SE:V Shipset Questions

[Jarena]

As soon as Malfador put up their SEV Empire Styles page I started work on one of my own, but I've run into a few problems already. If someone can provide some insight I'd be very grateful.

- I'm confused as to the aspects of Organic and Crystalline races' shipsets. From what I've read it seems that Org/Crys races either have:
An entirely new set of ship hulls/models, or
Texture file changes for all hulls/models, or
Additional units only unlockable through their race tech, or
Organic and Crystalline races cannot choose normal tech.
If I want to make my shipset fully compliant with any tech/race setup I choose to play will I have to make 102+ models? (18 (base designs) + 16 (optional size variants) + 34 (full organic compliment) + 34 (full crystalline compliment + whatever tech-specific hulls exist, if at all))


- How does scaling work? I know that if you don't provide the optional heavy/light variants the game will automatically scale the model to the correct size, but does the game scale standard ship hulls? If we can set our own hull sizes, I imagine that some abuses of this would lead to unfair gameplay (imagine SE:IV planet-sized on the tactical map starships) or just crummy-looking shipsets (fighters and dreadnaughts are the same size) If we do have to scale our own, could someone provide some numbers for us?

- Is there any way to test the compatability of your ship outside of the full version of Starfury?

- What are the polygon limits for ships? If there aren't any, what should we be shooting for? What will run well in tactical battles?

- Will there be any helper programs for shipset designers? I 'm having nightmares about having to open SEV and set up a tactical battle to test if my firing arcs are in the right place, or my engine glow is on my engines, or going into the design screen to make sure that inventory box #32 is in the right spot... over and over and over and over and over.

Thanks in advance,
John

[Phoenix-D]

If you want to, yes. More likely you could just include Organic or Crystalline texture. Its been stated that the org/crystalline stuff is optional.

Scaling- you can set whatever size you want, but if you make it too big or too small people won't use it. I doubt the appearence of the ships has any effect on actual combat. Can't really give scaling numbers.

For testing, grab the Starfury demo. You'll have to replace the default destroyer with your new ship.

Poly limits- look at the SF ships. I'd say a couple hundred polys at most.

SJ made a couple of helper programs for SF that might get ported to SEV.

[Captain Kwok]

You can just include alternate textures if you'd like to have your shipset look the part for Organic or Crystalline hulls.

There are a number of scale settings which I imagine could be abused, but anything off of the normal shipset will probably be shunned by players.

There is a viewer included that could help test placement of firing points or glows etc.

[Puke]

i was brainstorming with someone the other day, and we hit upon the idea of shipsets made of nothing but light points and glowy bits. perfect for all those silly energy-races that people like to play.

[Baron Munchausen]

Organic and Crystalline ships (including units) are seperate hulls with seperate entries in the config files. In the default set they are using the same models and textures as the standard hulls. So the organic and crystalline races have 'distinctive' styled ships and units even before they have researched their respective racial techs. But this doesn't have to be the case. You can make ordinary 'technological' models and textures and dedicated organic or crystalline models and textures for a given race.

[Fyron]

According to SEnet:

Like SEIV, the SEV vehiclesizes file defines primary and alternate model/texture files for each hull. In addition, it also defines a default, thus allowing for 3 possible file specifications. The file is set up to support the following additional models for ambitious shipset authors:

LightCarrier
HeavyCarrier
Baseship

Small, Medium and Light verisons of: Freighter, Drone, Fighter, Mine, Satellite, Troop, WeaponPlatform

Another thing to note is that the Organic and Crystalline racial traits in SEV provide specialized vehicles hulls. There are calls for specialized models and textures for every one of these vehicles, so a very ambitious shipset author could provide different textures in an "Organic" style for Organic races, for example.

[ToddT]

i took a peek at the human destroyer and crusiuer in Starfury demo. the txt files are mia so can't say anything about them, but the destroyer model is larger than the cruiser model. but in game thats not true. the face counts are aslo nearly 50% less. Not sure the number of slots is to big an issue,since tonnage limits would keep that in check.

[Phoenix-D]

The text files are there- check SpaceObjects_XFiles.txt. The cruiser has a base model radius of 444.293 and a scale of 0.008, the destroyer 588.822 and 0.004, respectively.

[ToddT]

SpaceObjects no such file in demo as far as i can see, have checked all directories. the model info provided, comforms what i sad about model sizes (i opened the actual .X files)
it seems you can create models any size you want then set scale accordingly.

[Phoenix-D]

Its in the Campaign 0- Backwater Blues folder.