SE:V Shipset Questions

ToddT · #1 August 22nd, 2006, 11:03 PM

hmm saw that then skipped over it for some reason, anyway the scaling numbers are completly different
destroyer model radis is 5.0 and scaling is .01 versus 588.822 and .004

Phoenix-D · #2 August 23rd, 2006, 12:00 AM

Buh-what?

That's..bizzare. I pulled those numbers straight from the copy of Starfury on my disk.

Suicide Junkie · #3 August 23rd, 2006, 12:05 AM

That's just because the destroyer's model happens to have been made small in the 3d editor, so it only needs to get scaled down a little bit.

The other one is a large model, and needs to be scaled down lots more to make both of them look the right size in-game.

Noble713 · #4 August 26th, 2006, 02:38 AM

Quote:

Poly limits- look at the SF ships. I'd say a couple hundred polys at most.

Is this an engine limitation, or a matter of playability for low-end systems? I tested a ship in the Starfury Demo that was ~1700 polys and it ran fine on my system. Right now I'm working with ships that are around 2k-5k polys, AFTER I've cleaned them up. I'm sure I'll be removing/simplifying more of the detail after I've had the chance to test them in-game, but I doubt any of them will go below 1k polys.

On a side-note, do the textures for the ships have to be 256x256 bitmaps? I've got textures that are 512^2 and 1024^2 in JPEG format that I want to use. The ships look horrible when crompressed down to 256x256.

Phoenix-D · #5 August 26th, 2006, 03:07 AM

SEV will have a LOT more ships on-screen at once, so keep that in mind. Its mostly a playability limitation as far as I can tell.

You can make the bitmaps bigger in Starfury, and even use multiple bitmaps (though I don't remember how to pull that trick off..), and SEV will probably be similar.

However if it isn't, design in 256x256. No compression issues that way.

Noble713 · #6 August 26th, 2006, 04:16 AM

*smacks forhead* I'm retarded..... the meshes that I have include 2-3 different models within the file, for various view distances (the game they were made for would swap models accordingly). I've been taking the close-in, high-detail models and hacking them up to reduce the polys. I totally forgot that there were already nice, low-poly meshes included that require no changes. Some of those 5,000 poly ships are now a fairly tame ~1,000.

I've spent the past week doing little more than improving my skill at welding vertices and re-aligning UVWs... Oh well, I guess this is how we learn.

Jarena · #7 August 26th, 2006, 10:13 PM

Another question-
When exporting to .x format in 3DS Max 8 (using panda's .x plugin) I get a .x export, but in a very different format from the neatly ordered text files of Starfury. As a result (I believe) the Starfury demo won't load my ships. Any idea what might be going on?

Phoenix-D · #8 August 26th, 2006, 10:16 PM

X has a couple different formats- one is Binary, one text, one compressed IIRC.

Check to be sure you're using non-compressed; that might be the issue.

Also, if I remember right the starfury demo disallows most modding. You have to replace the existing Terran Destroyer with your own ship.

Noble713 · #9 August 27th, 2006, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Jarena said:
Another question-
When exporting to .x format in 3DS Max 8 (using panda's .x plugin) I get a .x export, but in a very different format from the neatly ordered text files of Starfury. As a result (I believe) the Starfury demo won't load my ships. Any idea what might be going on?

I had problems with the Panda plugin in Max 6 at first. The settings I used were:

Text format, only Normal and UV boxes checked, XYZ scaling of 6.

Don't worry about the jumbled format of the file, it will still load. Most of the problems I had trying to load things into the demo were caused by the changes I made to the other files (like the one that specifies where the hardpoints are). What ship are you trying to replace, the Terran Destroyer? Does it crash the game when you start a new campaign and try to select a ship?

henk brouwer · #10 August 27th, 2006, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Jarena said:
Another question-
When exporting to .x format in 3DS Max 8 (using panda's .x plugin) I get a .x export, but in a very different format from the neatly ordered text files of Starfury. As a result (I believe) the Starfury demo won't load my ships. Any idea what might be going on?

Does starfury give you an error, or does the ship model simply not show up? If that's the case you might just have made the scale of your ship too small (by a factor of 1000 or so) Quite a few people, myself included, have been fooled by that. So check your game of starfury for any suspect pixel sized ships and try to rescale them. I hope that helps..