Neo Standard for SE V?

Shadowstar · #1 January 30th, 2007, 03:13 AM

I wonder about the sizes involved. Models are bigger than pictures, and putting as many ships into an SE5 set as a SE4 set will undoubtedly result in much larger shipset files. For most people, this wouldn't be a concern, but I run PBEM games, and require players using non-stock shipsets to send them to me (either attached or as a link). My email provider can't accept files larger than 5mb in an email, and once I have all the sets, I put them together and send them to the players before the game starts so that everyone can see the ships. The bigger the sets are, the more demanding this file becomes. I don't want to stick my 56k players with hours of downloading just to play in my game.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more variety, I'd just like everyone to keep an eye on the file sizes, and I don't think lowering texture resolution is the best option. I'd rather have a few less ships in a sharp-looking shipset than a few more ships in a fuzzy looking shipset.

Atrocities · #2 January 30th, 2007, 03:38 AM

You download them first and install them into your game. You don't send ship set files with PBW files. The information your sending for PBW is game data only, no images. The images have to be on your side in order for you to see them, or else the game will use generic images in their place.

And you might not know this, but many SEIV PBW game files eventually grow large then 5 megs. SE V will be even larger sooner.

Phoenix-D · #3 January 30th, 2007, 03:40 AM

Yeah, the shipsets are going to be the least of your worries. My KOTH game- which is a TWO player game, no AIs- hit 28 MB on a turn with a lot of combat..

Fyron · #4 January 30th, 2007, 03:44 AM

Why would you email the actual shipset files, when you can just send download links to where the sets are already hosted on the 'net?

President_Elect_Shang · #5 January 30th, 2007, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Why would you email the actual shipset files, when you can just send download links to where the sets are already hosted on the 'net?

Right guys (At & P-D) that is what I thought Shadowstar was saying. He sends them out at the start of the game not every turn. So Fyron took the words right out of my... fingers(?). Why are you killing yourself by sending the shipsets? In most cases you can get every shipset and every Mod from Fyron's site. Send the players a link to it and tell them the names of the sets they need. Or as Atrocities pointed out in SE5 if they don't have the time or inclination they will see a default shipset.

Combat Wombat · #6 January 30th, 2007, 11:15 AM

Of couse we need neo-standard, at least what we had for SE4. There is so much SE5 just left behind. Also I think we should try to go beyond the SE4 Neo-standard and go for a neo stnadard+ like was used in Invasion! Infantry, Gunships, etc....

Atrocities · #7 January 30th, 2007, 04:01 PM

The problem as I see it is how are we going to incorporate any more ships into a ship set? How do we do that? What files must be edited, what order are they needed in the ship set textures and ship set image files?

One is alphabetical so that isn't too much of a problem, but the other, the portrait main textures list, isn't.

President_Elect_Shang · #8 January 30th, 2007, 04:33 PM

I thought they had to be added to the end but for the life of me where I read that just slips my mind. We should ask Aaron. On that other matter we were discussing about the firing points... he said nothing would happen to the firing ship.

Fyron · #9 January 30th, 2007, 05:49 PM

A SE5 neostandard should probably be limited to 5 or 6 vehicles. Given the added difficulties and time present with SE5 set making, a ~30 model increase over stock will probably cause most authors to not bother with neostandard. With SE4, many authors just filled the 20 neostandard images with slightly resized models anyways, maybe with the wings slightly smaller. Hulls like "heavy destroyer" and "dreadnought heavy" rarely saw new, unique graphics. That functionality (model rescaling) can be done in a mod's vehiclesizes.txt file directly, so I don't think "heavy" and "light" models are really necessary. Neostandard++ was overkill.

If you could name the 5 "most needed" additional vehicle models (of all types), what would they be? (I won't put my list cause I don't want to color the ideas.

)

Combat Wombat · #10 January 30th, 2007, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
A SE5 neostandard should probably be limited to 5 or 6 vehicles. Given the added difficulties and time present with SE5 set making, a ~30 model increase over stock will probably cause most authors to not bother with neostandard. With SE4, many authors just filled the 20 neostandard images with slightly resized models anyways, maybe with the wings slightly smaller. Hulls like "heavy destroyer" and "dreadnought heavy" rarely saw new, unique graphics. That functionality (model rescaling) can be done in a mod's vehiclesizes.txt file directly, so I don't think "heavy" and "light" models are really necessary. Neostandard++ was overkill.

If you could name the 5 "most needed" additional vehicle models (of all types), what would they be? (I won't put my list cause I don't want to color the ideas.

)

doesnt mean we should put the stanard out there for people to use if they want.