I've instantly become interested in the series. And that music is awesome! Gonna fly this crate with that tune on repeat 😀

short list of old and new ads to use in spacestations and otherwise

'ad_pioneer_0' animated texture, very large texture!

- 'ad_acme_0' animated texture

- 'ad_acme_1' simple glowing

- 'ad_acme_2' no background, glowing

- 'ad_cola_0' animated texture

- 'ad_cola_1' simple glowing

- 'coolvar_1' changing above three textures and texture animated

- 'vegaline_1' composition of changing textures, progressing text

- 'ad_sirius_0' animated texture

- 'ad_sirius_1' simple glowing

- 'ad_sirius_2' no background

'inteloutside' simple glowing

relation, 2:1 for all adverts

changes to previous: only one texture size to avoid bad texture appearance in large buildings.

lowered zbias, to avoid extreme "distance" to wall and shine through other buildings or walls, but still useful to lay over a maximum of 4 layers (should be enough).

can be found in "bob the builders" alpha10 build

just because i saw your "station_splash", marcel

Thanks Gernot! They do look good in there, don't they! 😀

[attachment=715:Discovery Base entry.jpg]

how about biscuits and tea and beer ( all generic advertising names of course)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... eIsAnOcean

We need to decide whether we're buying into this trope. Not saying it's a bad thing, just that it should be deliberate. Space doesn't work like the sea, so capital ships might never be practical. Especially given that there's nowhere to hide these juicy, expensive, vulnerable targets.

gut gebrüllt, löwe

yes, i see that in the same way, especially for pioneer. it's and should be different to BSG or whatever, it's a different task to command a huge freighter or battlestar.

it would need crew and all what's part of a more strategic sim. but pioneer is to fight for your life in a hostile space, no lifeguards or only little, imho.

i wouldn't say that they are not practical, but a different task.

and like i said the universe of pioneer is quite unsafe, like you said large freighters are only a giant target for pirates, maybe one day we can have convoy type missions, that would be cool imo.

even a battlestar armed to the teeth, will lose a battle against a horde of pirates in eagles. something i liked in "colconqII" 10 fighters beat a huge battlestar, if you think about, yes, only logical, the battlestar however armed with plasma accelerators and how many missiles ever, can't hit all of them at once, except you have again fighters aboard*. but then we are back to what we have, except that the fighters will launch from a ship instead a station, only a small difference, more a question of a personal choice in sci-fi, imo.

i guess pioneer is not the game of huge spacebattles with hundreds of fighters and many battlestars, it's more like a gunfight. but we will see to what this can evolve.

apart from that, who should be interested in a galaxy like pioneer's, to build such expensive ships? if you can send off some "idiot's" to do the job as freelancers. 😆

* reminds me a bit of, why heavy armed knights lost the battle(s) against the eleven.

has to be made... means i have to paint them first, or have at least a idea for them, the cola ads are old ones i made for SC3k of course leaned on to, not again...

other ideas would be

- ..... used ships and space stations sale

- ..... ship wrecking, discretion assured.

and of course

- ..... needs you, sign up today

- soylent green was yesterday, diet steakette, IT'S BAD!

a lot can be done with a simple good looking font, i know not easy to find a true free one.

it's i.e not to clear to me if that differs enough

from this

while the upper is rated free and the lower is a commercial font

of course in one or another kind they are always leaned on a commercial font, not much that you can invent new what hasn't been done yet.

i guess that's a good place to check if one is legally free, usually if there is a copyright note it's listed also with what program the font is build.

of course this won't give you a warranty, but i guess well put together.

http://www.whatfontis.com

you can use also small example pics to search for a needed font if you don't know the name.

the listing of the used software and copyright in a font file won't give you any warranty, it could be a rip.

but on this page you can post a pic of it and see if it's a genuine one or a rip.

even this seems to be a help

http://www.ffonts.net

they list always similar fonts to a searched (that's where i found the above two pics).

I'm enjoying this site for free-for-commercial-use fonts: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

yeah, stumbled over that too (font face generator), but didn't checked the home... (idiot)

o.k let's present some from which i think they are useful for ads or otherwise (a click on the pic will get you to the details page)

if you blur this one i guess it will look nice when glowing

this will look cool inverted with a vertical sliding glow behind (similar to what i used on the conny)

more a clear one, but i guess a good effect for a advertise

one that can be use with a horizontal sliding glow to work as some kind of billboard

o.k, that's enough so far i guess, there are many more useful fonts for ads, just keep in mind that they should catch the eye without being unreadable.

Here's my latest spacestations.lua update, posted here in case it doesn't make it into alpha 11. I'm still trying to figure out Github. It's getting late on this side of the planet, probably be able to get it in there Sunday or Monday. Textures and adverts are by potsmoke66.

[attachment=745:Discovery Base entry2.jpg]

[attachment=746:spacestations 09.zip]

edit: I'm still finding my way around GitHub, but Robn says he'll check it out and if he finds that it works ok he'll add it to alpha 11. Thanks again Robn! 😀

a new ship is leaving the dock...

[attachment=762:2011-06-04_001216.jpg]

edit: there was a mistake i made, leftside position lights was facing the wrong side, fixed it. this file is updated at 14:00 2011/06/04

gunboat_1.7z

this ship turned out to be a good explorer. with a class3 hyperdrive fitted you get a great range and have left just enough space for the needed equipment and fuel.

i added some decals, i hope i got it now 😉

[attachment=764:2011-06-04_154354.jpg]

the new model is still at the same location

gunboat_1.7z

please I do not understand English well, what's that new file?

Vampirette, I don't speak French, but it's avec insigne, or something like that. Thanks, potsmoke! I'll take a little trip in this. 😀

Potsmoke, I downloaded the gunboat. Beautiful model, it looks better in the game than in the screenshots, and the landing gear animation is perfect! One minor thing for me is that the tail decal shows through the rest of the model in the new and reconditioned ships window. It works perfectly in the outside camera view. It's probably because I can't do shaders. I flew the gunboat to Beta Hydri and found one of your Lynx Bulk Carriers at station-keeping. Once again, beautiful work. It felt like Frontier to see it there, but it could use some blinking lights on it to give the proper feel. I think it should be both a decoration and a possible ship to buy. If one happens to be at station-keeping where you are and you have lots of money, why not? You'd have to deal with many crew members and possibly hire escort services to protect your big, juicy hide from pirates, but we're working toward unlimited possibilities here. 😀

un nouveau vaisseau spatial de mes anciens 😉 , n'ont pas fini jamais, il a raté une belle texture, qui espérons-i fait un maintenant.

---

perhaps shaders, perhaps and mostly the high zbias for decals, i will lower it.

but it's always a problem finding a zbias for a submodel, since you won't know how it will be used in future.

i recognized i have set them once to 100, which is far to high no one will ever need 99 layers 😉

(it was also that high for the adverts, which i already lowered for my build).

5 or 10 would be enough i guess, you will never use more then 3 or 4 layers at maximum.

even if i used here already two, to make the stripes on the wing appearing in the "squad color", perhaps in some cases you add a further layer to such but then it's more then enough. could be you like a additional metal color on such a wing, but since it's a well divisioned part it uses already a lot of extra polys, if it would be a simple quad i wouldn't mind using many layers.

thanks, yes i like the animations, fortunately i managed it here to get a good relation between rotation of the wheel part and rotation&scale of the piston.

i guess if i later checked my model where that comes from, it must be because they form a isosceles triangle (same shank length) from the joint to the wheel and from the joint to the pistons base (joint).

often i have a lot of problems to synchronize the movement's of them, best would be a "parented" vertex, so the piston can always follow exactly the wheels movement.

if you make a function out of such a part, it should be possible to assign a special vector (vertex) and pass it as a argument to the function of the piston, it will be then only a moving vector (following exactly the position on the wheel part). this is enough to let the piston "grow" in the right manner (if z is defined as "up" in the pistons cylinder, it won't be deformed when you move the pistons end along y or x axis, it acts then exactly like rot/scale).

---

progress,

[attachment=781:2011-06-06_130704.jpg]

if you ever see something like this, thrusters that cut parts of a model out, please report that to me. i can fix that, but it's hard to check the models for all possible leaks they can have.

new ship, not yet finished, but ready to use

[attachment=786:2011-06-15_032806.jpg]

[attachment=787:2011-06-15_032855.jpg]

basically i was inspired by this,

it's the players ship from "Galaxian"

I like it! 😀

It looks great for exploration, how big is it?

actual size is w31,h10,l60

but it's not the final size i guess, i only multiplied the model by 10 to have something i can check. i started the model without a exact idea about it's size, should be smaller perhaps for 80t total mass i guess.

a counterpart to the galaxian "player ship" is planned to, a "Galaga" type ship. but first this has to get a landing gear, guns, missile pylons and other extras.

[/hr]

That's really cool. I like how you've taken the source of your inspiration and turned it into a fully 3D model from just a few pixels too!

Now that is an interesting concept for ships in the game. Use ships from arcade classics, R-Type, Defender, Gorf the list goes on and on. Great idea Gernot! 🙂

- R-Type

- Defender (hard to imagine how that will look like)

perhaps more a airplane like ship, if i look at the up sized picture now (original 15x6 pixels)

short history of the Galaga player ships (incl. Galaxian).

there might exist more different ship types for Galaga, this game has been cloned and hacked like no else.

1979

1981

1984

this is a hack of the 1981 version

1988

if i look at them now, it was a good decision to take the Galaxian ship, all other of the Galaga series doesn't look that unique (mostly airplanes).

R-Type is a next step in the same direction i guess (only a different view).

yes, it looks like a "Eagle Interceptor" 😉

That R-type ship would ROCK... From the size of the glass cockpit though it would probably be a very small one-man fighter, like the Eagle or Talon... right?

Well your the engineer 😉 But when I look at the pictures, the number 160 screams out at me.... (160 tons)

Enough for a big drive, enough for some lovely exploration and a bit of trading 😉