Author Topic: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.  (Read 27947 times)

Offline Captain Jack

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #15 on: September 15, 2016, 03:42:46 pm »
Wouldn't that make it more like the Fortress?
In what way?

The only potential 'problem' is that it would be incredibly disappointing to have a dragon-head ship and not have it do something impressive-looking with its 'mouth'(beam cannon, flame/energy wave, etc). :P

Offline Cinth

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #16 on: September 15, 2016, 03:44:28 pm »
Wouldn't that make it more like the Fortress?
In what way?

The Fortress looks like it's built on top of an asteroid.
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline Captain Jack

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #17 on: September 15, 2016, 03:47:58 pm »
Wouldn't that make it more like the Fortress?
In what way?

The Fortress looks like it's built on top of an asteroid.
I thought it was modeled on the fortress moon from the Star Wars series of historical dramas?

Offline Cinth

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #18 on: September 15, 2016, 03:53:19 pm »
Wouldn't that make it more like the Fortress?
In what way?

The Fortress looks like it's built on top of an asteroid.
I thought it was modeled on the fortress moon from the Star Wars series of historical dramas?

You're the lore guy, you tell me.  I'm just tell you what it looks like ;)
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline x4000

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #19 on: September 15, 2016, 03:57:13 pm »
The fortress?  You mean the special forces guard post?  That was built into a rock, yeah.
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Offline Cinth

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #20 on: September 15, 2016, 04:08:19 pm »
Well, it did to me :p
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline x4000

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #21 on: September 15, 2016, 04:15:56 pm »
Fair! :)
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Offline Blue

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #22 on: September 15, 2016, 07:18:21 pm »
Chris suggested maybe building in a rock or asteroid, make it look like it was built off that. Like taking and putting rockets on a asteroid or something. Haha. Might be an excellent idea really.
So basically a human Spirecraft?  :P

Wouldn't that make it more like the Fortress?

I think a fortress is more apt. ;)


The only potential 'problem' is that it would be incredibly disappointing to have a dragon-head ship and not have it do something impressive-looking with its 'mouth'(beam cannon, flame/energy wave, etc).

Haha.

That'd be entirely up to Chris.

I've spent the better part of the day now working on the 3D model.

It's coming along!

Offline x4000

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #23 on: September 15, 2016, 07:20:13 pm »
Glad it's coming along!  A beam weapon out of the mouth would be fun, but given that players are going to want to target arbitrary directions, I doubt that would work.

Perhaps I'll use this model as the "secret indulgence" ship that you directly get to fly around. :)
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Offline Cinth

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #24 on: September 15, 2016, 07:32:42 pm »
Perhaps I'll use this model as the "secret indulgence" ship that you directly get to fly around.

It could be a Zenith Hydra Head.
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline x4000

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #25 on: September 15, 2016, 07:34:00 pm »
True!
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #26 on: September 15, 2016, 09:05:36 pm »
Great illustration. Let's call it "The Ryu."
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Offline Pumpkin

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #27 on: September 16, 2016, 03:05:46 am »
I love it! But even more, I love Blue sharing this insight in the process. I can't wait to see more.

On the piece of art itself, I feel the spiky design convey more an AI-style. I love the guard posts with their completely weird space-tech antennas and general shape; I think they're from you, Blue, right?

Anyway, if it's a concept art for the Human Home Station Ship, I think it's a bit too aggressive and menacing. (It is discussed in another thread wether or not it should allow "commander rush" and I'm personally supporting the "no gun" option.)

Anyway. Love it. More. Please.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #28 on: September 16, 2016, 05:08:47 am »
That looks like some sort of huge boss thing right out of one of my favorite shmups.   

That's high praise coming from me, mind you.   


Is this the sort of style the game as a whole will be using?   Looks bloody excellent to me.


Makes me think of Darius, actually.  Except that it's not shaped like some sort of fish, that series really had a thing for giant spaceship sea creatures. 


Looking forward to seeing more!

Thanks Misery!

As far as styles go, I'm not sure. I think a specific style is not really set in stone, but that you like this is a good direction to look at.

Could you specify more about what about this you like, as far as 'style' goes?

And thanks everyone!

-Blue


Well the first thing that stands out is that this doesn't have the extremely overused "big metal battleship" style to it.   I'm thinking of something like the ships in Battlestar Galactica, or even something like the Star Destroyers in Star Wars.  Big, blocky, very "metallic" looking ships, usually a sort of gray color (or close to it), that even from a distance shows the surface of the ship as being made up of a gazillion square-ish metal plates covered in random funky bits that stick out all over.   Anyone that's seen enough sci-fi space stuff probably knows what I mean by this style in a general sense outside of those two specific series.  It's very prevalent.

And it's REALLY overused in games.  I don't mean just the shmup genre (though that does go extremely overboard with these in certain games) but in a lot of space games of all sorts of genres, you get ships like that.  The sort of thing that says "another huge capital ship in space".  Cool as they may look they're often not actually very creative and tend to look very similar to one another.  After as many games as I've played that for whatever reason involve combat ships in space, I'm soooooo tired of these designs.  They're not very memorable to me anymore.  And they're usually about as colorful as a brick.

The thing you've shown here doesn't even go near that type of design, which is great.  There's an almost organic quality to it, yet not too much.  The blue crystal bits add to this look, and also add some extra menace to it (and a big central ship, which this is, should look menacing in my opinion, it shouldn't look like something that runs and hides; that wouldn't exactly scream confidence, nope).  It's got a dragon-ish shape to it but it doesn't go too far with that either.  Even if the individual ship itself ends up not being all that strong, as the core unit it's still sort of representative of the fleet as a whole, so it should look impressive even if it's actual power is low.

And overall, it just stands out to me.  It looks DIFFERENT than the norm that's used everywhere but without looking ridiculous. Stands out.  And again, there's some actual color there.  That's something that always catches my eye since so many games these days don't seem to know what colors even are.

Offline x4000

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Re: Second Art Look: Player Base Concepting.
« Reply #29 on: September 16, 2016, 09:36:30 am »
That's a really good point about the blandness of so many designs.  I'll have to think about that in general, honestly.
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