Submarine Mod

[Continuum]

I thought you'll need a Power Armour, because whole level is flooded and you'll need that suit to somehow breath under the water!

 

[Lexx]

Ah well, ok. But then again: The animation would look strange. Walking like normal in a totally flooded room... hmm.

Or vary it a bit: Build in some kind of puzzle with pumpstations to "free" the corridors first.

Imagine: You see a corridor of rooms in front of you. All are locked with heavy doors and flooded with water. Now you need to solve some puzzle to drain of the water from the room in front of you. In the next room, you need to solve some puzzle for the next room, etc. With this way you could add some water scenery that makes it looks like the room is flooded. If the puzzle is solved, screen fades black, scenery will be deleted, screen fades back to normal, etc. Also you have a story for why you can not enter the room without care (the water).

 

[Josan12]

Imagine: You see a corridor of rooms in front of you. All are locked with heavy doors and flooded with water. Now you need to solve some puzzle to drain of the water from the room in front of you. In the next room, you need to solve some puzzle for the next room, etc. With this way you could add some water scenery that makes it looks like the room is flooded. If the puzzle is solved, screen fades black, scenery will be deleted, screen fades back to normal, etc. Also you have a story for why you can not enter the room without care (the water).

Excellent thinking, Lexx. I think we need you 'on board' to help us design this ship. Captain Continuum commanding!

 

[Ravager69]

This mod needs lots of tentacle-waving monsters.

Tentacles are so Fallout and un-hentai.

 

[killap]

I am happy to see the Shi mod is closer to seeing the light of day. I cannot offer any help in the graphics area but when it comes to scripting and implementing all the new content into the game, I'll be right there to do it.

Thanks everyone. It looks like the RP might some day truly be complete.

 

[Josan12]

Always good to know the Bear Dude is on hand!

Here's a deisgn concept i made up for the Sub. It might be a little hard to read - if so i'll post the floorplans aswell;



I've been reasearching into nuclear subs, and it's hard to find much on 50's - 60's subs, let alone Chinese ones. So i decided on one that is approx. 30 ft. wide and 175 ft long. Now i realise that's a little short for the quests i want to put in there, so it'll probably get a little longer.

@ Continuum: this is what your image made me think:




Is this what you were thinking as the main access to the sub?

For the possibly submerged 4th floor, i had some ideas:

1) For compartments that are fully flooded, create some semi-transparent water scenery, and create a whole new set of PA FRM's that have their framerate slowed down to make it look like the critter is moving underwater

2) For semi-flooded compartments, il looked into Lexx's idea of modifying the PA FRM's (basicly cutting off the lower half of the body and adding some ripples) As long as it's only for the PA set, i'd say it's a reasonable amount of work:




This only took a few minutes. Unfortunately, Hero PA has alot of weapon frames !!

3) For non-flooded compartments it will be just a set of new tiles representing just a few inches of water.

Any help and ideas much appreciated

 

[Continuum]

@ Continuum: this is what your image made me think:

Is this what you were thinking as the main access to the sub?

No, that was only an eyecandy...

Anyway, player could enter through manhole on the deck. Later, when sub was partially deconstructed I wanted to use two possibilities of getting inside through destroyed deck:

- a manhole placed after the sail (high strength required to open it),
- rope that could be attached to destroyed deck (Glow like thing).

For the possibly submerged 4th floor, i had some ideas:

4th floor? I thought there suppose to be only three... or maybe do you mean deck + 1st + 2nd + 3rd?

----------------------EDIT

Yeah, you meant: deck + 1st + 2nd + 3rd = 4


----------------------EDIT2

Once again a small reminder how exterior map will be looking:



The sub isn't going to be fully visible. Only ~ 1600x1200.

 

[Grayswandir]

2) For semi-flooded compartments, il looked into Lexx's idea of modifying the PA FRM's (basicly cutting off the lower half of the body and adding some ripples) As long as it's only for the PA set, i'd say it's a reasonable amount of work:

Is there any chance that there won't be any combat in here? That would leave "only" the walking running animation to do...

Or maybe the water would be so much mixed with fuel/chemical, that a spark would make it go boom, so no firing with rifle is allowed?
Or is it a nuclear submarine?
That would leave only the fist, knive, hammer animation to do do... But then, the ennemy critter would have to be flooded too...

 

[Josan12]

Is there any chance that there won't be any combat in here? That would leave "only" the walking running animation to do...

Or maybe the water would be so much mixed with fuel/chemical, that a spark would make it go boom, so no firing with rifle is allowed?
Or is it a nuclear submarine?
That would leave only the fist, knive, hammer animation to do do... But then, the ennemy critter would have to be flooded too...

Yes ... i think it might be a good idea to put some limitations on:

a) only PC's and NPC's in a fully sealed suit of Power Armour can go in due to noxious/explosive gases - but APA doesn't count!!!
b) We can't have any firing in there - rifles slung and no grenades (i've been watching too much Aliens) due to explosive gas build-up. So no gun animations. Also MIB88 suggested because of the water no guns.

This would mean all i'd have to do is PA (works for male and female and all NPC's) in non-gun animations!! sweeet!

 

[Continuum]

Imagine: You see a corridor of rooms in front of you. All are locked with heavy doors and flooded with water. Now you need to solve some puzzle to drain of the water from the room in front of you. In the next room, you need to solve some puzzle for the next room, etc. With this way you could add some water scenery that makes it looks like the room is flooded. If the puzzle is solved, screen fades black, scenery will be deleted, screen fades back to normal, etc. Also you have a story for why you can not enter the room without care (the water).

This idea sounds interesting, but... that would require rendering of whole flooded rooms (to get a nice results) and then splitting them into the pieces... and this is not what I'm planning to do.

So, how to hell I'm doing the walls?

Long time ago I figured out FO's wall template (geometry) which contains all possible segments. It's not perfect (I doubt you'll ever make an identical), but is working well. There're small differences, but you'll only noticed them when you'll compare both segments (my and original) in PS. Engine doesn't give a flying fuck about those little differences, so me too

The most important thing is that I'm always getting 16 or 32 (+ that corners).

Each segment in rendered exactly in the same position. So, if I have 3x16 then I'm rendering the first, I'm moving 2nd exactly into the same position when 1st is/was, etc. But if I'll move 16 too far to right or to left then I'll get 15! Now, if I would like to render very long segment (made from that template by cloning and snaping exactly the same elements), let's say 4x16 + 3x32 I should get 160 pixels in Width... but no fucking way! I'll get 156 or 157!

Damn, those pixels!

So, if you'll try to render whole flooded room and you'll try to put into the game (without any annoying fixing in PS) it simply will not match into existing puzzles... Not to mention that you'll need to extract existing pieces, cut/merge them into totally new ones, because you'll need to match them with that pieces from flooded level... sounds really ugly...

just my two cents into to be flooded, or not to be flooded...

 

[Ravager69]

Uh, to make things simplier, how about the sub being stripped for metal so far, that there isn't a set of corridors like in a normal sub, but one big room, or two?

As for some inspiration, I looked up some photos:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/089OgCc0wOdxy/610x.jpg

http://strategycenter.net/imgLib/20060319_15.jpg

http://cnair.top81.cn/sub/04X.jpg

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,289060,00.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2728247219_8884b9a91d.jpg?v=0

http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/722...BF717C26DB4932AC8D72A1A30E0A4A55A1E4F32AD3138

It's hard to find good pics of a chinese submarine, the ones I posted are the best I've found. Just throw in some art deco and it'll be good [/url]

 

[Continuum]

Ok, let's start this crap...

Here's overall color I picked for the interior:



Cables are going to be rendered with walls.



-----------------------------EDIT

And here's what I meant by rendering whole flooded rooms/sections/whatever:

Even after conversion to 228 colors looks freaking crazy and you can even animate this "water" surface

 

[Glovz]

@Josan12

Just a thought, but instead of the PA; you know people will complain why they cannot use the APA, how about the Environmental Armor?

I believe it was added by killap for the EPA, this would kind of tie things together a bit more in the game and give the Environmental Armor a bit more use.

Just a thought.

@Continuum

The dock boards need to look a bit more aged and have some missing areas/holes. Is the edge of the dock; part against the water, concrete or are part steel? If there are steel parts; usually are in real life, there will need to be rusting and/or missing bits.

 

[Continuum]

The dock boards need to look a bit more aged and have some missing areas/holes.

I was thinking about it, but this will require cutting the geometry, because that wooden surface, if you look closely, is using seamless texture, so the holes/missing parts will be repeatable when I'll use the opacity map...

Is the edge of the dock; part against the water, concrete or are part steel? If there are steel parts; usually are in real life, there will need to be rusting and/or missing bits.

This is going to be a concrete thing, but it needs to tweaked/texture changed, because it's looking too much metal-ish.

Those are only WIPies and textures can be changed in any time. That's why I'm posting a large number of such images, so people can participate in what can be improved/changed/etc.

 

[Continuum]

Which version looks better (I mean that top part)?


Default:

My:

Also, two cables at the top or maybe two on the top and two on the bottom? Or maybe something else? Also, what else can attached to the walls? Maybe texture should be darker/lighter?


----------------------EDIT

Doorways/doors should look like in previous sub or maybe we should try something else?

 

[Josan12]

Looks great Contie. I would say very close to perfect. I like the second one the best. Also, i like the 2x2 cables. It'd also be good to have pipes also - but maybe they can be a seperate wall feature or we can use the existing ones. As i said, i would like the coridoors to be lined with lots of pipes, cables, etc.

Don't forget to check how those steel walls look in the dark. It's gonna dark and scary inside this 'ghost ship'. The engine changes the colours quite radically when it makes scenery 'dark'

Also: I really like the flooded sections. You say they CAN be animated?? awesome!

@Josan12

Just a thought, but instead of the PA; you know people will complain why they cannot use the APA, how about the Environmental Armor?

I believe it was added by killap for the EPA, this would kind of tie things together a bit more in the game and give the Environmental Armor a bit more use.

Interesting idea, Glovz. I like it. To be honest, i haven't actually seen the Tactics enviro armour in-game yet - how does it look? I'm a little skeptical about using tactics graphics in FO....
But it's a good idea.[/quote]

 

[Continuum]

Don't forget to check how those steel walls look in the dark. It's gonna dark and scary inside this 'ghost ship'. The engine changes the colours quite radically when it makes scenery 'dark'

Day:



Night:

Also: I really like the flooded sections. You say they CAN be animated?? awesome!

Yes, they can. But as I stated few post above - this will be very, very, very hard to implement, so I don't know if this going to see light of the day...

To be honest, i haven't actually seen the Tactics enviro armour in-game yet - how does it look?

It's looking simply bad (with all respect to Wild Qwerty's hard work).

You can't use sprites from engine where you have 8 directions in engine where you have only 6 without ugly side effects. Movement animations are awful (sliding, jumping, not moving in a straight line, etc.).

I'm a little skeptical about using tactics graphics in FO....

And I'm strongly against it because of reasons I mentioned above


---------------------------EDIT

I don't know why a lot people wants to implement idea of walking/swimming/whatever in the water... Shitload of work need to be done to achieve somehow decent results. Not to mention that effect isn't going to look good, because of crappy engine... So, please, explain it to me why this is so important?

You can always make a special manhole and when player will open he'll see a water inside and information will appear: you can't get there. After he'll remove whole water that special manhole is replaced by default one. I was thinking about such solution when I was doing that previous sub...

 

[Dravean]

@Josan12

Just a thought, but instead of the PA; you know people will complain why they cannot use the APA, how about the Environmental Armor?

I believe it was added by killap for the EPA, this would kind of tie things together a bit more in the game and give the Environmental Armor a bit more use.

But that would change the EPA from a neat optional place to discover , into an integral part of the Fallout 2 game play, which alters the game too much for my taste.

I don't know why a lot people wants to implement idea of walking/swimming/whatever in the water... Shitload of work need to be done to achieve somehow decent results. Not to mention that effect isn't going to look good, because of crappy engine... So, please, explain it to me why this is so important?

You can always make a special manhole and when player will open he'll see a water inside and information will appear: you can't get there. After he'll remove whole water that special manhole is replaced by default one. I was thinking about such solution when I was doing that previous sub...

That sounds like an elegant solution to me. Why make more work than you have to?

 

[Continuum]

Doorway + door:

It'd also be good to have pipes also - but maybe they can be a seperate wall feature or we can use the existing ones.

Do you mean something like that pipes "inside" walls on the Tanker (scenery that is placed on the walls)?

 

[Lexx]

I like the door. Looks very massive.