What features will the ships have?

[Shrub91]

Will the ships in the mods have colorization and engine/damage particles?

I'm just curious, because most mods that have come out recently seem to have rushed their models out the door with many features left out or not done correctly: such as weapon firepoints facing the wrong way, no damage particles, engine effects on the model itself instead of a particle, and almost none of the models in most mods feature colorization



I've been really looking forward to this mod, and I'd hate to see quality ship models brought down due to minor things like that.

[Corey]

We've made sure all weapon bones are facing the right way, which is the main issue. We don't do break off hardpoints because that means at least a week of extra work (We'd have to make over 20 models for the ISD, and 140 for the Executor) for a single ship, which we are NOT doing. As for engine glows, we're using the plane method at least for now because when you use particles, scaling becomes a large issue and EaW's engine particles look like complete shit anyways, so unless we make our own new particles, we're not doing them that way. The particle method requires a new particle for every single ship, sometimes more if the ship has more than one type or size of engine. There're 56 ships in the first release alone, that means at LEAST 56 more particles that would need to be made and put into the mod. Not only does that take a lot of time, but it takes a lot of disk space.

This may seem like small stuff, but in the end it adds weeks, even months to the development time, and we don't have our whole lives for this. The stuff you've mentioned could only be done by one person on the team, and he's already overworked. He's our only animator, he does all the rigging, he does well over half the skins and he does a lot of modeling too. It comes down to whether you'd rather have death clones and infantry that actually move and down just slide, or if you want some engines to shut down when the ship stops moving. The bones facing the right way is obviously important, but the other things are small enough that pretty much nobody will ever even notice them, and they don't effect gameplay at all while still pushing everything back.

As for team colours, most of the units have that.

[ARC-Trooper57]

We've made sure all weapon bones are facing the right way, which is the main issue. We don't do break off hardpoints because that means at least a week of extra work (We'd have to make over 20 models for the ISD, and 140 for the Executor) for a single ship, which we are NOT doing. As for engine glows, we're using the plane method at least for now because when you use particles, scaling becomes a large issue and EaW's engine particles look like complete shit anyways, so unless we make our own new particles, we're not doing them that way. The particle method requires a new particle for every single ship, sometimes more if the ship has more than one type or size of engine. There're 56 ships in the first release alone, that means at LEAST 56 more particles that would need to be made and put into the mod. Not only does that take a lot of time, but it takes a lot of disk space.

This may seem like small stuff, but in the end it adds weeks, even months to the development time, and we don't have our whole lives for this. The stuff you've mentioned could only be done by one person on the team, and he's already overworked. He's our only animator, he does all the rigging, he does well over half the skins and he does a lot of modeling too. It comes down to whether you'd rather have death clones and infantry that actually move and down just slide, or if you want some engines to shut down when the ship stops moving. The bones facing the right way is obviously important, but the other things are small enough that pretty much nobody will ever even notice them, and they don't effect gameplay at all while still pushing everything back.

As for team colours, most of the units have that.

So the hardpoints will just blow up, they wont drift into space and then explode?

[Corey]

Mhm. For breakoffs, each hardpoint has to be cut out of the model, skinned individually, rigged individually and exported individually. That's another 12 hours of work per ship at least, and since there'd only be one person doing it, who also needs to do a lot of other stuff, production would crawl to a standstill. I'd rather have a mod that's completed than one that has useless and senseless features (Why would 100 meters worth of ship fall off for destroying a single weapon emplacement?)

[Shrub91]

Alright, well now that you've put it that way.... it seems more than reasonable.


I wasn't aware of exactly how many ship models you folks had, and as far as particles go... they aren't really a big concern IMO.





I just wanted some clarification on what exactly was in the mod, I'm not criticizing you guys.



BTW, since you guys are working on the AoSW mod, are you fixing the ship models' firepoints in that mod also?

[ARC-Trooper57]

As long as theres some kinda explosion im good with it

[siegfried1]

Explosions are always good

[Corey]

BTW, since you guys are working on the AoSW mod, are you fixing the ship models' firepoints in that mod also?

That's something that you'd be best off bringing up on the AoSW forums. There may be several people here that are also on AoSW, but not all.

As long as theres some kinda explosion im good with it

We are making various graphical improvements. We just feel that certain things are far too much work for the reward.

[ARC-Trooper57]

As long as theres some kinda explosion im good with it

We are making various graphical improvements. We just feel that certain things are far too much work for the reward.

True, plus dont wanna wait forever for the mod. If some things are superfluous like that then dont bother with it

[GrndAdmrlPellaeon]

Can you just make an explosion on a ship without a piece tearing off?

[Corey]

The glorious return of Non-Mod Team Member Steve (look at the rules and you'll see what I'm talking about)

Do ships explode when they die?

Yes.

Do they have death clones? (Things that make em break up upon death)

Yes.

Do the individual hardpoints break off and float away when destroyed?

No.

Is there at least an explosion when that happens?

Yes, and our explosions are new. They look better than the vanilla ones.

What about engine glows?

Engine glows are on all ships, but they use billboarded planes as opposed to particles. They are fairly time consuming to do as particles, and the billboarded ones look fine and only take about 2 minutes, so we went with that.

Does this mean you don't like it when people ask questions or make suggestions, you always say something isn't possible or will take too long.

We like getting suggestions, and we encourage questions. By saying something isn't possible, I'm not trying to be an asshole. If it is a good idea, we usually look into it, spend some time trying to find out if we could do it and then if we say it isn't possible, it usually means it isn't possible. If we say something takes too long, it's usually a time vs. reward thing. If we just cut everything that took time, we'd never have started, however if it's something you either won't notice or won't miss and takes a long time for somebody who already has a lot of work, then we aren't going to do it.

[siegfried1]

Will you make the ships burn/smoke or something to show damage?  Just something i thought would be cool