QUOTE (king_of_manticores @ May 6 2010, 06:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So Delphi began from an assignment you did in freshman year?

That's epic. Seriously. I can't imagine how you started on a sheet of paper to develop a universe with so much care taken even to the littlest details.

It all started on a colony ship called Delphi, the same one from which the TC takes its name. However, I'm starting to think that the title Delphi should really be just a working title, as the primary focus of the plug will be on the war between the Nova Defense Coalition and the Enclave Colonies, not the paranormal events that take place in the original short-story. I'll probably split the story into two halves, with two game universes, just so I don't have to make duplicates for every system that changes hands and new descriptions to match.

So basically a game leading up to the war and then a separate game after/during the war.

Ooh, can you share the short story with us?

I'd have to find the story again. I wrote it on the school computers and printed it that day. I still have the marked copy somewhere in my filing, but that could take some time to unearth.

Besides, countless things have changed since that initial spark of creativity, and I wouldn't even directly call it canon any more.

The following, however, is.

No two NDC stations are manufactured to the exact same specifications. As an anchored stellar structure, they are manufactured on-site according to purpose and function, equipped with custom sensor arrays to cut through local interference, or larger artillery cannons to repel enemy fleets near the front lines. This particular one is called the NCS Auriga, stationed over Maxwell II. Providing long-range artillery and fleet repair services, the station's three primary docking arms give it a spidery look in the night sky. It is one of only a few stations actually capable of servicing Dominant-type cruisers, which in most cases are large enough to serve as mobile support bases completely by themselves. The station is currently the testing site for an experimental artillery cannon capable of projecting concentrated nuclear firepower over more than one eighth of a light year, an unprecedented range for even the most advanced focused Nichron cannons.

NCS Auriga Test Model, showing "front" approach to station.

NCS Auriga Test Model, showing aft of station.

P.S.: This kitbashing thing is REALLY delivering good results, but even it becomes arduous and tiresome at times. This station is once again made entirely out of pieces and parts from other vessels, and yet it still took more than six hours of gluing and placing to create it. See those little "ribs" down the back portion of the station, like structural supports? Yeah, that's a piece I only used ten times while creating the Alexander.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 07 May 2010 - 07:19 AM

By the way, SketchUp 7 lets you have a WHOLE lot more lines and faces on-screen than version 5, but also lets you export your file in a version 5 format, meaning that I can now draft in version 7 without it slowing down on gigantic models like the above space station, and still drop them into my licensed copy of 5 to do the model exporting.

Life is good.

THAT. IS. AMAZING.

I like it.

Delphi, my iMac gave up the ghost attempting to process your stations.

I'm so proud of you.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Apr 30 2010, 08:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I get the feeling that the rings you have there use the "Twirl" filter, one that somebody else recommended to me in a photoshop forum. I tried it a few times, but a lot of the rings it made looked too crisp and artificial. I'm sure that crossing Glitterato and the Twirl feature together though could make some very good-looking ringed planets.

Actually, I fooled around in photoshop to find out what I probably did.
filter->render->clouds->difference clouds-->radial blur (few times) cut and paste the best part to make symmetrical, radial blur radial blur, watercolor, radial blur, glowing edges --> edit fade glowing edges, and maybe another radial blur.

End result:

btw if you take a rectangle marquee while still in the overhead view, and delete a portion of ring the same width as your planet, your shadow is proportionally accurate.

Sample around a sphere:

obviously the way you go about it gives you different ring styles. The faint, thin rings around the tropical planet I made, for instance, probably has some other formula which I doubt I can easily replicate. I recall I wanted to get a noise effect, like it was made of tiny rocks. I would suggest fiddling.

This post has been edited by Insomniac : 08 May 2010 - 06:05 AM

Clever. Wish I could afford Photoshop. (I'm living la vida broka right now.)

Oh. Oh goodness. I'm sorry Delphi, I have a feeling I'm going to have to cover the monitor in a giant curtain. For that, is the most holy of holies. Very very nice!

QUOTE (StarSword @ May 8 2010, 08:46 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Clever. Wish I could afford Photoshop. (I'm living la vida broka right now.)

If you you go to college, talk to your college's art department and see if they have some kind of special offer, so you can get photoshop for >$200. Or even if you're in high school, talk to your art teachers if there's a graphic design class and see if they can hook you up.

If you don't have any of these, you have until 5/25 to get a copy of Photoshop CS5 from amazon.com for $800 off , so only $200 instead of $999.99!

This should interest some of you. I said on page 29 that I was going to be assembling a little portfolio with all the building chunks I've been using lately to speed up the model creation process. Though I'm still working on getting that together (I have to normalize the size of the parts; some are 0.100 m long, some are 10 m), here's a little set of small screenshots demoing how I use these parts together to create unique shapes and components.

Figure 1.A and 1.B - The engine block from the Cephecon ship model, without decorative plating.

Figure 2.A - Engine block, exploded to reveal component pieces.

Figure 3.A - One component element, zoomed and rotated. Used as an engine block on its own in another ship model, yet used as a construction piece for this one.

It used to be, that I would create the entire ship from scratch, line by line. Eventually, this proved to be tiresome and arduous, and led me to start using grouping and duplication to create things like multiple engines or fixed gun enclosures. One day, I noticed that a piece I had originally used as a component of a space station was also good for adding a sort of greebling detail effect on another ship, so I copied and pasted the item from one to the other, and distorted it to fit. Finding that the effect worked, I started going through a lot of my old model files, or files that I just couldn't see as a ship on their own, and found that the proper combination of many of these "throwaway" models could create entire ships on their own. Now I used a hybrid method, creating a skeletal structure out of basic pieces or a quick sketch on paper, and then using component pieces to assemble and detail the ship.

I'll be working on getting that component package together, in between writing stellar descriptions.

Here's the famous little piece, wrenched from the hull of one of my first station models. There isn't a single component-based model in which I haven't used this amazingly awesome little useful chunk.

For a fun time, go back through my ship model screenshots and see how many times you spot this piece!

P.S.: Huzzah for transparency-enabled thread images! Think I'll keep doing this. It looks good.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 09 May 2010 - 02:19 PM

Regarding the engine segments, I thought they were cannons before I saw that post. Now I have a question: if they aren't cannons, then what is?

QUOTE (darthkev @ May 9 2010, 01:01 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Regarding the engine segments, I thought they were cannons before I saw that post. Now I have a question: if they aren't cannons, then what is?

They are cannons, originally. Rather, they're part of a cannon component I made in the past. Combining the barrel with other pieces makes different-looking cannons for different ships, and in the case of the Cephecon engines, I used the structure of the cannon to make part of the engine instead. The original model has two plates that extend forward over the edges and cover the openings of the cannons, suddenly making them look like saddlebag-style fuel tanks or something. Just like the team at Industrial Light and Magic used battleship game pieces to make the surface of the Death Star, I use parts from other models, whatever their function used to be, and repurpose them to become whatever I want them to be. I've got one ship that uses that wide-set piece at the back of the engine model both as an engine block on its own, and as a series of armor plates.

In other news, I got bored of writing planet descriptions and got working in SketchUp for a little bit. I just wanted to make a very basic ship, so I think this result will do quite nicely for a standard NDC police corvette.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 09 May 2010 - 04:17 PM

Nice. As for getting bored, I find doing what you did is probably the best idea: switch to something else. Recently coding ships for HOTS has gotten boring, so I switched to government HUDs and making düdes so I can test the AI balance of what ships I've finished. Never stick to one thing if it gets boring, that's how vaporware is made IMO.

Seems like I'm full of new ideas today. I made another starship, but now I'm going back to writing descriptions.

I'm not quite sure what to call it yet, but it'll make a nice cruiser.

Geez Delphi, you're just full of updates today aren't you? No complaints, they all look awesome! Oh so excited! Also, I like how you've given us arrows to show which way is the front, as many of your ships look awesome either way!

This recent cruiser reminds me of a Romulan Bird of Prey.

QUOTE (darthkev @ May 9 2010, 08:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This recent cruiser reminds me of a Romulan Bird of Prey.

Huh. I guess it does look like the Bird, doesn't it? It'd probably eat one for breakfast in a firefight, though. Twin artillery cannons firing in rapid succession would be enough to ruin just about anybody's day. I make no ridiculous claims about my ships overpowering every SciFi vehicle designed though; most of the NDC ships would be toast against a Star Destroyer. Let's just face it: the Empire has thousands of years of technological refinement over the NDC.

Actually, Star Wars was one of my sources of inspiration when I was designing the weapons for my little universe. I realized that on Star Wars they were using what seemed like very basic tech (lasers, deflectors, scan-line holograms, etc.) but with massive refinement and perfection of craft. In other words, instead of moving past laser weaponry and developing plasma cannons or whatever, they obviously spent more time simply making the laser better, and increasing its power output. The same is true in the NDC universe, where they use what seem at first like primitive nuclear weapons, but in truth have hundreds of years of development and refinement behind them. Why throw away the limitless power of the atom when so much is still unknown about it? Even the NDC realizes that there is further to go with their guns before they have to find a new technology: focused Nichron cannons are still a rarity, and they haven't even begun to experiment with the terrifying idea of a repeating or continuous-fire nuclear weapon.

I'm just glad there isn't any nuclear fallout or winter in space. Though, to be fair, space already is a desolate wasteland. Still, scary, I can imagine that NDC lives would generally be filled with dread.