Where are the editing regulars?

[KillerWave]

Quarto, if you wont actually use the hangar, just to make it appear that the ship has that hangar, i could simply change the original carrier texture to show it, instead going through all this trouble of converting and retexturing...
What do you think?

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...

 

[Quarto]

KillerWave: If you can do that, that'll do nicely

. As usual, I was looking at the most complex solution first, just in case it was doable

.
I'll get you a screenshot of the Lexington from Armada asap... but first, I need to download something that can take screenshots

.

Death's Head: Yes, I see your point about launching things without a hangar (though I daresay, the player would be too busy to notice). Of course, we could change the texture on that one, too

.
Now, your other points would be correct in most circumstances, but not necessarily here. It's actually more likely that that troopship would be there than that the Dauntless would still have a squad of Marines. If you look at that bit of fiction I sent you a few weeks ago, you will remember that the Dauntless just took part in a Marine/Fleet operation. Now, that troopship didn't just teleport back to BW HQ

. The Dauntless, on the other hand, is highly unlikely to have its own squad of Marines. Also, remember that the Intrepid's problem with getting Marines was mostly due to the fact that "things got hairy in the Lennox System". The BW isn't at war right now (though they are preparing for one), though.
Still, if you don't want the troopship, that's fine

. It's one less capship to worry about

.

The fiction will clarify how it starts and how things are laid out, to a point. I think we need to clarify things more about what happens in-flight (which the pre-mission fiction obviously can't talk about, since it hasn't happened yet).

Look, let's stop with this making things less hard on the programmers. Either we're going to make proper missions, or standard three nav cat/bugfests. If we have the player told where to go after nav3a, then we might as well just have the Fralthi appear on the map as nav4. I don't want that. We only have eight missions here - let's make them as good as we can. Also, as far as I can tell, having two comms at every nav isn't any more complicated than having the player told where to go at nav3a.

 

[Quarto]

There. Transmitting data, KW. I was surprised, actually - it looks as though the ship has a separate launch bay, and a separate hangar bay.

Anyway, from my calculations, it looks like the carrier in the screenshot is in fact the right length (approximately 725 metres). Actually, it looks like it's a lot larger, considering the size of th Gladius. But both the Gladius and the carrier are at odd angles, so we get a bit of perspective distortion.

I suspect (but don't know for sure) that the carrier is assymmetrical - i.e., that it only has bays on one side.

Another odd little detail, is that in the Mac version of WC1, where this carrier appears instead of the Tiger's Claw, the carrier seems to have some very unusual fighter recovery procedures. Ships fly close to the hangar, decelerate, and are tractored aboard. Of course, this is of no relevance whatsoever in this case

.

BTW, could you scale the ship up a bit, as well? Currently, it is (or at least, is supposed to be) 725m. If you were to increase that by... oh, about 20%, giving a lenght of 870m, that would be good.

 

[Death's Head]

Was is not you that said the only craft the Dauntless had left was a small squadron of scims? Now if the troopship is small enough to be stored in the hangar, I'm guessing this troopship was transfered along with the rest of the fighter wing and other nonessential craft. This confed sport you plan to use for the dropships, do you know its size? Should the sport be too big to dock internally, there would be another ship we have to protect. For something we appear to use once, it seems a bit overkill. Next, it's all good to concoct a grande scheme and hope we have programmers to stick with the project long enough to complete the job before 2003, or the original date of release planned for that matter, if we have the people for the task that is. We'll have something worth waiting for, fine, great. You understand this isn't something I'd like in limbo for a year while we wait and wait no more than I want to churn out something poorly planned and underdeveloped.

 

[Quarto]

Uh... DH, this isn't the sort of troopship that gets stored inside a carrier

. It's the Armada transport we're talking about, and they're fairly large critters

. Essentially, it's something along the lines of those 1000 Marine-carrying Drayman transports that we had to escort so many times in WC1. And that's exactly why I think it's more likely that we see this sort of ship passing through the same area, as opposed to the Dauntless actually having its own contingent of Marines on board.

I agree though, that it would be a pain to have to protect an additional vessel, because it would essentially have to stick around until mission 4 (which is the earliest time when we could spare a few fighters to escort it out-system). That being the case, let's use a normal shuttle (or two) - but let's say that they're coming from the station, not from the carrier. Maybe we can use the troopship concept in a sequel

.

I understand your concerns about the waiting time, and the lack of programmers. I also don't want to wait any longer than necessary. But if we have to simplify things, then let's allow the programmers to decide what to simplify. Neither of us is in any way an expert on SO mission creation. So, let's present to them each scenario in its original complexity, and then we can cut out the bits that they don't think they can do in time.

Dammit, what we really need is a place where we can discuss all this with the programmers without having to send hundreds of e-mails back and forth. Hmm... your site has a board, right?

 

[Death's Head]

Indeed it does. Sometimes I forget I even have it.

 

[Quarto]

Hmm... is it just on my computer that that coolboard thingy is torturously slow to load up?

 

[KillerWave]

Quarto, first things first:
You are using the WCA carrier from my page?
If so, i will change the texture and increase the scale of the mesh by 20% as you asked.
If not, i will need the one thats going to be used to make the changes.

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...

[This message has been edited by KillerWave (edited July 17, 2000).]

 

[Death's Head]

Usually isn't, but then I forgot my password so I haven't been checking on it much. It loads at a decent speed for me. Sometimes, I'm under the impression that the server may be slow, but many servers are like that.

[This message has been edited by Death's Head (edited July 17, 2000).]

 

[Quarto]

KillerWave: Yep, that's the one. Hmm... could you replace one of the capships with it? I think I listed the "replacable" capships in an earlier part of this thread. After all, at 870 metres, this thing'll be a bit too big for a corvette

.

DH: Well, maybe it's just one of those slow days for them. It'll do, at any rate.

 

[KillerWave]

I tryed it, but unfortunatelly, i hasnt figured out yet how to convert actual wcp capships, just as corvettes, which i'm almost sure thats the base to start it...i will e-mail you with more details.

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...

 

[KillerWave]

Q, i'm sending you what i was able to do with the carrier. The problem is that it wasnt textured as it would supposed to be by the look of the textures...

. Parts of the texture where used in more than one part of the model, making the hangar appear where it shouldnt appear. I converted the mesh to dxf, but unfortunattelly, it was in just one mesh. i maged to split the meshs, but i had then to texture a lot of polygons(124)...almost one by one...

With my limited knowledge in texturing, about 3 hours and a little headache i was able to put textures and hangar in the Carrier, but its not great..

Im going to send it to you now. Take a look at it, if its not ok, maybe will be better to use the one whithout hangar, just with a bigger scale.

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...

 

[Quarto]

Hmm, I see what you mean. And the hardpoints all got messed up, too. Though I must say, it's very effective to have all the turrets in one place. Only took three blasts to down my Vampire

.

Anyway, given the way the texture messed up, don't worry about it. Just scale the original by 20%, and send that to me. I hate to say this now that you've put so much work into it, but it looks like I don't get to put this model into the game anyway. Dammit. But there's always a sequel

.

BTW, we should really thank you for all that you've done so far

.

 

[KillerWave]

The turrets arent messed up, i just didnt placed them correctly yet. If it where textured like the WCP models, it would create no problem...anyway, i will scale the other tomorrow.

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...

 

[KillerWave]

What the hell, i didnt liked the result too, but i would never know it unless i tryed it.

Thats one thing to put in a list of "Things NOT to do again".

I've done some texturing before, like if you take a look at my page, i textured the centauri fighter in the news page, but never did something from scratch, neither poly by poly...
Anyway, while im waiting for my computer to finish a download, i just scaled the original carrier and sent it to you. Just replace the old mesh file with the new one. If you think its still small, i can scale it again, but remmember that as a corvette, the bigger it is, it is less protected by its own turrets...
You mean you wont use any Armada Carrier in UE or just the first one i sent? Anyway that doesnt matter..

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Well, its classified... i mean, i could tell you, but then i have to kill you...


[This message has been edited by KillerWave (edited July 18, 2000).]

 

[Death's Head]

What was it you wanted the lex for again? Late hours...must sleep.

 

[Quarto]

<Shrug> What else? The Eisen. But since the Eisen's identity appears to have been resolved (at least as far as LOAF's concerned, and there's no point in wasting my breath there), it's obviously not gonna happen.

 

[Pedro]

Wow I really should have checked this chatzone

Just a couple of points, HCl seemed to think there was no way to convert the kilrathi transports (thats why we had kilrathi pelicans)
The wc4 shuttle is at Thomas Bruckners page (BTW could we use the alien drone?)
Finally if wingED is as simple as they make out I'm making my own simulator missions for UE, some nice big dragon fests

 

[Quarto]

Yes, well, we've already given up on the Kilrathi transports

. But we're not going to use Kilrathi Pelicans. No way

. Our options at this stage include the Armada version of the Kilrathi transport, and... well, that's it. But it's better than using a Pelican.
Oh, and as for the shuttle, we were actually talking about the Kilrathi shuttle from WC4, not the Confed one

.

Yeah... I guess we could use the Drone, if we really wanted to. Mission 6, DH? As in, the one where the aliens are trying to infiltrate the belt and we're... uh... trying to keep them out

. I guess they might possibly want to send in a few hundred unmanned drones as well as proper ships.

I don't know how good WingED is going to be, but I sure hope they hurry up with it. I've been reading all the stuff that comes with HCl's mission compiler, but it's too complicated for me to learn right now. Why, even that beta of WingED would be useful.

 

[Pedro]

The best maverik could do was to offer to talk to the other members about passing on a copy in 3 weeks or so

Also I thought you mentioned the confed ones aswell but even if you didn't if you decide to keep the intrepid destruction scene somehow then we could replace the WCrophecy shuttles with those.