Released Repainted HMS Victory

[Pieter Boelen]

Personally I prefer "notably different" over "subtly different", but indeed "subtly" will have to do.
Assuming that we can get some more feedback to find out if there is a "general consensus" on this, I suppose?

 

[Grey Roger]

How about this, then? Same flag detail and windows as before, but new lighter colour, and men replaced by scrolls. Sculptures between the first and second windows from each edge at each level give the ship a bit more distinction from "HMS_Victory".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Nice idea, @Grey Roger!

 

[Armada]

If you guys insist they should have the same paint scheme, then that is indeed the only way to distinguish them.

I'm not insisting anything; just posting some thoughts for both sides of the argument. I'll leave you guys to decide what's best for the game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'll leave you guys to decide what's best for the game.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm OK with mostly everything.
I quite like the old black-and-yellow paint scheme and don't mind only the HMS Victory having these new colours for now.
But if @Grey Roger repaints all other British ships to match, I am also not going to complain; that does make sense, after all.

I think I will veto changing the French and/or Spanish paint schemes though. For gameplay purposes, it is good to be able to tell the different nations apart.
And @Grey Roger did quite some hard work on that not too long ago, so I'll definitely want to keep that.

So since you don't mind and neither do I, there seem to be two options:
1. Let @Grey Roger make the final decision on the inclusion
2. Wait until after the next Beta 4.1 WIP (which will include the new Victory) and try to get some feedback from other players
3. Have the more realistic paint scheme (OR the old colours) as an additional download

 

[Grey Roger]

It's worth noting that at least one of the updated files, "wood_rd1.tga.tx", isn't just used by "HMS_Victory". Like it or not, if you accept the new "HMS_Victory" then the repaint of the rest of the British fleet has already started.

Next: the picture of HMS Unicorn in the thread HMS Unicorn Virtual Museum also shows the lighter, slightly pinker shade seen in the new "HMS_Victory" and in all the ships I've done so far. There's confirmation if ever you needed it that if the new scheme is going to be applied at all, it shouldn't just go to one ship.

Next, @Pieter Boelen : the superstructure on "RN_SteamFrigate" seems to be the same colour as the stripe along the hull. (Likewise, the roof of "FR_SteamFrigate" is red like its stripe.) I'm not sure this is going to look good if it goes to the same pale shade as the new stripe, and as it's your idea to even have the ship, I'll let you decide what colour the roof and stripe on the superstructure should be - new light cream, original dark cream, or the same colour as the deck. Or pick something else, I know which bit of texture file "AddRN.tga.tx" is responsible so it's easy to change the roof and stripe on the superstructure to whatever colour you like.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It's worth noting that at least one of the updated files, "wood_rd1.tga.tx", isn't just used by "HMS_Victory". Like it or not, if you accept the new "HMS_Victory" then the repaint of the rest of the British fleet has already started.

Really? What other ships use it? We could do some HEX-editing to avoid that.
Anyway, that's the red and not the black/cream, so probably makes much less of a difference.

Next: the picture of HMS Unicorn in the thread HMS Unicorn Virtual Museum also shows the lighter, slightly pinker shade seen in the new "HMS_Victory" and in all the ships I've done so far. There's confirmation if ever you needed it that if the new scheme is going to be applied at all, it shouldn't just go to one ship.

I already agreed that it does make sense and I don't actually object to it.

as it's your idea to even have the ship

Not my idea, no. That was originally Snow White Sorrow, actually.
But now that we DO have them and working as well as they do, we'd be absolutely mad to get rid of them!

I'll let you decide what colour the roof and stripe on the superstructure should be - new light cream, original dark cream, or the same colour as the deck. Or pick something else

I don't mind much, as long as it looks OK. If the hull is no longer yellow, then maybe something more wooden would make sense?

 

[Grey Roger]

Really? What other ships use it? We could do some HEX-editing to avoid that.
Anyway, that's the red and not the black/cream, so probably makes much less of a difference.

It's the red used for the inside hull and gunport undersides. Why avoid it? The file has been changed to make the gunports on "HMS_Victory" brighter, with the side effect of doing the same to any other ship which uses it. "HMS_Surprise", for a start. The only reason for HEX-editing any ships to not use it is if we decide to apply the new gunport only to "HMS_Victory", otherwise I'd be editing the ships to use a new file which I'd need to create and then edit to make it the same as the gunports of "HMS_Victory".

I don't mind much, as long as it looks OK. If the hull is no longer yellow, then maybe something more wooden would make sense?

Here's what I've done so far - all the "HMS" ships and some of the "RN" ships.
http://piratesahoy.bowengames.com/potc/Grey Roger/FleetRepaint.zip
Quite a lot of them were dealt with together when I altered "RN_Hull.tga", "RN_Hull_01.tga" and "RN_Hull1.tga". (Which are identical, or near enough that I can't see a difference, and probably all exist so that the filenames are the right length to HEX-edit into copies of models.) It was the oddballs which use their own specific files that caused the trouble, especially "HMS_Surprise".

Here's the steam frigate in its new paint scheme:

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It's the red used for the inside hull and gunport undersides. Why avoid it?

My thought was to HEX-edit only the Victory to use it so that it doesn't affect any other ships.

Here's what I've done so far - all the "HMS" ships and some of the "RN" ships.
http://piratesahoy.bowengames.com/potc/Grey Roger/FleetRepaint.zip

But now that you already did so much work, I might as well add it to the mod and see what people say!

Here's the steam frigate in its new paint scheme:

Not bad, actually. Not bad at all!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Oh, if ALL those ships are being repainted, we really will be needing updated Interface Screenshots for them!

 

[Armada]

It's worth noting that at least one of the updated files, "wood_rd1.tga.tx", isn't just used by "HMS_Victory".

What? I thought I created an entirely new texture with that name. And HMS_Surprise almost exclusively uses textures named "Surprise#.tga.tx", last time I checked.

EDIT:

Next: the picture of HMS Unicorn in the thread HMS Unicorn Virtual Museum also shows the lighter, slightly pinker shade seen in the new "HMS_Victory"

I thought the Unicorn had a white stripe...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What? I thought I created an entirely new texture with that name.

I can confirm that. The previous Build 14 Beta 4.1 WIP version did not even have that file at all.

So what I am doing for this weekend's upload is to add your new Victory to the main mod. @Grey Roger's WIP work will be included as an option.
Added bonus of that: People may actually notice there is something new going on, since that option will show in their install menu.

 

[Grey Roger]

Update on "HMS_Unicorn": the ship in the game does have the lighter colour stripe, matching the new colour for "HMS_Victory" - and I didn't put it there! At first I thought it had got that colour as a result of me changing general files "RN_Hull.tga", "RN_Hull_01.tga" and "RN_Hull1.tga". It turns out "HMS_Unicorn" has its own texture file, which I didn't touch, and in fact if I look back at the one in Beta 3.5, even that has the lighter stripe.

I can give it a white stripe if you want. Or, since "Ships_init.c" has it in French and Spanish service as well as British, there's a case for keeping the cream stripe for Britain and giving it a red stripe version for the other two.

Odd. I could have sworn I saw "wood_rd1.tga.tx" in one of the ships I was altering. Maybe I've been at this too long.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Update on "HMS_Unicorn": the ship in the game does have the lighter colour stripe, matching the new colour for "HMS_Victory" - and I didn't put it there!

Indeed the HMS Unicorn has never had the black-and-yellow paint scheme of the other British ships.

I can give it a white stripe if you want. Or, since "Ships_init.c" has it in French and Spanish service as well as British, there's a case for keeping the cream stripe for Britain and giving it a red stripe version for the other two.

Since we now know that the Unicorn's paint scheme actually IS historically accurate for Britain, indeed it makes sense to not use that model anymore for France and Spain.

To not deprive France and Spain of that model though, it would be great to have separately retextured versions for those two nations as well.

I'm not certain yet if we should keep the "historically accurate British paint schemes" optional as it is now, to include it in the main mod or have the "yellow-and-black" scheme as optional.
IF we do decide we want to keep a choice for both, would you be willing to make also a yellow-and-black version of the Unicorn?

Odd. I could have sworn I saw "wood_rd1.tga.tx" in one of the ships I was altering. Maybe I've been at this too long.

No worries. There's a lot of textures. I wouldn't remember every single one of them either.

 

[Grey Roger]

Since we now know that the Unicorn's paint scheme actually IS historically accurate for Britain, indeed it makes sense to not use that model anymore for France and Spain.

To not deprive France and Spain of that model though, it would be great to have separately retextured versions for those two nations as well.

I'm not certain yet if we should keep the "historically accurate British paint schemes" optional as it is now, to include it in the main mod or have the "yellow-and-black" scheme as optional.
IF we do decide we want to keep a choice for both, would you be willing to make also a yellow-and-black version of the Unicorn?

I'll finish off the British ships that haven't been updated first, then revisit "HMS_Unicorn".

"HMS_Unicorn" appears in "Colonial Powers" and "Revolutions", making it a contemporary to the Aurora class corvette, e.g. "RN_Corvette", "Corvette1", "Corvette2" or "Corvette47". So France and Spain can have a red-striped version similar to "Corvette1", which they also share in the same period. And if I have a Photoshop file with a separate layer for the hull stripe, which I'll need for that red-striped version, then it can be made dark yellow or whatever other colour you like.

 

[Armada]

I can give it a white stripe if you want.

Ah, slightly different Unicorn. The PotC version is based on an older ship that bears no relation to the white-striped Unicorn that @Flannery is making, so there's no need to repaint it.

 

[Grey Roger]

I'm not certain yet if we should keep the "historically accurate British paint schemes" optional as it is now, to include it in the main mod or have the "yellow-and-black" scheme as optional.
IF we do decide we want to keep a choice for both, would you be willing to make also a yellow-and-black version of the Unicorn?

Here's the texture file. I'm not planning on doing much else with this one, so anyone wanting it in the game gets to make a modified version of "HMS_Unicorn" to use it, then do the interface pictures.

The French version, on the other hand, is operational, or will be when I finish doing the interface pictures for it along with the other British ships.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Here's the texture file. I'm not planning on doing much else with this one, so anyone wanting it in the game gets to make a modified version of "HMS_Unicorn" to use it, then do the interface pictures.

Is that the yellow-and-black texture or the red-and-black one you show on your screenshots?

I can do some ship-copying and make a screenshot if needed. What I can't do is add it to the Interface Screenshots.

 

[Grey Roger]

The texture file is for the version in the old black and yellow scheme, with the British stern crest, hence the name "Unicorn_H3_old". "HMS_Unicorn" uses "Unicorn_H3", so "Unicorn_H3_old" will need to be renamed to something suitable and the same length. The new "FR_Unicorn" has been hex-edited to use "Unicorn_FR" for the same reason, and that's the red and black texture file as seen in the screenshots. I'll upload that along with the rest of the package when I've finished doing screenshots and interface pictures from them.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The texture file is for the version in the old black and yellow scheme, with the British stern crest, hence the name "Unicorn_H3_old". "HMS_Unicorn" uses "Unicorn_H3", so "Unicorn_H3_old" will need to be renamed to something suitable and the same length.

Actually, since we basically agreed to have the yellow OR the cream, no copying and HEX-editing is required.
I'll just stick all the old yellow stuff in the "additional installation choice" and that's that.