006

rapierdragon

Pretty cool; but doesn't seem entirely game accurate to me. The transition between visible and invisible seems right, but the final invisible state seems off.

I seem to recall being able to see the Strakha even when it was fully clocked, but you had to be pretty close (it had to take up a good part of the screen. More often than not you could somewhat see it right before you were going to bump into it or its shields). When fully clocked it had a kind of glass-like quality; you could still see edges and detail, as though the most main lines of the model wireframe were visible or rendered or something. (Or does this "glass like" appearance only occur on the easiest level or two of the difficulty settings which I play at?)

A part of me wants to say that the transitional state is off, that it should fade from full color to grayscale than to invisible rather than this random plasma-like effect, but that might be my memory confusing what a strakha looks like when cloaking and what the cloakable excalibur cockpit looks like.

Still, it is amazingly detailed and a pure joy to watch.

Hehehe.

---The Prototype Incident---
The real reason the facility was destroyed and its workers killed.

"Engaging cloak" <szlip> "Control, the ship cloaked... too well. I can't read the displays or see the controls or even see my own hand."
Pilot fumbles around trying to hit de-cloak button. Torpedo unlocks from hardpoint and falls to deck, crushing foot of an unwary technician.
As technician reacts he looses balance, falls over onto monitoring and backup control console, activating a dumbfire missile and firing it.
Missile flies over project supervisors head leaving him burnt bald and missing an ear before flying through the viewing window that leads to the test-bay control room. Unfortunately Thrakhath is standing there, back to the strakha watching the main display monitor as the missile makes a dead-on hit of his personnal exhaust pipe.
Some time later...
...after undergoing the painful removal of the dumbfire missile...
...and getting everyone to swear secrecy about the event cause honor, and workers contracts, prevents them from simply being killed over the incident...
...and the physical recovery needed...
[during the opening animation of WC2],
Thrakhath orders the test facility and all its works utterly demolished and the extermination of anyone who knew anything about it to prevent it from falling into Terran paws, hrr, hands.
YEAH... RIGHT... he just wanted to put an end to jokes. And the fear that that the Terrans might just find some unerased backup security tape of the incident and put it into some properganda/comedy show. Or worse, a porno.

Now you know the real reason why Thrakhath had it destroyed and had its workers killed.

gevatter Lars

Interesting. I don't remember any visible leftovers in WC3. In WC4 you could see cloaked ships when flying a Dragon IIRC.
Still as said above we where doing the WC4 effect of the CGI. In this vids you don't see any glass-like ships. Same goes for the WC3 CGI sequenzes.

As for the for the transitions...you where right for WC3. In WC4 the effect was a little different. What was in was that the ship becomes a little white before fading IIRC.
I doubt that we could add this to the cloaking anytime soon. We are allready happy that we got cloaking running and good looking.
Well their will be some time till the main release...maybe we can come up with something till then.

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I give suggar in my coffee, and the coffee just gets totaly depressed, because I can't accept him, as he is.

Lt.Death100

The only time you can see a cloaked ship in WC3/4 is if you're in a ship with strong sensors or if the cloaked ship is damaged and you have really good eyesight.

t.c.cgi

Correct. I could shoot the Strakha as they cloaked in WC3 and it seemed to mess them up, so they didn't completely cloak. Otherwise they were totally invisible.

Personnaly I think the effect is great, and the video gives a really good idea of the work you've done on it.

Lt.Death100

No they fully cloaked you could just see things going out of the cloaking field.

t.c.cgi

Err, no, I was able to tag Strakha many time to freeze their cloaking at half-cloak. It's my favorite tactic. However it was likely a bug, but I didn't mind it.

Vinman

that is so awesome

if theyre damaged will we still be able to see their sparky trails?

Lt.Death100

Yes that's what I was referring to.

gevatter Lars

In theorie it should work but I didn't had the time to test it out.

__________________
I give suggar in my coffee, and the coffee just gets totaly depressed, because I can't accept him, as he is.

Tolwyn

of course it will work. The ship might be invisible, but the particles are not (That is because same set of parficles is used on every heavily damaged ship.)

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Wing Commander Saga | WingCenter

Edfilho

the effect looks great to me. excellent job.