Know Thy Enemy: Kilrathi Capital Ships - Entry 1: Kamrani
FROM: Rear Admiral Tolwyn, CINCWEAPONSDIVISION
DATE: 2009.02.03
Before I go to much into this week's update, I want to talk about the team working on this project. These guys are the most dedicated and talented guys I've ever worked with. They're putting in ridiculous hours right now as we make the final push towards our Alpha. I feel like the effort is really paying off, too. In my opinion, the game is really starting to look and play great. Many times as I'm playing through our current build preparing feedback, looking for issues, or generally doing any of the other hundred things I do in the game while not actually "playing" it, I find myself slipping into "gamer" mode, simply enjoying the experience. This team is busting everything they've got, and I can see that it's really making a difference. I feel that the final product will be great.
And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for far too long. It’s time to introduce our Kilrathi capital ships. Scooby Doo from the team explains the process:
"Like everything in game development, designing capital ships is always more difficult than it sounds. As a team, we had a long discussion regarding the overall look we wanted to create for our ships. We went through every available concept art from finished Wing Commander games and also from the art associated with the unreleased Wing Commander games. We found the artwork by Feng Zhu were particularly helpful.
We tried to really understand the meaning and philosophy behind Kilrathi ship design. In the end, we walked away with a good idea of the approach we were going to take.
We started with the basics. We took a simple yellowish base metal texture, and we started evolving it from there.One of the first additions we made was dirt patches. To be honest, these were actually designed to help facilitate another effect we were experimenting with. We ended up cutting that particular effect, but we used dirt effect here because it just felt right to us.
Next we began playing with armor plating. We actually have a good foundation in there now. We wrote a simple Photoshop script that creates armor plates in a matter of seconds (thus saving us a lot of time).
Normal maps came into the picture a little after that. This is one of my personal favorites. Basically, normal maps are used to greatly enhance the appearance of our low poly models without using more polygons. This technique allows us to create highly detailed, impressive models with very small impact on performance, allowing Saga to look and play great on a wide variety of machines."
As our first demonstration of the results of our work in this area, we would like to introduce our version of the Kamrani.
The Kilrathi’s obsession with hit-and-run strikes and wolfpack tactics is manifested in their most recent corvette model. Its combination of offensive anti-ship missiles and high speed enables these corvettes to attack Confederation convoys before they have adequate time to muster a counterattack. Even though the Kamrani is lightly armored, this corvette is well protected against fighters with it's multiple turret configuration.
Take a look at this Kilrathi killing machine below.
In our future updates we plan to release some information on the story, talk a little bit about our characters, and introduce the player's nemeses! Stay tuned!
-Tolwyn
Can\'t wait for the main campaign to be released!! BTW, I\'d like to say that if I have nebulas and backgrounds on, my FPS drops to 5 or 6, but if they\'re disabled, it\'s 25+. If you could find a fix for that by the release I\'d be grateful :)
Looks amazing. Seriously.. that really does look amazing
Cheers!We are lucky to have Scooby Doo aboard. He developed this amazing texture style in a matter of days. We just gave him the nudge in the right direction. :p
nothing like the feeling u get wen uve mopped up all the bad guys and used up all ur missles and a corvette jumps in :p
Quote : nothing like the feeling u get wen uve mopped up all the bad guys and used up all ur missles and a dreadnaught jumps in
There. Fixed. :p
Man that\'s a kickass ship right there. Nice work. That Art work of that capital ship looks brill as well. Are you guys planning to make that because I would love to destroy it please :D
Quote : Man that\'s a kickass ship right there. Nice work. That Art work of that capital ship looks brill as well. Are you guys planning to make that because I would love to destroy it please :D
That artwork is not from the team, we just roughly based our new textures on it =) We neither will do that ship since it is out-of-era for the Saga time period. However I\'m sure you\'ll find plenty to shoot at in the final release ;)
Wicked :grin
Quote : However I\'m sure you\'ll find plenty to shoot at in the final release ;)
Good, I\'ve run out of things to own brutally :)
oh, rest assured you will.And some may own you or did you think we are making an arcade game here? :grin
Wow, i\'ve been monitoring this project for some while now.But i\'m really impressed by how it all looks :)
Kilrathi ships have never looked so \'raw\' and battle scarred :P
Keep up the excellent work, i\'m really looking foward to the finished product :grin
Will in the final game every ship be as realistic as this one?Can\'t believe it cause in the Prologe the graphic is already nice. Love your work so far.
Quote : Will in the final game every ship be as realistic as this one?
That is, uh, our plan. We\'ll be releasing new eyecandy now on the regular basis. ;)