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Released USS Constitution upgrade

Time to clear up some confusion here:rolleyes: My first modifications were to cut down the bulwarks, give the ship more accurate guns, and scale the ship up to its proper size. this version will be used for the model of the specific USS Constitution version ingame, with nameplate and all. pics can be seen in armada's first post. The version with the new bow and stern are to replace the model of the more generic united states class frigate, endymion, and probably acheron versions. not the specific USS Constitution version. My new bow and stern are my best guess as to what one of the constitution's sister ships would've looked like in the war of 1812. the headrails are built to the original plan of the class drawn by joshua humphreys. I had to cut the middle rail short because of the chase port, but this would've happened on the real ships anyways. The stern is built to the plan of the plan of the USS President taken off after she was captured by a british squadron in 1815, with one aesthetic alteration. There are no plans exsisting of the constitution herself during the war of 1812, so I left the modern configuration on there for the specific USS Constitution version. the stern is certainly much more plain than as launched, and the headrails are much bigger and bulkier than the original ones, but the current real life decorations are very recognizable as those of the USS constitution, so they will remain ingame for the USS Constitution version.
 
I definitely like the idea of making the unique Constitution more different from the other ships based on her model. :woot
 
In my honest opinion, I think getting away with the blue transom and quarter galleries may require more ornateness, or a darker shade of blue.
 
Its pretty damn good and historical as is. That color blue was very common on british warships about 20 years before. is it really worth spending time researching historical paint hues and trying to get the paint color exactly right for 1812 rather than 1790? rather than working on one of my 5 other ships or the centurion? I honestly don't think so.
 
Well actually, I plan on using the Constitution in my US storyline which takes place during the war of 1812. And considering she's famous for her battles in 1812, I think we should have it be more accurate to 1812. :wp
 
I would say leave it as is. There´s simply no way to tell how Conny exactely looked like in 1812. Sure, there are paintings/drawings of her during her famous actions but you´d always have to ask: Are they contemporary? And if they are: What are the arstist sources for the painting (Corne's famous USS Constitution vs Guerriere comes to mind here)? Did he see her with his own eyes at the time or did he rely on something else etc.

To add to the colour confusion, here are a couple of entries of the Constitution´s logbook:


11. Jan. 1804 - Received 15 kegs of yellow ochre, 2 of red paint, 7 small ones of black paint, and 50 gallons of black varnish

22. Jan. 1804 - Painting hammock cloths ; painting the leading blocks and the ring bolts on the gun carriages

19. Aug. 1810 - Received a quantity of green paint.

09. März 1811 - Varnished spars and painted head railings.

07. Apr. 1811 - Painting quarter galleries and "white streak."

11. Apr. 1811 - Painting the head and stern

29. Feb. 1812 - Whitewashing hold.

11. Feb. 1814 - Painting ship's outside black and yellow
Click to expand...

So, does this mean that they received the yellow ochre in 1804 and waited 10 years to paint her 'black and yellow'? Or did she have a ochre/black colour scheme from 1804 to 1814? There´s no way to tell imo.

And in the end its always the modder's decision how his model should look like. If someone else wants put endless hours of research into a 'totally accurate' version, fine, but intil then, we should enjoy what we have (which is a darn good model of the ship imho) :)
 
thank you Bava:)
the paint schemes of the constitution seem to be up for constant debate.:p I'll start with what is undisputed: the constitution was painted with a yellow ochre stripe for her early career
http://boats.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/923187/
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/...4-details.aspx?pos=33&intObjectID=5145044&sid=
until about 1810 or 1811, when captain isaac hull painted the stripe white during a refit.
there is some speculation (based mostly on the corne paintings) that Hull was in the process of painting the stripe yellow (to look more like a british frigate to lure british merchants closer) when he met the guerriere. this might explain her appearance in the corne paintings as the head and stern are still painted white there. considering the paintings were supervised and commisssisoned by hull himself this mightve been the case, but who knows really? At any rate, Captain Charles Stewart repainted the Constitution with a yellow stripe in 1814, again with the intention of luring british merchants into a false sense of security. After the war of 1812 she was generally painted with the white stripe.

and legendary spider: like Bava said, no one really knows how the constitution looked in the war of 1812.
I have this book, which I have been using as my main reference
http://www.amazon.com/Old-Ironsides-Decline-Resurrection-Constitution/dp/0877423466
It was written by the man who was hired by the US Navy to research and plan the 1997 restoration (which was mainly structural but very important) he not only details that but goes in depth as to what other changes should be made in future restorations, proposing new headrails be made to the original plans, and a better stern being built, and to restore her to her appearance in 1804 or 1812. the headrails are the same on my version as what he thought they looked like in 1804 and 1812. even he didn't have a plan for the stern though, it simply isn't known exactly what it looked like :(
 
Well I just want her to be accurate. But since nobody can really know, I suppose it's a matter of do we wanna keep the white stripe or make it yellow? We have the white stripe so she matches the color scheme of the American ships in the game. OR we could always make a second version altogether to have the yellow stripe and the blue stern. I mean, there's essentially 3 versions of the Pearl. lol
 
Legendary_Spider said:
But since nobody can really know, I suppose it's a matter of do we wanna keep the white stripe or make it yellow? We have the white stripe so she matches the color scheme of the American ships in the game.
Click to expand...
Ah, that reminds me, have you had a look at this thread about national paint schemes yet? Basically we might not be sticking to US = white, RN = yellow etc for much longer.
 
I'm torn too. I think either white or yellow looks good on the constitution, though if any ship defines the white stripe color scheme it is the constitution. I had originally intended to make the yellow and red versions with black sterns, but i feel like yellow and blue could look pretty good:)
 
Idk, we matched the HMS Victory to what it looks like today, and I think the Constitution looks fine matching how it looks today. I like the white stripe.
 
Maybe we could please both parties here. Armada and I were discussing making the whole national paint schemes thing an option in the options menu so players can decide whether they wanna have nation specific colors or not.
 
I think I actually posted about that in the national paint schemes thread, but whatever, same difference, the point is that it is a possibility:) the only problem is that two different ships_init.c files have to be kept up to date, which could be tedious.
 
Well, we'd keep the "mod off" and "mod on" code in the same ships_init.c file, otherwise people will REALLY go nuts trying to keep it up-to-date.
What we could do, since with "mod off", we still want certain ships to be unique to a nation,
is to just have the game ignore the national chance values and use the refShip.nation line instead with the mod off.
 
I've got good news and bad news.

The good news is, the upgrades are finished and have been exported to GM format! Here are some screenies showing the entire ship, and what she looks like when all the masts have fallen off:
(note: the yards are in approximate positions, which may not be accurate)

Constitution_upgrade3.jpg


Constitution_upgrade4.jpg


The bad news is, she's not ready to sail yet, and probably won't be for a while, thanks to TOOL letting me down. :facepalm
In order to make the ship fully functional, I need to copy and rescale the locators of all the components of the original model.
This is easy enough to do, and would have been done by now, if it weren't for a major drawback. The foremast, mainmast and mizzenmast of the original model will not open in TOOL, so I can't copy the locators and modify them for the new masts. There is a huge amount of locators on each of those masts, and recreating them one by one would involve a lot of trial and error and be a very time-consuming process.

So, chances are all the mast locators will have to be redone from scratch, which will be a nightmare if we stick to the immense number of ropes on the original model.
It might even be better to scrap most of the locators on the entire model, and use another ship's locators as a base from which to start again. I don't really fancy either method. :rumgone

Of course, the walk file also needs redoing because of the ship's size increase, which is another chore on the list.

It's such a shame, as I was hoping to have the ship ready for the Build 14 Beta 2.2 release this week, and even for Independence Day.
 
If you export a GM file to OBJ with the GM Viewer, is there any semblance of the locators retained?
 
You don't get much with OBJ export. The model itself with its various components will convert, but it's double sided, not smoothed, and all materials need to be redone. Nothing about locators is exported.
 
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