New Models!

[Bava]

I also liked her picture, and essentially decided to make the model because of it:

This one ain´t bad either:

 

[Martes]

This one ain´t bad either:

Oh, yes, and very, very useful.

The Egyptienne turns out to be a ship of compromise.
French enough to be French, British enough to appear British, between two drawings, two configurations, two models and two paintings, I brought her to pleasing enough appearance, and she now is firmly on track for launch.

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[Martes]

And another peek from the shipyard:

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Nothing can be more essential to age of sail game than a Temeraire-class 74.

 

[Bava]

Nothing can be more essential to age of sail game than a Temeraire-class 74.

Besides a Cruizer-class brig?

And very nice work on L'Egyptienne, an awesome looking 'compromise'!

 

[Martes]

Besides a Cruizer-class brig?

It's definitely on the list.
Although even the stock brig in the game is pretty usable.

As for Egyptienne, I even used the painting you posted for stern layout

 

[Martes]

I only wish somebody could make a newer engine for all of them, with normal sea, waves, and all.
With the same interface and features, basically.

 

[Martes]

The Egyptienne:

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Upd - view with Java and Endymion in the background in calm sea, you can see the underwater lines, and a tiny fix to the stern texture, making the angle of windows and decorative columns a little more inclined:

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Upd2 - fixed stern geometry and showing her in French red, under French colors. Just for variety.

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[Dan Shinnan]

Where are these new models/textures available?

 

[Martes]

Nowhere at the moment, I am afraid.
Although I intend to release them at some point, I can make no promises. It's all very much work in progress.

 

[Dan Shinnan]

In your original post you mentioned an edited config file. Are these changes something we can make ourselves?

 

[Martes]

In your original post you mentioned an edited config file. Are these changes something we can make ourselves?

Obviously, yes.
Look at the *.shp files in resource/txt_res directory, as well as ships.ini and models.ini.

You can easily edit ship types, add new ones, switch textures and rigs.

PM me if you need more info.

 

[Martes]

I can as well publish here the config set I made (conforming to the screenshots of the first posts), but you have to keep in mind that:
- it completely replaces the ship database (ships.ini) and model database (model.ini)
- the aos2/pb scenarios might work, but since the ship data is kept in scenario file, might end messed up (not that it isn't from the beginning...)

The new models I made are not yet ready for release, I still change and correct them almost every other day

And if I might ask, who is this "we" you mentioned?

 

[Dan Shinnan]

I’d be interested to see your files. I messed around with my own a little, but I have a full backup of my originals just in case.

 

[Martes]

I’d be interested to see your files. I messed around with my own a little, but I have a full backup of my originals just in case.

Here they are.

Backup your /resource/txt_res directory, and extract the archive to /resource, replacing any files it asks.
In this version, each ship type contains 4 configurations: auto-colored (yellow for Britain, white for France/USA, red for Spain, etc), and three of fixed color, so you can have differently painted ships on each side as you see fit.
The default database points to auto-colored files always, and this can be changed either by editing ships.ini, OR in scenario editor going to "edit ship", add to user database, click on the model icon, choose correct, save. The ship is saved to usrships.ini (make sure the file is not marked read-only).
Warning: do not use drop-down list, since the list of models became very long, and there is no scrollbar there, it won't work, just arrows in 3d-view.

Known bug: for some ships it is impossible to switch chase guns on and off.
It is because the config file name does not start with one of the original strings, so, for example 50_gship*.shp will work, but 50_gfrigate*.shp won't, and Indiamen also.
It can be fixed manually, by renaming the configuration files (and readdressing them from ships and models .ini), but I won't do it until the models are done since the whole list is going to be slightly different.

Included also French tricolor flag, since because of some bug the game shows default tricolor only in editor when set to correct dates, but during the game the ships will fly white Bourbon flags. This can be fixed by adding a custom nation that will use the included flags.

As a note, generally, because I had to replace most of the default frigate textures, and at the time there was no picture converter known, I used 2-decker textures for frigates, and 3-decker for part of larger ships (which is structurally correct!), so I would treat the upper row of ports in the waist part as hammock nettings.

Have fun

 

[Martes]

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I have almost completely reworked the hulls, slightly increasing the face count (1.7-2.1k per ship now), and made them sleeker, rounder and smoother overall.
Now I have to backport this to Indy

 

[Dan Shinnan]

great work!

 

[Martes]

Again, a glimpse to the shipyard:

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Following the last series of fixes to hulls (see post above) I have reached the detail level where the underwater stern can be modeled without all kinds of "extreme low-poly" tricks, so I tried some more conventional technique on the 74, and that's going to be a new standard. A usual note about a backport is in order, of course, but I think I will get to it once that one is floating.

I understand that this is actually the last stage before I have to cut out the gun ports and make the guns stick out, but that's not feasible for this engine, as it tends to randomly clip closely interloping faces, but in case there may be possible to adopt the models to another, newer engine (oh, wishful thinking), replacing the guns with more detailed models and adding certain parts to the decks won't be hard.

 

[kimov]

closely interloping faces

Hi, Martes. Maybe, it's frustrum culling. 3D Object in .cff or .clf file consist of smaller parts, let's call them meshes, and every mesh has it's radius variable (bounding sphere). Engine tests mesh/object postion and if bounding sphere intersects with view frustrum, mesh will be rendered or clipped. You can try this 010 Editor (need to be installed) template and change radiuses and maybe, it'll help. Also, you can experiment with negative values.

 

[Martes]

Thanks!
You even have a format description for scenarios, so a generator may be, after all, possible!

As to face clipping, I am not sure changing radius will help, since I encountered this effect with unconnected faces within single object (and since then I was very careful not to interpose the keel with hull, for example, but make their vertices coincidental).
Also, the clipping appears only on certain camera angles and begins to multiply when you lower the camera towards the sea. While there may be some engine variable that controls this, I wasn't able to find it yet...

(I can guess the one of the reasons for this is the extremely small object scale used in the game - 1 unit = 100m, and that may drive the viewport to such effects. When making models in Blender I had to set the "Clip start" to 0.001, from much larger default value)

Do you know anything about engine limitations? How much objects, triangles and textures can it hold together without crashing?

 

[kimov]

No, i know nothing and there are no any useful clues in files: 32 integers for counts, floats for coordinates and so on. It's just a standard thing. What about you?

I am not sure what to do next with all of this (formats). Do you have some ideas?