[IDEA] The Stardrake (Inspired by the Wyvera Mod)

[steelwing]

Heh. I just installed Wings3D. Much more intuitive than Blender, and just as capable. I'll have to learn my way around it, but I'd be willing to bet right now that I can do everything I need to in it.

[Aury]

You'll need to use an external renderer, like bryce

[digdug]

Heh. I just installed Wings3D. Much more intuitive than Blender, and just as capable. I'll have to learn my way around it, but I'd be willing to bet right now that I can do everything I need to in it.

yeah, you can install kerkytea or POVray and render directly from 3dWings, but I think that making all the facings and textures is going to be difficult.

Activate the advanced menus in Wings3D, so that you have access to the magnets and advanced tweak menu.
I like Wings3D because there are no buttons! everything is accessed from the right click menu and with the keyboard. middle click will rotate the camera in the default settings, so be sure to have a 3buttons mouse.

The main tutorial on the wings3d webiste (the dog house I think) is easy and good for learning the basic commands.

[steelwing]

Heh. I just installed Wings3D. Much more intuitive than Blender, and just as capable. I'll have to learn my way around it, but I'd be willing to bet right now that I can do everything I need to in it.

yeah, you can install kerkytea or POVray and render directly from 3dWings, but I think that making all the facings and textures is going to be difficult.

Activate the advanced menus in Wings3D, so that you have access to the magnets and advanced tweak menu.
I like Wings3D because there are no buttons! everything is accessed from the right click menu and with the keyboard. middle click will rotate the camera in the default settings, so be sure to have a 3buttons mouse.

The main tutorial on the wings3d webiste (the dog house I think) is easy and good for learning the basic commands.

Yes, tutorials are such helpful things.
The facings may not be all that difficult. 40 facings means renderings from 40 different viewpoints in a circle around the model. 360/40 = 9, so I just move the camera (or rotate the model) 9 degrees for each render. Textures will be easy, too; Wings3D has almost all of the material generation options that Blender does. And if those won't work, at worst, I can use GIMP to generate a texture graphic to put on my model.
Or better, I could model it in Wings and then import to Blender and do all my texturing and rendering there, since I know better how to make Blender do exactly what I want in those areas.

[steelwing]

StarDrakeFirstRender.png (8.84 KiB) Viewed 7292 times

And for some perspective...

StarDrakePerspective.png (14.18 KiB) Viewed 7292 times

This shot lets you see how the wings slope. Something like this would be ideal for the image shown during ship selection, I think.
The model was built in Wings3D, as were the materials. The rendering was done in Kerkythea.
I'm excited!

[Ttech]

StarDrakeFirstRender.png

And for some perspective...

StarDrakePerspective.png

This shot lets you see how the wings slope. Something like this would be ideal for the image shown during ship selection, I think.
The model was built in Wings3D, as were the materials. The rendering was done in Kerkythea.
I'm excited!

Very interesting, very bird like, i'd imagine a ship in space more like an aquatic animal with more design to 'float' and to mention it... if the cargo old opens at the rear... what are you entering through? totally joking there.

[steelwing]

Very interesting, very bird like, i'd imagine a ship in space more like an aquatic animal with more design to 'float' and to mention it... if the cargo old opens at the rear... what are you entering through? totally joking there.

Oh, the funny part of this was that my wife and I both thought it looked aquatic rather than bird-like.
As a serious response, I envisioned that the hold could be opened from anywhere on the ship. The organic hull would "morph" an opening to accept or eject cargo as needed. Similar openings could be formed for the pilot to get in and out of the ship.

[Ttech]

I suppose so, looking at it again, but the 'wings' look a tad bit large for an aquatic methinks. But its not bad design.

[steelwing]

I found a way to get my model into Blender and decided to do all my materials and rendering there. I also decided to....adjust my color scheme. I wasn't sure that purple and yellow looked right for an organic starship, so I decided to try a different color combination that looked more "organic".

StarDrakeImage.png (74.07 KiB) Viewed 7228 times

Thoughts?
For comparison, here's the original purple and yellow...

StarDrakeImage1.png (90.25 KiB) Viewed 7228 times

[steelwing]

I think I've finally got something that I'm happy with for the coloring of my ship. This view will be used for the ship selection screen...

StarDrakeImage.png (79.95 KiB) Viewed 7216 times

Now to figure out the facings and the masks...

[Patupi]

Fascinating! Before you mentioned this to me (in another thread) I'd been thinking about a possible organic concept based loosely on what I'd said in that thread. I'd actually come up with a couple of ways to work it, and one of them seems similar to what you are talking about.

One was that when you 'feed' items to the ship it adds variable stats to the appropriate part of the ship (shields, reactor, size, thrust etc), so if you fed it a reactor it would increase power output, certain fuels (instead of refueling with them) would increase fuel tankage or efficiency etc. Feeding shields would add stats to the organic shield system. If that shield you fed it had a HP Bonus above a threshold it would increase that HP bonus in the organic shield. Simliarly feeding a shield with too low a HP Bonus would actually lower the Organic's HP Bonus accordingly. Be careful what you feed it! Similar to that would be the built in organic weapon. Feed certain types of damage and it would gradually change, sometimes flipping the damage type, changing rate of fire up and down based on what you feed it. It'd be a challenge to get it to be where you wanted it as too many weapons would have detrimental side effects.

Engines was a tricky one. I really wanted to split up tops speed, thrust, manouverability so you could vary the type of ship you were growing. OK, so if you increased the ship mass (by eating wrecks most likely) it would lower engine stats and you'd have to increase them somehow.

As I was thinking of the engine trouble I realised if I went to a points based system entirely that would sort itself out. In a way it's not as nice a system but it would be far more customizable by the player.

So the second system i came up with would have a generic 'eat item' and that would give 'growth points' to the ship, but specific to the type of item you fed it. Engine growth points, reactor growth points etc. Also any item with special bonuses (shield HP bonus, armor resistance, weapon damage types) would give a secondary... 'score' I guess, that allowed you spend so many of the standard points on these bonus types. IE if you put in an armor that had radiation proofing it the 'radiation proof' score would go up slightly. If it went up enough you could spend some of the normal 'armor growth points' to buy radiation proofing for the ships carapace.

With this I was also thinking of having the growth points, bonus points as well as stats local to the device in question and using the new dynamic types code in Transcendence to make new devices as it went with the appropriate stats. This means you could uninstall an 'organic shield' and replace it with a mechanical one if you really wanted, but then it wouldn't increase in capability. Also you could reinstall the old organic shield to pick up growth where you left off... or grow a new shield to replace the mechanical one... but that one would start from scratch. Thus you could grow an advanced shield and sell it... but you'd be loosing a LOT of work.

It's a bit of a toss up which system I prefer. The first one feels better. You eat items and get a more fluid result directly, plus less menu screens to get results. The second one does give you far more control of the upgrading but I feel lacks some of the feel of the direct upgrading... Still, I'm tempted to think the second version would work better, if it's possible.

Any thoughts on all this meandering?

[steelwing]

Fascinating! Before you mentioned this to me (in another thread) I'd been thinking about a possible organic concept based loosely on what I'd said in that thread. I'd actually come up with a couple of ways to work it, and one of them seems similar to what you are talking about.

One was that when you 'feed' items to the ship it adds variable stats to the appropriate part of the ship (shields, reactor, size, thrust etc), so if you fed it a reactor it would increase power output, certain fuels (instead of refueling with them) would increase fuel tankage or efficiency etc. Feeding shields would add stats to the organic shield system. If that shield you fed it had a HP Bonus above a threshold it would increase that HP bonus in the organic shield. Simliarly feeding a shield with too low a HP Bonus would actually lower the Organic's HP Bonus accordingly. Be careful what you feed it! Similar to that would be the built in organic weapon. Feed certain types of damage and it would gradually change, sometimes flipping the damage type, changing rate of fire up and down based on what you feed it. It'd be a challenge to get it to be where you wanted it as too many weapons would have detrimental side effects.

This where I started out, except the weapons. Weapons will still be equipped, though the dynamic types would make it theoretically possible to do growable weapons.

Engines was a tricky one. I really wanted to split up tops speed, thrust, manouverability so you could vary the type of ship you were growing. OK, so if you increased the ship mass (by eating wrecks most likely) it would lower engine stats and you'd have to increase them somehow.

As I was thinking of the engine trouble I realised if I went to a points based system entirely that would sort itself out. In a way it's not as nice a system but it would be far more customizable by the player.

That's one way to do it. My own plan was originally to offer the player "stepped" options in each growth area. Want to upgrade your armor? Based on armor plates and armor upgrades your ship has recently consumed, you could upgrade to one of the following: Armor plates with 10% more HP and a .1% higher repair rate; 5% higher HP and 1% repair rate; 2% higher HP and 4% higher repair rate. Same with shields and engines. The reactor would be more predictably stepped, and options would be based on current hull size.

So the second system i came up with would have a generic 'eat item' and that would give 'growth points' to the ship, but specific to the type of item you fed it. Engine growth points, reactor growth points etc. Also any item with special bonuses (shield HP bonus, armor resistance, weapon damage types) would give a secondary... 'score' I guess, that allowed you spend so many of the standard points on these bonus types. IE if you put in an armor that had radiation proofing it the 'radiation proof' score would go up slightly. If it went up enough you could spend some of the normal 'armor growth points' to buy radiation proofing for the ships carapace.

With this I was also thinking of having the growth points, bonus points as well as stats local to the device in question and using the new dynamic types code in Transcendence to make new devices as it went with the appropriate stats. This means you could uninstall an 'organic shield' and replace it with a mechanical one if you really wanted, but then it wouldn't increase in capability. Also you could reinstall the old organic shield to pick up growth where you left off... or grow a new shield to replace the mechanical one... but that one would start from scratch. Thus you could grow an advanced shield and sell it... but you'd be loosing a LOT of work.

Except for weapons and certain types of supporting devices, everything on my ship will be organic. No option to remove the shield or armor because it's an integral part of the ship.
I like the points concept, and it matches with the direction I'm moving in.

It's a bit of a toss up which system I prefer. The first one feels better. You eat items and get a more fluid result directly, plus less menu screens to get results. The second one does give you far more control of the upgrading but I feel lacks some of the feel of the direct upgrading... Still, I'm tempted to think the second version would work better, if it's possible.

You've got some great ideas. Good luck!

[Patupi]

Thanks, but it'll be a while before I try this. Right now I'm trying to get to grips with modding this in general. I've been programming for a long time, but never tried any language quite like this. I'm getting there Right now I'm playing around with trying some unusual shield mods and seeing what I can do, but I'm not going to give this up. I've always loved the idea of organic vessels (Waaaaay before Farscape! I remember a Starwars comic in around 1980 that had a huge organic alien ship that threw anti-matter weaponry!) and have used the concept in computer games, roleplaying games and books (non published... erm... very little finished to be honest) over the years.

I hope you get somewhere with yours too and I'd love to take a look at how it works. If you need any help on anything (not that I know much about modding yet, but I'm sure there are other areas I could help with) let me know.

[durbanator]

I've always loved the idea of organic vessels (Waaaaay before Farscape!

wow i finally meet a fellow farscape fan
i the entire concept of an organic space entity that is itself a spaceship totally blew my 8 year old mind.
that was one of the shows that got me hooked into sci fi and gaming and the like.
i would really love to see some type of living ship made for transcendence. i've been following the wyvera mod on and off and it still seems a bit far from completion.
though i am not a modder myself, if there ever was something that made me want to be one, its this concept.
one day i would like to see a Talyn inspired leviathan warship hybrid racing across the galaxy blasting the crap out of the ares