Developer Journal: Why I don't like BIG ships... image - Yuuzhan Vong at War mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
Behold the Yuuzhan Vong Army! This mod adds the Yuuzhan Vong Race as a playable faction and all units of this era. We are a community of modders working for the greater goal, so anyone who wants to help or support us is welcome!
So, I thought this would be interesting to share with everyone...
I have never seen a SSD textured as detailed as I am trying to make our Lusankya/Guardian for a low poly RTS game like EAW. If polylimits and unlimited textures were no issue, this thing could be incredible, but we are striving hard to make a game that does not lag and runs smoothly, so with that, we are trying every trick imaginable to bring the Lady Ex to life....
but honestly... as a texture artist...
I HATE THIS SHIP.
LOL...
Sure, it's big, beautiful, massive and Kad went totally crazy putting like a billion guns on it, but I am doing my damnedest to keep it at 8 textures for the ship hull. It is a real challenge trying to get a good variation of detailed semi-realistic texture on a ship this size, and having it look believable when shown next to other ships that are only a fraction of the size.
Just late night thoughts as I work on this, trying my best to make this look awesome for everyone, here is a little preview with a mighty brave New Republic task force approaching the stern...
Shadows are not shown, but will be present in the final version.
Totally understand that issue!
I personally havent worked on a ship that big but I can imagine.
But when I look at it right now then let me tell you you made an awesome job so far! I think you said that the lady Ex will be on a lower Z value than other ships, wont she ? So the difference in Pixel density wont be noticable anymore.
You are not only a great modder but also smart :)
The shown height of the MC80A is the lowest height ships will be on our Z layer. It looks great from a distance and from a medium range, and only if you are zoomed in all the way on fighters or the corvettes does the SSD texture begin to look slightly blurry. Once shadow is applied, and lights, we do not think this will be a noticeable issue because if a player is zoomed in that close, they will most likely be in motion or watching a unit in motion/with animations that will distract them (our ships have the flashing hangar shields, moving turrets and blinking lights - lots of ‘eye candy’ for distraction).
It is by far, the most challenging texture I have ever worked on, but so far it is going pretty well, and soon we will show in video and during our live streams.
Note: join us on Discord to see more sneak previews of this ship and others, and to join us for our soon to be starting bi-monthly Saturday Live Streaming, where we will be showing our development process and offering modding advice or showing live in-game battles
Discord.gg
Is there a certain reason for why you limit it to 8 textures?
Mostly the Alamo Engine's poor handling of texture memory.
If you've noticed a big stutter upon dragging in ships from the reinforcement window in the past, it's mostly due to the ship's textures being loaded.
thank
Really the only way to tackle this issue (imo, and what I will do for mine) is to keep all textures to tilable ones, and either have no AO, or use Enpremi's AO method for tiled textures, and even that will cost you several 2K maps for the AO alone.
Our model has: AO, 8 textures, shadow
And your suggestion is not “the only way”, because I’m literally doing it “My way” right in front of you, and it looks really good Lol....
So let’s have a discussion about this.
The method that Jeroen is describing is a modern technique that is used in modern game design. It is the “correct and appropriate” method that anyone should be doing for “modern game design”. EAW is not a modern game. I have been crafting my texture style to be specifically suited to maximizing the constraints of an old game. My goal has been to create a uniform presentation of pseudo-realistic textures. I design for the medium at hand to attain the visual results I desire. While creating a tileable texture would increase resolution of the textured components, the lack of Ambient Occlusion and the fact that all textured components would use the same texture pattern would result in a much less-realistic texture. It would create a more comical/cartoonish style of art (without having more polys added) while not a bad thing, would be a completely different style of artwork. This is due to the game just not having PBR, volumetric rendering, better shaders or a global light source.
With EAW, if you want to create realism, you really only are limited to texture quality, AO, and shadows.. the solution to making our Executor hull look improved would be to add a 9th texture and increase the size of the UV map of the textured elements-something I have decided to do tonight. If the executor was all the same texture, it would look incredibly boring... and this point will be further understood when I show the engine section which uses about 9 different texture samples to create a visually diverse and intricate array.
This is my theory, and my style explained for EAW. It is not how other games should be textured, but from what I have seen and experimented with, I believe this works very well. What Jeroen is attempting with the high poly model and simplified texture approach is very interesting, but we sorta feel it will be a greater drag on the game engine for having larger battles of 30 ships in a space battle...
It’s all exciting and speculative, and very interesting to watch as we both progress, but an open mind must be kept, for I may be incorrect in my assumptions, but so far our tests are proving well.
I actually think you can do it with three texture sets, one for armor, one for the superstructure, and one for trench detail, not counting the window lights. For fancy work you can add two more, one for the baked ambient engine glow and one for the AO map, also baked on a separate texture, for 5 sets in total, depending on the level of detail you want to put on it.
Less textures means better performance, and it also prevents the game from crashing due to texture memory overload. As for looking boring, well, as usual I'll figure something out.
I’m not trying to discourage you... more like forwarning. The ship is huge, and you don’t really realize just how big until you start adding texture, especially on the large flat areas.
Good luck with it, the ship is giving our team a good challenge
Yeah I had that moment as well, when it hyperspaced into the map when I first loaded the test model ingame. Really an "oh ****, what did I start on?" moment if ever there is one.
I wish both of you the best of luck, guys!!
Either way both Executors will look crazy as **** c:
double Eyecandy for us fans ;)
Lol, quit teasing us!
Will be the viscount harder or easier then? ^^
We will soon find out...
How are you guys tackling the path finding problem?
Big ships in EaW are always terrible at moving (even ones as 'small' as Star Destroyers)
We're working with what we have at our disposal.
And the vanilla Executor did work most of the time ... so we're good.
O i just love watching ants, especially when they are metal
iirc Didn't Awakening of The Rebellion downscale all the ships so that they were all smaller and moved around the map and each other easier? Or is my mind lying to me? Either way it's an idea?
No, They Just Made The Maps bigger And Downscaled Some Of The Bigger Ships Like The Executor.