Pilgrim Legacy WIP (lotsa images yo)

[Wojo]

Ok. Here's what I have so far. These are shots taken from the ship editor - they all work in-game in most respects.

Obviously there is polish needed on pretty much all of them - the Rapier is about the closest to finished. They also look much less 'beaten up' in game - something about the way the editor lights the ships makes them look weird. Also the cockpit glass is reflective in-game. Looks much prettier.

Yes. The gun spins in-game very nicely. And there are laser cannons hidden in the wings just like the handbook says. But it doesn't carry 10 heatseekers. Like the handbook says. We can't have everything.

Obviously missing torpedoes - they are placed in-game. Also playing around with a nose turret at the moment. And really the three mass drivers should all be in the nose section (if you've ever seen the concept art for this ship, it looks rad. Considering following those concepts instead).

You can't see it now, but I placed a screen cap from the movie of Blair sitting in the cockpit. Giggles.

Hey! I can use WCNews image hosting instead! I didn't know! Woo! This is a modular starbase - all the components can be reconfigured to build other layouts. Based on the Pegasus base at the beginning of the film.

An old-school Venture. It fires torpedoes from those hatches like an ICBM submarine. At least, it should.

This took a long time. And is still going... Headache after headache. I actually ordered the Confederation Handbook from Amazon to get some of the details right! Also some long forum posts regarding weaponry. It currently has a couple of AMG's in the nose, 8 large laser turrets and a bunch of anti-fighter/warhead flak cannons (the freespace engine does this well). Plus torps. Have not tried to recreate a broadside capability as in the film - it sounds like a bit of a game-breaker to me. I'm excusing the differences by stating that it is NOT the Tiger Claw, but another ship of the same class.

The next three are my original Pilgrim designs. In order, Legionaire interceptor, Centurion heavy fighter and Praetorian Gunship. Currently working on a modular Sloship that will perform carrier, dreadnaught & base roles.

Oops. Looks like my rocket pod texture is broken here. Excuses, excuses.

You see what I mean about looking too weathered...

And that's it for the ships! Will post up my ready room & some hud images soon. I also had a whole custom UI in the works - realised about halfway through how much of a waste of time it was. I now get only a few hours per month to work on this - even doing this post is eating up a bunch of time!

-W.

 

[capi3101]

Those are looking pretty nice so far.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of premise are you going with?

 

[Wojo]

By premise I presume you mean story?

Not much of a story anymore. Had grand ideas once. Really just aiming to get the ships done and leave missions etc. to others. Maybe just a couple to introduce.

It boiled down to a renegade Pilgrim squadron working with the player's squadron - that way the player gets to fly both. Set at the end of the Confed-Pilgrim war leading up to the Siege of Peron. Had a wicked end/twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

Really wanted a whole Confed fleet, and was going to do my take on a Wildcat. But just going to concentrate on finishing what I have already.

 

[Wojo]

Wow. Just wow. It's been over two years since I posted those pics... and not a huge amount has happened since. BUT I AM WORKING ON IT. Very slowly... thought I'd post a couple of things up.

I made this map very early on, simply based on the intro from the movie & the canon universe map that was published with WCP. Interestingly I placed a pilgrim cross around the whole pilgrim-owned sector much like the original movie map - and I don't think we even see that part of the map in the film! Of course, mine is placed around the pilgrim systems as they are located on the WCP map... I saw in the 2016 roundup the great work done to digitise the original movie map, and so felt like I should offer up this up as an 'homage'. (yes, that is 'ere be dragons' in the corner. I just couldn't resist)

And the Pilgrim Sloship. It's kinda based on a sketch done by Ninja_LA, and built to utilise the FS2Open engine features. So, yeah. Big beam cannon on the front.

Finally, my take on the historical 'Wildcat' fighter - based on descriptions in novels, conversations on forums, and my imagination. I took a Hellcat, and imagined what it might have looked like 50 years previous...

As before, the renderer in my 3d software differs from the appearance in-game. But you get the general idea.

So much time, so little results. I'm counting six years I've been messing around with this. The project has ballooned, shrunk, ballooned again, been lost, recovered, abandoned, forgiven & accepted back like the prodigal son, whipped, cursed, nurtured, forgotten, & generally mis-managed. But it keeps nagging at my soul, like that thing you're sure you've forgotten to buy at the store & you're sure you really need & will have to turn around and go back for, but you're almost home now & it's cold and you're hoping you can live another day without it.

It's usually milk.

W.

 

[ChrisReid]

Wow, that map is gorgeous!

 

[Quarto]

So much time, so little results. I'm counting six years I've been messing around with this. The project has ballooned, shrunk, ballooned again, been lost, recovered, abandoned, forgiven & accepted back like the prodigal son, whipped, cursed, nurtured, forgotten, & generally mis-managed. But it keeps nagging at my soul, like that thing you're sure you've forgotten to buy at the store & you're sure you really need & will have to turn around and go back for, but you're almost home now & it's cold and you're hoping you can live another day without it.

Have you thought about sharing your models with some of the other modders? For example, I'm sure that the Homeworld mod could find some use for a Pilgrim faction. Older Confed vessels, of course, could also be more than useful. Apart from Homeworld, I think it goes without saying that I'd absolutely love to see that Bengal model in Prophecy. Flying a movie-style Rapier from a movie-style Bengal would make for some really fun screenshots at the very least.

Normally, I don't like even making suggestions like this. I think most modders have a particular vision of what they want to achieve, and they don't want to share their stuff until that vision is accomplished - which is perfectly understandable and fair. So, if you want to simply keep pottering along with your work, there's nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, you're doing this stuff for your own enjoyment (and if you're not... nah, if you've been at this for six years, you are doing it for your own enjoyment), and nothing should spoil that. However, it has been six years, and that means that you actually run the risk of some of your older models becoming deprecated. It happened to us in Standoff - we replaced a couple of ships in the final episode, because the old versions were some of Eder's earliest work and didn't look so great any more. This, I think, is a good reason to consider sharing your work with others.

 

[Wojo]

I think it's safe to say I'm definitely not in it for the money Or any reason aside from my own perverse enjoyment (Hooray! Gimbal Lock!). I was going to put feelers out to the fs2Open community to see if anyone wanted to pick up the project, but after a recent flurry of work decided to see at least some of it through. My spare time is gradually increasing, not decreasing.

My goal is to finish polishing the current shipset (what you see in this thread is the lot) to a reasonable standard (and my standards are fairly low - that Rapier is pretty much done), release a mini-campaign (six missions, tops, no voice acting), then anyone can do whatever they want with the models, so long as they credit me. I'm not precious. Well, a little. I had a grand vision that I'd love to see realised in some form, even if it's just a footnote in someone else's work.

About model/tech depreciation; yes. This has already happened. It's kinda what's driving me to post all this stuff now - in the hopes that I'll get guilted into winding it up sooner. Let's be honest, we're already inhabiting the grey area between 'dated' and 'retro'. Hell, if it comes down to it, just cell shade everything, eh? SureWhyNot.

 

[Quarto]

Yeah... definitely, get it to a stage where you're happy to release it, as soon as you can. I do think one problem that you're having is trying to do this with FS2. Yes, Saga exists. But let's face it, most members of the FS2 community are not quite as interested in Wing Commander as members of the WC community are. Even though there's like half a dozen of WCP modders here, of whom probably two are actually active, I suspect you'd still see more interest in possible collaboration here than over there.

Heck, if I wasn't in the hellish middle-not-quite-near-the-end part of my PhD, I'd love to mess around with these ships in WCP.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

This thread reminded me of an old model I did several years ago. I had to go digging through several old decommissioned NAS drives but I found it. I was playing around with an idea for a movie-fied Scimitar. It's kinda hinky, go ahead and chuckle, I did.



BTW - That Rapier and the 'Claw are top notch man, good work!

 

[Quarto]

Hey, that's not a bad start . If you ever wanted to continue with it, I think you'd want to make the nose even chunkier (maybe just plain right angles, without rounding?), and maybe do something to make the wings less aircraft-like? you know, in the same way that the Rapier didn't have those big streamlined wings.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

Hey, that's not a bad start . If you ever wanted to continue with it, I think you'd want to make the nose even chunkier (maybe just plain right angles, without rounding?), and maybe do something to make the wings less aircraft-like? you know, in the same way that the Rapier didn't have those big streamlined wings.

If I get time I might poke around with it. But that's waaaaaaaaay down the list of to-do's. If anyone wants it to play with I'll make it available.