That would be awesome. But "step up" here really means you setting the direction and driving it. There are some random thoughts about direction for the game, but just like code, its really up to the people who do it.

I highly recommend you join #pioneer on IRC. The core team lurk there, and then we can talk about it properly.

For me the multidiversity of styles is coherent in a Galactical  game .

That why i have more than 80 ships in Genesia witch have very differents  style .

But i like also playin' Paragon and these genaral look whose make more realistic .

I think Pioneer must be in the middle  , some differents look  from major factions ( federation , empire  etc ) 

But each with a common identity , and for that  a kind of " artistic director " to give the art way is necesary ...

But maybe a chief designer (or art manager , or whatever you like ) can assing a modeler and all his product to a faction ? , for an example we say Lionheart = federation , and SolCommand = empire (red) .

You know what i mean ? of course the designers must have a big and constant indentity in their style ( like the 2 i used in example ^^ ).

I think that this could be good, not sure how we'll get to an actual agree upon look for Pioneer itself with so many people with differing opinions but it's a goal that I think we'll really benefit from achieving 🙂

Trying to balance everyone's opinions, especially the opinions of those not actually contributing anything, is impossible. That's why I want one person saying "this is how its going to be", arguing strongly for that when there is disagreement, producing concept art, producing actual game assets, and guiding other people's contributions with constructive criticism. The only way to get something coherent is for there to be a strong vision that gets enforced.

In my opinion if there's a good strong general style guide, and as robn said, there's somebody in charge (with a veto "right", but coupled with mandatory elaboration (if you now what I mean)), than there's a good possibility that we can achieve a good coherent visual style.

(everything in "quotemarks" are the expressions I use but think, it might be a bit strong word, but describes the thing nicely)

I think there should be a general style guide, which encompasses everything in the game on a vague general level, (typical level of detail, mood, typical proportions and such).

Then there should be a more in-depth, but somewhat general style document for each faction (including a general taste and some typical things), and after that, there should be different shipyards/design offices for lines of ships (at least in the end, but when starting out, there could be just a line of ships for each mayor faction, similar, but with some diversity). Take car or aircraft looks here on Earth for example. You can usually tell if a vehicle is made in the US, in  some western European country, or in the eastern block of soviet allies (I'm from one of those ex-communist countries... 😀 ). There are some overarching things you can't really miss, but there's quite a diversity in those vehicles regardless.

Anyway, the first thing that should be is finding the mayor "selling points" of the game. In my opinion it's the vastness of it, and it's good realism and the "ship is your avatar" point. These should get a proper elaboration, so we could build a general mood for the game on it, and then could come the more and more intricate details of the world.

The main job for the "art director" should be creating a good design handbook foundation for foundation, and then "enforcing" it. I think, there should be a level of consensus in that, but the final word should be the "art director's" to avoid that "camel = horse designed by a committee" effect. And the "art director" always has to give proper criticism and suggestions for everything he "vetoes". And there should be a clear road for creating any content.

 I think, because it's an open game, it's not always a good idea to have concept art for every tiny detail, and contributors can only model a strictly similar end product. I think for most people, the fun of it is to come up with a design from the ground up, and I think we should encourage that. 

So I think, there should be a set, but flexible path/cycle for every asset. Like for example, there should be a: 

• picking a manufacturer and role of the ship (there could be a list of needed roles)
• designing basic properties, like thrust and such for it.
• collecting some inspiration regarding to the mayor style
• blocking/sketch/concept phase (not necessarily drawing, since not everybody is comfortable with that) - should not be too detailed to allow for quick reworking - with discussion with the community
• "approval"
• modelling phase - with frequent reviews, and there should be a guide for a "minimal quality" (like proper topology on a level, UV layout requirements, LOD-s, orientations and size of objects polycount and such - this should be worked out really)
• texturing phase - frequent review too, and there should be some similar "minimal requirements"
• Description/history writing for that ship.
• Finalizing the properties of it.
• Testing (really this should start early in the works, at least when the modelling is good enough)

This could have some parallelization where possible, like when coming up with properties when modeling and such. And if an artist wants to do only the modelling or texturing, he/she can do that.

That minimal quality should be on a basic level. The main point of it is to ensure that if an artist can't continue working on the asset for some reason, then another one could pick it up and continue with minimal headache. Imagine it like a coding style guide for programmers.

The main point here is to give as much freedom to the artist, but to keep it all consistent in the same time. In my opinion some kind of "system" benefits the artist in the long run, since working with some limitations pushes the creativity quite a lot. Also it's a very good opportunity to learn from each other, not just technique, but teamwork too.

In the end, this should be firm and flexible enough to be useful and fun too.

I couldn't yet get myself to IRC yet, but as soon as I arrive home properly, I will try to contact the core team to discuss this stuff.

Just out of interest, how many people are actually developing any ships for Pioneer currently?

I am re-working the Deneb and have another (Venturestar) almost finished and ideas for another couple of ships along a similar look / feel.

I had written a short novel on this but I'll summarise my thoughts instead because life is just to short to read it:

• For the size and diversity of the universe portrayed in Pioneer, a single 'style' does not seem enough to me
• A strict style per faction IMO is not the way to go either
  • This works for something like the 'X' series because there is only 5(?) factions, Pioneer currently has quite a few and it is potentially unlimited
  • I doubt a ship designer would want to spend a considerable amount of time on a ship for a faction that was 100's LY's away from the start point that some players may never actually see

My Ideas to move forward:

• It is feasible that in the future all ship design will be undertaken by large mega-corporations. These designs would then be sold on to other fabrication facilities (much like the ARM microchip strategy)
• The Federation (ie Earth start point) would buy / manufacture ships from all mega-corps. Other factions may only buy / manufacture ships from a small subset.
  • This means all ship designers ships will be seen by all players
  • Other factions will have a general feel to them by the nature of limited ships
  • Each faction would have its own colour for patterns. Federation ships would not use patterns so there is some incentive to travel outside the Federation to get more interesting variations on ships.

• Regardless of any of the above. Realism should be key.
• Designers should think about thruster placement, correct scale, room for crew cabins, room for engines / landing gear etc. For my Deneb / Venture star I have an internal blueprint in my head where all components would fit inside the craft. I love the Wave but I just cant imagine where the crew would sit etc..
• There needs to be a ship guide with examples of ship roles / thruster power / fuel consumption for ship designers to base their ships from.

I've been working on another 2 ships, whilst doing 5 million other things simultaneously 😀

1 is a player ship the other is a static ship for sitting outside stations / npc.

I'm working on that little red transport ship I posted a while ago and also on a large transport from the same manufacturer/design bureau (painting a concept right now).

(Also updating my small courier to the pattern system). I'm intended to come up with a line of freighters, one or two freighters, some low range shuttles, a ship aimed for exploration and a small luxury/racing craft. All from the same bureau. I already have some preliminary doodles for some.

Speaking of art style, I've been meaning to make some changes to the sector view.

Namely switch to using colourised animated textures for stars (using a texture atlas for animation frames), textured stalks showing distance from current sector plane, and a fresnel shaded sphere to show jump distance.

However I think that the whole screen needs a graphical and functional redesign.

Today I read how Elite 4's new system screen is going to look. That's much more the level of fidelity that we need to be aiming for and is pretty much what I've had in my mind for the sector view screen.

It should be feasible to only have a single screen though, start off in sector view, select or focus on a star, zoom-in/double-click and it transitions into the system view.

Hoping you're still around and interested nozmajner 😉

Namely switch to using colourised animated textures for stars (using a texture atlas for animation frames), textured stalks showing distance from current sector plane, and a fresnel shaded sphere to show jump distance.

The shading on the sphere is really important. When I was doing the 3D galaxy map I tried some flat spheres, but of course they don't show enough depth to be useful.
 

However I think that the whole screen needs a graphical and functional redesign.

Today I read how Elite 4's new system screen is going to look. That's much more the level of fidelity that we need to be aiming for and is pretty much what I've had in my mind for the sector view screen.

Really interesting ideas. The filters idea has come up in discussion before. Some experiments were done with trying to get more info in the UI about trade, see #1197. The UI ran out of steam on that one really.
 

It should be feasible to only have a single screen though, start off in sector view, select or focus on a star, zoom-in/double-click and it transitions into the system view.

Yes, that's something I've wanted for a long time - combined sector, system (orbital) and system info views. With terrain in the super-close up. That was one of the very first things I tried to do (March 2011!) but I didn't understand the code at all back then so I didn't get very far.

The shading on the sphere is really important. When I was doing the 3D galaxy map I tried some flat spheres, but of course they don't show enough depth to be useful.

Was this regarding the jump distance sphere?

My thought was to make it something like this from EVE:

Here's a screenshot from my experiments at the time (don't have any usable code anymore):

As you can see, without some shading or whatever to indicate depth its really difficult to take any useful information away from it.

Maybe some animation, or some drift to the camera so you get some parallax?

Flat colour won't work but how to we feel about my very first fresnel(-ish) sphere 😉

[attachment=2058:screenshot-20130711-204357.png]

On a totally unrelated note that I definitely don't, in any way, need any help with, at all, I'm just mentioning it... y'know, because... Does anyone know why you can jump to systems that appear to be outside of your jump range? Only the pretty sphere I'm drawing is centred on the player, but there are systems which are clearly outside of it that you can reach?

It's quite odd because I'm scaling the sphere by the hyperspace range, which is the same value used for the distance test. I don't think the scale is different for the star positions or anything.

Obviously this is just a first glimpse so don't expect it to look quite right yet 😀

...but do feel free to make suggestions etc!

 

Flat colour won't work but how to we feel about my very first fresnel(-ish) sphere

 

Nifty. I would make the border a bit darker, but the falloff somewhat slower.

 

It's quite odd because I'm scaling the sphere by the hyperspace range, which is the same value used for the distance test. I don't think the scale is different for the star positions or anything.

 

 What's the base unit of the grid? a Lightyear? 

Flat colour won't work but how to we feel about my very first fresnel(-ish) sphere 😉

Its a good start! Its still not showing me depth in a way that makes sense to me, but I know you're not done yet 😉

Does anyone know why you can jump to systems that appear to be outside of your jump range? Only the pretty sphere I'm drawing is centred on the player, but there are systems which are clearly outside of it that you can reach?

The sectorview presents your range based on your ship's current mass (equipment, cargo, fuel, etc), not the max range under "ideal" conditions (ie from empty). That doesn't quite answer your question, but it does mean that you can manage to jump further than the sector view would have you believe.

What's the base unit of the grid? a Lightyear?

One sector. An 8x8x8 ly cube.

Is it possible to colour the grid (and the stars?) inside the sphere with a brighter or different colour? Or (and?) draw a circle where the sphere intersects the grid. I think in that way it would be easier to see where's the limit.

I think the uniform star labels might ruin the depth abit. How does it look if you turn off labels?

Looks good fluffy, would be a nice addition.

As for why you can jump to systems outside your range.  What does the info say about the range? Does it say its within range or do you mean its just outside your sphere?  There could always be some wonkiness with the positioning of systems when compared to their actual range.  How big a difference is it really?  Perhaps you could just fudge it a little, make your radius a couple of % greater to catch them all 😛

@robn,

That might explain it but I think it might be a rendering discrepancy, hard to tel right now, guess I'll have to experiment and play around with it a bit 🙂

@Tichy,

I hope to do something about star rendering in another patch later on, one thing at a time this time around to keep the PR's smaller. I may have to try brightening / dimming stars but it is already doing some of that for reachable system and I hoped that would be enough.

I'll be adding a similarly transparent disk that bisects the sphere in the plane of the grid next.

@shadmar,

Yeah you're right, it'd be better if they were truly 3D so that they'd be affected by the transparency of the sphere.

@All,

What about changing the grid itself? Do people have any opinions on that?

I used a shot from EVE before with range nicely delineated by circles which might be simple to add?

One sector. An 8x8x8 ly cube.

 

I was actually thinking of the "grid" of the engine. I.e. if you draw a vector of length one, how long a distance will it represent? It's not reall important, though. I thought there might be a slight chance that it is connected with fluffyßs distance problem.

There always the star citizen way 🙂

So ring style grid looks nice. I also would suggest maybe the stars where rendered glowing with some halo.