Assault shuttle upgrade

Starman©

Spaceman
For today's update we would like to showcase our final version of the Confederation assault shuttle. This beautiful ship has been modelled and textured by our new team member, Scooby Doo, who joined us a few weeks ago and has been working at full speed ever since. You can expect to see more of his great work in future updates (and of course in-game, once Saga is released).

Regarding the model, WC Saga aims to provide a wide variety of mission types, and among the sorties that the player will fly will be escort and close support missions for Confederation Marines operating out of this sturdy combat transport spacecraft.

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More Screenshots here:

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Starman©
 
honestly I've always had the opposite opinion of this shuttle...while reading ER I had a much different image of what assault craft would look like...more like flying bricks bristling with weapons (especially those ground suppression missiles) that were designed with as little comfort and as much firepower as possible...

The model does look great but the original design is well just kinda weird looking to me
 
Model looks cool. I'd recommend you lower the compression on your screenshots in the future too. The shuttle has a bunch of detail that gets blurred a bit in the imaging process. You have 50-60k 1024x768 shots that could easily be 100-120k with higher fidelity.
 
Looks cool just kinda wondering though wouldn't it have a confed paint job or some type of confederation symbol on it. I always thought that when the border worlds were using it was worn down and old tech I figure since this was during the war it would look more up kept. Just wondering I do think it looks great though and keep up the good work.
 
gevatter Lars said:
The shuttles mentioned in ER wheren't they ground attack shuttles?
Maybe their are more types of marine shuttles.

They were assault ships. They get used in both ground and space missions (they get mentioned in FA as bringing in some of the units that land of the hakagas and other ships)
 
Just kinda curious I was crusing the hlp forums and noticed some of Scooby Doo's models and they all look great. Highly detailed but I was wondering what you guys are planning on using for this mod. I got a little worried when I saw his crossbow bomber now don't take me the wrong way I loved his model. Just when I saw the detail in it it didn't strike me as something you would see in wing commander 3 like era.
I just remember you guys saying that you wanted to recreate the feel of wing commander 3. I loved playing that game when I was a kid and I don't remember being able to peak inside the fighter and see the pilot. Now don't take this the wrong way Scooby or any one else for that matter I love the designs and I think that his skills will be a great benifit to the team. But I think to much detail in here may be a bad thing, I rather be going against 10 bland looking ships with a great frame rate than against 2 with super detail.
Again Im not inteading to harrass anyone or offend anybody. I was just saying what I thought and please don't take it the wrong way. I love your ships Scooby especially that athena heavy destroyer you made man that things sweet. Oh also I know Im prob gonna offend someone with this also but I think those freespace cockpits are a little overated. But then again I always used to turn mine off in wing commander 3. One last time I mean no offense towards anyone.
 
No offence taken.
Maybe some histoy of Scooby might clear this one up. Scooby has made some highly WC inspired ships for his own FS work..I suspect that these are the ones you have seen.
He made these before he joined our team and he still is doing some of them. These models are just for fun.
So you have to see what models he is doing for our mod and what models he makes for his own/the FS community.

As for the cockpits...I like them and from what I read in different places most people would like to have a real cockpit...still its on the one side a matter of taste and on the other, as you mentioned, playability.
Current planes are that we won't have cockpits in the prologue, main release is a different matter.

I hope that cleared up things a little.
 
Thanks for the response and keep up the good work I do see that Scooby's got some major skills.
 
Yes, Scoobies Models are something developed by him for his own fun and for public release as Freespace Ships. But that models showed us his skills, and because they were influenced by WC it was also a sign that this guy would become a great addition to the team, and it already proofed that way (not only with the shuttle) :) I loved his piranha and vampire fighter btw.

As for cockpits, I would really like to see them ingame. Currently it works that way, that you can model the cockpits and make them being rendered ingame. However, it is currently not possible to switch it simply on/off because the entire player ship get rendered. But that also means, that when you look backwards in your arrow, you would see the fins of your fighter for example.

The problem why we cannot/will not use that feature now,is that we aren't able yet to position and change every HUD-Element like we would like. It will look stupid having the freespace hud stuck upon a original painted WC3 cockpit. But I think sooner or later that will come too, and then we can build in cockpits very quickly ( we just have to remodel 5 fighters partially).
 
No, you spelled it correctly, it just doesn't make any sense in the manner that the internet proper has decided to adopt it -- it's a noun, not an adjective.
 
@Starman

Don't get me wrong I do kinda like the cockpit views I mean it does make things more realistic looking. I would never have a problem with it if it could be switched on and off I just know that currently that is not a possiblity.

Also with all honestly I don't think that they would look all that bad in game. As long as the windows where blacked out on the outside of certain fighters like the thuderbolt. Just to keep with what they sorta looked like in the original game to keep that feel. I don't really know alot about the cockpits I just seen a couple and most of the widows on them looked perfectly clear.

Another thing that kinda bugged would you fellas be appling those to every single ship that would be player flyable(Im talking past the prologue again sorry) that would seem to be alot of ships to me. And I know its cool to have cockpits but they arn't in any way fuctional so I kinda don't see the reason to have them.

Also Im constantly thinking about preformance since my machine is getting ancient but I got to get rid of it sometime. Don't let my comments upset anyone what ever you guys decide is gonna be great.
 
My understanding of the word 'canon' is that something can obey THE canon, rather than BEING canon with whatever it's being related to. Is that correct?

About the cockpits, are you guys (Saga team) thinking of doing interactive cockpits in vein of earlier Wing Commander games (e.g. the hand on the flight stick) or something more static like in X-Wing/Tie Fighter?

Also, welcome aboard, Stone. You ought to relax a little. As long as you don't go out of your way to be offensive or make stupid comments (see many of my earlier posts for examples of stupid and or offensive comments), people tend to be pretty forgiving as long as you're appologetic and try to learn from your mistakes. Sorry about the hell I gave you in the screenshots release thread.
 
Cockpits will be static (when we get the HUD-Stuff changed), however they will be a little more like XWA. That means you will be able to see to the left,right and the back with the colli-heat on your joystick. Modelling a moving arm on a flight stick is impossible.

Technically it is so that we need to model real cockpits into the fightermodels and the engine renders the entire player model. The players viewpoint is placed within the model itself and so you will have rendered parts before your eye.

Luckily, the performance drop for having your own fightermodel being rendered by the engine is minimal for that.
 
Not sure if Saga team would be the right people to ask, but do you have any idea if there's anyone working to bring environmental mapping to the infinately more stable OpenGL rendering mode? I finally have a setup that let me try out D3D mode and the environmental mapping feature really is quite spectacular.
 
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