Defiance's Eyecandy Thread

[NightBall06]

Hate is a bit strong, I just don't like it. One ship that I liked was the Dralthi from the movie.

The Dralthi movie-version is pretty cool.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

So I was playing around with the WCtoolbox and decided to try and make a WC1 mod. So I took my WCA bengal and converted it into a sprite sheet. It was a larger process than I originally thought but it is kinda fun to do this sort of messing around. Admittedly I stand on the shoulders of giants here. This would've been impossible without the work of @UnnamedCharacter on the WC toolbox and Goliath's sprite rendering script for Blender. So yeah, if anyone wants it I'm happy to share. I may end up doing a whole WCA pack at some point in the future.

 

[Klavs81]

Ok that's amazing.

 

[Wedge009]

How does the landing sequence look? WC1's Claw seems to have an open deck while it looks like the bow of the Academy TV's Claw is enclosed. Or is the landing sequence using its own bitmap and not the sprites we see in-flight?

 

[DefianceIndustries]

How does the landing sequence look? WC1's Claw seems to have an open deck while it looks like the bow of the Academy TV's Claw is enclosed. Or is the landing sequence using its own bitmap and not the sprites we see in-flight?

It still the original landing sequence. It uses a separate set of sprites for the landing. I haven't figured out where that is yet.

 

[ODVS]

That's absolutely gorgeous

 

[Panther1.0]

I agree !

 

[wiese.hano]

One reason more for me to punch up the game with the easter sale on GOG.

 

[YCDTD]

"After the war, the boys over in R&D and Special Projects started slapping a cloaking device on anything with wings. They were obsessed with trying to close the gap between us and the fur balls; even after their disarmament at Torgo they still had a big lead on us in cloaking technology. So when we heard Douglas was shipping us a new model of Hellcat to test out we were a bit...skeptical is probably the best word for it. But when they brought us the first Black Cat we saw this was really the first step forward.

The cloak itself hadn't changed much, it was still a huge energy hog and it's heat dissipation curve still lagged way behind the Kilrathi's mid-line models, but the hull plating was something totally new. It was a brand new neoferro-carbon composite that absorbed incoming radar/lidar signals or simply reflected them off in a different direction. It could fly in a limited stealth mode even without a cloak engaged - and with the cloak active we were able to sneak up to the sensor nets along the Kat's border, tail a patrol or convoy, and zip away unseen. It was the first time we ever had anything like parity.

Unfortunately we couldn't do anything about the Hellcat's giant intakes and the big ol' engines, which really cut down on the Black Cat's stealth profile, the hull can only do so much. It was obvious to us then that we needed something new, even an Excalibur couldn't make full use of the new hull plating - and she was designed for a cloak out of the gate. So that's when Admiral Tolwyn stopped by my office and asked me to start drafting a new heavy fighter, something that was fast, mean, and could use the new hull and cloak to it's full potential..."


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Ahhhh...the Advanced Hellcats as mentioned in the WC4 novel. In my Head Canon they have an upgraded powerplant which allows them to sport dual Particle and Heavy Ion Cannon, with expanded weapons bays for a total of 8 missiles. Along with increased maneuverability and speed. It also laid the groundwork for the Bearcat.

These are real beauties Defiance.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

So I continue my playing around and started working on fighters. Fighters are different beasts a bit from the WC1 capships as they have to be scaled appropriately (if you render the sprite too large, they appear giant in the game) - My experiments yielded the best results at a 120x120 px render, then cropping the images down to less than 100 px on the long side. Unfortunately this causes the loss of some fine detail, but the result is pretty good. You also have to manually reposition the thruster exhaust sprites. The toolbox does a good job exporting everything into XML, but you have to open each image and establish the position by counting pixels. (it's exciting work believe me).


Hornet prior to repositioning the engine sprites


after.



At some point I'll write up a guide on how to do this. It's a time consuming process as there isn't alot of automation currently, so there's alot of cropping, saving, and using the repal function in the toolbox that has to be done manually. I think it takes about 3-4 hours to do a single sprite currently.

However if I were to do a complete pack I had some ideas as there isn't a 1-for-1 match between Academy and the game below are my thoughts, but feel free to weigh in if you feel differently:

WC1 Ship	WCA Replacement	Alternate
Bengal	Bengal	N/A
Drayman	Achilles Destroyer	Priv1 Drayman
Diligent	Byrd	Priv1 Drayman (not used above)
Exeter	Exemesh	Achilles Carrier
Hornet	Hornet (shown here)	WCA Epee, WCA Ferret
Scimitar	WCA Scimitar	N/A
Raptor	WCA Ferret? Hellcat?	???
Rapier	WCA Sabre	N/A
Salthi	Sartha	N/A
Dralthi	Dralthi	N/A
Krant	???	???
Gratha	WCA Jalkethi	N/A
Jalthi	Grikath	N/A
Bloodfang	???
Hhriss	???
Dorkir	Dorkir
Lumbari	??? (Dorkir)
Ralari	Ralar (Omni ship)	WCA Ralari (Defiance custom)
Fralthi	Fralthi
Snakeir	Ralar (Assuming use WCA Ralari above)	???
Sivar	Ras Agn Sivar

Just some thoughts, anyone with an opinion please feel free to weigh in (especially where gaps exist)