Released Corvette V.2

[Armada]

Ahoy mates, it's about time I showed you what I've been working on over the past few weeks, which is my greatest modelling effort to date.

All PotC players should be familiar with the humble Corvette, or 'Light Frigate' as she's now known in Build 14.
Although she's always looked half-decent, I think it's fair to say she has the potential to look far more impressive.
So, realising this potential, I took it upon myself to see what I could do, at least as a way of gaining modelling experience.

I thought the best way to demonstrate the biggest improvements was to show how the ship has evolved since the stock version:



The 'Recent upgrades' refer to additional details added (after Patch 6) from a Russian mod, which includes new cannons, gunport hatches, anchors, catheads, a capstan, a belfry, and a wheel.
Now, Version 2 gives the ship an even greater facelift, while retaining the classic appearance and overall shape of the stock ship.
V.2 includes a completely remodelled bow, repositioned bow chasers, new cannons sourced from a deck location model, repositioned stern lanterns, new catheads and anchors with ropes, a new capstan, wheel, belfry and lifeboat.



I'm also going to adjust the path and walk file to match the new details, and replace the masts and spanker sail.
There's also some texture updates that need doing, but only really due to the repositioned bow chasers.
The upgrades will be available as soon as I finish the final parts, and implement them into every Corvette model.

So, any thoughts on the new-look Corvette? And any suggestions for further improvements? :hmm

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Definitely an improvement, I like it! nice job on the bow remodelling- that is always a trick part, espicially without plans to work from. As far as further improvements go, i dont know what could be done without changing the overall shape of the ship drasticly. In my mind the the next step could be a drastic cutting down of the upperworks, adding quarter galleries, removing the poop deck, rearanging the guns on the top deck to mount on the fwd and aft parts of the ship rather than in the waist/middle, and really a new ship that uses most of the old hull. just an idea, and there is already a high-detail ship that fills the role.This HMS surprise version (called Unite class frigate in-game) http://forum.piratesahoy.net/index.php/topic/15456-hms-surprise/page__st__80 has the same # of guns and is otherwise similar to the corvette.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Repositioning the bow chasers is a great idea. I never liked the way they are always underwater. More details are good until it gets too baroque. Not much chance of that with these babies though.



Replacing the light frigates with the Surprise? The old Surprise (HMS Indefatigable) and the Boussole carry 32 pound cannons. The current Surprise carries 24 pound cannons. The light frigates carry 18 pound cannons. There is a class 6 light frigate with a modern look to it. Are you talking about that one?

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Replacing the light frigates with the Surprise? The old Surprise (HMS Indefatigable) and the Boussole carry 32 pound cannons. The current Surprise carries 24 pound cannons. The light frigates carry 18 pound cannons. There is a class 6 light frigate with a modern look to it. Are you talking about that one?

I dont know about replacing, especially after these upgrades, but I think they fill the same role, and my point was make sure Armada knew that a high-detailed ship of a very similar size and firepower was aready out there if he was thinking of more drastic changes.
I forgot about the difference in cannon power because I changed my files so the HMS Indefatigable/Boussole and the Unite class frigates(see the link in my previous post and scroll down until you see a picture posted by armada if you are still confused about which ship I am talking about) to carry 18 pdrs max. I did this because of historical accuracy, and even 18 pdrs are a stretch for ships of their size, 12pdrs or maybe even 9pdrs wouldve been more likely. The Indy carries about the same # of guns as 32 gun frigates of the same time as Master and commander, (which carried 18pdrs) so thats why I didnt take the firepower down further. The real Indefatigable carried 24pdrs, so I guess for the hornblower quest it would make sense to have 24pdrs. I also modified all the constitution-type ships to carry 24pdrs rather than 32pdrs. It was a big deal at the time that the constitution class could safely carry 24pdrs because 18pdrs had been the max for nearly all frigates until then, and many ships built by the british and french to carry 24pdrs were too small to carry them and had to use 18pdrs instead. There were a few other frigates like the HMS Endymion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endymion_(1797) that could carry guns as heavy as 24pdrs, but they were extremely rare, and there certainly were no 32pdr frigates until well after 1815, so IMO the steam frigates should be the only ones with 32pdrs ingame. hopefully that makes sense.

 

[morgan terror]

i've always preferred to keep the poop deck myself. it sets the old corvette apart from the rest of the ships. would a bit more reliëf on the stern be a problem to add?

 

[Seb]

The bell should'nt be placed here on my mind, it breaks the lines of the ship and ruins the view from the poop deck

 

[Armada]

Repositioning the bow chasers is a great idea. I never liked the way they are always underwater.

Yeah, that had been bugging me for some time. There are several other stock ships which would benefit from the same treatment, too.
The only problem is that the guns now shoot through the sail on the bowsprit. :urgh

i've always preferred to keep the poop deck myself. it sets the old corvette apart from the rest of the ships. would a bit more reliëf on the stern be a problem to add?

That's what I kept in mind; I didn't want to stray too far from the original lines, otherwise it's no longer the good ol' Corvette.
As for the stern, it's hard to know what to do with it. There's so much diversity with the different stern textures, so what works for one will look odd for another.
Does anyone have any ideas for the stern?

The bell should'nt be placed here on my mind, it breaks the lines of the ship and ruins the view from the poop deck

What I did there was put it in the same spot as the one on the corvette-based deck location, just for added uniformity.
Where would you suggest it should go instead?

 

[Seb]

Maybe beetween the capstan and the cabin door? what do you guys think about that?

 

[Armada]

I guess that would be fine, since there's plenty of room for it there.

On a related note, I'm considering modifying the new Corvette to replace the Fast Merchantman models, by removing the guns from below deck.
Would that be a good idea, especially since FastMerchantman has reverse lighting?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Improving the deck on the fastmerchantman and NL_Merchantman would be sweet. Would you be using the same skin? Those empty holes along the side are ugly. The reverse lighting doesn't bother me, but they are suddenly pretty common so they should be improved.

On a side note, the rigging on the fastmerchantman is better than the rigging on the light frigates. IMO.

 

[Armada]

The textures can certainly be modified to remove the old gunports, once they've been taken out of the model.
It's the fact that they're so common which is the deciding factor here. Eventually it would be nice to give all the common ships a facelift, especially stock-based ones.

About the rigging, I think I agree with you on that one. I'm looking into using taller masts too, because the stock ones have always looked too short for the hull, to me.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The masts look too short? The Amsterdam uses frigate masts. Are you making new masts or using masts from other ships?

 

[Armada]

I'm trying out the Boussole's masts. They seem to fit pretty well, actually. I'll post a screenie when I've got the locators in the right positions.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The bow of the Corvette5 looks a bit dodgy with the new model. But then admittedly it looked a bit dodgy with the OLD model too.
It's a bit different now, but not necessarily worse, so it doesn't make too much of a difference.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

With some locator-copying and adjusting, the CorvFrig models now look pretty good with the new hull as well.
What I do note is that pretty much all corvette-based ships still have their bow chaser gun ports textured onto their bows, which looks a bit weird.
It's especially obvious on Corvette1 and CorvFrig1. It's hardly noticeable on both _44 models and it is no problem at all on the CorvFrig2_50.

Also, how come the FR_Corvette has apparently been remodelled by somebody at some point, but is not Armada's completely new version?

Obviously, the CursedCorvette needs some additional texture work to work fully with the new model, so I made her use the modified FR_Corvette files instead.
See attached for the result. The added parts don't have the seaweed-y look. Does anyone object to that?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Some of the corvettes have as figurehead a man holding a sword over his shoulder. This does not work well with the new corvette model, because the shoulders of the man end up through the bow of the ship.
I thought I had this fixed by adjusting the deck geometry locator a bit, but it's still not right and apparently the TOOL decided that I am no longer able to open any corvette models files,
even though I managed to about an hour ago. Not even the unmodified ones will work, so I'm rather lost on that account.

Edit: The files open again now (WHAT the hell was going on???), but doing what I did before apparently just makes it worse.
Needs some slight attention, I suppose.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Also, the Crimson Blood gets some weird effects on her bow with the new corvette model; see attached picture.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Try reinstalling TOOL. It does that periodically. So does GMViewer for that matter.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

See my edit above; no clue what happened.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Also, the Crimson Blood gets some weird effects on her bow with the new corvette model; see attached picture.

A similar problem seems to be plaguing the PirateCorvette50 (aka. Corvette6_50).