WC Saga shortnews

Oh, love that ship in the screenshots/renders section: TCS CV-85 Iwo Jima.

Very nifty, very nice. that's not a ship we see anywhere in the official series is it?

I like it anyway, great work.
 
Ah, that would explain it. Don't have any novels. Must...get....novels.

But I absolutely hate e-bay or amazon.com. :mad:

I just hate it, and of course there's no place in Belgium to get these things. :(
 
Its an interesting design, should I ask Tolwyn if he could make a low poly version for the mod?
I think he should first post more pics of it so you can deside better.
For my taste its a little bit to flat. For me no ship is looking better than the old Bengal Strike Carrier, but thats not importend.
I don't know if you know it, but there will be two new Confed ships in the mod. Tolwyn hasn't post a pic of them yet and I can't use our page for it. So if someone could post two or three pics for me I show you what they look like.
 
i really love it, it sort of reminds me of the ships the asgard had in Stargate SG-1. Really cool. just set it as my wallpaper too. But it probably won't hold out for 2 days against the Eliza Duschku pic I had on there till now :D

I'd post 'em if someone tells me how. i think I've got some web-space lying around here somewhere....

EDIT: Just checked, I've got 50mb lying around waiting to be used, so if ya like, I can put them up for ya. Just mail me at niels.dehaes [at] skynet.be

Sorry bout not using the @, but I've been told it keeps spambots away.
 
Originally posted by WildWeasel
Well, the Iwo is mentioned a few times in Fleet Action, but we never actually see a picture of it...

It's a CVE, like the Tarawa... or the ship on the cover of ER.
 
i'll just post what Lars wrote in his email.

Here are 3 pics of the new ships. They aren't the best, but you can see what they will look like. The textures are temporarly.

1.jpg


If that doesn't work:numero uno


This pic shows the new destroyer of the Snake class. This model has a little bit to much polys. A version without the windows and different Turrets will be used in the mod. Tech Data so far:
Snake Class Destroyer
Size: about 500m
Weapons:
2 dual Matter/Anti-Matter gun turrets in the front
8 dual Laser turrets
2 Cap-Missile-Lunchers
Engines: 4
Shield & Armor unknown


2.jpg


3.jpg


Or: the second

and finally...

The two other pic show the Black Guard Carrier. We haven't desided yet if its a fleet or a normal carrier. Tech Data so far:
Black Guard Class Carrier
Size: about 750m
weapons:
8 dual cap Laser Turrets
8 dual Laser Turrets
? Rocket Turrets
Engines: 6
Fighters:
8 Arrows
8 Hellcat
8 Vindicator (Prototype)
8 Thunderbold S
4 Banshee
4 Avenger
Complement-> 40 Fighters
Shield and Armor unknown


This status is just what I have planded, but we will balance it out when the ships are converted and weapon tables are written. About the Vindicator and Thunderbold S... thats because of the Story. Its the first set of Vindicator used on a carrier. As far as I know the Story takes please when the Vindicator was the newest ship and its not completly the same as seen in WC IV. The Thunderbold S is a modified Thunderbold with more Torpedos(3) and less other Rockets. So thats it I think.

Thank you for posting

MFG gevatter Lars


And you're very welcome. Gives me an excuse to fiddle around with these things instead of studying.
 
So what do you people think of them?
Are they looking like Confed ships, is there anything that shouldn't be there or did you miss something?

Tell me bevor its to late
 
they look good, but surely you could increase the detail on the ships. up the polycount so to speak. at the monment they are very blocky.
 
What kind of details are you speaking of and about the blocky designe. Look at the WC 3 & 4 ships. That all do look very blocky (and this ships are build during WC3). Only the WC 1 & 2 ships aren't that blocky, because they are made of pixel (or what so ever).

Beside that if you have enough to do with enemie fighters, you can't take a close look at the ships. Also as far as I know must of the details of a ship are made with textures.

But if you have something more details that you want tell me excalctly what you are missing.
 
Originally posted by milo


I dunno, maybe something like this?

http://www.trekmania.net/art/strtroop1.jpg
http://www.trekmania.net/art/strtroop2.jpg
http://www.trekmania.net/art/strtroop3.jpg

It's OK to use your imagination.

That's a cool looking ship....but there's something to be said for the way he has it already...like it or not, that IS how ships in WC3/4 looked. They didn't have all kinds of "useless details" hanging off the sides. I personally actually like the current style of the ship over that. That's why i've always like Wing Commander and Star Trek ships so much (although the Star Trek ships are giving in to it too now...). I see no point in "useless details". Why does everything have to look like a Star Destroyer to be cool? (although, seeing it up close, the Star Destroyer model looks SO much cooler...you can see EVERY little tiny detail...if you like Star Wars and the Magic of Myth exhibit comes near you, I highly recommend it!)

Besides, they plan to use the ship in a mod so the model has to stay relatively low poly. The ship you posted poly count is probably through the roof.
 
OK, I suppose I was a bit vague in my last post.

I didn't mean that they should try to copy that design in all its glorious detail. I meant that they should look at it, and draw inspiration from it.

Some things I notice about the Rodger Young design (and this could apply to the Sulaco, or half a dozen other movie starships):

* It is not a big rectangular box, nor a collection of rectangular boxes. The ship has many surfaces set at oblique angles (not 90 degrees and not 45 degrees). There are of course some surface that are set flat either sides or bottom, but they are not the majority.

* The design elements are all different sizes. There are large components and much smaller components.

* The components are not "boxy," at least not all of them. Each individual piece is not the same width, height, and length. Some are long and skinny, others are broad and flat.

* The design appears to be built out of materials with structural properties. Is there a skinny piece sticking out? Then it probably has some kind of support member or truss holding it in place. Big pieces are mounted on strong structural members along the spine of the ship. Small pieces have smaller supports.

These, and many more, are all design patterns that are characteristic of things that humans build out of steel and plastic and lumber. When I design a ship in a computer modeling program, I think about what it would take to build the design out of plastic and glue.

like it or not, that IS how ships in WC3/4 looked. They didn't have all kinds of "useless details" hanging off the sides
Yes, and back in the Elite days, ships were made out fewer than twenty polys and hand coded in assembler. The ships in WC3 and 4 were built to the technology limitations of the game engine and computers of eight years ago.

Given current game engine technology, I think it is possible to stay within the broad outlines of the original designs while also making them look more detailed and believable. You can do quite a bit with just a couple thousand polygons.
 
WC3/4 capital ships were blocky, but that doesn't mean they had no detail. Look at the WC4 lexington. Its bridge had antennas and a small "gap" between its sides and the hull, it didn't just pop out of the hull, being totally glued to it. Most of the polygons are angled, etc...

If you want to design a ship following the WC3/4 style, you don't need to make it blocky. If I were to make a Lexington model nowadays, I would add smaller details to the bridge around some of the windows.... I'd make the inside walls of the hangar and the sides of the main hull more detailed instead of just using textures with details drawn on them... I'd add some small details to the engines near the blue areas, etc...
The ship would still look like a big stretched cube, but it would look more realistic in the sense that there would be small components that don't change the overall look of the ship (and therefore don't draw it away from the WC4 style), but make it look more convincing. Like milo said, the sizes and structural properties of a ship's components play a big role in making it look good.

For a more practical example, that carrier a few posts below has octagonal engines. If that's an attempt at representing round engines, it can be improved a lot by using, say, 24-sided cylinders. It would add like 100 polygons to the ship, which is simply a *pathetic* number of polygons for any game engine written after like 1998. I'd also lose the edgy area right above the front entrance of the hangar. It probably is intended as a representation of a not-so-edgy area, and with another half a dozen polygons tho smooth that edge out it would look much better. Now, the engines. They have those textures on top of a flat, flat square. Why not take the drawing from those textures and add some detail to the model itself, following the lines of the texture? Finally, the bridge is a box. Why not add some different details for some of the windows? Make some windows be located into little boxes that stick out of the bridge's main box and angle these little boxes differently than the surface they were extruded from... etc. There, a lot of suggestions that add detail without changing the style of the ship.

--Eder
 
Still though, there doesn't have to be "stuff" on it for it too look realistic. I mean, look at a submarine. They're pretty much big smooth cylinders...when the engineers were sitting around, they didn't say "hmm...it looks boring...let's add useless details on the sides of it and stuff!". I think having less crap around makes it look more realistic. IMO, of course.
 
Yes, well, that's a valid point. A design should be kept simple when the idea is for it to be a simple design :)

What I *don't* agree with, though, is the idea that WC4 style capships don't need detail because WC4's capships were blocky... simply because the reason behind WC4's capship lack of small details was the game's engine itself.

Take a look at the WC4 cutscenes and you'll realize that WC4 *ships* had "useless details", whereas WC4 *in-game meshes* had not. Therefore, unless you're making models for the WC4 engine, there's no point in using octagonal engines to represent round engines, for instance. (Again, there IS the possibility that an octagon is supposed to be just an octagon, but I don't think that was the case with that ship someone posted a picture of. This is of course just my interpretation of the model, and what do I know? ;))

In any case, my point is that while you still have polygons to spare, you should use them to add detail, because there HAS to be some part of the ship which you picture as having more small details. Don't settle for a boxy bridge if your original concept of the ship was to have a boxy bridge with viewports and antennas sticking out of it... Hell, as long as you think your engine can handle more details, don't settle for a flat flight deck when you can have a flat flight deck with a fuel hose and two crates lying on top of it. There's no point in cutting corners when you have polygons to spare - it's not like you're going to make a mod for SOF2 run on a Pentium 100 by using only three triangles per model - and judging from what I see in these screenshots, these ships could use a few more polygons, unless there's going to be hundreds of them onscreen at a time.

(Hell, my Hakaga model has like 3000 triangles, and it takes three of them onscreen at a time to slow down the WCP Engine... which is like 4 years old.... on my Celeron 300/256/TNT1... which is about 4 years older ;) Using a more up-to-date computer with a GF2 card, Killerwave was able to put about 15 capital ships from Standoff into a single nav point without any noticeable slowdown...)

--Eder
 
Eder could you post a pic of your ship, I would like to see it. Abuot the Polycount...do you mean 3000 polys with triangels?
Beside that, my problem is that we made the models for Freespace2. The problem is that it seems as the converter has problems to convert models with polycounts higher than 1500 and the engine slows down, when there are to many ships. ( I haven't the chance to test that for myself. )
The only thing I know is that it seems that making missions and Campains is quite easy with the FRED2 mission editor. WCP hasn't got a mission editor that is so easy to use...not that I knew.

An other question is how good is the WCP/SO engine?
- What is the recomend polycount for ships?
- What is the max ploycout it can handle?
- Is there a good converter for models with a manual?
- How difficult is it to make missions?
 
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
Eder could you post a pic of your ship, I would like to see it.
Go to http://standoff.wingcenter.de and take your pick... you can see dozens of my ships there.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
Abuot the Polycount...do you mean 3000 polys with triangels?
Yep.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
The only thing I know is that it seems that making missions and Campains is quite easy with the FRED2 mission editor. WCP hasn't got a mission editor that is so easy to use...not that I knew.
Yep, FRED is a big plus for Freespace in my opinion as well... but I still think that for a WC mod, the end result's better if you just strive to learn WCP mission making and go with the WCP engine. That's why I decided to use the WCP engine anyway.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
An other question is how good is the WCP/SO engine?
- What is the recomend polycount for ships?
For fighters, it can be anything up to 1200 triangles. Fighters don't really slow the game down unless you have dozens of them.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
- What is the max ploycout it can handle?
Up to 1200 triangles for each fighter or capital ship component (IE: bridge, engine, hull, etc). Like I said, fighters hardly affect framerate, and a GeForce level video card can easily handle half a dozen capships on the same navpoint... which is quite an absurd number already.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
- Is there a good converter for models with a manual?
Killerwave has a tutorial up on his site: http://killerwave.solsector.net/ - as for the converter, you can get it from Thomas Bruckner's site... look for it in the CIC's link section.
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
- How difficult is it to make missions?
Pretty difficult, if you ask me. This is just about the only part I still have trouble with. But someday I'll get the hang of it :)

--Eder
 
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