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The Magical Vanishing Incarnate! (New Ship)

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Nov 20, 2005 incarnate link
Hi, just in case anyone wondered What The Hell I Was Doing before I disappeared (see newspost) over this past week (sure haven't seen much action on the wiki!), well.. I was planning on posting about this:

http://www.incarnate.net/raptor.png

And getting it into the game. (Yes it's a fighter, and the short end is the front).

That image is temporary. The name is temporary. The model isn't even quite the right version, but that was the pre-mockup I was working on last weekend before life.. became.. more exciting. So anyway, I've been working with Luis a lot more lately (he gets mad props on that ship, although I did make the specularity and normal maps based on his diffuse PSDs), and we should be seeing more coolness from him in the future.

So yeah, he and I are going back and forth on a number of things, including replacing the bus with something more aesthetically pleasing (the old bus will stay as an odd variant or something, for the nostalgic), so new users don't find our game quite so crappy looking.

Trying to make the best use of the resources we have available.

Also, I'm going to replace the above image with a more "final" one sometime this week. This one doesn't even have the game name on it or anything, so I'd rather people didn't like.. I dunno, post it on some gaming news site or something. Don't spread it around too much (hence the messageboard post instead of news). It isn't really "marketing material" yet, but I thought you guys would at least like to know that progress is being made in that department.

Also, a couple of other things, before people go too nuts about this particular ship. This ship is higher-poly than we want most fighters to be (2500 polygons), so I'm kicking around the idea of making it a limited-access variant to keep some cap on utilization. Ie, only people who have subscribed for 6 months or some such. I've been meaning to add some kind of nice "thank you" for our more supportive long-term users anyway, I just hope this isn't too much and everyone else wants to kill me (first real ship addition in aeons). It would be like.. six months contiguous currently, or 6-months currently prepaid, to at least give newer users the option (not a plug to buy 6 months or anything, just the simplest solution I could come up with). I have yet to work it out with Andy how to actually get the hooks into the billing system to let us do this, but I imagine it's pretty easy.

So, yes, woo! New Ship! Better late than never, more info to come this week.
Nov 20, 2005 silentsuicide link
very cool inc, cant wait to fly this beast :D
Nov 20, 2005 Teh Void link
Sweet bejezus! <drool>
Nov 20, 2005 genka link
> replacing the bus with something more aesthetically pleasing (the old bus will stay as an odd variant or something, for the nostalgic)

I almost had a heart attack there.
Phew.
Nov 20, 2005 zamzx zik link
Ahhhhh! HAHHHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAH H! AHHAHAWODSFHGKBI"MGVH WS:"AFKMKfervfdx

/me explodes

only 6 months? wadda 'bout the 2+ year peps? < just kidding

HOLY MAJUSUS! GIVE MEEEE
Nov 20, 2005 Beolach link
> replacing the bus with something more aesthetically pleasing

Maybe 3 replacements, 1 for each nation? Would make for a nice difference between the nations right off the bat.
Nov 20, 2005 incarnate link
3 nation-specific replacements would be cooler.. but uhh.. less likely to happen? I did consider doing three different texture sets though. Same model, different textures. Something to differentiate a bit. We'll see.
Nov 20, 2005 Beolach link
Ah, shucks. Couldn't you have said "less likely to happen soon"?

Maybe in the meantime use the same model w/ different textures, and maybe slightly different stats? Say, more armor & mass for Serco, less armor & mass for Itani, and UIT w/ mass & armor halfway in between, and other stats the same.
Nov 20, 2005 wylfing link
As soon as the image of that ship finished rendering in my browser, I went into convulsion of extasy. Anybody got a spare keyboard? Mine's ruined.
Nov 20, 2005 Phaserlight link
Yeah, what Beolach said. Pleeeease consider implementing nation specific newbie ships with different stats. Would go such a long way toward first impressions.

Nice job on that new fighter, too, b.t.w. I'm really liking this new look for VO's ships :)~

And I hope your family is well. (points to news)
Nov 20, 2005 incarnate link
Well, yeah, everything is "Soon". But, given how long it takes to get a ship finished and into production, I'm shooting for the most accessible "one new bus replacement!" thing.

Multiple textures and multiple stats is totally doable. We're at the concepting stage on the "new bus" right now, as things move along I'll coordinate with Luis on potentially making multiple textures from the beginning. Since it's his ship he'll probably have more ideas than my just hacking things together on the back end in photoshop (not that I can't hack fairly artistically). So anyway, yeah, I'll shoot for the 3-texture-variants.

Unfortunately, that will make for a larger download. We're talking.. well.. five 512x512 textures per ship (diffuse, specular, normal, illumination, alpha), then multiplied by three. So, fifteen new 512x512 images. PNGs or max-quality JPEGs, it'll still add some extra downloading. But, worth it I hope.

In the long run.. I want to add more realtime variability. Through shaders and additional colorizable alpha maps or something. But we don't have that right now, so I guess I'll just make do. An exception for the EC-series is worthwhile, since it's the first ship any newbie is exposed to..

good comments, by the way, thanks.
Nov 20, 2005 LeadFist link
Incarnate: I appreciate your sensitivity on download times for game updates. Yet, I strongly believe that getting new game elements and content out to the playerbase should take priority over user download bandwidth management -- as long as gameplay isn't hosed 'cause there's only one pipe feeding the update server AND the live server. If Guild communicates to VO users about the update (including approximate file download size), then I think that the company has done its due diligence. And I know that if I was still on 56k dial-up, I'd be just fine with taking the time to download an update which improves gameplay.
Nov 20, 2005 Harry Seldon link
I really like it. :D
Nov 20, 2005 Spellcast link
I definitely like the idea of each nation having a slightly different set of stats/textures on the 'new' freebie ship.

also, that ship is kickass.

dont worry too much about the download times either, (tho maybe you could seed a bit-torrent for people who would rather use that if the update gets too large??)
Nov 20, 2005 roguelazer link
TPG Destroyer Miniature Edition? Or is there no TPG Destroyer, just this fighter-sized craft which looks suspiciously like it?
Nov 20, 2005 Harry Seldon link
Haha, yeah rogue. incarnate did say that he intended it to be a fighter though..
Nov 20, 2005 zamzx zik link
the raptor sounds like a good temperary name....how about you use it as a excuse to add in more backstory stuff in? (we can use all of it we can get) just put on the info and the wiki something about it being roughly based on the nighthawk design.
Nov 20, 2005 roguelazer link
If you read descriptions ingame, you'd note that the Vulture is based on the Nighthawk design...
Nov 20, 2005 incarnate link
LeadFist: It isn't the update size, it's the total download for new users. We're very careful about increasing the size of the overall client. If it exceeds the "newbie patience threshold" then it may impact our new user trials and potential signups. We add stuff to the client only when necessary, and we go wildly out of our way to keep it as small as possible. Hence, our MMO is 120megs or so, while some are over a gig and most are somewhere in between. The smaller the download, the more accessible we are.

These textures will only add a few megs, it isn't the end of the world, and given the importance of the ship it's worthwhile. But again, as time goes on it all adds up. These textures, the new cap ship, so on and so forth. I have to be careful, I have to keep these things in mind. That's all.

Everyone Else: Yes, the ship is stylistically similar to the TPG destroyer. Since Luis made it, that's to be expected. I imagine the future ships will also have his stamp on them. I'm ok with that, they aren't total clones of one another. And, since they do look relatively similar, I'm (so far) making them all TPG ships.. that adds to the "makes sense" side of similar looking ships all built by the same faction.
Nov 20, 2005 thergvk link
how big is that compared to a centurion?