Yeah... Tiled is good... 64x64 texture at 65k colors... That would be... What, about 10k per person? And you could cache them, so you only have to download it once per person... And for the people on dialup, it could use a placeholder texture while it downloads...

I was thinking 12bit colour. 4096 colors. That makes it 16777216 bits per person... So approx 2097152 bytes per person... So 2kb/person. And tiling is optional. Either the entire ship can be tiled with a 64x64 texture or they can have it as an emblem. Each ship would have "emblem locations", so on a Centurion the emblem might go next to the cockpit, but on a Valkyrie, there would be one on either wing.


Also, limit these by score and/or money. I don't want vets dressing up as n00bs and putting vulgar things on their ships. Also, give moderators the ability to remove these with one command. So if n00bie1234 has something vulgar as their emblem, the guide types:

/removeemblem "n00bie1234" "guidepassword"
Are you sure you want to do this (y/N)? y

and it's done!

Once again borrowing from F-Zero GX you chould just have the emblem float then position the ship where you want the emblem to do then just stick it on. I guess you would have to play the game to realize how it works.

Too much work. If everyone has their emblems in a different position, it becomes too complex for the engine. Emblem hardpoints are less work.

Ummm... Rogue, you might want to check your math... That's 2 megs per person... And why the heck would anybody need 4096 bit color? 8 or 16 bit color ought to be enough.

Err... I mean 12 bit. 4096 colour. It looks like 16bit, but isn't. 256 color isn't enough!

Yeah, scaling it back would be quite good, as I said.

And I need 4096 bit cause i just do! ;)

Should emblems be upload-able? Or user selectable? There is a big margin for abuse, and the moderator-remove idea is nice, but how often are mods on to see such things? And how does a mod get close enough to someone sectors away to see their emblem. Possible a way to view emblems on the user list or something?

~The Penguin

I'd say offer some pre-selected ones (and some special ones, like a unit insignia if you're in the military), plus let guilds upload one for their guild.

I thought that the sectorlist should show emblems, plus they should be displayed (with a preference for people that have 56k and can't stand downloading 100000 emblems) on the Player Rankings sheet. Maybe they could even be made into forum avatars?

Speaking as a dialuper.. only way these could really feasibly be used is preapproved ones and its downloaded as part of the game intially, so im not downloading 100000 emblems at once..


of course, even better would be instead to allow it as text, rather then a graphic. until of course they get to where emblems are very small.. and just have it displayed on certain places of the ship

My concern with custom decals is a bit different. Do you really want a "SUXX0R MY C0XX0R" bumper sticker on every ship you see? Or giant penises painted onto every ship in the galaxy? I don't

have it so you can only apply a custom decal once a month and it needs to pass a mod's\guide's eye.

I called black ship with white skull and cross bones painted on the top. Well, on my frigate anyway. :)

What if you could get emblems approved for use (have a small guide division review them)? They could be included in a weekly (or however often) update with all the new emblems, so you wouldn't have to download lots of new ones while you play.

/me reads what SL wrote...
Ummm... Yeah... That... :P Except maybe more often than once a month... Once a week would be better...

I have dutifully used the search function and found a thread that corresponds to my thoughts, instead of starting a new thread...

Something has been bugging me about all the ships in VO, and I just realized what it was. Well, actually I think I realized it months ago but today was the first time I remembered to write something about it.

The ships look great. Especially the "original" three: Prom, Valk, Marauder. The new vulture looks decent. The new bus, the raptor, the Teradons, Constellations, etc all look really good. However, there is one glaring problem with them that makes them seem generic, and personality-less.

They all look the same.

I mean, if you've seen one TPG Constellation, you've seen them all. One is the same as the next.

Since KOURIER will be active soon, I assume that the NPC's we have now will be at least "semi-persistent", right? How about we add differing graphics to each ship? Maybe just the Tridents and above for now? It could be as simple as naming a Xang-Xi Constellation the "Kobayashi Maru", and giving it a numerical designation of "14" or something that appears on several areas on the hull. And let's not have the Trident-and-above ships designated by the pilot's name, but by a ship name. The USS Enterprise isn't called the "*James T. Kirk"

I realize that essentially this is adding another layer of graphics to the mesh, which will decrease performance. I don't know how much of a hit it would be, but I know that I would like the end result.

And if it were possible to add another whole LAYER, then perhaps individual changes to the ship's look could be made. (i.e. a couple of panels on the Xang-Xi "Kobayashi Maru" are green due to a bad batch of xith, when on other Constellations those panels are the same color as the rest of the hull.) This would increase the individuality of the large ships which grace the Vendetta Galaxy.

I'm not against uploaded "decals" from players, either, but I realize that it would be time-consuming to approve these decals (otherwise we'll get obscene pics like... Hilary Clinton's face on our ships or whatnot... ) I don't know how to get around the "downloading player custom graphics every month", either.

yep... that sounds about right... well, except the Hillery part, she is ugly but calling a PC democrat obscene is kinda an oxymoron.

"Frontier - Elite II" had a random, supposedly unique ID applied on the wings/fuselage of every ship. The callsigns were much like the "names" of the Hive bots.

It was 1993. It ran out of one megabyte of RAM and two 880K floppies.

14 years later, we'd have the problem of performance of applying unique names to ships? Interesting.

14 years later we attempt to compare a single-player game to a multiplayer game.

Loading each person's unique ID graphic (suitably tailored to fit on each ship, show on each color, etc.) as we enter each sector or start the game would most certainly present a performance issue, especially for slower connections. Yes, it could be toggled off.

If you must be sarcastic, at least think it through more carefully.

Thinking cogently has never been Syylk's strong suit. See, e.g., http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/15869?page=3#201353

This would be like me reading the U.S. Constitution and then expounding on how current constitutional law is or isn't on target. If I hadn't been, you know, trained.

OK Nevermind the player ships and their custom uploaded decals.

What about using them on the larger ships? Is that a possibility?

Decals, whether built-in or player-supplied would have to go in the client updates, making them larger; remember that a large client is one of the Dev's things not to do. Then, like with any other texture, they'd have to be loaded; imagine going into Deneb B-12 (lag city for some already) and then, in addition to all the ship textures for each ship type in the system, the game would have to load each ship's decal. Precaching would still offset this, of course, but any which way you spin it it's more resources for the client to juggle.