Wing Commander "game" using Shockwave

wcs

Spaceman
Hi,

I'm trying to create a small Wing Commander "game" using Macromedia Director 8. I have made slightly simplified model of a Hellcat V, but I'm having a bit of a problem with texturing. I have a background in programming, but not in art/media. Do you people have any advice to create a (semi-)realistic metal texture? Also, does anyone have a good reference for all the metal seams/other texture objects on which people base their models on?

This is what I have right now:

Wing Commander Shockwave

Click once in the opening screen ( yes I'll replace it at some point, but I needed a suitably low-compression ratio image to prevent a bug in Adobe Shockwave player for Firefox )

Controls:
Q,W - Roll
Arrow keys - Yaw, pitch
Z,X - Speed
Home - Return to opening screen

Thanks in advance :)
 
Can't really help you much on the metal thing, but I think the camera/POV needs to be tied to the craft (static position from the center of the craft). Though I guess you haven't gotten that far in development.
 
Well it's still a work in progress. :) The current tracking camera is temporary, I'm planning to replace it with a object cam and a 3rd person view cam. A "suitable" background is also in the works. :)
 
I also recommend updating to the latest version of the Shockwave player, though the Firefox version has a bug which affects small-sized files. The symptom is that you see the Adobe/Macromedia progress loader, but it refuses to load any further beyond that point. Is this what you are seeing eddieb?
 
You've got the handling right - controls "feel" good for a ship that size.

For your texturing questions: I guess it might help the folks here if you describe what kind of model you are using, and what software you have for texturing it. Get technical, someone can handle it.
 
You've got the handling right - controls "feel" good for a ship that size.

For your texturing questions: I guess it might help the folks here if you describe what kind of model you are using, and what software you have for texturing it. Get technical, someone can handle it.

The model I am using is a slightly modified Hellcat V made in Blender. Thus far I have used Paint Shop Pro to make the textures, but they're applied using Blender.

I am not a graphic artists and don't know much about textures but FilterForge (http://www.filterforge.com/) is an amazing application that allows you to generate all sorts of textures easily.

They also have a free pack on their download page:

http://www.filterforge.com/download/

Thank you! :) Though I don't have Photoshop ( yet ), I'll have a look at this.
 
Update:
Added a starfield to the scene. Don't fly across the edge of the universe people! :p
 
Another update:

limdaepl from this forum provided me with a Hellcat V texture, and I have applied that texture to the model. I am astonished as to how good it actually looks, even if some parts of the texture do not properly align with the mesh ( yet! ).

Many thanks to limdaepl for providing his texture!
 
Hey wcs - a question about Blender if I may, how much texturing/modeling experience did you need to create this Hellcat? I've been curious about Blender before but always found it a little heavy going for a novice, is it a program that took you long to pick up?
 
Looks very cool so far with the textures and the starfield added. And moving the ship around feels absolutely great.

Would it be possible to add a cockpit view, too, or would this be to much work? I don't like that 3rd person spacefighting so much - btw that's why Arena and I never became friends ;)
 
@ -danr-
For the modeling experience I have to say that Blender is very easy to learn, I picked it up in just a few weeks. Creating textures that look realistic is something different though, and it's also something I'm not very good at.

@ Death Angel
Yes, it is possible to add a cockpit view, **shouldn't** be much work either ( but you never know :p ). But before I add a cockpit view, I want do add at least 1 object to scene, so people have a sort of reference where they are flying.
 
I understand that cockpits are not your top priority right now.

What I meant with "too much work" was not so much adding the image of the cockpit but the interactive displays in the cockpit reacting correctly while you fly around and dogfight.

Looking forward to the next version :)
 
Interactive displays are a planned feature, but I need to do some more research in Macromedia Director for it :)
 
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