Structure Improvement

[Zarel]

You know, this is a great baseplate. With a few modifications, it looks ready for immediate commit. Namely, the "grid" is too subtle, and cannot be seen from normal zoomlevel. Can you make the gridlines thicker? I think the yellow lines could stand to be slightly thicker, too. It might simply be a matter of following Pumpkin's style more closely.

Can you make those changes and send it over?

We'll need to discuss licensing. I'm a fan of CC-0, but GPLv2, CC-BY-3.0, CC-BY-3.0, or any less restrictive license is fine.

I also have some feedback for your cyborg factory:

I think we can get away with just having the "A" parts stick out, and just paint on the "D" part in the textures.

We could also add the "B" fan into the model; I think that'd look good. And the C parts - I think they're supposed to be domes. Do you think that'd look better?

And the baseplate - I assume those lines are part of the texture, not the model? It really should be part of the texture...

Other than that, it looks great.

[sg1efc]

Artwork looks great. The artists here have a great eye.

[Colditz]

Well,... some drafts.

[Mysteryem]

You really are doing an excellent job. I would like to point out that some of the textures of the older models in the game may have had specific shapes based on the fact that the polygons where that shape, one example would be the shape of the 'holes' in the cyborg factory base plate:

Aside from that, could you perhaps send me one of these new models (either .3ds or .obj format)? I would like to see how well it converts to a .pie file. I'll pm you my email address if you're happy to send me one of them.

[Colditz]

That's always the question because you have to decide, based on the texture or the original mesh, which shape you are building in your new model. I chose the octagonal polygons because you have those X elements at the sides, they are flat in real world, so we have 8 of them, and we have 8 sides.

Like this german gas tower:



Just got another idea...

[Olrox]

I think that the octogonal silo without the frames looks better, and also that their respective "holes" on the baseplate would look nicer if octogonal also.
It was kinda hard to decide, because both looked good xD
really good work Colditz, I hope that your work can be incorporated into the game or at least be made into an officially-supported mod. Because it really mantains the core of the original models, and only improves them, purely!

[Zarel]

If you'll look at the top of the texture, you'll see that it was intended to be round. It might be better to resize the hole in the baseplate. Personally, I'd vote round, but it's your decision, Colditz.

[Colditz]

Let's see...

[Colditz]

Need some work but looks promising...

[Olrox]

I can try to help you with the textures, if you like!

[Terminator]

wona to see this beauty in game. Would it looks as good as on this pics ?

[Olrox]

I think that the main problem is the minimum distance between point that mysteryem mentioned, that could reduce the detail level. But, it bump map is implemented, then that can be corrected by proper use of it, I think. Those are my unexperient thoughts, unfortunately (but I'm getting help from Mysteryem to improve my knowledge, fortunately)

How many polys are on the latest version, Colditz? You can apply a 0,1 vertex weld (after scaling the model for 1 tile = 12,8 units, that is) to simulate the limitations of the PIE models, I think.

[Colditz]

The current mesh has 390 triangles and 294 vertices. What do you mean with one tile?

[Olrox]

The current mesh has 390 triangles and 294 vertices. What do you mean with one tile?

Hmm, I think that's good already.
By a tile, I mean 1 in-game square (likewise, the cyborg factory is 1x2 tiles, the HQ, Research facility and Power generator 2x2, and so on). It's essentially the unit of space used ingame, and when you export your models to PIE format, you must proportionally rescale it so that what you want to be 1-tile length is equal to 12.8 units in the PIE model. (please, someone correct me if I'm wrong )

This poly count is acceptable in my opinion, but I'd only go near 512 for big models, like the vehicle factories. Probably if those changes to the defensive structures (those changes), the performance improvement would make for the performace drawback caused by implementing models like this for all buildings? Or is that still too much uncertain?

[Colditz]

If you can pm me your email or icq number, we can work together if you want.

I'm currently working on those nasty normal mapping errors,...

Some has to convert the file to pie to test it works as ingame model.

Playing around a bit...