SpaceSimCentral

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First a short preview on the "FFE ships mod", it contains 18 ffe ships (21) and replaces almost all ships of a common phoenix installation, only a few static ships are left for compatibility.
I decided to replace the ships because else they get simply to many in my opinion, it's no big thing to re-enable them because they are simply disabled by a blank ship specs file, if this blank file is removed from the mod the ship is re-enabled.
due to that as long as you use different ship sets the savegames are of course not interchangeable between the modded and default installation, but this is already the case if you add a ship and remove it later.

You start with a shuttle or a lifter in the modded version this might make the game very hard at start, i haven't tried it yet with the ffe ships.

But until i worked out something better the game is to return to sol and the idea is to start with a interplanetary shuttle and make a career until you can afford to get "home" at all.

To start at sol is not only stupid it's a bad place to make money with such a miserable ship, the distances between the stations are to short to make good profit.
but it's recently the default starting position i.e. to examine a model or whatever else fun purpose like cosmic billard.

Hardly you will meet an enemy and you're lucky if not.
Reconaissance missions often spawn a enemy ship close to you, just rough land your ship to destroy the offender if he's on your heels.
You can evade a persuer in interstellar travel mostly.
Take care that scout missions don't end in a different faction as the one you signed the contract, you can't complete them (probably i will change this to the vice versa, interstellar scout missions will always lead to a different faction and then to the "home faction" to score, even if that faction is probably 100 sectors far from you, and not to any system in any faction to any system in any faction).

you can make a life as postillion, that's safe, easy and somwhat lucrative. in the very beginning this will be your choice because you can't make profit with interplanetary cargo runs and can't afford a ship with a hyperspace drive. the interplanetray taxi runs i still haven't wrote. save up your little profit and buy as soon as possible a radar mapper to sign to interplanetary scout mission, they won't make you rich quicker but you will be bored of the postal runs.

i have no idea yet how this works out with the ip shuttle or lifter, fuel reserves are low and consumption high i guess, maneuverability of the starting ships is weak, cargo capacity equals to zero which means not much extra fuel - but as i elaborated it's sometimes not wise to last your cargo capacity out, you will need more fuel to carry the extra fuel as it will help you to travel faster or longer, you will have to find a useful mediacre load but you will need extra fuel.

at the very beginning without the autopilot this can be a grave, you won't have enough fuel to overshoot your target.

here's the link to the fitting phoenix version including all the nice new buildings.

Phoenix 0.0.5

and that's the "ffe ships" mod
FFE Ships

the space stations are still incomplete, i'm sorry, but i was frustrated and needed a break from the problems i had with the gate animation for the sealed ground station and the orbiter needs to be made overall it's still bare boned.

it's possible to use "big crappy" if you overhaul it somewhat or you can try if one of the early sgm models works, what was content of pioneer31 should work even if i don't like to see them in phoenix for whatever reason. the last "solid" mesh is the pilot and even this is in work to be replaced. i know there is no real good reason not to use wavefront or collada instead of the lmr but the idea is to use scripts only.

it limits the modelling and forces a unique style.
it forces a interested one to deal with the lmr and the limitations/possibilities.
it forces you to pick up pencil and paper,
it strains your brains (all of them).

---

i nearly forgot
the "ffe ship mod" will add the music from FFE overhauled by Mike Cook. (for the proper atmosphere)
they're nicely done and some are really good to listen to.

Oooh, more old school FE2 goodness! I could never say no to that! Great work Gernot!

Yeah! This stuff is looking really good!

grazie cinquecento

perhaps when i finished the ffe set i will convert them to sgm models, but this will be a leftover from the versions for FFED3D, once i've converted them it's easy to export the same model as either direct-x mesh or collada, there is just a small scale problem but this i can solve in the mesh, either i scale the .x meshes down or the collada up (FFED3D is ten times smaller, it's in fact in decimeters instead of meters). the idea is to use them as quick replacement models to fill the missing ships in FFED3D of course for this i wouldn't have to model all ships, but i like to have them for Phoenix/Pioneer as well. They will be in this simple state for Pioneer and will be model by model upgraded for FFED3D, at least this was my intention.

in this manner i can fill FFED3D quite quick with the missing shipmodels and work on them later on.
also once finished they will leave a unified look in FFED3D when you use only my models.
all will have multiple textures and the labels and sub-models will fit mostly because i kept the exact dimensions, slight differences could be fixed in the source (or perhaps using the models .ini, it would be great to reposition labels, guns, thrusters, if they don't fit to the model. it can be done in the source but it won't be flexible). however the models are even in this close to the originals, most thruster positions are exact like ffe. some reverse thrusters i added but that's no problem, they are aftewards just unused.

i know it's more then just unusual to script a model and to use the mesh as starting point, but i feel i get closer to the original in this way (+/- 0.00000001 meter) and it offers me the possibility to work with the beziers exactly (or almost exactly) like they was used for ffe. anyway you search for a different solution if you script as if you use a cad software.

recently the scale is inconsistent like in FFE, but once i finished them i can scale them for Pioneer to something more comprehensible as a constrictor which is almost double in size to the ASP explorer.
the problem is that FFE only doubles scaling divisiors, you get a table like this
.002
.004
.008
.016
.032
.064
.128
.256
.512
1.024
...
that means you can scale only twice up or half down something inbetween isn't possible for ffe.
since the values are integer numbers they had to find something which works.
another example might be the "moray" it is altered for "GLFFE aniso" (in the script) but i didn't think twice in size is proper, it's larger as the cobra mk3 in this way.
the viper mk2 is to small for the capacity and so on.

but i'm free in pioneer to use any scaleing.

---

erm yes a small mistake i noticed.
the "Cobra MKII" has the wrong engine, it comes with a class 4 military drive instead a class 2 default drive.
that's because i forgot this when i altered the script from "turner" to "cobra".

the "Turner Class" is maybe to heavy, i already gave it less cargo as the original, but since the pioneer class4 military and the ffe class 4 military are anything as the same (the hiddeen class 4 in ffe is extremely strong) it would maybe wise to lower the cargo capacity for the turner even more.
it doesn't makes much sense to have 1000 tons cargo capacity for this ship.

future music, if i can achieve this i like to get the multiple drives back of which was said it was an accident, no this would definately make sense for the large carriers. you get nowhere to zero with a class 9 and more then 1000 tons. especially for pioneer this is a problem, 9 ly are enough in FE2 but in pioneer you get nowhere with that. nah it's already shit for FE2, if you don't use the wormhole bug you even get nowhere with a panther. of course it's not the ship of your choice but i guess all ships should be somewhat useful and not just because you won't use it it has only a range of a few crippled ly. why don't buy a bulk carrier? mostly because you can jump only one ly. i guess one would like to buy even such a ship and it should work or how get bulk carriers and LRCruiser to their target? i know they just lurk around as static ships but no one said that it must be this way or that it wouldn't be nice to at least once use a LRC. of course one can spawn the ship no matter if they have a hyperdrive.
but that's not the point, i think they should work no matter if ever used or not.

also this would open the possibility to allow i.e. a turner a second drive to use it as long range explorer as it was ment. it would allow to create crazy missions which you can only fulfill with a ship with multiple drives. get to the black hole in the centre of the galaxy, find a relict of an alien race on the other end of the galaxy, just as example.

there is one ship i don't know what i should do with the "Griffin Carrier" this ship looks so rotten ugly that i have no idea where i should start. also it's a stupid design, there is no comprehensible reason for this ship to look like that, with the two pods to small to hold anything useful. almost the whole space the ship uses is wasted. it's really a boring model, personally i also never used this ship, has anyone used it in FFE?

another one is the "Fer De Lance", never been part of FFE, but i found it in the overhauled colored manual (it's a montage) somehow i like to get this ship modelled but there are many other elite ships, dunno why it has exactly to be the Fer De Lance.

I never used a Griffin Carrier. I think I'd be embarrassed to be seen in one. Maybe if you filled in the back area and turned it into a delta shape it would look ok.

you realy read all that, i'm impressed

it's just a ugly carrier who cares.
we will see, i thought about to use bezier quads, certainly for the head and maybe the pods turn out well when they are oval in profile. still it will look clumsy and i'm not the only one who thinks it's an ugly ship, now then it is ugly.

also about the cluttered together models of FFE i've read today something very similar as i stated myself:
"Some ships in FFE seem slapped together at the last minute, the Gyr is one of them."

[url]http://kelpie.dream-ware.co.uk/ships/gyr.htm[/url]

however i feel the conversion turned out well after some fixes, the ffe model doesn't fits on all edges and corners. the top is smaller as the bottom (you won't see this because of the normals and because it's single sided material) the cockpit is losely on top of the hull somewhat above it, and what you is to see as "belly" is a simple circle with no depth. it is lousy in fact, but works for ffe since you haven't resolution enough to see the leaks.

or the strange skeet cruiser, it's really weird and no man ever knows what the skeet is for, to be shot at i assume. kelpie assumed it's for artificial gravity - hmmm.... strange i imagined this, like a lift you will have some gravity when the skeet lifts but when it comes down you hang on the ceiling. not very useful imho. it needs to be overhauled if i'm in the mood. there is a small nearly not to notice error. but when you look at the bottom of the skeet cruiser you can see the bezier is nicely roundet, on the topside i made a mistake and didn't added the needed points thus the top side is slightly concave. it's really nearly not to notice because it gives the impression of being convex but when you know it you will see that the reflections are wrong for a convex surface. changing this means i have to work on the texture again because then the cockpit won't fit the same anymore and will be sunken in a little more, that's why i didn't fixed it and because it's hard to notice and because you will rarely use a skeet cruiser it's one of the decorative ships in ffe and has no advantages. or like kelpie stated you won't made it in a skeet long it's clumsy in battles.

it's very funny how the dudes describe the ships or their assumings they have, it brings some fantasy to the game i like that.

this is the upcoming ASP, i started it already a couple of days ago before i linked the mod, today and yesterday i worked on the skin. the ships are to save time standartisized in many things, i.e. i repetively use the same methods to create the textures and partially even use the same images for them, likewise the rust pattern. textures are held simple to quicker texture the models even with the help of the mapper.

it leaks a little on the sides because i used only a top projection and noticed later that for the front sides a side projection would have been better. recently i won't change this but it will be changed for ffed3d and then i can use this changed texture as template.

a few words to the texturemapper, i decided to leave it like it is, i wasn't sure if i should add a second vector though you can project from any angle, but while i made the ships and the buildings it happened maybe twice that i needed such a projection, it's this rare that it makes no sense to change the function for a few occasions. in 95% of the cases a projection from either one side is enough. you can rotate it 90° and mirror it to fit to a texture that's enough for the most cases.

also i found out that the "divisor" vector won't be needed for the mapper, it's much better to calculate this in the variables for the mapper, i.e.:

local top = texmapper(v(-25,0,50),v(50/(347/1024),25,100/(883/1024)),v(0,1,0))
the division is to calculate the size in pixels the texture has compared to a full on the texture streched mesh.
models dimensions are x = 50, z = 100
texture space is 347 to 883 on a 1024x1024 texture.

one could scale up or down using the divisor but it isn't practical i found out, this is much better, you see what you calculate and to position shrink/stretch the texture you can work in meters, that's quite comfortable to estimate the position or slight corrections. (or calculate in pixels if you alter the division, adding a pixel will shrink the texture, one less will strech it by one pixel)
in general you can start with "half of" if a mesh is streched full on the texture the distance to centre is exactly half of the size of the mesh.

i could have wrote the mapper different so that it would be centered rightaway, but this isn't good if you use the mapper for "simple" texturing or the way i used it for some buildings, knowing where the default position is i created some textures in a way that you won't have to do nothing. if i centre all, well then all will be centered and not each projection will have a texturespace of its own. also it will be confusing if you use a skin/map because every projection will start in centre. default zero is lower left corner for lefthanded geometry and i kept this, half of the extension brings you to centre. if you also use the same division on the position vector you neither would have to care a lot about that, half of dimension will be centre.

sometimes i didn't used the mapper,
texture(v(-.5,.5,0),v(1/24,0,0),v(0,0,(1/15)/(1/24)))
will be the same as the result of
texmapper(v(-12,0,7.5),v(24,1,15),v(0,1,0))
in the same way you can divide to fit it to the texturespace.

it's just a little more comfortable to work with the mapper, bacause you won't have to mind about the exclusion. the strange thing is that top and side projections need to be divided in "Z" with the value of "X" while if you have a front projection you won't divide "Y" with "X" and just use each as it is.
also you have to move the values to other positions if you like to rotate a texture, this all you won't have to mind using the mapper.

(the "1" for dimension "y" is needed else the mapper fails to calculate because one value is missing, i can't change this i need this to be at least "1" because divisions with zero result in zero and zero means zero - no result. it's also bound to the fact that i used only one vector for the projection, the second vector i take from the dimensions)

to be honest without a cad, blender though, the uv mapping as picture is an export from blender.
the only ship i ever textured without any help from a cad is the rapier, for this ship i made back then a drawing on mm grided paper in the models dimensions and scanned this as template, the result wasn't that good. especially the bezier stuff failed completely.
well i didn't know how to draw beziers, to be honest.

and instead to make a master in drawing beziers i decided to simply use a cad for the projections.

if you examine the textures you can see that i used in the beginning full streched meshes i also didn't used maps this i changed later because of the multiple textures, it makes life easier but isn't really good because you strech the texture and above a certain value it starts to look ugly because of the mip-mapping, also it won't be in the proper relation, lines will be to thin or to thick.
and i found out that if you are once used to the mapper it won't play no big role if the mesh isn't fully streched on the texture the division with the texture space in pixels and full size in pixels works perfect.

assumed it's a quadric map, i.e. 2048x1024 pixels then you simply can double the dimension for "U" (mostly X in the model, Z if it ) instead to divide #/(1024/2048) assumed "x" is streched on 1024 pixels.

slight update, i wasn't satisfied with the stretched texture on the sides of the ASP, thus i changed that.

The updated mod including the ASP.

[url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/h18oc8xu6yjpihx/mod%20ffe%20ships%2020190131.zip?dl=0[/url]

Yay! The Asp was my favorite ship from FE2 and FFE. Looks really good!

Looks liks an asp explorer, very plain but i like it this way.

He, i visited Kelpies ffe website and his judging is similar, the FFE ships often look how he said "like assambled in a hurry".
In a hurry or not but assambled while the old ships are made like of one cast, very simple yet cool.

I finished another brutal example of that kind, the "Spar Attack Fighter", a lot of mismatching parts it's just you don't see this in a resolution of 320x200, however i guess it worked out well.

The "Harrier" will be a near to similar ship, it uses almost the same geometry and has the same leaks in it, i await it with pleasure (grmbl...).

It start's with the many bended quads, ok even tne cobras leak of this much and still do in my conversions but it's hard to notice, but the bended quads and wrong wound flats in ffe are almost standard, "doesn't matter you won't notice that" i get this feeling. I guess also many ships are only ai vessels, or did someone ever used a "Gyr", "Spar", "Harrier" or "Harris Fighter"? the latter is a fine ship for FFE i guess, sort of hidden gem, it offers more cargo as the cobra mk3 but has a better performance, due to the scaling limitations of FFE the ship is far to small for it's capacity (while next step would be far to big), guessing of that most of the ship is wings, i scaled it up somewhat. While in general i scaled now all to "1" instead of the exact 1.024, the .024 are neglectable, also i scaled the geometry up or down to end in 1.024 ("1") instead to use the model scale, if you scale to much the lod and z-bias won't work proper also you get a better idea if you like to scale a ship new because all are now "1". I did that already for the "Harris" and the far to giant Constrictor which is as large as the ASP therefore i scaled the ASP a little up to fit better to the next heavier, the Lanner. This was something which always worried me the mismatching Constrictor and ASP. Yes it's true it's hard to notice in FFE you play and you won't compare the sizes - usually. Thus one could say what matters if a Connie doesn't fits to a Cobra or a ASP. In FFE the scale is ofte a matter of "luck" or let's say look. Truely the orbital spacestations are to small, with exception of the orbital city maybe, but even here i guess it isn't the real to guess size. If we take the Wheel station then tell me where are the four ships docked, magically one in another? the whole docking procedure is a "cheat", you don't move a shit, it only looks like. To be honest only to park four ships of a guessed diameter of max. 100m you need a station as large (or small) as my orbiter, but in fact the space is used all for the four docks, acceptable but i guess it's still to small and them are only four, not that i need more to play but for sure something like an "orbital city" will have a lot more as 4 docking bays (i'm guessing about to cheat this for larger stations, to display a random port no. and give you the idea of so and so many bays). Buildings are scaled by purpose one could say. What is in the background must not be scaled proper. Hmmm.... just guess of the small diamond shaped orbiter accompained by 4 Long Range Cruisers, and i guess even the cruisers are to small, but that's ok it's only decoration.

i've made a clip of my finally working hostile port (and orbiter) docking procedure
fotunately no one noticed it, but i felt so sorry that i handed out a broken game, what i uploaded had a complete broken docking animation for the hostile port. this made me so sorry that i had to fix that once and for all.

I was an idiot to be honest, even this time i searched and searched for the reason why the tard doesn't works as it should.
Suddenly i found it, "dock_one_at_a_time_please" changed to "dock_one_at_a_time", the wrong spelling prevented the single gate stations from working proper. i just never noticed this small change in spelling. One could argue if such changes made any sense but i won't.

The postal runs have now a mass which varies from 0 to 2 tons, unfortunately i have to use whole tons and unfortunately it's "rubbish" (in future this will be a new item). And mean as i am if you jettison this "rubbish" you can't complete the mission because hey you jettisoned my stuff even if it looks like "rubbish" to you it belongs to me (on the other hand i can't differ between this or that rubbish, not yet). The idea is that some exra mass will cost you extra fuel and extra time and that you can't contract to as many missions as you like. Phoenix is a bit picky in such things and the ships are weak. The FFE ships are mostly even weaker, especially the starting ships "IP Shuttle" and "Lifter", i had to give them slightly better thrust for the game but they are still just lame. The reason is the consequnet use of the original thrust values for the empty ship (hull plus fuel) it results in clumsy carriers and acceptable fighters, the 27G of a MKII Eagle shrink to the half if once ladden. Personally i guess this is the behave in Frontier, the G's are ment for the empty ship, the quite low angular multiplier i use results in almost the same behave for large ships as in Frontier, if that is realistic i don't now but it feels "realistic", the heavy ships have "drag". It's maybe i little to tight, some ships can hardly lift when they are ladden, but well on the other hand i like that, it's for sure better as one ship is hunting the other in outstanding performance. The scale is inconsistent in FE2/FFE but the ship specs are very balanced, you never find the right ship, each has its drawbacks. One could be satisfied with a Cobra MKII or an ASP? Nah, some military missions require to have a Cobra MKI. If it's a heavy mass planet or one with this strange traktor beam (or whatever it is what holds you back) you need a ship with a very good acceleration, forget shields and weapons, a 1MW beam laser, some shields and a large jumprange if you can't or won't use a "wormhole bug". I rember to use a Cobra MKII often but the bottom thrust is very low of this ship it's no problem for the autopilot it seems (some trick?), but manually you are lost (it's not the only ship with reduced manual maneuverability), however to photograph or bomb you often have to hover over the surface with your nose up and use the main thrusters not to collide with the planets surface. The Cobra MKI has enough hyperspace range to reach the targets which can be sometimes quite far away depending on for which faction you work, it seems to me a career in the empire is somewhat easier. By the way, don't approach like an eagle to a target, rather like a sleek coyote, ok crashed ships give no honor (and no points) but one less is one less no matter how. Heavy mass planets can be good targets in FE2, because often even they can't start to intercept you and collide right after start one after the other, it's just you have to find a way to handle the large gravity. Likewise the strange flying stations, whatever causes this i never saw a ship starting from such a station, but well they are almost unreachable, they "slip" away as soon as you are in the right range but you can trick this with the use of the stardreamer.

i drifted away,


it's a good half of a hour "Phoenix" showing a first mission (or two) in the FFE Ships mod.
The missions are of course the same with or without the FFE ships and ships and missions fit in a similar way (phew).

From on 00:22:00 it starts to get somewhat funny i don't know such never happened before, a bursted planet and i was quite confused how to reach the station but managed it finally, even without that shitty planet, bah!

The system i play in is a noteworthy one i guess, it's not the best you can find to start in, the distance is a little low and you have to make many manual flights to get an autopilot, but interesting is the closensess of some planets to the brown dwarf star, the stars gravity will give you troubles, it gives even the autopilot troubles expecially because the ships are so weak. The planets speed around their sun and you have to fly good to reach them at all. so it's not because i'm a bloody beginner when i overshoot sometimes this dramatically it's really perky.

A couple of new conversions i've made and like i said i fixed the stations and added cargo to the postal runs.
I will repect this in future also in the answers, so if the cargo is missing and you are in time he won't answer you are late (therefore i think about to strip all translations from Phoenix, personally i don't need it and when i work alone on it already one language is more then enough), he will argue about that you lost his goods, maybe this could even cost you something, why not. Besides i like to keep the possibility to jettison the mission cargo even if that is one a special item and not just rubbish. There could be a situation when you need to jettison it.

But recently it's ok as it is as long as it's just rubbish.
the weight isn't random, "some documents" have no weight, a crate of goods or a whatever good is one ton and moving a home is 2 tons, it's to think about to give the latter a random value from 1 to 10 but then it must be to request in the bb and the mission roster and i have to check for free space (anyway) which i didn't made yet such is still to do.
but i'm quite satisfied for now.
I don't like the mission scripting to well, problematic is also that i have no web at home and can't refere qickly to some help.


I will link the stuff as soon as i prepped it.

MKIII

New will be the "Harris" (that weird large X-wing thing), "Spar", "Osprey", "Osprey-X", "Transporter", "Lanner" and "Lanner II"

Yeah, I flew a Harris for a while. It was great and I loved the look of it. The shuttle and the lifter may be lame, but there may come a time in a player's 'life' when they're out of money due to fines or damage and have to downsize. I haven't even gotten around to playing your last upload, but I'm looking forward to the next one!

never mind, i haven't even since a couple of weeks, right when i attempted to make the clip i noticed the broken station animation. thus i had to fix that and because of i added the cargo to the package drops.

like i said modded it's even harder, shuttle and lifter are weaker as my shuttles.
you will never use a lifter or shuttle in FE2/FFE but you can't get around that in Phoenix (except you change the starting ships). For this i started to refine my calculation for the mission timelimit based on the distance. instead to use a logarithm i just copied walterars calculation for the payment.
it's based on a square root result and yes i've read that this is a probate method to get an exponential curve as result. this is exactly what i needed, more time for short distances, less for long because you can accelerate longer and since the ships are very weak (yet still impossible) you need some time and even more fuel. perhaps i balance this even harder, it results greatly in gameplay value without to write one line of code or script. i just have to lower the thruster efficiency again and it will be a lot more challanging.

yes i want that someone who will play this tard feels a bit proud when he succeeded "finally i made it!" and if you have to try several times to reach this shitty station, i often need myself more as one try, i'm no god.

no one will ever scoop fuel from a gas giant if he's not forced, but it's there it just waits to be used. i noticed that since the gas giants have a surface (the diameter is to debate, but i accept it as limit where the gas gets thick as a hard shell) it's much harder to scoop fuel.

i know in good old fe2 you can even land and even deploy mining machines on gg, i favored them. overall personally i feel it won't matter where you deploy them the harvest seems to be random, even when i've read not to long ago about places which are more or less suitable for mining, i guess, or my experience is that this won't matter, it's random (it's still debatet about a game from '93? wow!).
to me it mattered most that they won't be found, because every mining machine will vanish once, most likely this is a simple counter and a random halt. even to stash them away using the wormhole bug won't help.

however, left open ends imho, even in fe2, it's there but not actively used, scooping and mining can be challanging but you have to force a player to do it, except he's a weirdo like me who has to try all no matter if it makes sense or if it's part of a "storyline". fe2 has no real and liked to leave this to the player, i liked that but most disliked exactly this fact to find themself in an open space without any special goal.

likewise a stupid galaga clone wins in gameplay due to some coins and blinking things (which is a bit a riddle to me) a player loves to be honored with something, even if that is just a blinking thing on a screen. what is the real magic of mario, mario? luigi, princess peaches? no the coins i can collect are the magical ingredient.

riceballs, pardon me sega are less interesting even when very sympathic.

why did ppl play frenetically tetris?
because of the eye candy with the trepak dancing russians.
the title music (so far it's an execerpt of a classical piece) is still a hit in the web.
"tetris ahh the game with the trepak dancing russians" who will remember what it was about?

eye candies come and go but that thing blinkie bllnky works always.

honestly John Doherty shouldn't have entitled it "Zombie Marbles" - "Zombie Diamonds" make them blinking semitransparent and it might become a hit.
The game is a challanging short game in which the machine always wins.
different colored marbles on which you have to shoot with the right color to stop them from growing, slow approach but horrible, just like zombies, not to stop.
20 minutes of action if one likes that.

as usual "it's just a developers toy gernot" - dammit it's one of the best games for the old machine.

-- to the harris
you really used it? i guess i'm a very biased federal
unlike the FFE ships which are held in one color for this ships (almost the whole range of new ships) i used some colored materials. the harris looks hmm so and so, aometimes the combination is good and next time it produces nausea.

the cockpit is of cours an addition, but it needs one (likewise the turner) imho.

it won't need it, but one thing for sure already such a little thing like a cockpit gives you an idea of the size.

that large black whatever it should be on the Spar (and i guess even Harrier) one could guess it's a window? in this size? i replaced even with such a cockpit thing.



in general the beziers for this ship are present, but it's horrible put together, the sides which are now clearly convex, give in ffe the impression of being convex from the side, if veiwed from front they are in fact concave but the rear end requires a convex shape. the wings are paperthin on the rostrum and the bottom is folded in that much that everything else is as paperthin on the rostrum.
all of this you won't notice in the way the model is drawn in ffe.

but exactly that is what differs them from the old models, they have more details as Fe2 could ever draw and didn't "abused" the simple fact that the resolution is such low that you won't notice something.
the absolute peak of this is the "radioactive" label on the cobra mk3, no way to be displayed in frontier but it's there. if it would be a ffe ship it wouldn't be there at all - because you won't notice it.
the absolute vice versa is to trick with a circle a shape (Gyr) or to use a blob as geometry (Mantis).
almost all later ships have simply main thrusters and basta.

another one i liked to put some effort in was the osprey, it's a nice fighter and i guess this time they captured it, it's not an airplane like the eagle or falcon, it's clearly a spaceship but not as weird as some of the rest.

looks like missed to make a shot of the osprey-x, i used a different way to texture it as for the osprey. the "X" is textured more from the side as the "osprey". it can be diffuclut to project on a round shape.

the wings i cut a little, in the orignal they are even more curved and more is vertical, impossible to project on, even if i would have used a angled projection it would have been bad and smeared, it's still but i guess acceptable.

these two was made in a hurry by me, they was quite easy to make