Adventures in Explorations: WC1 Edition

Awesome job @Howard Day . SO BEAUTIFUL! With more ship angles like this the ship movement in the game would be much more fluid. I wonder if there will be some mission memory limit? If this were done to all the ships it would use far more memory then could be conseived at the time.
 
Damn! What you guys have done with the Tiger's Claw is amazing! I was a bit sceptical at first whether these sorts of improvements will make a big difference given the game runs at 320x200, but... wow! That there is a superb-looking sprite Bengal!
 
@Howard Day, thank you for providing the new renders! It's been great to have high quality images to experiment with. I have completed the conversion of both new sets of images you have provided. I've tried to get screenshots so that people can compare the two results.

First, here are the traditional 1024x1024 renders resized by 34% (with a little bit of image filtering):
wc-tc-lg1.png wc-tc-lg2.png wc-tc-lg3.png wc-tc-lg4.png

And here are the renders prepared at 34% scale:
wc-tc-sm1.png wc-tc-sm2.png wc-tc-sm3.png wc-tc-sm4.png

It may come down to personal preference which people may like. The 1024x1024 renders do lose a little detail but may have a "cleaner" look since it helps to smooth out some jagged edges. The 34% renders on the other hand retain their detail but there may be the occasional jagged edge in there. In theory, the smaller renders could provide better quality since the images don't need to be resized/filtered but it will be important to fine tune their quality.

I've attached to this post both the updated SHIP files. The files for the 1024x1024 original renders is named "Updated_Tiger's_Claw_for_Kilrathi_Saga_V3_(1024_originals).zip" and the 34% renders is named "Updated_Tiger's_Claw_for_Kilrathi_Saga_V3_(0.34_originals).zip"

Also, sometime in the upcoming days I'm going to create a new thread dedicated to creating new sprites for the game and sharing information about how to create them. @UnnamedCharacter should also be able to provide additional insight in that thread as well. This will allow @UnnamedCharacter to continue to use this thread to explore how Wing Commander works. Once the new thread has been created, I will provide a link here so people know where to look.
 

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It may come down to personal preference which people may like. The 1024x1024 renders do lose a little detail but may have a "cleaner" look since it helps to smooth out some jagged edges. The 34% renders on the other hand retain their detail but there may be the occasional jagged edge in there. In theory, the smaller renders could provide better quality since the images don't need to be resized/filtered but it will be important to fine tune their quality.
From these screenshots, it looks to me like the smaller renders "feel" more like Wing Commander sprites, presumably because at the time, this is how they would have created the original sprites - none of that rendering at high resolution only to scale it down stuff :).
 
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And one more yes, just for good measure. That looks well-nigh perfect. Rich, detailed, yet still within WC1's capabilities. This is exactly what a WC1 remaster should be.
 
I can't make up my mind which of the first two you posted are better, Howard. Not a fan of the last one, though, as it seems a bit too dark.
 
Well, here's the darker version compared to the concordia from the toolbox thread (scaled to the proper length, too! )
upload_2018-9-29_12-9-32.png

And here's the brighter, previous version...
upload_2018-9-29_12-10-57.png
 
I like it @Howard Day.
Question for you though. Is there any way to add the lovely Red 7 to the deck?
Has anybody tested if the 64(?) angles will work? This is what I was talking about earlier but I mistakenly posted 32.
 

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