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TerminalSaint posted:WWI ace Mick Mannock would have been a great fit for the Penitent Crusade: Slight derail I know, but the cruelty eventually got to him. quote:I well remember his last leave. Gone was the old sparkle we knew so well; gone was the incessant wit. I could see him wringing his hands together to conceal the shaking and twitching, and then he would leave the room when it became impossible for him to control it. On one occasion we were sitting in the front talking quietly when his eyes fell to the floor, and he started to tremble violently. He cried uncontrollably. His face, when he lifted it, was a terrible sight. Later he told me that it had just been a 'bit of nerves' and that he felt better for a good cry. He was in no condition to return to France, but in those days such things were not taken into account. He'd make an interesting subject for a movie.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:49
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quote:As described in Simon's article, vertex coloring excels at gradients. Seeing filtered pixels on skyboxes doesn't fit with Starfighter's flat-shaded art style at all, and creating skyboxes that are high enough resolution to fix that will take forever.
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Jul 8, 2014 07:32
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It looks wonderful 
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Jul 8, 2014 16:03
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Jul 8, 2014 16:39
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All I really want is like a couple weeks heads up before a release date, so I can order a joystick.
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Jul 9, 2014 02:10
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I've got my old Saitek x-45 broken out of storage and repaired back into fighting shape. Rudder controls didn't center properly. Little bit of very fine sandpaper on some surfaces, and its smooth as silk again. Game keeps looking better and better. Walking by the poster in my hallway reminds me I need to check in on this thread or twitter for new screenshots. Loving the way the fighter detail is shaping up.
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Jul 9, 2014 16:44
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Have any of you guys seen this? Wings of Saint Nazaire, I just had a go and it feels like an upgraded Wing Commander. Sadly, I was not able to figure out how to launch missiles, but it's an early alpha so there might be a ways to go. The best part, is it was made in Unity. I hope it pans out and becomes something really awesome. It looks like another sweet spaceship game being made by one dedicated person, the more the better I say. EDIT: Oops I guess it's a small team. Still superrad in any case. Dreadwroth fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 05:29
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Eterium is also an indie Wing Commander tribute, and is a completed game. Rastor fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 15:36
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Dreadwroth posted:Have any of you guys seen this? Wings of Saint Nazaire, I just had a go and it feels like an upgraded Wing Commander. Sadly, I was not able to figure out how to launch missiles, but it's an early alpha so there might be a ways to go. The best part, is it was made in Unity. I hope it pans out and becomes something really awesome. Yeah Wings is super cool. Howard, the artist, is really talented at this style of art. I love how it all still uses sprites (like Brigador). He also did a sweet mech animation in 3D based off someone else's pixel art.
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Jul 10, 2014 20:04
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I'm somehow enchanted by the sprites myself, it's a high-quality job. Seems like that would limit the size of ships? Like, a real big battlecruiser would have to be a really hi-res sprite or else it would go all blocky once you get a bit too close, and modeling movement or flybys would be either a lot of work or really tricky. Same with anything big that isn't a part of the background. There's a demo, guess I'll try it out and see how wrong I am.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:10
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All the larger ships are actual geometry, it's the fighters that are mainly sprites (at least it was like this last time I played it).
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Jul 11, 2014 00:43
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I'm looking forward to when I can throw money at this. I've been informed I'm bad at financial decision and I would like to exacerbate the problem.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:50
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Even for the fighters, Wings of Saint Nazaire uses textured 3D models converted to sprites and downscaled for that low-res look, which is also how Howard can easily get all the rotation angles he needs without having to start from scratch for every single sprite. There are some screenshots of the models in the media section of the Wings site, and on some google-locatable forums where he posted early development stuff. I'm pretty sure I remember one of the articles on the Wings site talking about his process as well, or maybe I'm just remembering one of those forum posts. Also, the music for Wings is pretty great. There's not a lot of it and it's not well-implemented in the demo yet (you don't get to hear the cool main theme play all the way through because you're always in combat, thus the combat theme cuts in), but if the music guy continues to produce this level of quality, I'm really looking forward to it.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:04
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Cathair posted:Even for the fighters, Wings of Saint Nazaire uses textured 3D models converted to sprites and downscaled for that low-res look, which is also how Howard can easily get all the rotation angles he needs without having to start from scratch for every single sprite.
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Jul 11, 2014 02:05
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Dreadwroth posted:Have any of you guys seen this? Wings of Saint Nazaire, I just had a go and it feels like an upgraded Wing Commander. Sadly, I was not able to figure out how to launch missiles, but it's an early alpha so there might be a ways to go. The best part, is it was made in Unity. I hope it pans out and becomes something really awesome.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:38
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Cicero posted:Where am I supposed to bind nose left/right and roll left/right on a joystick? I have an X52 and bound all the nose actions to the main stick, but trying to maneuver without rolling feels incredibly awkward and dumb. Should I bind rolling to a hat or something? You want roll and elevation on the stick's main axes, with yaw being the twist axis. Imagine a little model of your ship on top of the stick - when you move the stick around, the ship in-game should do the same thing as the model on top of the stick.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:54
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FredMSloniker posted:Didn't they actually do something like that for the early Wing Commander games? Or were the sprites hand-drawn? Wing Commander II and its various derivatives had computer-generated sprites. Wing Commander I had hand-painted sprites.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:25
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I'm just in love with the ship designs, they look incredible and really remind me even more of ships from WC, Privateer, and Colony Wars. I'm also looking forward to when I can actually buy it.
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Jul 14, 2014 10:22
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Jabor posted:You want roll and elevation on the stick's main axes, with yaw being the twist axis. Thats how planes work, but it's not how old school space shooters ever worked. The defaults in Xwing, the wing commanders, pretty much all of them put yaw on the primary axis and roll on the twist. It's kind of silly to make a realism argument about this kind of game, but even so it makes some amount of sense. An atmospheric fighter needs to reorient it's entire lifting body to make a reasonable turn, so it makes sense to put roll and pitch on the primary controller. In your spacefighter, rolling doesn't really achieve that much, actually chainging your heading with yaw and pitch is the most important thing, and most space shooters make yaw and pitch equally strong, so those should really be the primary controls on the stick for precision. The only space shooters I've seen that do it the other way are recent - Elite does it, but it puts in plane flight for its gameplay balance with very weak yaw compared to pitch. Some of star citizen controller presets put roll on the X axis, but others don't, and it's togglable. (Xwing actually puts just a smidgin of roll alongside yaw on the X axis, for the sake of feel. I really like that)
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Jul 14, 2014 11:11
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I'm way too used to regular flight sims to remap my hand and brain to doing it that way, even if it makes sense.
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Jul 14, 2014 17:40
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more very cool stuff Kairo (@tipul) posted on twitter this morning: "Torpedo barrage in flight from a carrier. The menu rolled this skybox again, but I had to snap a shot anyways." 
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Jul 14, 2014 20:55
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ShineDog posted:Thats how planes work, but it's not how old school space shooters ever worked. The defaults in Xwing, the wing commanders, pretty much all of them put yaw on the primary axis and roll on the twist. It's kind of silly to make a realism argument about this kind of game, but even so it makes some amount of sense. Starshatter has a toggle (by default, 'J') that lets you swap yaw/roll axes, since you can transition between space and atmospheric fighting. My game brain is grateful for this.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:43
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powderific posted:I'm way too used to regular flight sims to remap my hand and brain to doing it that way, even if it makes sense. Yeah this. I was playing Diaspora: Shattered Armistice earlier (great game/mod btw, check it out if you like battlestar), and I figured roll is really not hugely important in space combat like this so I swapped the roll and yaw axes. Nope, years of Il-2 Sturmovik have conditioned me to that control scheme and I just can't get my head around it any other way.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:25
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For space games, I'm conditioned now to want Mouse+WASD (or ESDF I guess) with Z or shift to toggle thrust and drift. Until there's sticks similar to the shuttle controls, where one is all rotation in 3 dimensions and the other is thrust in 3 dimensions, the atmospheric fighter thing just confuses the issue and makes you fly crippled by imaginary air. I liked Xwing and TIE Fighter, because Star Wars basically is just a WW2 movie with the slick futuristic veneer of the 1970s.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:33
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God this keeps looking better and better everytime I come into this thread.
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Jul 15, 2014 02:46
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I'm not sure if the forums auto-show this or not, so I'll just link it: http://www.gfycat.com/AnySkinnyBoilweevil Hey guys! Quick update: All sorts of stuff has been worked on, but right now I'm focusing on gamepad controls for the tactical mode. This is super important to get right especially for VR, and my original way of doing it sucked. Everything is ordered around as a flight group now, not individuals. If this were a game like Nexus or even a pure RTS like Homeworld, I'd probably go the other way with it. Your targets can still be individual units (or subsystems), but you're just giving orders to a combat group. Last Stand has spawned a new mode called The Wall, which is really rough at the moment but meant to be a nice quick fix of space combat and some of the tactical mechanics. I am furiously trying to get this ready for Early Access, but I'm still not ready to say when that will be other than ASAP. quote:I liked Xwing and TIE Fighter, because Star Wars basically is just a WW2 movie with the slick futuristic veneer of the 1970s. Same! These are by far my favorite space sims. I really like duel-ish sims that dive super deep into controlling your ship, but Starfighter is cut from a more pseudo-sim cloth than many of the newer ones. Another game that struck a balance really well was the original Crimson Skies (PC). Everything felt so meaty and weighty, but the game was elegant and fun. Kairo fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 21:26
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The fact that you appreciate the controls in Crimson Skies makes me indescribably happy. That game was just so fun to play- and though it was far from perfect, everything felt like it should have.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:34
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I have an xbox 360 controller and am willing to undertake the arduous task of testing the controls for hours on end. It will be tough, but I'm willing to take the pain in order to help build a better game.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:53
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Is there any way I can apply for a goon beta? What are the hurdles I must conquer before getting my plasma engines running and my blaster cannon gunning?
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Jul 16, 2014 22:55
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Kairo posted:Same! These are by far my favorite space sims. I really like duel-ish sims that dive super deep into controlling your ship, but Starfighter is cut from a more pseudo-sim cloth than many of the newer ones. Another game that struck a balance really well was the original Crimson Skies (PC). Everything felt so meaty and weighty, but the game was elegant and fun. Just Offscreen posted:The fact that you appreciate the controls in Crimson Skies makes me indescribably happy. That game was just so fun to play- and though it was far from perfect, everything felt like it should have. Crimson skies was the loving greatest and I am so bummed they haven't brought it back to PC.
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Jul 16, 2014 23:00
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Kairo posted:Another game that struck a balance really well was the original Crimson Skies (PC). Everything felt so meaty and weighty, but the game was elegant and fun. Oh wow, yeah. And it came out of nowhere. I think one of my favorite elements of that is that the 'arena' wasn't just anonymous empty skies. It was always this huge place with caverns and hollow things and bridges to fly under and around. I think it had powerups or collectibles you could get in there, too. I'd love to see something like that here. Maybe derelicts with drifting high tech wreckage that you could tractor up for a 20-30 shot damage boost, or a cloud of rare nebula gas you could fly through to pick up a static charge that beefed up your shields for a while. The post earlier about how homeworld skyboxes were made reminded me of how impressively Homeworld managed to make you feel like you were *in* somewhere as you proceeded through the campaign. I particularly remember the bleak nothingness of the second mission after you jumped somewhere and found out your rendezvous ship had been pirate-napped, and how it gave way after several missions into this rich orange nebula of the 'garden' until the confrontation with those guardian sperm ships when you almost felt like you were fighting inside a cave in space, the way the gas clouds surrounded you.
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Jul 16, 2014 23:29
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To all of you who do not yet have an Enemy Starfighter poster framed and on their wall, I would like to pass along the information that it makes you envied by men and desired by women. To be serious though, everybody who's walked past it has mentioned how cool it is--people who couldn't give less of a poo poo about sci-fi nerd stuff included. It's just that awesome, I guess! Its one of the only video-game anythings I feel can belong on the wall of a grown-rear end man at least. Looks right at home next to classic movie posters. TerminalBlue fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 23:40
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Kairo posted:I'm not sure if the forums auto-show this or not, so I'll just link it: http://www.gfycat.com/AnySkinnyBoilweevil This only exists so you can make GIF's out of it, admit it. If there will never be tactical control over individual units, I guess that means combat groups will always be made up of preassigned units or will the player have any control over that? Or do you think we'll never really deal with large enough groups of units for this to be an issue? The closest analogy I can think of right now would be Homeworld 2's strike craft squadrons; interceptor squadrons were always 5 interceptors, laser corvette squadrons always 4 corvettes. Do you think there would be any way to mix and match unit types if I'm right in assuming they'll be grouped by type?
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Jul 17, 2014 03:07
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Update the beta to the latest build you tease, you!
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Jul 17, 2014 03:23
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Kibayasu posted:This only exists so you can make GIF's out of it, admit it. Haha, it's true! One thing the game somehow does is look pretty good in motion, even if it can't compete with the high end stuff. So gifs are the best method of delivery. I need to do more of them. quote:If there will never be tactical control over individual units, I guess that means combat groups will always be made up of preassigned units or will the player have any control over that? Or do you think we'll never really deal with large enough groups of units for this to be an issue? The closest analogy I can think of right now would be Homeworld 2's strike craft squadrons; interceptor squadrons were always 5 interceptors, laser corvette squadrons always 4 corvettes. Do you think there would be any way to mix and match unit types if I'm right in assuming they'll be grouped by type? There will be preassigned flight groups: fighters, destroyers, frigates, battleships. When you earn a new X ship via a bounty or objective, it will be put into the appropriate group. Honestly, when I play I spend most of my time only making the distinction between fighters and capitals. The fleets you run are small compared to something like Homeworld. Battle of Endor stuff is fun in short bursts, I won't deny, but better and more readable encounters (in Starfighter) happen at smaller scales so those will be the norm. I even have a kung-fu system in place that sort of doles out fleets at a more reliable pace.
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Jul 17, 2014 03:28
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Kairo posted:Honestly, when I play I spend most of my time only making the distinction between fighters and capitals. The fleets you run are small compared to something like Homeworld. Battle of Endor stuff is fun in short bursts, I won't deny, but better and more readable encounters (in Starfighter) happen at smaller scales so those will be the norm. I even have a kung-fu system in place that sort of doles out fleets at a more reliable pace. This is good to hear. Big Battle of Endor stuff might be visually appealing, but if it happens all the time the 'wow!' effect diminishes very, very quickly. Jumping in to something every 20th or 30th time that makes you sort of look around and go "oh poo poo, what did I get myself into?" would be way better.
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Jul 20, 2014 16:29
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Considering one of the main points of the battle of Endor was nobody was expecting it to be that big, yeah it should be a once in a while thing. Would be p. Cool to have a scripted mission that has you essentially playing Endor from the imperial side tho, complete with a wall of fighters waiting right at the enemy jump point.
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Jul 20, 2014 16:34
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How about if you were waiting to ambush your enemy who thought he was coming in for a sneak attack?
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Jul 20, 2014 17:21
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I don't see why you need to remove individual unit control, especially if it's already implemented. Just make the squad-method the default but give us the option to micromanage the fights from the RTS view if we want to.
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Jul 20, 2014 20:38
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I imagine Tom Clancy's Endwar style voice controls would work nicely with this, especially for VR. Nowadays voice control isn't so terrible, Articulate being a particularly good tool. With group designation being a thing, it would be even easier to assign commands.
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Jul 20, 2014 21:36
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