Completed Pioneer Models

[durandal]

Nice work, do not worry about wheel animations and sub_models.

[robn]

I move that this thing be made the default start ship.

[matthewfarmery]

mark 2 of the ship, certainly as long as its cargo space is OK, but yeah, I would agree, would be nice to start in a new ship and step away from the default eagle mk1so yeah I second the notation

[Geraldine]

Um..... thirded! Yes some may think that the Eagle LRF should remain as it's the more "traditional" starting ship, but then again you could also say this about the Cobra MkIII too. So why not a compromise then ? Have 3 different start positions with three different ships.

[Marcel]

Quote:
So why not a compromise then ? Have 3 different start positions with three different ships.
Compromise, that's a word that used to be used in my country. Great idea Geraldine. How about a fourth with a Cobra MK III? All we would need to do is to find Lave.

[matthewfarmery]

in frontier you had several different start positions too, and one was with a Cobra mk3, but no auto pilot, while the other start position was on Mars, the and final one on Lavebut yeah, three start positions with three types of ships, I see this working

[Guest]

matthewfarmery wrote:
but yeah, three start positions with three types of ships, I see this working
I like this idea

[Geraldine]

Thinking a little more about this......Also, with the 3 starting positions, you could have an "Easy" option of the first ship, fully outfitted (listed above) in a safe system with a totally clean criminal record, a "Normal" option with the Eagle LRF with an adequate equipment level in a slightly unsafe system with some petty fines (say around a couple of thousand credits) to pay off and finally a "Hard" option with the Cobra MkIII with just basic onboard equipment in a very unsafe system with big humongous fines.This is more than a compromise, it gives the player a real choice on how difficult they want the start of the game to be.

[matthewfarmery]

frontier did similar, and pretty sure one of the harder starts, cobra, you had fines too, so yeah, adding fines to the game would make it more interesting, especailly if there are bounty hunters after you for the hardest settingeditloaded up frontier, the cobra start point, had you as a fugitive in the federal and imperial systemsedit 2thinking about start points more, (probably should be in its own thread) but for the easy start, pirate ambushes should be very rare, if ever, as you should be in a safe policed areas, the second start point with the eagle mk1, ambushes should be more common, say 1/10 chance, or maybe a bit lowerwhile the cobra start point should see you wanted by bounty hunters and pirates, and your only refuge from the law are disputed systems, lawless and survival of the fittest, and ambushes should 1/3 I guess this could be more balanced once the game is in beta, but I think this would allow people either a very easy start to the game, or if they never played frontier before, or those that have and want a harder start use the second start point, while those that want the hardest and greatest challenge, use the third start pointI think that would allow the game to be more flexible, while still remaining easy for new inexperienced players

[durandal]

Vlastan wrote:
I'm gonna continue creating new models and variants for each one in the next days...But i have some problems with lua scripting, so when i'm finished with this, i'm gonna give these models to the dev comunity for the right ingame implementation.
Better give finished models sonner than later and post links to our issue on github.

[Brianetta]

One of our game starts will ultimately be the one described in issue 374. It'll be the one I use when I start my first "real" game after all this testing.

[s2odan]

Brianetta wrote:
It'll be the one I use when I start my first "real" game after all this testing.
I second that

[Geraldine]

WOW that would be a tough start, lots of smaller goals before really opening the game up. I guess, since the capacity is there within the game to allow you to make money without leaving a system, then yes I third that too 4 start positions then, easy, normal, challenging and hardcore? I mentioned this before, I think there should be a special achievement that is recorded within the game if you manage to take to the stars after such a difficult start.

[Marcel]

Quote:
I think there should be a special achievement that is recorded within the game if you manage to take to the stars after such a difficult start.
Perhaps we should call it the Brianetta Award, because he's sure to be the first person to achieve it!

[Brianetta]

Don't count on it. I'll be distracted by the flying.

[matthewfarmery]

4 starts seems OK for me,

[Robsoie]

A few questions about contributing with models.For the engine, what should be the best polycount a space ship (regardless of its size) should be ?I'm used to make low poly models in Blender, but if starting detailling a bit the shapes, it's easy to get the face count going high in no time.By example i model this very low poly shape, it is indeed very simpleNow if i start to detail it a bit like this :polycount is going to be obviously increasing and last thing i want is to get the engine crawling.So at what kind of polycount a space ship model is considering good for Pioneer ?Now for the structure of a space ship model : would there be problem if a space ship model is made of several part that are saved as if it was a single model, of would it be necessary to have the whole model not made from any part but from 1 single hullI mean by example for this shape :Would this be acceptable :Or is it necessary to make this :Finally, is Pioneer using a LOD system for the models (i mean level of details in which a model may be more or less detailled depending on the distance between it and the player) , would solve the polycount optimisation problem, as i could model many kind of LODs so a space ship would be detailled (in a reasonnable way though) visually only when the player is close to itNow question about the textures, it's obvious that for a 3D model, less texture by models = better, so it's always more efficient for performance to have a model using only 1 texture.So in the case in which more that 1 texture is needed for a model, what would be the absolute maximum to keep the model efficient with the Pioneer engine ?While i think about it and having noticed pulsating lights working, i am wondering, would then this kind of texture (with the lights actually be in that free texture found on a website) a big no in Pioneer ?Finally, what's certainly the biggest obstacle for me, i have read in this thread that you need coding.Is there any kind of documentation on how to bring a space ship into the game , and what is exactly needed in term of vertex groups , naming etc to get the required anumations (gear, station doors, etc... ) working ?edit : and remembering that all the engine i made contributions for always required specific licenses for the added content, what is required for Pioneer models/textures , does it need to be all-GPL like for Flightgear (non GPL content being only then available as 3rd party download) , or would Creative Commons (or even more restrictive licenses) acceptable/required for inclusion in the main releases ?

[durandal]

1.) For lod 1 aka collision mesh lower better. No need to export UV to collision obj. For other lods 2-4 you just add meshes with more details, lod 4 is with the highest detail.2.) If your ship is going to use more than one material you must separate objects that are going to use different material. (use_material() in lua). You are free to do with faces/shapes what ever you want just note that everything should be triangulisated - when exporting obj.3.) You can use as much textures as you want, more importans is size of texture - both in pixels and MB. 1024x1024 should be enough.4.) You are free to add you own lights. This is done from lua.5.) More info is available on pioneerspacesim dev wiki and on irc.

[fluffyfreak]

durandal wrote:
1.) For lod 1 aka collision mesh lower better. No need to export UV to collision obj. For other lods 2-4 you just add meshes with more details, lod 4 is with the highest detail.2.) If your ship is going to use more than one material you must separate objects that are going to use different material. (use_material() in lua). You are free to do with faces/shapes what ever you want just note that everything should be triangulisated - when exporting obj.3.) You can use as much textures as you want, more importans is size of texture - both in pixels and MB. 1024x1024 should be enough.4.) You are free to add you own lights. This is done from lua.5.) More info is available on pioneerspacesim dev wiki and on irc.
A slight addendum to this, modern graphics cards/drivers hate small meshes/textures.It's much more efficient and future proof if the model has been welded into a single mesh wherever possible and the textures/materials that it used turned into texture pages/atlases (i.e. many textures within a single larger texture).If we ever want to get to the point where we have larger numbers of ships in a single area than the current maximum I've seen of 3 (!) then we'll probably need to start adopting more rendering friendly modelling approaches.

[fluffyfreak]

Robsoie wrote:
Now for the structure of a space ship model : would there be problem if a space ship model is made of several part that are saved as if it was a single model, of would it be necessary to have the whole model not made from any part but from 1 single hullI mean by example for this shape :Would this be acceptable :Or is it necessary to make this :
I think the last approach is the better one to take, otherwise you could get z-fighting issues at the intersections. Also remember that polygons are single-sided (or they should be) modelling thin fins/wings/etc needs to be done with a mesh consisting of triangles on both "sides".