I decided recently (today) to start trying to convert some of the old 3do format TA units into the new s3o format. Of course, I'm not doing this directly, I am importing them into Blender, adding more detail, adding the parts of the units that can be seen in Spring but not TA, and UV mapping them. So far, I've UV mapped the Storm.

Right now the texture is 512x512, it'll be reduced to 256x256 eventually.



Comments and Criticisms (The texture is a placeholder til I get someone to texture these things *hint* *hint*)

Nice work!

Unfortunately this community is severely lacking in texturers

There was a similar project undertaken a little while ago to remodel all the TA models, many models of which ended up in XTA's pimped edition (though not all, strangely enough). Might be worth doing the ones that haven't yet been done, so that we can have a full set of remodelled TA units.

Would be really good for the soon-to-be TA to SupCom mod too.

I think you should do what Caydr was planning and instead of remaking the TA units make units that are functionally equivalent but not copyrighted so we can finally rid Spring of all that copyright infringement.

I think many of the people who advocate making new TA-esque units that aren't really TA units are largely missing the point of why people want to remodel the TA units. There is a certain attachment to the TA units, and they were designed with a certain level of brilliance that makes people love Thuds and Sumos and Morties and so forth.

Sure it'd be nice for Spring's sake to have a bunch of copyright-free units. But they wouldn't be TA units. You may as well go play something like Star Wars! (*hint* *hint*)

Caydr once worked on that. He made around 70 units (untextured). which covered most of the tech 1 units. You might want to contact him (if able) and see how things stands.

Those were very bad models if I recall

I don't think you'd like it if people made a fork of SWS that played like BA...

Exactly, too many polygons. Keep in mind that spring's battlefield is a huge stage with lots of actors without LOD scaling.

He should turn on lighting in UpSpring to see how laggy it would be xD

There is LOD in Spring, but:
1 We can only control the distance at which it comes into effect
2 The units-to-icons thing usually kicks in before LOD anyway

Caydr had wasted enourmous numbers of polies on those models - it wasn't that he'd gone overboard on detail - the units didn't look that detailed at all but the lack of optimisation and simple common modelling sense was just plain to see...

Have a look for yourself: http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6932



*shudder*

There is LOD? Alright, then I was misinformed.
UV mapping that Thud properly will takes aeons.

Springs LOD is a joke... IIRC it just replaces the unit with a billboarded sprite of the unit past a certain distance.

Well, I've done the Core Thud and Storm (+corpse) now. Are there any texture artists who would like the challenge of texturing these?

Screenies:


BTW I found a bug: Units that die take on the team color of the team that killed them

I don't see the link with the BA reference.

Looks nice but the team color needs to be more prominent.

Well, I suppose I could boost it's prominence... Still, thats only for the period til I can find some unlucky person to texture these.

Actually they take on the colour of team 1. If there is no team 1 (first team is team 0) then you get that patchwork-texture thing. Or you do with 3dos at anyrate. God only knows what happens with s3o

I usually make the shapes which are team color black on the texture or add outlines. It's really sad that team color is not getting mixed in.

As for corpses you should avoid team color on them. Projectiles have had similar issues.

Speaking of TA remakes, what's so bad about making new models from scratch instead of remaking 10 year old stuff?
If the people on this board would work together as a team you could get this done in a month or two. But that is just not gonna happen...

Anyway here's a quick attempt at a thud replacement... ~700 tris
The "turret" is just a placeholder because it's late and I need to sleep.