QUOTE (EKHawkman @ Aug 1 2010, 12:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you for existing Delphi(wasn't it originally Sol?). It makes everyday much better. That was a beautiful idea!

Yes, it was "Sol", a long time ago. I always wanted the username "Delphi" though, but it had already been taken over at EV-Nova.net (RIP). Ironic that I should end up finding the name unused in the central forum officially dedicated to EV Nova. Normally if the fringe sites are already populated, there isn't a chance in hell of getting anything other than perhaps "_delphi_1727".

Wow, page 45 already. This thread is trucking along at a prodigious rate these last few weeks.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Aug 1 2010, 12:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For my purposes, I actually had the idea for a device that would allow you to hear in space. Though sound doesn't travel through a vacuum via traditional airborne transmission, it is still technically there in a different medium. Because every mass produces a "dent" in gravitational space-time, that means that any changes in the positioning or the structure of the mass will cause ripples. This is why supernovae exert force on stellar objects well beyond the range of their shockwave: the displacement of that much mass causes a giant depth-charge effect on the gravitational plane. By this reasoning, a ship firing its weapons is producing a ripple outward from itself exactly the same as a sound wave. The only difference is that human ears aren't designed to pick up gravitational waves and interpret them as audio, less so in harsh vacuum. It is extremely easy to argue that a soldier who cannot hear is far worse off than the one that can.

To confront this issue, all starships in the NDC universe are equipped with graviton sensors that "listen" for the shockwaves of ships changing/shifting their mass and translate the disruption into an audible sound through speakers in the command center of the spacecraft. When a ship fires its cannons, space is distorted, and the pilot of any neighboring vessel hears the muzzle report. When the ship begins to shift in space and engages its engines, the disruption from both the vessel's general relocation of its mass combined with the energy being released by the engines produces a unique signature that is translated as such.

Ergo, sound in space (more or less).

This would actually work, but it'd sound really weird. Also, you'd need crazy sensitive sensors. Like, ridiculously. The Gravity Wave detector out in Gingin, Australia, is a massive installation.

Mind you, given the size of the ships, it'd fit nicely. The problem would be detecting gravity waves from everything else, not just your ship.

Also, it means that planets and some stars (as well as pulsars etc.) would make noise to filter out.

So yeah, possible, if a little far-fetched.

Also, you're awesome.

QUOTE (Templar98921 @ Aug 1 2010, 03:22 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This would actually work, but it'd sound really weird. Also, you'd need crazy sensitive sensors. Like, ridiculously. The Gravity Wave detector out in Gingin, Australia, is a massive installation.

Mind you, given the size of the ships, it'd fit nicely. The problem would be detecting gravity waves from everything else, not just your ship.

Also, it means that planets and some stars (as well as pulsars etc.) would make noise to filter out.

So yeah, possible, if a little far-fetched.

Also, you're awesome.

I know it's far-fetched, but then again, so is faster-than-light travel or hyperspace in science fiction. Fortunately, when I joined the sci-fi writing community, they gave me this awesome red button that fixes logic errors with witty, succinct statements.

Here, let me show you.

Click!

The graviton sensors today are just really primitive. The sensors in the future are much smaller, and can easily filter out things they don't need to be detecting.

I think everybody should have one of these.

Actually, if you consider ripples on a pond, they lose amplitude as they spread because they still only have as much force as they started with. Therefore, the "volume" of distant stellar ripples would be very low. If I had to come up with a really decent explanation for why this all works, it would be as follows:

Planetary bodies, though massive, produce predictable, regular waves in gravitational space-time, so their motion is easily filtered out by the sensor computer.
Distant celestial entities' waves are many times weaker by the time the sensors intercept them, so a sort of ordinary "noise gate" easily ensures most are ignored.
The computer is programmed to keep most background noise at a reduced volume, only amplifying signatures that it recognizes, such as the typical man-made "sound" of thrusters activating or weapons firing. The same way that stealth engines are under development today, these ships of the future may have special prototype engines designed to prevent them from disrupting too much space and being detected. This was pretty much the entire premise behind the movie The Hunt for Red October, in which the Russian submarine has a special stealth engine that doesn't sound mechanical, and is therefore ignored by most sonar operators. Though this is a fictional example, it is a good comparison because the same tenets are the founding principle behind all modern stealth technology, from camouflage to low-radar-profile jets. The goal is to blend in with your natural surroundings. If a ship can blend its unnatural sounds with the background ambience of surrounding space, it can effectively disappear.

So basically, this isn't going to make ship pilots hear comets entering the solar system or space-bunnies hopping around on Mars, but it will give them some sort of an audio cue when that first unnoticed missile soars over their left flank and evasive action is suddenly necessary.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 01 August 2010 - 04:38 PM

Sorry about no updates in the last few days, guys! I installed a new hard drive in my laptop, so I'm still getting all my files settled in. It's so awesome. Gone are the days of archiving countless files on multiple storage volumes just to save file space; I've upgraded from a little 80 GB drive to a whopping 500 GB in one fell swoop. The drive is also a lot faster (7200 RPM), and I've heard that for some reason drafting programs like SketchUp work better on faster drives. I'm not sure why that would be, but I'll let the cards fall where they may. In either situation, I've finally beat the size constraints that were slowing me down before, and I'm cruising fast and happy down the Half Terabyte Highway.

How will this affect the development of the plug? Not by much, I'd assume. No matter how big I try to make them, Nova's files just aren't that massive. The extra space will mostly just be convenient for the rest of what I do on the computer (gaming, and... more gaming).

Hmm. Would you look at that. Bryce 7 is available in a "Personal Learning Edition" that includes every feature so long as its not put toward commercial use. As plug-in development for EV Nova is also mandated as non-commercial, I'd say that meets the criteria for me to perform a little 3D renderer upgrade.

Do you delightful fellows see what this miraculous little thing is right here? It's a contextual menu containing some of the OBJ groups I originally formed in the Guardian's SketchUp file (according to where I right-clicked on the model; there's actually more there). Bryce 7 lets me select model detail down to the group level. Because I draft almost all the new ships using components, every single component counts as its own group. Version 5.5 would only let me wrap a single texture around the entire model.

This means I now have the ability to texture individual components to whatever degree I so choose, in a program I already understand greatly.

Be prepared for amazing things.

Do I see a tail fin sticking out above the menu there? I didn't realize you put any 'sporty features' on your ships. Is that a corvette? I don't remember seeing a ship named Guardian.

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Aug 7 2010, 11:58 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do I see a tail fin sticking out above the menu there? I didn't realize you put any 'sporty features' on your ships. Is that a corvette? I don't remember seeing a ship named Guardian.

It's from many pages back, described as an artillery platform. It's a small cruiser with a big pair of cannons and fairly weak engines, best suited to a completely defensive player. The menu is actually obscuring the bow of the vessel; you're seeing the forward blast-deflection plates wrapped around the cannons to protect their gas venting systems at the end of each barrel.

Very nice! Looking forward to all the new textural updates, Delphi!

One thousand, one hundred and eleven posts. Way to go delphi! Lots of ones are going on here.

But I'm so excited about new texturing, it will make the ships the prettiest of pretties! Or the most awesome of the awesomes! There will be much joy rendered(get it) from this revelation!

Heh, "rendered". That's a good one

I'm looking forward to what improved textures you can create, Delph. Not that they weren't bad, but this system could enhance the detail and complexity of your textures.

I don't know, too much texture could be a bad thing. Mainly in the sense we all might incur facial injuries as we run into our monitors in an attempt to tough Delphi's ships.

Actually, I concur, I've had my head exploded too many times by Delphi's epic artwork and my doctor worries that if it blows up a few more times my brain will be fully melted beyond repair

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 08 August 2010 - 05:55 PM

QUOTE (Delphi @ Aug 1 2010, 12:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For my purposes, I actually had the idea for a device that would allow you to hear in space. Though sound doesn't travel through a vacuum via traditional airborne transmission, it is still technically there in a different medium. Because every mass produces a "dent" in gravitational space-time, that means that any changes in the positioning or the structure of the mass will cause ripples. This is why supernovae exert force on stellar objects well beyond the range of their shockwave: the displacement of that much mass causes a giant depth-charge effect on the gravitational plane. By this reasoning, a ship firing its weapons is producing a ripple outward from itself exactly the same as a sound wave. The only difference is that human ears aren't designed to pick up gravitational waves and interpret them as audio, less so in harsh vacuum. It is extremely easy to argue that a soldier who cannot hear is far worse off than the one that can.

To confront this issue, all starships in the NDC universe are equipped with graviton sensors that "listen" for the shockwaves of ships changing/shifting their mass and translate the disruption into an audible sound through speakers in the command center of the spacecraft. When a ship fires its cannons, space is distorted, and the pilot of any neighboring vessel hears the muzzle report. When the ship begins to shift in space and engages its engines, the disruption from both the vessel's general relocation of its mass combined with the energy being released by the engines produces a unique signature that is translated as such.

Ergo, sound in space (more or less).

The ship's sensors don't actually have to be gravimetric; standard scans would do the trick. I've run across this explanation for sound in space in at least two places. The '80s Star Wars Radio Drama that aired on National Public Radio had it show up during the Millennium Falcon's dogfight with the Death Star's TIE picket (you remember the scene, I'm sure; at the end everybody goes "We did it" (Leia hugs Chewbacca) and meanwhile Threepio's tangled up in wiring going "Help! I think I'm melting! This is all your (R2-D2's) fault"). Elizabeth Moon mentioned it in one of her Heris Serrano novels, too (one of Heris' previous COs replaced the standard explosions and whatnot with tympani and other orchestral instruments).

At the end of the day, though, humans need sound. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey one time and found it boring, partly because there was no sound during the EVA sequences.

QUOTE (StarSword @ Aug 9 2010, 02:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

At the end of the day, though, humans need sound. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey one time and found it boring, partly because there was no sound during the EVA sequences.

That's interesting, because I found them vastly more interesting without sound, and I have a tendancy to mute all the sounds effects in Shattered Horizon and other games taking place in space, including EV Nova.

This hard drive swap has been taking longer than I thought it would. It's still proving difficult to get my original workflow up and running again. I'll start to get somewhere with a project, and then realize I can't remember where my original texture file went or whatever. It's becoming ultimately very frustrating.

However, I have successfully migrated all of my sound software over to the new hard drive, so I've put some work toward recording fighter voices. I realized that I can do some very interesting effects if I don't follow the Nova method of even numbered voices being male and odd being female. I intend on using the different voice numbering as well as multiple inherent government types to create special voices for fighters, destroyers, and cruisers.

For instance, a fighter's attack confirmation may be something like, "Affirmative; archon beginning attack run," whereas a much larger capital ship may give you the response, "Directive confirmed. All power to forward artillery."

Each voice would also have the appropriate background ambience as well. Instead of just using "clean" audio, I want each voice to sound like it's coming from within the appropriate vessel. Over the fighter channel you'll hear the roar of engines inside a tiny ship, while the bigger ships may have a deep droning engine rumble hidden in the background.

The only audio aspect about EV Nova that's disheartening me at the moment is the inability to make environmental music play in a stable way. If I could, I'd even write a memory-interception program to listen for bit-cues in Nova and play music in a separate program as necessary. Unfortunately, I have no such programming skill, and the closed-app environment of Mac OS X would probably prevent memory interference like that.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Aug 10 2010, 09:15 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I intend on using the different voice numbering as well as multiple inherent government types to create special voices for fighters, destroyers, and cruisers.

I like the concept, but I'm not sure on the idea of actually implementing it. I don't know if you know this, but Nova limits you to 7 separate voice types. At most you could have 3 distinct voice sets for the NDC, another set of 3 for the Enclave, and then have one voice type left for merchants or something. Everyone else would have to use the same voices as the others or just not use voices.

QUOTE

The only audio aspect about EV Nova that's disheartening me at the moment is the inability to make environmental music play in a stable way.

I'm unsure as to what you mean by this. What about the current way EVN plays landing sounds is unstable? It all plays fine for me.

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Aug 10 2010, 11:34 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I like the concept, but I'm not sure on the idea of actually implementing it. I don't know if you know this, but Nova limits you to 7 separate voice types. At most you could have 3 distinct voice sets for the NDC, another set of 3 for the Enclave, and then have one voice type left for merchants or something. Everyone else would have to use the same voices as the others or just not use voices.

Actually, there's technically 14 different voices that can be used. Remember that within each voice type, governments can be told to only use the even or odd-numbered ones, meaning that within each individual "voice" you actually have two usable sets. However, three per government is pretty much as many as I'd ever need. The only two kinds of ships that really behave differently and have limitations on their weaponry are the capital ships and the fighters, so the differentiation would probably divide them into two voices as such. Military transports may have a voice, I suppose. Aside from them, I'll give voices to the Voidspace groups - one voice track with odds assigned to the Pariah Combine and the evens assigned to any independent mercenaries you hire - and voices for various traders.

In short, it means that if I'm being extremely frugal, I can lay it out as follows:

Voice 1 Odds: NDC Fighters
Voice 1 Evens: NDC Cruisers
Voice 2 Odds: Enclave Fighters
Voice 2 Evens: Enclave Cruisers
Voice 3: Military Transports
Voice 4: Merchants
Voice 5 Odds: Pariah Combine Small Craft
Voice 5 Evens: Pariah Combine Capital Ships
Voice 6: Voidspace Mercenaries/Independent Militia
Voice 7: (Unused)

I'd say it's good to leave one slot unfilled for now, just in case I want to give one type of ship a full set of voices, such as perhaps the NDC Archons. The Archons are the elite fighting unit of the Coalition, and often operate alone and under the radar. They fly specially-modified Scimitar fighters and behave like a combination between a World War II Axis SS officer and a futuristic bounty hunter. Imagine Boba Fett if he were working for the Empire as an enlisted member instead of freelance, and if the Empire made a habit of training a few more like him as well. I might give their ships one voice all their own, so that they really get a stand-out personality in the game.

QUOTE

I'm unsure as to what you mean by this. What about the current way EVN plays landing sounds is unstable? It all plays fine for me.

The landing sounds are just fine, but there was a point in time where I was doing some extremely experimental plug-in stuff, trying to create in-game atmospheric music during flight/combat. It worked for a moment, and then it crashed. I've not tried again since. My only other idea for making something like that work was to create a "listener" program, almost like a game trainer, that watches Nova for set bits that don't have an effect in-game but are used to trigger the music in certain situations, running it in a different program.

Like I said, though, I have nowhere near the programming capacity to create such a device.

Oh, in-flight music. Arpia has that, so does Ashen Galaxy. They have the music triggered by missions, maybe you should look into that. Though, they only play one track at a time. Additional tracks would have to be activated by cröns at some point or when the player lands.

Alternatively you could just not make in-flight music, but instead suggest people try running iTunes while playing Delphi TC. I can do it on my MacBook (13" non-pro) so I'm guessing it's not hard to do on other Macs. Not sure about Windows, though.