Black Pearl and QAR Progress

[Pieter Boelen]

When you go to "Convert" for TGA>TX, you get a lot of options. I think usually people use R5G6B5 - 16bit (16bit color), which is a BMP style format with no quality loss and no compression.
The other options offer various levels of compression; you can try them and see which one gives a good result. I've been using DXT1 - 4x compressed for the new loading screens, for example.
You can tell the difference in that case, but the quality drop isn't too bad, so I think it's a small price to pay for a lot smaller download size.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Don't panic! That's just a missing texture for the path file, by the looks of it. Here you go: http://www.pyratesah...ed/Blank.tga.tx
I don't know why that hasn't happened until now, though. I thought that texture was included in a patch already. :?

Don't know why, but I didn't have that file in my game version either, so it wouldn't have been in a Patch either.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Ok I'm 99% done with the Wicked Wench. there's just an oddity happening on the ladder on the sides of the hull that needs sorting out, so ignore that. lol

Anyway, here are screenies of the new Wicked Wench! Let me know what you think. Likes,dislikes, suggestions. Once she has everyone's seal of approval, I'll finalize it with some bump mapping and post the textures.

NOTE: Pieter, since she's now using the new Pearl hull, you will have to go to the Wicked Wench's entry in Ships_Init.C and change her waterline from 0.3 to -0.7. Don't forget!

And of course, she has some technical issues as well. The bow line looks weird, the mizzen mast is floating in the air, the rigging is messed up, and the top two fore sails are wrong. So here's some screenies of the problem.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Very nice! If you completely copy the Black Pearl folder and rename all files to "WickedWench", she shouldn't have any of those issues though, right?
Is she still using the old Wench's rigging with the new Pearl's hull model or something? :wacko:

Some thoughts of mine:
- The yellow line between the white stripe attaches to the white stripe, but above the white line, the yellow stripe doesn't touch the white but there's some brown in between; are you sure that is right?
- Do the stern decorations use the same texture as the Black Pearl? The gray-ish colour seems to me to not match up with the rest of the Wench's colour scheme. Can you try those in yellow-ish/gold-ish?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

By the way, I just tried all Pearl variants in my game, but am not familiar enough with the differences to be able to spot them.
Can you point me at some particular things I should pay attention to?

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Very nice! If you completely copy the Black Pearl folder and rename all files to "WickedWench", she shouldn't have any of those issues though, right?
Is she still using the old Wench's rigging with the new Pearl's hull model or something? :wacko:

Ah. No, I didn't do that. That should fix that issue.

Some thoughts of mine:
- The yellow line between the white stripe attaches to the white stripe, but above the white line, the yellow stripe doesn't touch the white but there's some brown in between; are you sure that is right?

When I created these stripes for the Pearl and QAR, I added some shading to the bottom part to make them appear three-dimensional and pop out from the rest of the hull. what you're seeing is actually dark yellow.

- Do the stern decorations use the same texture as the Black Pearl? The gray-ish colour seems to me to not match up with the rest of the Wench's colour scheme. Can you try those in yellow-ish/gold-ish?

Yes, these are mostly modified Black Pearl textures.

Yeah I did the sea monster/neptune statues on the top as gold originally, but I went with a more marble look because I thought it looked like too much gold. I'll post a pic of them in gold, so you can see the difference and decide for yourself.

As for the ladies holding up the cabin and at the cabin doors, I kinda liked them as marble looking statues too, but I can try them out in gold too if you'd like. I just personally thought making EVERYTHING gold was kinda overwhelming.

Do you like the lanterns? I tried them as all gold originally, but I think the silver accents it nicely.

I'll make those changes and post them in just a minute.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

By the way, I just tried all Pearl variants in my game, but am not familiar enough with the differences to be able to spot them.
Can you point me at some particular things I should pay attention to?

The differences are:

Un-cursed Pearl is squeaky clean with solid black sails.

Standard Pearl is dirty with patched sails.

Cursed Pearl is even dirtier with a different figurehead that Bonjourmonami modeled and has the torn sails.

I'm going to take Armada's suggestion and use the same hull for the cursed and standard Pearls. You can't even notice the extra grime I discovered.

Well I tried. Besides, with all the fog, no one would notice anyway. lol So I'll fix that.

I'll post that in an update along with the rest of my finished work.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Ok here's the golden versions. What do you think? I think it's a bit much on the gold, but if everyone likes it, I'll go with that.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Idk maybe you're right. Now I can see what you're talking about. So go with the golden versions, yes?

 

[Legendary_Spider]

I'm going to take Armada's suggestion and use the same hull for the cursed and standard Pearls. You can't even notice the extra grime I discovered.

Well I tried. Besides, with all the fog, no one would notice anyway. lol So I'll fix that.

Oops. Never mind. By doing that I eliminate the second figurehead that Bonjoumonai made.

I guess it stays after all. lol
So basically, the cursed Pearl has a different figurehead.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Ok those technical issues are fixed, Now look at her!

 

[Legendary_Spider]

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Hmmm. I noticed this with the QAR and fixed it, but since the Pearl is black, I must've missed it till now. The curvature of the stripe is a bit off towards the bow.

That won't be hard to fix. I'll just take the stripe I already adjusted on the QAR and stick it on here with the appropriate colors. The hand thing about the Pearl and QAR being so similar is that you can interchange parts!

 

[Legendary_Spider]

Fixed the stripes. Now I'm fixing the stripes on the Pearl. I'll post the updates along with the Wicked Wench as soon as everyone ok's it.

 

[Armada]

It's going to be huge whatever we do, but anything we can do to tone down on the size would be much appreciated. I'm going to try to clean up as much as I can and I'll try to apply some compression to all the Build-added textures too.
I think generally nobody uses the compression settings in the TX Converter and that is really hurting the modpack filesize.
It is actually possible to maintain close to the same quality with a lot smaller filesize in the file format we're using.

Sorry about that. No one ever told me about that.

^ This. No-one told me there was an option for compressing the files. Ah well, at least I know that now.

Armada, the Damaged Pearl doesn't have her masts when I try to test her out in game, and it CTD's when I switch to first person view.

Two things:
1) You need to give her a copy all of the model files of the BlackPearl's rigging and path, and rename them to DamagedPearl.
2) She doesn't even work if you do that, because the hull has no locators, because I told you she had a problem when I tried to read her in TOOL (I even highlighted it in red!!!)


Anyway, my immediate reaction to the new Wicked Wench texture was: "Holy crap, she's beautiful!" VERY nice work, mate, I love what you've done to her!
Be sure to post a screenie on ModDB once you're done.

 

[Legendary_Spider]

And what do you think of the lanterns?

 

[Legendary_Spider]

That stripe is still off. Now parts of it are hidden behind those boards where the rope ladders attach. Such a pain. The shear tool in PSE is tricky.

 

[Armada]

And what do you think of the lanterns?

They look good to me.

With the way the ship looks now, it's easy to see why Jack Sparrow fell in love with her at first sight.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ok here's the golden versions. What do you think? I think it's a bit much on the gold, but if everyone likes it, I'll go with that.

I understand what you mean, but personally I like the way it matches the rest of the colours on the ship. Plus it makes her look even more different from the Black Pearl.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

"A work of art with graceful gilded lilies and scroll work emblazoned on her bow and stern, and gilded railings on her gunwales. A golden dream of a vessel..."

As per the above quote, she does have a lot of gold on her now!