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Ocelot Beam and GETCo Beams Artwork Appearance


Getco Beams Artwork Appearance  

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  1. 1. Rollback to Original Artwork Westwood Designs

    • Rollback to Original Artwork Westwood Designs
    • No Change, Leave Current Artwork
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    • Improve Current Artwork


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What the heck happened to the look of the Ocelot Beam? and, Getco Beams Appearances They All look like a piece of dust.

 

Can we do a rollback to change it back to the original artwork? They were a lot better looking.

Edited by Kenu
Added poll option for improving the artwork
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What the heck happened to the look of the Ocelot Beam? it looks like a piece of dust.

 

Can we do a roll back to change it back, the original art work was allot better looking.

 

In the patch notes many of the Good Earth Trading Company's beams have changed in their appearance.  Pitbull beams both Jr. and Sr. remain the same.

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Thank you Terrell, I went to the db to check them out, they look terrible, thats just me tho. I dislike the appearance now, we should vote on this, to have it changed back me thinks, the original artwork was better. no offence to the Individual that changed it up, leave the creatively an appearance alone please, I like the artwork of Westwood Team.

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Thank you Terrell, I went to the db to check them out, they look terrible, thats just me tho. I dislike the appearance now, we should vote on this, to have it changed back me thinks, the original artwork was better. no offence to the Individual that changed it up, leave the creatively an appearance alone please, I like the artwork of Westwood Team.

i totaly agree with Brackflin

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Oh and I think I was mistaken about the Pitbull's art remaining the same.  I had my JT make a Pitbull Jr. and it's different from what I remember.  I'm not sure on the Pitbull Sr. since I don't have that printed and haven't seen one since Live started.

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I wasn't involved with this change, but I think the 3D assets look great.

 

uCFSvoo.png

 

The 2D assets could use some work in my opinion. They look a bit blurry because the purple doesn't stand out as much from the grey as the green did. on the green ocelot the tip of the beam is very distinct but I barely noticed the purple tip on the new ocelot. Lightening the background grey of the new asset could help bring out the purple. Or maybe make the purple a lighter shade or outline the purple with a lighter color.

sXcljI5.pngiaFzHRI.png

 

I think they could look better, but they're not bad assets and I agree with the reasoning for the color change.

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The 3d model is the main reason for the rework here. The 2d asset can be reshot, and I'll look at that possibility with the rest of the team over the coming week or so.

Staging some of these models into a 128x128 frame for ingame icons isn't always a walk in the park, we restaged the InZen devices again because of alpha whiteout.

What looks good before we send them to the server doesn't always look -as- good on the other end.

 

Terrell : correct, the beam models were also re-tiered, and the large asset re-assigned to the Pitbull series. The Cheetahs were also changed (low level, changed to small asset).

The new tiering is based on the standard 1-5, 4-7, 7-9. Which Westwood sidestepped originally when they introduced the Pitbull.

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Hmm, btw since I haven't formally expressed an opinion, I have no problem with the reworking of the Good Earth Trading Company's beams.  I'm holding out hope for them to have greater storyline importance than they did in the original game.  I do like how they do have influence in both Hyperia & Sharim.

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Don't think people appreciate how hard it is to make even 2d textures that will look as intended after converting to DDS and alpha channels being messed up. Although I *agree* previous 2d textures look better, the 3d models are much better and "purple" therefore much more accurate. But still don't discount the time and effort required to create the 2d texture because if you look closely it fits the model perfectly, just the lighting is slightly off - hence the alpha problem.


On a side note, can we please change the "projectile asset" of the flechette from the "line/beam" of singular bullets from the "pew pew pew" to something more substantial? If no one is with me on this then I'll be quiet, but the flechette deserves somewhat of a more 'formidable' aesthetic to the one it currently possesses (no qualms with the 3d asset)
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Maybe my opinion will help.

 

When I changed the original texture I DID NOT change it's colors or anything I changed the alpha channel to get rid of the wierd looking flash the model had from westwood.( see kenu's screen shot on his ship)

 

That was all that was changed.

 

The texture is IDENTICAL to what westwood put out.

 

The problem i'm running into is when i make the screen shots in the model viewer to put into the game they go grey. Titanium whatever you want to call it.

 

This was not done intentionally and the ingame 2d assets look nothing like the files that are in the game and we have not been able to figure out why.

 

I'm going to show you what the screen shots look like and what the game is doing and I hope you understand it's out of my hands atm while trying to sort this out.

 

ScreenShot04.png is originally in tga format ( which the game can handle btw) and is the screen shot which made the i_pu39f.png( it's a dds file format ingame)

 

I have to convert them to upload here for you to see.

 

It's supposed to be transparent in the game and looks very nice as you can see.

 

And when I put it into my client on my computer.  ( see the client 2013 files)

 

This is what happens, all 4 of the pitbull pictures you see are based off the same picture.

 

If you can explain to me why it does this and how to fix it I'd appreciate it.

 

I've even gone as far as to put the original dds file from westwood into photoshop next to the new one and they look fairly close ( mine isn't as Shiney) blame the model viewer for that.

 

Remember except for the invisible part of the texture (the skin of the model) the texture is identical to westwoods.

 

These are new picture btw, done today in photoshop trying to solve the problem.

 

And I hope this allays the suspicions I'm changing the original 2d assets from westwood.

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I agree with Kenu. The 3d art look good, but the 2d art need some work. I dont know why you just dont recolor the original 2d art independantly of the 3d art, but i guess it's a limitation of the old engine.

I'll answer that question in this way.

 

The original artwork you see in the game is a 64/64 2d screen shot of the model itself.

 

If you have ever manipulated a small picture file and made it larger you know exactly why I make all new files.

 

Westwood used 3dsmax 3-4 (not sure on which version) to make an alpha channel rendering of the model which is what is used in the game.( and the main reason why the 2d assets i make look different)

 

I do not have that luxury.

 

I use a model viewer to take screen shots of the work I have done.( I might screen shot the model 50 times or more getting the position and colors right)

 

And then use photoshop to produce it for ingame content.( there is specifics i can't get into). You could use Gimp I happen to like photoshop more.

 

I'm still fairly new to photoshop and I've learned a tremendous amount about how game textures and 2d assets work and how to produce them.

 

With that said I do NOT "photoshop" the 2d assets to much pain involved.

 

I use the original artwork to start with and change it around to match what I am asked to do. (if you know anything about model texturing you will know why)

 

The blacksun/inzen texture(model skin) was fully rebuilt except in a couple areas.

 

This model just had the invisible part changed only and is the artwork westwood produced ( the invisible part controls where the colors flash only)

 

As i explained in the above post with the screen shots that the game is making some wierd lighting changes on this model's 2d assets.

 

So i hope this answers some of the questions people have.

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Unbelievable how much better the attached screenshot looks. Wow! 

And Arthur yeah I am talking about the sound effect, and also the thin line of ammo that spews from it. It looks especially funny at high turbo percentage, but something I did notice about it that may warrant a change rather than just my own personal taste is that during the last GoBB raid I attended. There was quite a few PW's using the Flechette, and one player in particular had about four of them installed. When these came into view I noticed significantly more lag, which I had not previously noticed when visuals of any other PL had come into view, even large masses of bile ammo flying in had never produced an effect similar to this. May be co-incidental but like I said, not something I had noticed before! 

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OK, so we are going to put this topic to rest for awhile as far as the GetCo beams go. The 2d artwork has been redone, and will get pushed this week.

 

[attachment=2699:i_pu3g.png][attachment=2700:i_pu3f.png][attachment=2701:i_pu39c.png][attachment=2702:i_pu39f.png]

 

Thank you Fish for the comment regarding the screenshot, but it's exactly the point I was trying to make .. they look fantastic at full size, but are harder to manipulate for the HUD icons and vendor trees. The alpha channel also tends to white them out, which is why we had kept the first versions a little darker.

 

You should all thank Magoo for his time on this one. He put in a 12 hour session one night to get something for me to post regarding this for the week, and is still working on the other two things we temporarily shelved to redo this. I haven't been much help in this department the last few days, as I was busy writing a new mission series. So props to his obsessively compulsive desire to finish this again. If this meets with greater approval, fantastic. If not, it`s not going to be redone again unless we have free time. Not Soon™.

 

As for the Flechette, I will talk to a couple of the other DEVs and see what`s happening there, those effects are coded with the weapon and/or ammo.

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