Damn. That's just... words cannot express the sexiness.

woah

I was originally going to do this myself, but I never managed to get a solid grasps of the concepts behind it, and then became destracted by... other stuff. That also never went anywhere. Regardless, if you need some help and have a minute to help me understand WTF I'm doing, I will gladly help you with this project.

I too have a powerful computer, I'm just too dense to figure out rendering on my own. Spreadsheets I'm not good at either, but I am good about figuring out what parts go where seeing as I do that for a living, so I will take a look at this. If you could perhaps provide a simple overview for me, either here or in PM, I would be greatful anyway. Usually if I blunder my way through something enough I can eventually figure it out, but sometimes I need someone to beat it into me with a stick.


EDIT: After going through the files a bit I've noticed that the Devs decided to modularize the models for the alien ships. While this is awesome for SS because they can make literally scores of ships that all look different while following in the same theme without the (relatively) extreme use of resources that doing this by exporting every ship as a .obj file (ie. the old way) and also avoiding using the same models for a bunch of ships (*cough*Pretenders*cough*), it makes this project a little more difficult with regard to that line of ship. You would have to put all the bits together manually. =/

indeed the aliens (except the 2 cap ships), were built in modules to allow for a much greater variety in looks and thanks to the fact its a lot faster to switch model when rendering, than to switch texture xD (so rendering 4 modules with the same texture is essentially the same speed as rendering 1 complete model with the same texture, but rendering 2 module with 2 texture is a hell lot longer).

It's quite nice, but at the same time annoying to render outside of SS. =)

If any Devs are willing to help us out with this project, I need a list of all the (player known) ships that have particles or glows added by the server that aren't in the client files. For example, Santa's Special Sleigh. And I may also need some help deciphering some models and textures.

Also, if you could continue putting in comments as to what ships are what in the Ships.XML file, that would me awesome! xP

Woot, I was hoping that was the case. The spreadsheet is maybe 80-85% complete using what I had available. Some stuff might be wrong though, it's hard to tell without access to the server files. Other things use effects generated by the server which are going to be annoying to replicate (here's looking at you App Ward).

The thatch, astro, absentis and absconditus look pretty legit, others not so much =P

I'm using the Paxtro render as my desktop background at the moment because I love it so much. I hope TCGM gets more time to work on these soon, but with college and all he doesn't.