[Official] Behind the scenes

[Aken_Bosch]

Some questions coming from user ADAM79 over the italian forum...

1) I know you (Lino) already gave some answer about capital bridges some time ago (about time constraints and gameplay possibilities), but still, is there any hope to see one day anything official about that? Or in any case, is there a possible future way (with due time available) to overcome the lighting and shadowing problem that can be seen with the Litauen's bridge mod?

2) again, you already said you don't work on the NPCs, but ADAM79 asked if there's the possibility to have some future informations on how they are created, or how (if possible) to modify them or add new ones

3) is there some kind of limit to the size and number of interior spaces (aside from obvious performance constraints)? And also, if there is a way to have some kind of windows opened to be able to see outside space from stations (we know space is there, we can hear it! )...I seem to remember that the room Litauen originally used to create his bridge, had a "window" with a modifiable parameter to be visible or not...maybe I remember wrong...

That's all for now!

[linolafett]

1) I know you (Lino) already gave some answer about capital bridges some time ago (about time constraints and gameplay possibilities), but still, is there any hope to see one day anything official about that? Or in any case, is there a possible future way (with due time available) to overcome the lighting and shadowing problem that can be seen with the Litauen's bridge mod?

Capitalbridges are nice, but i would repeat myself here. No capitalbridges without additional cameplay. No bridges without solving some gfx issues. This will only happen, if i could grab a coder and hide him from the rest of the team for some time

2) again, you already said you don't work on the NPCs, but ADAM79 asked if there's the possibility to have some future informations on how they are created, or how (if possible) to modify them or add new ones

Uff, i dont know nothing about character setup, but sure, worth a posting here!

3) is there some kind of limit to the size and number of interior spaces (aside from obvious performance constraints)? And also, if there is a way to have some kind of windows opened to be able to see outside space from stations (we know space is there, we can hear it! )...I seem to remember that the room Litauen originally used to create his bridge, had a "window" with a modifiable parameter to be visible or not...maybe I remember wrong...

As far as i know, there are no hard limitations for the interiors. Just see if your PC can run it
Why the interiors do not have windows? Same cause why we do not have capship bridges, gfx issues. (leaking lights, environmentmaps).

[Aken_Bosch]

This will only happen, if i could grab a coder and hide him from the rest of the team for some time

Why not, could be an idea!

- lure one of the coder away from the flock (possibly the Alpha-coder, usually recognizable from the others for the thickest eye-glasses; also, he usually is the first of the pack to have the chance to compile the main code, leaving only the scripts to the weaker subordinates), swinging a slice of pizza in front of him

- have him locked in the office basement, with the promise that he will be able to see the outside world again, when people aboard stations will be able to do the same

- feed him a slice of pizza for real from time to time, to keep his motivation high


Sorry, I've seen to much documentaries in the weekend ...
Jokes aside, thanks a lot for the answers!

[Snafu_X3]

Capitalbridges are nice, but i would repeat myself here. No capitalbridges without additional cameplay. No bridges without solving some gfx issues. This will only happen, if i could grab a coder and hide him from the rest of the team for some time

Aken, www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/sid/

Lino, I suspect ppl shouting about capship bridges are (maybe only slightly) interested in the gfx prettification than they are in the gameplay useability. Use the 'bridge' metaphor for the ability to do something (trading, LR scanning for potential capping targets, whatever) other than standing on a landing pad listening to occasional inane drivel from the captain of the ship..

So the 'capship bridge' of a trader would be where you issue (more specific, as the orders are segregated) orders to your fleet of traders, for instance; while a bridge on a combat vessel would allow you to assign your fleet of combat (cap)ships to specific tasks. You'd /have/ to land on the appropriate ship type to allow those sort of detailed orders.. until a computer module upgrade comes along a year later, or something

For those only interested in the gfx, hell even an appropriate scene tailored to the type of ship would be good. You land /in/ a Rahanas, yet the scene still shows most of the outside view; maybe change this to something akin to an internal station's dock, with (limited) access to the internals of a freighter? Some sort of 'portal' (belt & braces H&S airlock? - if so it has to be visibly rotating: either just the walls, or the player's PoV ) could cutscene away similarly to entering the back of the Skunk, reducing load on GFX & CPU no longer needing to render the outside view in realtime.. ofc you could add similar functionality to military ships, but they tend to have a wide RT viewing area (& segregated general access areas) for a good reason.. your choice

Just some thoughts.. don't be offended!

[terrannz]

I've found out if you stop posting you stop getting notifications.

The goods the mass traffic are carrying, is it spawned in-ship or are they wares produced by those stations?

The reason I ask is that I've started using a mod that makes spawned freighters spawn empty

[UniTrader]

depennds on the ship: if its freight drones these are exchanging Wares between the Stations in the Zone and carry wares Produced there, if its Civ Ships they carry Inventory Items which dont have any impact on the economy usually (Missiles/Ammo may be an exeption, but iirc only one of those is actually used in the economy)

[Morkonan]

...We also use a new UV Layer (This tells a Texture where it should be) to place the "paintoverlay", so all the small details such as coloured stripes, numbers and decals of all kinds are placed in this way...

I haven't looked at any of the models in games like X3 using a proper 3D app, but you wrote "new UV Layer." I assumed that all the previous models were UV mapped and textured, then procedural shaders were used for extra effects.

So, when you say "new", what do you mean? Is this a "new" proprietary shader/texture format or do you just mean that you then remap the model in 3DS before the final export? Or... did you guys somehow get away from having to map anything, before?

[Lwerewolf]

As far as i know, there are no hard limitations for the interiors. Just see if your PC can run it
Why the interiors do not have windows? Same cause why we do not have capship bridges, gfx issues. (leaking lights, environmentmaps).

So rendering the big indoor environments with windows makes it so that the shadow maps eventually clip through or something?

Also, Blender!!!
What's the team's take on it

[linolafett]

I haven't looked at any of the models in games like X3 using a proper 3D app, but you wrote "new UV Layer." I assumed that all the previous models were UV mapped and textured, then procedural shaders were used for extra effects.

So, when you say "new", what do you mean? Is this a "new" proprietary shader/texture format or do you just mean that you then remap the model in 3DS before the final export? Or... did you guys somehow get away from having to map anything, before?

The normal metalplating is UV-mapped. Its is not a unique texture for a single ship, these are shared textures used everywhere.
Adding a second UV-layer means, we unwrap the ship just a second time, but instead of mapping another opaque texture on it, we use a alphatexture with paint details on it. Ill show this soon.

So rendering the big indoor environments with windows makes it so that the shadow maps eventually clip through or something?

Also, Blender!!!
What's the team's take on it

Jep, the shadow calculation is not working correctly in interiors, also the same issues with the environmentmap, you would see the universe in the reflections, even when you are in an airvent.
Just the whole light in open interiors would look broken.

I love Blender, the rest is using 3dsMax

[linolafett]

Someone asked about the paintoverlays, so here is a small thing about how we use them to create more variation of ships.

For the DLC we need pirate ships. Usually pirates capture normal fighterships and modify them. That is exactly what i am doing too!
I grab a existing ship, repurpose it a bit to be useful as a pirate ship.

Step by step progress:

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first we grab a existing ship we want to change into a pirate ship.
This is a new Teladi small fighter. Perfect for pirates to create some havok, right?

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So, pirates are aggressive, green doesnt fit them. Pirates seem to like red, so i repaint the ship with vertexcolours to make easy to distinguish from the normal fighters.

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Pirates dont clean theirs ships, so they get a bit dirty

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Now something new to look at! Pirates dont like boring ships, they want decals and stuff! So here is where we use a new UV layer to map a second texture on the metalplating.
In this "paintoverlay" (to the left) texture are all the numbers, decals, stripes and grudge you can see in the game.
I picked some intersting pieces from the texture unwrapped them to the ship and this results in a ways mor dirty and angry ship. Perfect fit for 'dem pirates, arrr!

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Create new LODs and we are done with the main mody of the ship! But we are missing something...

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We have to create a variation of the engines, otherwise we would have a red pirate ship with green engines in the game


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Repeat all steps like we did for the ship. I also had to recolour the enginefalmes from blue to red. The Lensflare had to be changed from blue to red, too. The same for the engine texture. Now the engines are ready to be exported and attached via the database to our ship.

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Final product, a nice angry pirateship with red engines and a nice paint.

[Santi]

Thanks so much for this thread Lino, it is awesome reading.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Nice! Love the teeth.

[terrannz]

Looks like the smile on a reiver ship... and now I have a new desktop wallpaper

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

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Final product, a nice angry pirateship with red engines and a nice paint.

and this

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam ... 1411747493


Iam not sure if I like the style of Teladi ships... They all look like escape pods.

[linolafett]

The style was unusual for mee too, but after seeing them for a few months i actually like the design a lot. Something new in the universe

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

Show us a pirate facility Something what produces illegal stuff

[BigBANGtheory]

design looks like a drone imho, but factor in the new Teladi expansion with the new ship on show the common style begins to fit

[MegaJohnny]

The style was unusual for mee too, but after seeing them for a few months i actually like the design a lot. Something new in the universe

I like it too. The game's capital ships thus far are the usual long brick shape, so this exotic saucer shape is a welcome change.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Map changes are nice. We can double-click on things like sector rings and stations to auto-zoom into respective sectors and zones, and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out manually.

[wwdragon]

Pod ships?