QUOTE (Technomancer @ Sep 15 2010, 08:24 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just out of curiosity, what angle are those silhouettes from? I was thinking top-down or in-game angle, but then I thought they might well be front on, and could probably still work from that angle, so it'd be good to know either way.

The silhouettes are shown from the top down, with all three ships bow's facing the bottom of the screen. The "arms" are always toward the front of the craft.

Also, KoM, you're very close. Good job remembering. The weapons the Pariah favor are stolen modifications of the NDC's Electromag Laser. Theirs is mostly the same, but it trades hull damage for the ability to pierce shields, and its firing rate is much slower. The Pariah are even a threat to some NDC capital ships simply because of the shield-piercing effect, which makes any category of refractor shield effectively useless. Even if you're flying an Alexander or a Cyphus, an engagement with the Pariah Combine will result in hull damage to your ship. You can find this weapon on a few Voidspace stations and planets, but its availability is slim. At some point in the game, I intend to feature a mission that involves the complete military conquest of a Pariah station, which grants access to some of their technology.

In other news, I think I'll call it the Pariah Seraph, as a blatant irony-in-moniker (Seraphs are angelic beings at the top of the hierarchy in heaven). The Seraph is the ultimate Voidspace terror, tasked primarily with the subjugation and processing of massive numbers of abducted human sacrifices. Half battleship, and half prison, the Seraph can often be found looming in the dead of space over an independent world, hanging motionless in the sky as smaller Pariah ships scour the surface for ample populace to harvest, before they are shuttled into the battleship's gaping maw of a cargo bay. It is the only Pariah vessel outfitted with nuclear missiles, carried for deployment to worlds whose populace is deemed unfit for sacrifice. Though the technology is ancient, it is more than effective, and the Pariah are fast becoming the number one cause of death in Voidspace.

Holy (expletive) that's a fearsome sonuva(expletive). Your description of the Pariah Combine makes them sound like the Borg or, more accurately given the design of their ships, Stargate's Wraith. Both have massive, powerful ships and harvest planets for their human(oid) populations.

And to correct myself in my earlier post, the two smaller ships are actually several pages back, page 39. Here where the mid-sized Pariah ship is, a modified Kevilan Class Destroyer. The smaller of the three, a simple frigate, is here.

I'm gonna have fun tearing those Pariah ships apart.

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Sep 16 2010, 02:44 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Holy (expletive) that's a fearsome sonuva(expletive). Your description of the Pariah Combine makes them sound like the Borg or, more accurately given the design of their ships, Stargate's Wraith. Both have massive, powerful ships and harvest planets for their human(oid) populations.

And to correct myself in my earlier post, the two smaller ships are actually several pages back, page 39. Here where the mid-sized Pariah ship is, a modified Kevilan Class Destroyer. The smaller of the three, a simple frigate, is here.

I'm gonna have fun tearing those Pariah ships apart.

Perhaps I am channeling some elements of the Borg, but I've never seen Stargate's wraiths. I envisioned the Pariah as a form of extreme theocratic bureaucracy. Their policies and procedures are strict and methodical, and they think nothing more of collecting slaves and sacrificing them as a rancher would consider the feelings of his cattle when he brings them to the slaughterhouse. This is not to say that the Pariah are mindless drones - in fact the opposite - but their system of values and beliefs is so alien in nature to conventional moral rationality that they resemble a purely evil, hostile group of blood-lusting cultists. As is true between any differing cultures, there is no definitive set of "true" values and morals. It's all a subjective thing, and to the Pariah, everything that they do is ethical, justified, and necessary. To the NDC and Enclave, their deeds are monstrous.

Fortunately, though I painted a picture of massive abductions and "human processing", they've never successfully abducted an entire planet's populace. Usually slaves and sacrifices are extracted only a few hundred at a time. They don't inherently have a desire to end human life, but their doctrine insists that without human sacrifice, their lives and their society will ultimately collapse.

Anyway, for the purposes of the TC, they are pretty much just evil.

Stupid comment. Looks like a spider that's missing some pieces. Other than that, the ship is sweet! As always, I have a question. Are the capital ships in EVN Delphi, superweapons? Or are they things like the Starbridge, that SAYS capital, but it's more of a gunboat.

QUOTE (Spartan Jai @ Sep 17 2010, 04:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Stupid comment. Looks like a spider that's missing some pieces. Other than that, the ship is sweet! As always, I have a question. Are the capital ships in EVN Delphi, superweapons? Or are they things like the Starbridge, that SAYS capital, but it's more of a gunboat.

Oh no, they are freaking superweapons, the capital ships are going to destroy so many things. It is ridiculous. If you've ever played Sins Of A Solar Empire, the capital ships are a whole different level. Same thing here.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Sep 16 2010, 03:14 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I swear that ship looks like a giant hand. (with an extra finger) Don't really have anything else productive to say considering that it looks like a giant hand.

This post has been edited by of doom : 19 September 2010 - 09:12 AM

Well, if you had the Seraph fight the Draconen Hand Ship from Polycon, the Pariah Seraph would win by far. Because it that important extra finger.

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 19 September 2010 - 10:45 AM

That ship is RIDDLED with weaponry. RIDDLED. You can't fit much more on that thing! It would just decimate things! Good lord it looks scary! It is going to crush so many things!

How do you get all those nice greeblies on the ship?

I've been doing some stuff myself, but It never looks as awesome or detailed.
Eg. one of my wips- Devilfish destroyer

This post has been edited by Pyrophage : 19 September 2010 - 03:16 PM

QUOTE (Pyrophage @ Sep 19 2010, 02:15 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How do you get all those nice greeblies on the ship?

I've been doing some stuff myself, but It never looks as awesome or detailed.
Eg. one of my wips- Devilfish destroyer

Every last bit of greebling done on my ships is created using pieces from other ships, and sometimes entire ships by themselves. For instance, the swept-back top of the Seraph is actually an earlier version of the model for the Mars Corvette. The fanned missile tubes are the upper hull used in a couple of Enclave ships. Even the imposing arms are composed of smaller pieces, including a fighter wing, a thruster block, two of the "anything piece" (from my model kit), and a long structural block that I use in many different ships. It's exactly like using a pack of LEGO blocks; there's really no limit to how many things you can glue together in different ways. To go even further into depth, the primary hull has a flat segment on either side of the greebly center section, which is comprised of a few hull chunks copied directly from other NDC and Enclave ships. Within each of those are about twenty to thirty hand-assembled model pieces. If you download and take a look through the component kit that I made available, you'll see many different simple pieces that can be used as pretty much anything you want. If you want to add them into your model for greebling, feel free to. They're completely open-source, so I encourage people to take them, rip them apart, and make beautiful (or ugly) things out of them.

I've done a bunch of work on the weapon graphics and all their related effects; everything from the sprite tables themselves up to nailing the correct number of particles to really make them sizzle when they hit. Absolute weapon damage values still have to wait until I've put most of the ships into the game and set their defensive stats, but at least when I'm testing I really get a nice light show now. I'll try to capture some screenshots later during testing, but if I can't get exactly a good shot I'll at least upload the sprites themselves so you can try them out and see how they work.

I had a lot of fun playing with particles while working on my various TC and plug projects. Had problems with getting the colors right sometimes though, often they would come out multicolored and not quite what I was after. You had any trouble with that?

@sp3cies, on Sep 21 2010, 06:16 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

I had a lot of fun playing with particles while working on my various TC and plug projects. Had problems with getting the colors right sometimes though, often they would come out multicolored and not quite what I was after. You had any trouble with that?

Yes. Absolutely. I think I remember setting one particle color to absolute blue, and it came out white, yellow, blue, and orange.

Sorry about the delay; here's the download for some of the energy weapon sprites used in the TC. All of the bolts are based off of the same template, which is also included as a large black and white bolt image. The bolt itself has a faint amount of glow added to it, but you'll most likely want to add the effect both before and after resizing your sprite from the original (always save a copy!). If you do it correctly, you can create several different-looking bolts with heavier or lighter internal brightness. Simply apply a color filter on the entire image to change the bolt from black and white to whatever tone you so desire.

The included sample bolts should work in Mission Computer without any special tricks; just open the RLE creator and load in the sprite and the mask for each one to try them out. As you know, I tend to use a higher number of frames for each sprite, so the table should measure up to be 6 x 12.

Go nuts!

Download: Delphi Sample Energy Weapons

Those are really nice, Delphi! Thanks for sharing!

I concur.

I've been trying to do the same thing myself, actually, but I can't figure out how to make a sphere. I can't even seem to make a cone. Pyramids aren't a problem, but cones seem impossible. Any tips on how to make a cone or sphere in Sketchup?

Yes. You can make a cylander (i didn't spell that right), and rotate it along its axis. It will form a cone without a point, and then you use the line tool to structure it from there.

That did the trick. I don't mean to take this thread further off-topic, but I seem to recall you made a sphere, too, Jai. Any tips on that? I need a sphere to couple with a cone in order to make weapon bolts. I suppose I could just ask Delphi for permission to use his template file, but I'd like to make my own.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=iDbQhQjeP9g

That is an easy way to make a sphere.

This post has been edited by Sp3cies : 27 September 2010 - 06:20 AM

@darthkev, on Sep 26 2010, 11:32 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

That did the trick. I don't mean to take this thread further off-topic, but I seem to recall you made a sphere, too, Jai. Any tips on that? I need a sphere to couple with a cone in order to make weapon bolts. I suppose I could just ask Delphi for permission to use his template file, but I'd like to make my own.

Any shape can be made by lathing it, which is done by creating a circle, creating a shape (or the exact same circle in the case of a sphere) that is perpendicular to the original circle and some distance above it (doesn't matter, just helps if it's not touching anywhere), and then use the "follow me" tool. Click the circle's edge, click the tool, then click the face of the shape (in that order) and it'll lathe it out for you.