Sorry I didn't update with more words today honestly, I don't have a ton of words to say about the ships. I think they speak for themselves ^^ I hope y'all can forgive me! XD

LindseyReid wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 16, 2017 10:34 pm

Sorry I didn't update with more words today honestly, I don't have a ton of words to say about the ships. I think they speak for themselves ^^ I hope y'all can forgive me! XD

A picture is worth at least a few million words going by the bit rate.
Don't worry, just post pretties. :V

LindseyReid wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 16, 2017 10:34 pm

Sorry I didn't update with more words today honestly, I don't have a ton of words to say about the ships. I think they speak for themselves ^^ I hope y'all can forgive me! XD

I much prefer the images, Lindsey.

Holy shit guys. I mean. Holy. Shit. Where did we crash the hype train last time? We need to get that old boy up and running again. Great work Lindsey. Especially for such a short gestation period. Frankly, if I saw these ships in the game with trails, lights and good texturing, I wouldn't complain. But you sound like you're just starting out. Kudos to that.

Wowzers. To clarify: are these being generated by our old friend, Mr. PRNG? Or are they hand-designed for now?

If procedural, that's fantastic -- it implies that the universe of ship types we encounter in LT v1.0 will be terrifically diverse.

I do have two pieces of feedback at a conceptual level, both of which are related to kostuek's comment: wings make sense for atmospheric flight.

1. Forward-facing wing surfaces that are flat are an offense to physics. If it really is a "wing," implying that this thing could fly well in an atmosphere, then there probably needs to be some logic to insure that the "front" part of any wing is an edge where two surfaces join.

2. Less wing, more fuselage. Unless Josh is still planning to support our landing on planets and showing a city through a window, where we might see some of these fighter craft flying, "wings" are completely unnecessary for a spacecraft in a vacuum.

They do sort of make sense aesthetically, though. The idea of a "fighter" craft immediately brings to mind the basic shapes in the drawing shown in the OP. So while some fighters might not have wings (maybe they are wings -- a "lifting body" design), it probably doesn't hurt to let some space fighters have wing-like attachments.

But in all the test images shown, the wing-to-fuselage ratio seems very excessive. I think (following Hyperion's perspective) that a great diversity of shapes means we ought to see more-wing-than-fuselage fighters from time to time. What I'm suggesting is that this should not be the norm, that most fighters probably ought to be mostly fuselage with a bit of wing.

That still leaves plenty of room for visual variation, but it also covers the feeling that a spaceship with a bunch of core systems (power, engine, weapons, shields, armor, sensors) would usually put those systems in a fuselage, so the fuselage needs to be proportionately larger compared to any wings. (We might note that wings may be hardpoint sites, but here we start to get into real-world aircraft design and that's probably taking this too far. )

Overall, really happy with the progress here! If some variation on fuselage/wing proportions can be added, I think that would deliver considerable value.

And Flat's post reminded me that I should have posted a thank you for your contribution concerning ship styles Hyperion. It was a treat to see you had included Liberator in your examples.

In a game like LT aesthetics win hands down for me. Especially as we are aware that there will be plenty of scope for modifications to be made to the released game.

Flatfingers wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 3:10 am

Wowzers. To clarify: are these being generated by our old friend, Mr. PRNG? Or are they hand-designed for now?

If procedural, that's fantastic -- it implies that the universe of ship types we encounter in LT v1.0 will be terrifically diverse.

They are indeed procedural.

Flatfingers wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 3:10 am

I do have two pieces of feedback at a conceptual level, both of which are related to kostuek's comment: wings make sense for atmospheric flight.

1. Forward-facing wing surfaces that are flat are an offense to physics. If it really is a "wing," implying that this thing could fly well in an atmosphere, then there probably needs to be some logic to insure that the "front" part of any wing is an edge where two surfaces join.

2. Less wing, more fuselage. Unless Josh is still planning to support our landing on planets and showing a city through a window, where we might see some of these fighter craft flying, "wings" are completely unnecessary for a spacecraft in a vacuum.

They do sort of make sense aesthetically, though. The idea of a "fighter" craft immediately brings to mind the basic shapes in the drawing shown in the OP. So while some fighters might not have wings (maybe they are wings -- a "lifting body" design), it probably doesn't hurt to let some space fighters have wing-like attachments.

But in all the test images shown, the wing-to-fuselage ratio seems very excessive. I think (following Hyperion's perspective) that a great diversity of shapes means we ought to see more-wing-than-fuselage fighters from time to time. What I'm suggesting is that this should not be the norm, that most fighters probably ought to be mostly fuselage with a bit of wing.

That still leaves plenty of room for visual variation, but it also covers the feeling that a spaceship with a bunch of core systems (power, engine, weapons, shields, armor, sensors) would usually put those systems in a fuselage, so the fuselage needs to be proportionately larger compared to any wings. (We might note that wings may be hardpoint sites, but here we start to get into real-world aircraft design and that's probably taking this too far. )

Overall, really happy with the progress here! If some variation on fuselage/wing proportions can be added, I think that would deliver considerable value.

Thank you for the feedback, I'll definitely use this. I see a lot of wings in the general fighter trope, but I 100% agree that there needs to be more possibility for very short wings.

Awesome Lindsey - those ships look interesting and cool!

They have something in common - a visual "culture" if you will.
Could there be distinct pallets of ship design algorithms to represent different "space cultures" (with different values/goals/philosophies expressed in the design)?
It may make recognizing ship classes through visual shorthands more difficult though ...

I keep dreaming of space gypsies (hunters and gathers?) with gobbled together and super colorful flotillas roaming around, picking up the pieces of crumbling empires, and meeting up once in a while for a giant party and swap meet

Very nice work, Lindsey. I can't wait to see polished versions properly textured and touched up with your ... erm ... gribble algorithms? Now if there only was a badge for how many distinctive ships you've collected ... you gotta catch em all.

Also, the MAERSK cargo freighter from the collection is terrific XD

lobosan wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 11:53 am

I keep dreaming of space gypsies (hunters and gathers?) with gobbled together and super colorful flotillas roaming around, picking up the pieces of crumbling empires, and meeting up once in a while for a giant party and swap meet

I love this idea! this would be amazing!

That super impressive! Especially if you didn't cheery pick the result! Would you consider generating a video where you change the parameter at random and generate a new ship like every 10 second ? That a pretty good way to visualize the breadth of the possibility space of a generative algorithm, and it would allow to see if there is any bias repetition or something not explored. Also it should be pretty low effort to generate automatically, and of course it would be super cool!

nobb wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:07 pm

Would you consider generating a video where you change the parameter at random and generate a new ship like every 10 second ?

... Thats a super neat idea. Lindsey, you could setup a little version that regenerates the ship every 5 seconds or so, and rotates the ship around slowly.

Then you could stream that to the internet while you are away from the office. :V just set it up, and leave it overnight. :V
Come back to infinite happiness from the random denizens of the Forums and IRC :V

Josh is almost certainly going to be just as against doing streams as he always was. The gif is a possibility, but I don't think the ships are quite at that stage yet. Wait until they're developed more, and then we'll see.

Silverware wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 5:07 pm

nobb wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:07 pm

Would you consider generating a video where you change the parameter at random and generate a new ship like every 10 second ?

... Thats a super neat idea. Lindsey, you could setup a little version that regenerates the ship every 5 seconds or so, and rotates the ship around slowly.

Then you could stream that to the internet while you are away from the office. :V just set it up, and leave it overnight. :V
Come back to infinite happiness from the random denizens of the Forums and IRC :V

I personally think its a bit too soon for that, but after a reworking of textures and adding lights and more details, sounds great.
I think nobbs idea would be good though, maybe a 5-10 minute video? doesnt need voiceover, just generate, rotate, morph....Can ships these ships morph by changing their verts and such? Because seeing

turn into

would be amazing

Nope, they cannot morph as of now... and I really don't think that's at all likely to be a feature Lindsey implements, either.