Well it's very very easy to stretch the ship excluding the tanks, and then fill space with more tanks

But how does it go?

It's:
OOOO
OOOO


neutralzone.de is excellent site for ship info, in this case for malon ship:
http://www.neutralzone.de/database/indexfra.htm

Seven's doing some texturing with 3DSMax 2375.

Malon emblem for ship:

color



black and white

I don't know if it came up before but those models (though 4 years old) from "VegaTrek", a mod for Vega Strike, look astonishing:





vegastrike forum: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums

vegatrek download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=52085 (0.2.0) http://deeplayer.com/vegatrek/release/V ... .0.tar.bz2 (0.3.0)

sounds like an interesting project to me plus it's opensource, has its own working 3D engine and is already at 0.5.0 version number (hopefully means something good ). String, Zeleni, Kenneth, you think this might be interesting to look at?

also Fox: you might be able to get some additional ideas for the new bote content out of their database wiki if needed: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Database

Nice looking meshes, Kenneth will find something for shore. 186 mb ? That's game data?

mod only. the game is pretty awesome (~450mb), download on vegastrike site. Just played a bit around, has some FreeSpace 2 and Privateer 2 feeling. hm, speaking of which, the freespace 2 opensource 3d engine ain't useful for us or is it Strings?

we should ask this pnuematic 81 guy (if we still find him, 2003 is sometime away) and also some other guys there on the forums, I'm shure they'll help us once they know about us. Heard, their sovvy does also look very nice..

We certainly need fresh blood overhere in large quntities, i recommend forming headhunters squdron with Malle in charge!

Seriously, i have few names on my hitlist!

yeah I have some experience in that (just wait for the new content, all my headhunting ).

anyway, that's why freespace 2 3d engine may not be that useful for us: http://www.moddb.com/mods/4614/star-tre ... nversation (read all)

Yeah, appears it's not fixable.

seems like the AI is the biggest problem on designing 3d space combat anyway, more than the fancy "looks".

anyway, what's with these nice meshes: http://stblender.iindigo3d.com/meshes_startrek.html

Ooh i'm loving that Galaxy class image posted above - that model is soo detailed!

The models are nice on that site you posted, Mal, but the colour schemes for some of the ships seem a little off to me, especially the Cardassian and Dominion models. Some of the Klingon designs are a bit too green for my liking as well. The Federation models are seriously well detailed though. Looks like you guys have some competition.

Yeah, I've spent some time on the combat engine today and so far I still haven't worked out any details for the AI. But I do have some good algorithms to load in ships, and got a extendable way of storing the state of the battlefield, so... the basics are there. I think the next step is to think about manipulating that data to mimic intelligent behaviour.

@Zelani: the Malon freighter is one messed up mesh I noticed a lot of Z-fighting when I loaded in a test texture, turns out there are two copies of the same mesh occupying the same space. Well, I cleaned it up now, knocking 2.2k off the poly count, down to 3.3k. Time for actual texturing, yay, I like texturing

Are you still doing it turn based?

Regards Wolfe

Yep of course.

Done any thinking on the one for BOtE yet?

Ideally, I'll make the same engine work for both games, just using different content. It would save time and effort in development and afterwards by not having to support two versions.

However, if it is not feasible for some reason or another, then two variants have to be made; I am certain much of the code, algorithms, and ideas would still be interchangeable, and can be re-used.

My plan from the beginning remains the same, to help both existing projects

One thing to keep in mind is that each game uses differant 'ship combat' stats and components i believe.

Supremacy's are similar to the ones Dafedz made up but minus a few things like no longer using energy, it's all there in the editor. You'd have to ask Malv or something in the know on the differances to BotE's system though however.

Regards Wolfe

If you like texturing Strings there are a few other models on SharePoint that need it. Just look in the image library for the gray ships. The combat engine sounds more exciting to me right now though.

well just to say again, the vega strike and blender model sites I linked need someone (else) to go after if you like the models there. The coloring can be easily changed in the textures via color scheme in gimp or photoshop for example so the coloring shouldn't be a problem, so if anyone wanna ask..

anyway, our stats are fully descripted in our bote wiki on sharepoint. besides I think it should be even possible to write a "stats converter" for both supremacy and bote which ain't a bad idea anyway since it allows modding for both games simulatenously .

@ Strings, sorry to here about large number of vertices and polys, i am eager to see final result, so keep up with good work!!

Have you and Mike decided on raw ideas about game combat system,i am reffering on visable part of game not the code?

Finished!

Malon Freighter (3 tanks version)
Poly: 3290
Vert: 2418



and a shot from underneath for good measure


Download here
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/strings/MalonFreighter1.rar

ASTONISHING!

Excellent job

and one more thing... zipped 3ds + credits

Thanks

Ok here's the .rar file. It's a bit big because I've put in the layered .pspimage file to help whoever tinkers with it later.

PS - in the credits, I've left the model creator as blank... can you fill it in ?

Nice, i like the leaking effect

Regards Wolfe

Wonderful.

*Danger! Danger! Chemical leak in progress!*

Excellent work, Strings. That's a beautiful model you've got there.

Don t worry about mr. Korber he will find his way into credits. Strings, what have you decided about freighter number 2, rehuing or adding new tanks?

Adding extra sections and tanks



Hmm...
3 tanks ~400 polygons
12 tanks ~1600 polygons.