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The New Vulture

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Sep 20, 2013 incarnate link
This is the new Vulture.



There will probably be a related Event this coming weekend (the 28th), when we'll debut the new ship.

We haven't yet decided how we're going to roll it into the game, because there are some associated challenges that I'll go into in a minute.

First of all, to some people it may seem odd that the vulture is the ship to get a major make-over. Well, we didn't actually choose it. We already had a half-finished "new vulture" asset from a few years ago (Luis), which was never completed. It seemed like a good project to help Curt learn more about creating production 3D assets. To date, he's only done projects like special effects, 2D-logos, and the nebulae. All of which are complex in their own right, but they allowed him to learn independently. Learning our engine's handling of assets, however, requires a bit more direct oversight, and this seemed a good way to go about it.

So we took the previous unfinished asset, modified it a great deal to match my specifications, and then had him go through the steps of polishing it up for production usage. As of this writing, it is still not yet complete (these screenshots are not graphically final), but it's getting close.

The challenge here is that it's actually quite different from the existing Vulture. The shape and design and profile are significantly different, which means we will not be re-using the same collision hull as the original vulture. This also means that the ship's handling and flight performance will change similarly (distribution of mass is determined by the collision hull), along with its tactical collision profile.

For one thing, the new vulture has a fairly large "engine pod" area that hangs beneath the main ship, visible here:



So you can imagine how this would impact the forward profile.

But aside from that, we're also in the midst of completely changing the way we patch, update and maintain the game across all platforms (some much-needed housekeeping, there'll be another newspost about that before long), so we need to figure out the best way to roll this out, given the context of the changes. That process is still on-going, but.. I hope you like the graphics :).

(I am personally more focused on forward-looking gameplay, which I'm not going to discuss yet. It's very important to my future plans that Curt learn how to do this stuff, so he can help build some of the assets we're going to need, with a minimum of oversight. Handling this training in parallel is of value).
Sep 20, 2013 Harbinger1 link
whoa
Sep 20, 2013 roguelazer link
O_o
Sep 20, 2013 draugath link
So is this going to completely replace the existing vulture assets, or will it be available in addition to the existing vulture?
Sep 20, 2013 Savet link
Did we just turn the vulture into a raptor? LOL awesome!
Sep 20, 2013 greenwall link
no comment
Sep 21, 2013 TheRedSpy link
It's going to need a stat rebalance to compensate for the new weight distribution. I hope that's on the agenda.
Sep 21, 2013 incarnate link
It's going to need a stat rebalance to compensate for the new weight distribution. I hope that's on the agenda.

We have a dev setup right now to do some mass-distribution checks, to see how it compares vs the original vulture. I am aware of that issue. It may not be that huge, as the biggest changes are close to the center of mass, and it might actually perform better with the same stats, but.. anyway, yes, looking into it.

I'm aiming to get the frontal collision profile to be somewhere in the ballpark of the original, maybe a little bigger, but no.. nothing like the Raptor. Keep in mind that the collision hull of the current Vulture is actually greatly exaggerated compared to the visual mesh. This was done many years ago, because of the wingbug problem with the wings being too thin, and because of complaints that the vulture's profile was too narrow and gave it too much of an advantage. So, the current vulture's profile is actually a lot bigger than it seems, and I'll be aiming for this to have a similar total frontal area.

I'll post collision hull comparisons when we're further along. The first collision hull was just made earlier today.

I am aiming to eventually replace the original Vulture entirely with this newer asset (but I'm not sure if that'll happen immediately, or if we'll roll this out as a prototype first). I want to replace/update many of the older ships, although when we're starting from scratch we'll be re-doing them to fit the existing collision hull, so I don't have to deal with re-balance issues. This was not a from-scratch thing, being more of a training project, so.. it has some side affects.
Sep 21, 2013 TheRedSpy link
Yeah you can tell that about the vulture (Suck it ARF). The amount of times i've hit the wings of vults is not insignificant. Centurions are across the board much harder to hit in practice if you ask me. I am a little concerned about the total front area thing because shape is actually quite important, especially it seems for flares.

If you are doing a stat re-balance though across the range of vultures, you should take a look at the relative stats of the different makes. Mark III is much more useful than Mark IV for instance because of the turbo drain stat being relatively more important for combat and the XT is fairly unimpressive too.

It's actually not as much of a problem with Vultures as it is with Warthogs for instance, but as you fix the graphics a re-balance of the series to fix some of the long standing issues would be great.

Tell Curt well done!
Sep 21, 2013 draugath link
Due the the necessary changes with the new model and collision mesh, will this be available on the test server so players can use it and give feedback before it goes live, or are you planning to essentially just push it out live as the prototype you originally mentioned?
Sep 21, 2013 Kierky link
Me likey. More things to annihilate with flares :P
Sep 21, 2013 greenwall link
Ok, just to be clear, can we expect "new ships" from here on out to mean new versions of older ships? Or, probably more to the point, can we expect "new" things to be repaints of existing things? I'd like to know now so I don't sit around waiting for something actually new.

It seems there has been a focused effort on improving the look of the game, as opposed to adding new ship/weapons/content. The rate of additions of new "things" has seemed to steadily diminish to a standstill as we look back at the recent ones...

If the focus is on improving the look of things as it stands now (or adjusting existing content), then I'm not sure I'm gonna stick around because at the current rate of repainting it will take about 300 years to redo the "look" of VO.

What I can say is throwing in a little thing here and there goes a LONG way for us vets. Maybe you feel like you've been doing this already, but it feels the opposite from this side. The updates for the last three months have been heavily dominated by inconsequential bug/graphics fixes and platform support.
Sep 21, 2013 draugath link
greenwall, as Curt becomes more familiar with the systems he'll be able to do more of this with less oversight, as Incarnate already stated. My understanding is that Curt is just an artist. What this means is that it'll free Incarnate up to do more development work in tandem with the graphical upgrades they want to achieve.
Sep 21, 2013 incarnate link
Due the the necessary changes with the new model and collision mesh, will this be available on the test server so players can use it and give feedback before it goes live, or are you planning to essentially just push it out live as the prototype you originally mentioned?

I've thought about the testing thing, and had it been ready a few weeks ago I might have been more inclined to do that.. but at this point we really need to patch in these assets, ship the thing and move on (and tweak stats after the fact if needed). I have other timetables, outside of ours, that I need to meet, which includes rolling out our "new" mobile asset pack very soon.
Sep 21, 2013 incarnate link
What I can say is throwing in a little thing here and there goes a LONG way for us vets. Maybe you feel like you've been doing this already, but it feels the opposite from this side. The updates for the last three months have been heavily dominated by inconsequential bug/graphics fixes and platform support.

I included the paragraph at the end of the first post to specifically address this. Yes, I know people really want meaningful change to content, which is overdue, and we are working on that. But that isn't what this post is about. We're training Curt to be a more experienced graphic artist, which has relevance to larger changes to the game (which will also need artwork). So, training him, while also trying to improve the game, is not a bad thing.

I am aiming to have some pretty big stuff to say in the near future about the game itself (not just individual features, but schedules and milestones and goals), but not tonight. This thread is just about an updated ship design..

(FWIW, there was supposed to be an actual release tonight as well, with some other game changes, but that had to be pushed back. There's been a lot of that lately).
Sep 21, 2013 Inevitable link
Too drunk didnt read.. Ill get back to ye tomrrow
Sep 21, 2013 Faille Corvelle link
If this does replace the current Vults, can we have one or two of the "classic" vults remain (Wraith-style)? I've worked towards making the CorVult my "signature" ship, and would love to still have the "classic" CorVult (or even just the Anniversary version) still available...

It is an awesome looking boat though, well done Curt!

EDIT: Notice the lack of transparent cockpit? Further evidence of our non-biological existence!

Faille.
Sep 21, 2013 Kierky link
I'd prefer this wasn't a replacement ship, because it looks so much like the 2 heavy port ship a lot of us have wanted. Some kind of cross between a raptor and a vulture.

I dunno, I just don't see this replacing the vults.
Sep 21, 2013 Faceof link
...looks pretty cool ...:)
Sep 21, 2013 idd link
This is awesomeness.