Spring RTS Engine

I thought he was talking about collisions

Looks cool only make guns a bit shorter..they look like they gonna tip th ship to the side.

Gota wrote:Looks cool only make guns a bit shorter..they look like they gonna tip th ship to the side.

They're reinforced metal tubes used to direct fire, length enables greater precision and accuracy, and recoil does tip combat vessels from side to side. I like the feel of this.

this is an exaggeration of ota proportions, which is already an exaggeration of real-world proportions.

And its a shame.. look hoe epic supcom units look.
They look like that because they have small details on units and because shots and guns are smaller and not gigantic and overdone like in ota based mods..its just tastefull..

Gota wrote:And its a shame.. look hoe epic supcom units look.
They look like that because they have small details on units and because shots and guns are smaller and not gigantic and overdone like in ota based mods..its just tastefull..

Smaller is dumb and hard to see. Give me massive robots.

You wouldn't like CA then...

Try gundam.

what does gundam have to do with this thread? Unless of course you are saying that gundam has better modeling than most of the stuff(excluding the new stuff by mr d) than all of the *A mods.

Saktoth wrote:

Gota wrote:And its a shame.. look hoe epic supcom units look.
They look like that because they have small details on units and because shots and guns are smaller and not gigantic and overdone like in ota based mods..its just tastefull..

Smaller is dumb and hard to see. Give me massive robots.

Thats what gundam has to do with it, "massive robots", he was telling him to play gundam , you should be thankful heh

lol, except that I hate the current release. I was up until 3 this morning tweaking effects to shave off particles and make them look better. :)

They are not hard to see.Supcom isnt hard to understand and thousands play it competitivly without issues.
Im all for big units but not overdone hgue ass gunz with huge ass shots.
Units can be big but would make em look more epic if they had smaller details but that is onkly achievable by textures.
What can be done is smaller shots.
There isa problem of comparison..If there wasa way for the playr to compare theunits to something they know from real life it would help the epicness feel..for some reason trees dont quite cut it.
Maybe trees need to be smaller...

the trees are fine.

In the future I'll try to include more non-radar greebles. Some ships will probably have optional radar still, though I will try to make them look less weird if the radar is hidden.

Overall I wasn't a great fan of Supreme Commander's look. To me, small shots made it seem that nothing interesting was ever happening; combined with the bloom it made everything feel indistinct, blurry, and not really epic at all. There were perhaps half a dozen memorable units in the whole game out of many score. I liked how each faction had a unified style, though.

Evil4Zerggin wrote:In the future I'll try to include more non-radar greebles. Some ships will probably have optional radar still, though I will try to make them look less weird if the radar is hidden.

let the texture convey that.

Dude, try again.

Some reasons why it fails...

Texture
- The texture is too low res/detail, now whether you need to increase the size of your texture or just use it more efficiently I can't say, but if you're going to replace a unit, which is what you seem to be trying to do, you're going to have to out do the unit you're trying to replace.
-- Notice on the old destroyers hull the metal plate texture has reflection, giving it a behaviour we can easily recognise from real life as metal, yours however is dull and grey, making it look like concrete.
-- The low resolution also makes the team colour look like it's been drawn on with pastels and the box on the back of the turret and the buttons(wtf?) on the depth charge launcher wouldn't be out of place in hl1.

Model
-The model is a little hit and miss, let me start by saying that I like the hull, yeah it's out of proportion to the original but that isn't hugely important and it certainly makes me feel like I'm looking at a believable boat.
-- The main problems come down to aesthetics and design opinion but I'm going to voice them anyway, the first is that as stated previously by Gota the barrels are too long, you don't necessarily have to change the model to fix this, if you look at traditional battleship guns the axis was further forward in turret body for balance, you may still have to shorten the barrels.
-- Secondly unless you plan on adding a traditional depth charge launcher which you've modelled on the back, I suggest you don't put it in, else players are going to be annoyed that it is there but not functioning, I think the original had one but it worked as more of a lobber.
-- Finally the barrels are mounted on balls, why exactly? The turret provides the y rotation so the barrels need only turn up and down, and a joint like that is much stronger. Once again, mostly design opinion so feel free to disregard.

Gameplay
-Unit collisions still suck, not your fault, just something to think about.

Don't take it too harsh, practice is key.

Das Bruce wrote: - The texture is too low res/detail, now whether you need to increase the size of your texture or just use it more efficiently I can't say, but if you're going to replace a unit, which is what you seem to be trying to do, you're going to have to out do the unit you're trying to replace.

I'm not sure if I would be able to use the UV space terribly more efficiently (I did use mirroring and overlap); would you recommend going up to 1024x1024 for the texture? How much of a performance cost could I expect from doing so?

Das Bruce wrote:-- Notice on the old destroyers hull the metal plate texture has reflection, giving it a behaviour we can easily recognise from real life as metal, yours however is dull and grey, making it look like concrete.

Several people actually mentioned the same thing before I posted the model here; since the last screen in this thread I increased the reflection, although perhaps too much (I haven't taken a new screen since my computer here sucks). I suppose it will take me more practice before I find a good point between concrete and chrome-plated.

Das Bruce wrote:-- Secondly unless you plan on adding a traditional depth charge launcher which you've modelled on the back, I suggest you don't put it in, else players are going to be annoyed that it is there but not functioning, I think the original had one but it worked as more of a lobber.

The destroyer does in fact have a depthcharge launcher of the non-throwing type. I suppose it acts more like a torpedo launcher, since the charges go speeding off toward their target as soon as they hit the water, which does look kind of wierd. Although I'm not sure a realistically dropping depth charge launcher would work well gameplay-wise. Frankly the main reason I did it this way was so I could animate the depthcharges rolling down the ramp :p

Das Bruce wrote:-- Finally the barrels are mounted on balls, why exactly? The turret provides the y rotation so the barrels need only turn up and down, and a joint like that is much stronger. Once again, mostly design opinion so feel free to disregard.

Good point; I'll use a single-axis joint next time.

Das Bruce wrote:Don't take it too harsh, practice is key.

No problem. Thanks for your comments.

Realistic depth charge 'dropper' needs the ship to behave like a bomber. Ie it should pass over the sub and drop the charges. Which Spring ships can do (there is a new tag to allow ships to go over subs in svn), but that would require microcontrol - the unit won't do the bombing run properly by itself. I think that's the main reason most mods go with depth charge 'launchers' instead.
Anyway, modern antisub weapons are more torpedo-like, depth charges are WW2 era stuff.

Perhaps they could work as naval mines?

Evil4Zerggin, a 512x512 is sufficient for a unit like that, which I see you used. I think its a pretty decent effort, UVs are packed tight and a decent amount of detailing.

Problem is like Das Bruce pointed out, you seem to have produced a low-res looking texture. Perhaps you used a large brush with a low hardness value to paint those in?

Working at resolutions like this typically require you to work down at the 'per pixel' level, so its best to use a 1px brush with 100% hardness for drawing panel lines and details like that.

To make the details more prominent, you could add a sharpening pass after you finished all the base details.

Making the reflective layer on texture 2 requires a high degree of subtlety; a few percentages make alot of difference. You should try adding noise to it as well to break up the reflection.

This model is really pretty perfect for our purposes and has some of the best distance recognition of almost any s3o in game. Up-close quality isnt high, but for actual playing, this model is ace.

You can always imporve, just, dont need to go the smudgey realistic blobs route, Evil.

As for reflectivity-modern day naval vessels are very matte and almost do look like concrete. Id say the reflectivity is about right. Id envisioned arm with a ceramic/plastic style finish.