I'd like to know!
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Legal statuses, dummy governments, and auto-aborting missions ;).
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I've been doing a bunch of work this week on the new NDC heads-up-display (or head-sideways-display, being Nova), and I think I'm putting too much effort into each element, but I figure that if it's going to be taking up as much space on the right as it does, it's worth it to at least make it look good. I've completed test versions of the Refractor and Armor displays, while the energy display is actually going to be pinned to the navigation panel, under the selected destination.
Either way, tell me what you think!
The "lit" portion of the bar is only 2 pixels wide, but I've already done a few tests and it looks good, even though it's so narrow. It's still easily read, and actually using pure white as the color gives it a great "glow" effect. The sample render above is pretty much exactly how it looks.
The refractor display should provide a fun little light show, because the ships have rather low shield capacity but quick recharge times. I considered going back to the regular slow-recharge of typical Nova ships, but I like the idea of a shield that can be almost impenetrable to fighter weapons but discharged by a single artillery weapon.
This post has been edited by Delphi : 02 October 2009 - 06:26 PM
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Wow... I need to go change my underpants. Nice work, Delphi! Beautiful!
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By the way, I found out that you can give something a great rough metallic surface in Photoshop by putting 5-25% monochromatic noise on its surface and then using the Halftone Pattern filter to dice it up into a diamond-etched style. The metal on this image was done using just a simple base color, added noise, and then the aforementioned filter. The halftone filter was also used on the hazard striping, and ended up making it appear to have a plastic guard over it.
There is nothing really complicated in this image. Everything was done starting with a base color and then simply applying layer effects and filters, with a little noise here and there.
Here, this is the base level for each layer. No layer effects added. You can see the style created by the noise and filters, and compare it to the final version above.
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By the way, the side bar in Delphi is going to be laid out differently from the Nova one. I'm not sure on a final design, but certain elements will be in different places, and as a result once I'm done creating a suitable graphic with the new arrangement, I'm going to upload a small plug-in that will swap it in place of the default Nova civilian sidebar, so that you can try it out and get used to it.
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QUOTE (Delphi @ Oct 5 2009, 06:48 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
By the way, the side bar in Delphi is going to be laid out differently from the Nova one. I'm not sure on a final design, but certain elements will be in different places, and as a result once I'm done creating a suitable graphic with the new arrangement, I'm going to upload a small plug-in that will swap it in place of the default Nova civilian sidebar, so that you can try it out and get used to it.
I had no idea you could do that.
If it's possible you should do it. We need a change for once. -
QUOTE (Insomniac @ Oct 6 2009, 10:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I had no idea you could do that.
If it's possible you should do it. We need a change for once.It's all calculated using simple x and y values. The shield and armor bars can be repositioned the easiest, because they're small and simple to fit into a new graphic. If you played Uncle Twitchy's Starfleet Adventures (R.I.P.), then I'm sure you remember that once you got to the early 23th-century era ships, the sidebar changed to the Excelsior blue and green scheme, with vertical status indicators. Also, the first-generation Federation ships had a smaller radar display than normal, because it had to fit into a circular graphic that UT provided. Everything else is just determined by a coordinate, so it shouldn't be too hard to mix things up.
I'll be damned if I don't try, at least.
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QUOTE (Delphi @ Oct 7 2009, 12:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Uncle Twitchy's Starfleet Adventures (R.I.P.)
The last I heard from Pace, SFA wasn't shelved. They haven't thrown in the towel yet, it's just that Pace is moving to a complete different country (in Europe, of course) and all the other SFA team members have received heavy doses of RL. So, I guess you could say it's in suspended animation inside the transporter.
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QUOTE (JacaByte @ Oct 7 2009, 09:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
The last I heard from Pace, SFA wasn't shelved. They haven't thrown in the towel yet, it's just that Pace is moving to a complete different country (in Europe, of course) and all the other SFA team members have received heavy doses of RL. So, I guess you could say it's in suspended animation inside the transporter.
They had better pull it from the pattern buffer soon, before the signal degrades.
By the way, has anybody else noticed that we're modding for a game that's more than 8 years old?
The sheer stupidity and yet wonder regarding that just struck me. Oh well, it's fun anyway, and EVN's low system requirements mean that as long as we have licenses and Mission Computer, we can always make our own adventures.
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Also, I'm posting a new thread with a poll regarding screen resolution. I would really hope that by this point in 2009 people all have systems that can show the entire Nova status bar, but I really don't know. I'd like to make use of the space down below the regular dimensions, normally filled with metal or other artwork, but if it's going to clip off people's screens I'll have to simplify it. Also, lower screen resolutions may force me to shrink some of the higher-res graphics. They look just the right scale at 1400 x 900, but on an 800 x 600 screen the smallest shuttle becomes the size of a large cruiser.
Oh, and you can protest it, of course, but I'm really considering skipping 8-bit color graphics in Nova, in favor of 16-bit. Otherwise, I have to keep a full second set, taking up nearly twice as much space. Seriously people, computers with thousands of colors have been around since at least '95.
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On WinNova, the rle8s are completely ignored anyways. I'd say it's perfectly acceptable these days to ditch the 8 bits.
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Hey, guess what? Yeah, that's a terrible way to start a sentence, but I'm excited. Although the plug-in is still far from completion, I've reached a milestone in that I've successfully achieved 100% "on-screen conversion", which means that everything seen on the screen at a certain time was entirely of my own creation. There are still elements of the original game across almost 99% of the game universe, but I captured this perfect frame which featured new ships, the new status bar, and new planet graphics. It's all mine, and I'm thrilled with it.
Oh right, the screenshot. Here you go.
Okay, in honesty I didn't make the asteroids (of course), but I'm not likely changing them from the original version because there's really nothing that can be improved. They look like rocks, and they break apart.
This post has been edited by Delphi : 08 October 2009 - 04:22 PM
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Oh and yes, I'm teaching myself how to create really good textures. I had to build up from scratch to create the panels and details on the side bar, because nothing else had the right grit and tone, so I downloaded a bunch of photoshop brushes to create details like venting and rust over the panel, and churned out some great results. I like them, at least. Now I'm going to have to go back and do even MORE work re-doing ships. Blah.
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That's gorgeous, Delphi. The new sidebar might take a bit of adjusting to, but I can't see it being a real problem, and it looks amazing. How many sidebar UI's will there be in this, out of curiosity, and will they all feature this layout? Because you could mix things up between different govts, so that people might be less willing to change to a different govts ships. Also could be a way of indicating that different govts and/or races do things differently. Just a thought. Also, ships and planets look great, but what happens for the planet picture on the comm. window? Will it just clip to the middle section? Or have you enlarged the dialog? Does that work?
Keep up the awesome work.
