Forums » Suggestions
Wider variety of ships
I find the quantity of ship designs to be a disappointment. There are roughly sixteen ship designs, and most of them are (in my opinion) dull and/or ugly.
Whether something is dull or ugly is obviously a personal opinion. However, if there were a larger number of ship designs, and those designs were varied, then a player would be more likely to find a ship which they like. Personally, I would like to see the number of ship designs quadrupled.
Note that I am speaking specifically of the appearance of the ships, not of their statistics or performance. They could be mechanically identical to existing ships, for all I care.
Whether something is dull or ugly is obviously a personal opinion. However, if there were a larger number of ship designs, and those designs were varied, then a player would be more likely to find a ship which they like. Personally, I would like to see the number of ship designs quadrupled.
Note that I am speaking specifically of the appearance of the ships, not of their statistics or performance. They could be mechanically identical to existing ships, for all I care.
I should point out that when I suggested this in-game, I found that the current player base would apparently be just as happy if the ships all looked like green wireframe cubes. However, I think the visual interest of a computer game is a significant factor in its success.
I think we can all agree that more ship models would be cool. The thrust of the game development right now is to create / improve the game mechanics. The developers KNOW that the ship art is in need of improvement, but are directing their resources to other aspects at the moment.
this doesnt need to be suggested, its incredibly obvious that theres not alot of ship models. the devs will add more in the future, but for now the large amount of ship variants is substantial.
They don't even have a full time artist now... so yea...
And i don't know who you asked but I for one would love some nice looking new models, but not before some other things that need doing first.
And i don't know who you asked but I for one would love some nice looking new models, but not before some other things that need doing first.
well, you can...(theoretically)...do something about the lack of ship designs. maybe..."soon"...
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/9/18250?page=2
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/9/18250?page=2
To answer your question. Yes. This is an indie game. It means by DEFINITION that gameplay goes first. IF you would rather have graphics, this isn't where to look.
Anyhow, I agree that more ships are needed, but all in due time. Let them finish this behind-the-scenes update or whatever it is before more suggestions come in.
Anyhow, I agree that more ships are needed, but all in due time. Let them finish this behind-the-scenes update or whatever it is before more suggestions come in.
If you think there should be more ships, design some, make a contest, etc. Don't just sit there and call everyone else wrong.
I think it would be neat to implement volume light an shadows.
twould be nce for people with anything more powerful than the 7000 series thats sorta out dated now that the 9000s are out
twould be easier than to remodel/retexture every ship out there
twould be nce for people with anything more powerful than the 7000 series thats sorta out dated now that the 9000s are out
twould be easier than to remodel/retexture every ship out there
"If you think there should be more ships, design some, make a contest, etc. Don't just sit there and call everyone else wrong."
I am not an artist. I pay to play the game. The forum says "suggestions". I made a suggestion. But fine: I won't bother making a second one, or paying for a second month for that matter.
I am not an artist. I pay to play the game. The forum says "suggestions". I made a suggestion. But fine: I won't bother making a second one, or paying for a second month for that matter.
It's your attitude we have a problem with.
That's a Great Idea, blackmoor!! I would love it if all ship models
were variations of green wireframe cubes.
It would really cut down on memory usage and give response times a
considerable uptick. A real benefit for the kids playing on lower
capacity compies, too.
DEFINITELY APPROVE
were variations of green wireframe cubes.
It would really cut down on memory usage and give response times a
considerable uptick. A real benefit for the kids playing on lower
capacity compies, too.
DEFINITELY APPROVE
Or we can just petition someone to make a Spectre MMO. Come on, you all remember Spectre.
(/end sarcasm)
(/end sarcasm)
I think it would be neat if they buffed the WTD.
One other thing is that there are a lot more things to consider before you can make a ship. Let me just find Whistler's quote response to me, here...
Yeah. He quoted incarnate:
"Um, taking a baseline model and making it ready for the game is not a 10-hour thing, by any stretch. Michael used the phrase "at least", because he's never done it and wasn't really sure :). He's also making references to Luis's ships where most of the work was already done to spec, but last I looked at them they all needed quite a bit of work. And I spent literally months training Luis. In fact, I probably spent about a man-month total, just on training him, so that's what.. about 160 hours?
To recap for new people: We're always grateful that people want to help add stuff, but ship models do not help us, they do not save us time. 98% of content development time is spent in texture coordinates, map design, shader tweaking and the like. Making a neat low-poly model takes maybe an hour for someone experienced, from scratch. The rest of the BS takes another 40 hours. You can cut corners, of course, re-using elements between textures and so on, but it's time consuming work regardless, and there are usually a lot of revisions. And that's just the graphical work, then you get into the game-content work.
Also, for anyone else who was unclear, this is not an unskilled job. I spent a great deal of time training Luis, and he had already worked as a full-time game developer on a 3D MMO and knew a great deal. If I spent the necessary time to train an intern, or whomever, on how to do everything.. well, I wouldn't have the time to do all my other work (like say, writing faction stuff), which I'm having enough trouble getting done as it is. It's a catch-22 of resource allocation.
So, to boil it down, we welcome people playing around with content creation and asking us about it. I would link to the Wiki thing I made, describing a lot of it, if the old design-wiki wasn't broken right now. But anyway, we welcome people wanting to be involved and doing stuff, but we do not want to raise anyone's expectations about our actually using their work. It's not an impossibility, but it hasn't happened to date.
Michael was basically trying to make this point, but unfortunately stating any public numbers (like "10 hours") is a bad idea. People tend to latch onto the number and try to apply it to everything, which is usually not accurate or even meaningful. For instance, I spent hours and hours just cleaning up Luis's meshes, because they invariably had floating vertices, strange lighting normals and unusual polygon boundaries that would propagate through into the shaders; not even getting into his odd normal maps, OBB (collision) hulls and so on. And I would go back and forth with him about this stuff, and he would get better, but even his latest work still has these problems. Content creation tends to be a case-by-case thing, and the only time you can really make a judgement of how long something will take.. is when someone experienced has been working with you, in your engine, on your game, using your tools, for quite a long time (a year or two). It is often less time consuming to create something *completely new*, yourself, than it is to fix something made by someone else and explain why their work was broken. This seems strange to non-game-developers, and not strange at all to people who have been there :).
This is why, although we think the idea is cool, we don't really have any great expectations of user-contributed content in the short term. It would require a great dedication of time both for the contributing individual as well as the developer (pretty much just me at this point) who would help them. And then, after spending all that time to learn how, they might well decide it wasn't for them and leave. In some sort of vague "long-run", I'd like to make tools and documentation publicly available and just let people go nuts, to see what they create. But beyond the little thing I wrote for the now-broken design wiki, I don't have the time to put into writing documentation, nor do we have the developer resources to put into making our very arcane/undocumented toolset (which all depend on very expensive programs) any easier for people to use.
So, yeah, that's sort of the realistic sense of it, as best I can say. Hope that helps. Don't want to discourage anyone from playing around, but don't want to create unreasonable expectations either :). "
Yeah. He quoted incarnate:
"Um, taking a baseline model and making it ready for the game is not a 10-hour thing, by any stretch. Michael used the phrase "at least", because he's never done it and wasn't really sure :). He's also making references to Luis's ships where most of the work was already done to spec, but last I looked at them they all needed quite a bit of work. And I spent literally months training Luis. In fact, I probably spent about a man-month total, just on training him, so that's what.. about 160 hours?
To recap for new people: We're always grateful that people want to help add stuff, but ship models do not help us, they do not save us time. 98% of content development time is spent in texture coordinates, map design, shader tweaking and the like. Making a neat low-poly model takes maybe an hour for someone experienced, from scratch. The rest of the BS takes another 40 hours. You can cut corners, of course, re-using elements between textures and so on, but it's time consuming work regardless, and there are usually a lot of revisions. And that's just the graphical work, then you get into the game-content work.
Also, for anyone else who was unclear, this is not an unskilled job. I spent a great deal of time training Luis, and he had already worked as a full-time game developer on a 3D MMO and knew a great deal. If I spent the necessary time to train an intern, or whomever, on how to do everything.. well, I wouldn't have the time to do all my other work (like say, writing faction stuff), which I'm having enough trouble getting done as it is. It's a catch-22 of resource allocation.
So, to boil it down, we welcome people playing around with content creation and asking us about it. I would link to the Wiki thing I made, describing a lot of it, if the old design-wiki wasn't broken right now. But anyway, we welcome people wanting to be involved and doing stuff, but we do not want to raise anyone's expectations about our actually using their work. It's not an impossibility, but it hasn't happened to date.
Michael was basically trying to make this point, but unfortunately stating any public numbers (like "10 hours") is a bad idea. People tend to latch onto the number and try to apply it to everything, which is usually not accurate or even meaningful. For instance, I spent hours and hours just cleaning up Luis's meshes, because they invariably had floating vertices, strange lighting normals and unusual polygon boundaries that would propagate through into the shaders; not even getting into his odd normal maps, OBB (collision) hulls and so on. And I would go back and forth with him about this stuff, and he would get better, but even his latest work still has these problems. Content creation tends to be a case-by-case thing, and the only time you can really make a judgement of how long something will take.. is when someone experienced has been working with you, in your engine, on your game, using your tools, for quite a long time (a year or two). It is often less time consuming to create something *completely new*, yourself, than it is to fix something made by someone else and explain why their work was broken. This seems strange to non-game-developers, and not strange at all to people who have been there :).
This is why, although we think the idea is cool, we don't really have any great expectations of user-contributed content in the short term. It would require a great dedication of time both for the contributing individual as well as the developer (pretty much just me at this point) who would help them. And then, after spending all that time to learn how, they might well decide it wasn't for them and leave. In some sort of vague "long-run", I'd like to make tools and documentation publicly available and just let people go nuts, to see what they create. But beyond the little thing I wrote for the now-broken design wiki, I don't have the time to put into writing documentation, nor do we have the developer resources to put into making our very arcane/undocumented toolset (which all depend on very expensive programs) any easier for people to use.
So, yeah, that's sort of the realistic sense of it, as best I can say. Hope that helps. Don't want to discourage anyone from playing around, but don't want to create unreasonable expectations either :). "
Or we can just petition someone to make a Spectre MMO. Come on, you all remember Spectre.
(/end sarcasm)
Fuck sarcasm, that would be fantastic; Spectre was the best. Though, I say we switch to an MMO Spectre VR... that way, we can customize the tank stats ;)
(/end sarcasm)
Fuck sarcasm, that would be fantastic; Spectre was the best. Though, I say we switch to an MMO Spectre VR... that way, we can customize the tank stats ;)
to save space and not get the inevitable check this tread here is my first attempt at a suggestion to redo an unpopular ship (imo)
UIT Veloci-Raptor
Faction-UIT
Faction lvl- +800
License lvl- 5/5/4/1/-
Armor- 8600
Cargo- 6
Weapons- 2
Mass- 3600
Length- 17
Thrust- 225
Max speed- 60
Spin torque- 8.5
Max turbo- 220
Turbo drain- 50
Yes it would be an infinboost fighter but who turbos during combat anyways and it would give the UIT a light fighter to compete with the SVGs,RevCs, and CorvVults that frequent grey space. I say it's only an idea and I have no idea how or if it would change the way the Raptor preforms enough to make any visible difference.
Let the nitpicking begin :)
UIT Veloci-Raptor
Faction-UIT
Faction lvl- +800
License lvl- 5/5/4/1/-
Armor- 8600
Cargo- 6
Weapons- 2
Mass- 3600
Length- 17
Thrust- 225
Max speed- 60
Spin torque- 8.5
Max turbo- 220
Turbo drain- 50
Yes it would be an infinboost fighter but who turbos during combat anyways and it would give the UIT a light fighter to compete with the SVGs,RevCs, and CorvVults that frequent grey space. I say it's only an idea and I have no idea how or if it would change the way the Raptor preforms enough to make any visible difference.
Let the nitpicking begin :)