A Wing And A Prayer, a total conversion for Homeworld 2 takes players back to the golden age of air combat, high above 1920's europe. World War I has dragged on into an absolute stalemate, both sides entrenched heavily and both lacking the strength to deliver a final blow to the other through a ground offensive. The war has turned to the skies, where dashing aces in propeller driven aircraft duel with each other in lethal dogfights, where Zeppelins and airships tear each other apart with barrages of gunfire, where the hopes of men and nations live and die on a wing and a prayer.
A few examples of preliminary concept sketches:
Currently this mod is undergoing planning in terms of the game mechanics and visual appearance. Once that is completed I will decide whether or not it is worth pursuing as a full scale project or not. For now I simply want to gather feedback and generate some community intrest, while offers of help would be much appreciated there is no need for staff at present.
Sounds awesome, like a strategy oriented Crimson Skies.
I hope those airships will be armored, otherwise 1 shot and they're done.
Lol an airship could never hold up that much weight, but it looks really cool.
It would be nice to see you deviate from the typical airship design, and include some really awesome original airships.
Anyway I wish I had Homeworld 2 :(
Sounds full of win. I would download it :)
It'd be absolutely awesome to see giant airships bristling with cannons flying around in the HW2 engine. Might I ask; are you going to keep with conventional airship/plane architecture from the period, or perhaps delve into the realms of steampunk?
This sounds like it really could be awesome. One of those 'alternate timeline' style stories could really flesh it out too. I'd advise going all out on getting it into production - hit me up with a PM if you want a hand with mechanical design / written rubbish.
cheers all, and in anwser to your questions:
Your right Raider541 and Darkcraft but that recognising those facts would ruin the fun od the mod, I've got no intention of making this anymore realistic than it has to be (although I am planning to include some intresting upgrades to take advantage of an airships weaknessess, for example incidenary bullets for strikecraft). The heaviest craft for both sides (The Ironclad) makes little or no explanation of how it flies as you'll see in later releases.
Mefusta, I plan to stick to the basic airship/zeppelin shape as the base for most of the heavy craft, but there also some more unique designs, for example the German mothership is basically two vast zeppelins with a sort of pontoon between them housing proudction facilities etc. I'm also sketching ideas for a type of heavily armoured fixed ballon that would fill a similar role to some of the stations in homeworld.
Thanks Ambershee, I've got the story worked out pretty well at the moment although I haven't posted it. The backstory will be fairly vital if this develops to a singleplayer campaign, so thanks for the offer.
something about these models reminds me of the Wacky Races, maybe a little overloaded with guns? The Flag and the Destroyer look weird with turrets hanging down from them. Its understandable you want it to fire down also, but wouldn't people actually sit upside down in this cannons? Okay its not about realism, but that just looks odd to me.
Another thing I dont like are the huge chimneys - although they probably make a perfect strategic target, they seem not to fit in the concept. It just looks like a behemoth ship mounted onto a blimp. Again -not to discredit your fantastic approach of this - but zeppelins need engines and rotors and the most I count are three very tiny ones on each side. Those drawings are nice and clean and they are only first concepts, but they need some more work, before going to the modeling department.
Anyway, I loved Crimson Skies - part of the fun was shooting off guns and engines - and this does compare to it in some ways, just could be a whole lot better. Nice mod idea - do you happen to know Air Buccaneers for UT2004. That's kind of a humorous approach to this concept, but Air Buccaneers had some good, design choices (e.g. when close to a cannon you can boss a guy around who loads and fires it at the angle you selected, or you could just let him load them and fire yourself; different loadouts are also available)
Nice things,
Sin
fair points, but as I've said before I have no desire to let realism get in the way. I didnt want to clutter the sketches anymore with a realistic number of engines and as you've pointed out they are only early sketches. There are a few ideas in the pipeline for possible propulsion systems but at the moment my focus is on outlining both sides roughly, rather than focusing on fine details.
Even as they are these concepts have far more engines than RA2's Kirov Airship,
Cybergooch.com
As for the chimneys they are a remanant from earlier concept art. The airships would probably have one main engine (like a ship's engine) driving each of the smaller propellers.
And the lower turrets wouldnt require the crew to be upside down, amusing as the thought is. The crew, guns etc would be the same way up as other turrets, simply with an adapted turret shell.
Its been done before in various forms:
Cloudnet.com
Cheers for the pointers though, all valuable.
Zeppelin battles? Zeppelin DOGFIGHTS?
My life is complete.
There are some new sketches up in the gallery
Moddb.com
I plan to release these formally (ie in a news post) later this week.
Still to come: Carriers, Cruisers, Battleships, Ironclads and all sorts of strike craft.
I like the new ships. There is more inventionto them than to the destroyer or the flak. I do like the flak, too and I'm kinda getting used to the chimneys. What I like about the two new ones is that the got interesting weapons which look like they can be partially destroyed (I'm trying to say that hitting the emiiters of the lightning ship will weaken the weapon and ultimately destroy it). What I would like to see inthe design are a couple of fly-through areas where you can pull off really kick-*** manouevers as a pilot and get rewarded by coming past (and hitting) the soft spots on these beasts. That would reward those pilots that don't keep the distance but dive in instead and it would be a considerable challenge to the architecture of your ships to build such paths in and around your zeppelins. (Its a little like flying into the deathstar, except you would circle the zeppelin, going around tubes and turrets and finding a way to keep low enough so they don't hit you).
I really like this idea and some of the concepts, please take my criticism fromthe positive side, as I keep thinking about wahat do improve in the designs myself all the time. Maybe I will draw some photoshop concepts from your designs. These are really wicked, but in artwork some weeknesses may show that aren't visible in mere blueprints.
Cheers m8, like your stuff!
Sin
I like the idea of pilots getting in close, although I'm not sure how possible that would be from a practical coding point of view. Currently the plan is for each airship to have a few weak spots. For example the chimneys are really a target for the fighter-bomber which is small but only carries one 50lb bomb and so really needs to make it count. A more daring player might risk his fighters by telling them to get in close and try to drop some bombs down the chimney thus causing critical damage, a more cautious player might prefer to bomb from a distance, reducing the chance of losing planes to AA fire.
The plan in terms of airship is to have a mixture of more run of the mill classes (like the flak and destroyer) and then some more unique ones like the weathership. I was hoping that would pleased everyone and judging by your comments it has :)