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+--- Thread: Reskined eagles (/showthread.php?tid=26506)
Reskined eagles - JakeSG - 09-14-2009
Eh. Personally I'd like to see more civilian shiplines. I'm sick of whoring Eagles simply for lack of alternatives. This would take away some of the pain though, I think.
Reskined eagles - tansytansey - 09-14-2009
I have started re-texturing a Bretonian Eagle. Probably finish by tomorrow.
Reskined eagles - Turkish - 09-14-2009
' Wrote:Lets keep this thread sane for those who can't mod.
Anyway, for starters, why not? It would probably be easier to do this than make new ships for every organisation...
What do you mean by keep it sane? The topics Nighthawk (Doom too) and I discussed were of serious and rational nature.
I look forward to seeing that Bret re-texture as well.:)
Reskined eagles - Jinx - 09-14-2009
to put it simple
its weighing up the size ( that is the pure filesize of the mod ) and the beneficial effect of changes.
a secondary issue is that freelancer ( from what i know ) doesn t store or preload skins but uploads them each time they appear in visual range - thats probably why ( on slower systems ) there are miniscule freeze-ups when new ships appear.
the more we customize skins, meshes etc. - the more often the program attempts to reload stuff. - i believe that its client side - but i m not sure there.
primarily - the main issue is to keep the general modsize as small as possible. - that means ... avoiding superlarge .mat files, overly complex and huge .cmp files etc.
a ship consisting of the following files : mesh ( .cmp ), skin ( .mat ), hitbox ( .sur ), cockpit.ini, shiparch.ini entry, goods.ini entry, purchase locations. can blow up to quite a size. ( especially when we re talking about an entire shipline.
maybe all in all its just 500kb ... multiply it by 4 ( light fighter, heavy fighter, VHF, bomber ) and you get another 2mb. - add in other factions that will ask for the same fair treatment ( hence asking for their line, too ) and you might end up with a dozen megabytes.
and then you gotto ask - how much does it benefit the roleplay, the understanding of the faction and the mod in general.
in MOST cases, it benefits the mod. - cause features = fun, no doubt there. but a modsize too large can also scare people away - ( not everyone has a perfect connection and can download the modfile in a few seconds )
edit: it was a lie - i failed to put it "simple"
Reskined eagles - Colonel.Tigh - 09-14-2009
It would be a benefit to roleplay, to have some different skins.
I would feel mutch more nasty to fly a black and rusty eagle to xeno-terrorise all them aliens what steal our jobs.
Or eagles with a bretonians skin, both as an escort for all the nice bretonians coloured transports, and for the Gaians shooting them down.
Ill take the aditional 100mb modsize for that 9 times out of ten, and having an old an outdated system myself, i can say, the worst thing in the mod, ist the liberty carrier, huge, coustomskinned and polygons over and over, remove that abomination, and we have room enough.
Or if we take that as a scale, we (and all the slow systems) can take some special skins.
And an Eagle would be mutch faster if it was red !!
..or at least give them the 4 housecolours, xenos in white ^^, LWB in green and so on.
Reskined eagles - elgeeko - 09-14-2009
If we're going to add more to the mod's file-size, Id rather see the addition being done in totally new and interesting ships. ( Frankly I am so sick of the CTE line that I wish the NPC's never used it. :P)
But the basic idea still has great promise.
A Xeno decal'ed CTE line sounds great, but for the other 'smalltime terrorists' or even house corporations, I'd suggest having re-textured iterations of *other* civilian type ship lines.
Regardless, here are my suggestions distilled out;
1; Don't give any other factions (who currently don't use them) incentive to use the Civilian line. It is overused.
I am very very excited about getting around to doing some work on imports in the Civilian area because I hope it will draw people towards ships other than the CTE line.
2; If you must have decaled versions of the CTE line for any number of factions, Don't just have re-logoed versions of the Eagle and Roc. If you intend to have decaled versions of one or two CTE ships you ought to do the whole line, or at the very least the Eagle, Roc, Griffin, and Starblazer.
3; Please refer to my first post.
If there were Bretonian and Rheinlandic civilian lines, then along with the Gallic, CTE, KS, and Renzu lines there would be a civilian line for every house plus one to spare (KS).
Then the solution is simple; given any smalltime terrorist faction that doesn't have its own line of ships, have a decaled version of the civilian line that belongs to the house they operate in.
If they are intra-house use the CTE, border-worlds, or KS line.
As I said, I want to try and tackled the Renzu and KS lines 'soon' so all you need is someone to do Bretonian and Rheinlandic civilian lines. Then we can collaborate with a representative of each faction to get an approved logo, and apply where appropriate.
But anyhow, all this is just a suggestion. :)
Reskined eagles - Belco - 09-14-2009
i have little idea about modding, but if we were looking at just the faction logos instead of an entire repaint, would it be possible to do something similar to transport containers?
have a model of the logo as the containers are but 2D or as close as possible to, and change the position where it appears to on the tail fin or something?
that way it can be made a mountable object, have the Xeno logo sold at Xeno bases, Gaian logo at their bases, ect.
also you cant buy/mount Transport containers on say, a mammoth even though they're similar class, so if we went the same way about it, other HF's would not be able to mount eagle logos.
as i said, i have no modding/modeling experience, so shoot this idea down before i get excited:P
Edit: but i'd much prefer an alternative civilian line or remodeling of the Renzu line