P.U.R.E. 0.55

[KDR_11k]

The shape is great but the texture looks like basic coloring with some random shapes as "detail", seems to exist mostly to let the geometry talk instead of contributing much to the look of the model.

[Erom]

Those little triangles of metal that are "chipped" out of the windows on the front are bugging me. It looks really nice, overall though.

[Argh]

The shape is great but the texture looks like basic coloring with some random shapes as "detail", seems to exist mostly to let the geometry talk instead of contributing much to the look of the model.

Well, my approach is to make the geometry speak as much as possible, instead of trying to obscure it. That's on purpose- these aren't organic shapes, so I'm very deliberately leading the eye to the facets that I want to emphasize. In short, if it looks blocky, well, good- real-world military hardware tends to look blocky, that's the look I wanted.

The shapes of the greebles aren't random, btw. Like the other Resistance units, there are repeating patterns, which are really obvious when they're grouped together, giving them a stronger stylistic feel- the idea here is to make them feel like products of a common culture. See the details in context of a few of the other shots, it's obvious there are common patterns here. I'll admit that the first couple of units don't fit as well, but it was just like that with Overmind, and I ended up having to reskin things that were done earliest, because it took awhile to develop a set of common themes and apply the rules consistently.

Lastly, using strong, simple colors means that the unit will not turn into a mess of gritty pixels at a distance, but instead gradually just becomes the base colors with some shading and a few spots of high contrast. Combined with my new teamcolor approach, I think this will give units a very nice, recognizable feel at any distance. It's very deliberate, sorry if it's not your cup of tea.

[Argh]

The Resistance missile support vehicle. Model by Guessmyname, paint by me.

Y'know, I've seen a lot of weird models in my inbox, over the years- the things artists think up when they're dreaming visually.

If I receive one of these pieces in a project, I often try to find a use for it, just to preserve that mad bit of innovation, hopefully so that it'll get seen by a wider audience- the masses of people who think that video game art should look a certain way because it's always looked that way.

This model was definitely in that category. I procrastinated about it for over a month, trying to decide what to do with it, whether I should use it in the game or just let it go, to be replaced by a conventional design I could execute in my sleep. After all, this is chock full of odd shapes and strange premises, and I kept having visions of horror, thinking about getting it unwrapped nicely enough to achieve a good finish. However, after weeks of bringing it up in Wings, in between painting other stuff for the game, then shutting the window and moving on, I decided that it was just too wild not to give it a go. There was just something compelling about the combinations of strange shapes, and I had to see it painted and feeling like it might actually be a real thing to judge it fairly. So, tonight, I sat down and got it done.

Here was the result

[kiki]

IMO all those funny trucks like that super long gun truck and this missile truck just dont fit. I actually hate the way they look. However, I can appreciate the originality and uniqueness of these models, and the skill that you have put into uvmappng them.

[Otherside]

love the models and textures argh cant wait to play the new side :]

[Erom]

Dropping in as a Resistance player against an AI with a huuuge handicap playing Overmind is going to be fuck win.

[rattle]

Why the random panels... again. Also, stripping it from a launcher *might have been a good idea... but now that it's finished you're probably not going to change it.

[Argh]

The panels aren't any more random than the artwork of, say, Supreme Commander:




I like the overall effect a lot, personally. It makes the vehicle look really detailed up close, without creating a lot of noisy areas at a distance. In P.U.R.E., they represent reactive armor sections, instead of literal panel lines, but the idea's the same.

Also, stripping it from a launcher *might have been a good idea...

I don't understand what you mean by that- you mean making it not a missile launcher? That'd look really silly- any traditional cannon design would just look weird, imo.

IMO all those funny trucks like that super long gun truck and this missile truck just dont fit. I actually hate the way they look.

The long gun truck fit pretty well, I thought- it had a fairly modern feel to it, and IRL, there are armies that use flatbed trucks with artillery mounted on them. This one was really iffy, but as I said, it was too strange not to give it a go, and I think I managed to make the scale feel right, in the end. The next thing I do will be based on one of my infamous concept drawings, should be fun

[BlueTemplar]

Great mod! It's interesting to see a mod with different scale than most *a mods.
There are a few problems though that I noticed:
- the default camera shake widget shakes too much
- all the sounds are static - it probably comes from the OpenAL Mac implementation:

the buzz sounds because some silly windows sound encoders don't encode endianess properly, thus causing corrupted replay on the mac. the easiest option is to get people to encode it properly, the other is I work out a better way to guess endianness. Currently though it's not too high on the list.

[Fanger]

Argh for the love of god redo the tires on that unit.. it looks horrible.. the bling/comercial car is fail..

Military or even utilitarian vehicles do not have pimped rims and little tiny tires.. Pic related



Notice the wide tires, and lack of silly bling rims.. seriously the wheels on the vehicle look like they came off of this..

[Peet]

hehe.

[Argh]

lol, yeah, I actually searched for some good military rims, but couldn't find a head-on shot. I'll make a model and render it, I've just been busy with other stuff.

The default camera shake widget is not compatible with P.U.R.E., it will never be compatible, either.

Dunno what to do about the sounds, I use Audigy as my primary sound editor, I'll look into the issue of endians, see if there's anything I can do about that.

[BlueTemplar]

Thank you. Remember though that there are only few Spring Mac users around here...

Also, what I'd really want to know, is why PURE runs so much faster than any *A mod on my G4??? At the start of the game, I've got 20-30 fps in PURE, and only 5-10 in BA!

[Argh]

I have no idea why it runs faster. TBH, I would have expected the inverse to be true, but that really depends on the *A mod nowadays, depending on how much LUA is running all the time.

I have a non-bling military-style wheel greeble rendering... I'll use that here in a minute...

[Peet]

Dunno what to do about the sounds, I use Audigy as my primary sound editor, I'll look into the issue of endians, see if there's anything I can do about that.

Try posting all of them in audigy's own format, for someone with a mac to save as wav (I could do it this weekend, perhaps)...though that might introduce the reverse issue. Sauce.

[BlueTemplar]

And I get similar fps difference while the game is paused! Removing luaui doesn't change much...

[Argh]

Try posting all of them in audigy's own format, for someone with a mac to save as wav

Lemme see if Audigy just has some settings I need to adjust, it could be that simple, tbh, I just try and avoid messing with the deep-tweaker crap, if I can help it, because I don't wanna screw up my setup for producing relatively-clean 44khz sound that plays well through Spring's audio support.

BlueTemplar, if you open up the mod's files, can you play the .WAV files through Quicktime Player, or is it hash there, too? I've just re-checked my settings, the output is 16-bit PCM float WAV, at 44Khz, the only other option is to try a 32-bit WAV, which may or may not perform well.

[Argh]

Now with non-bling rims. Should probably do that to the scout vehicle, too, while I'm at it...

[BlueTemplar]

The sound and music plays fine in iTunes. I tried to recompress the .mp3 TA music from springplayersclub in ogg using Music Man + LAME, but it's still static.