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[Makwu]

Ship Textures Continued:

 

I realized my previous post was a bit vague on how i thought the ship textures could easily be improved, so i decided to reflect a bit more on the subject. I think the ship appearances can be greatly improved very easily.

 

Color: The ship textures seem dark and dull to me. Perhaps it is the lighting in the screen captures, but by and large the ships look very dark. Oddly, the imperial ground units seem right on par with the movies as far as texture color is concerned, very light grey. However, the space units seem to be a much darker grey. This is a screen clip I found that shows the color of the star destroyers in the movies:

http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/STAR%20DESTROYER.jpg

Very light grey, almost white.

 

In addition to color, the ground units appear to have a more dirty/gritty appearance (As the ships in star wars do have). I am very very pleased with the ground units actually. I think they look very similar to the models used in the movies.

 

Deck Lighting: The thing that the ships appeared to be missing that I couldn't quite pinpoint in my first examination was deck lighting. Deck lighting would be very easy to add since the game is ussing DX9. Here is an example of the EAW ship compared to a HW2 star wars mod:

 

link one - EAW

link two - HW2

 

I think that deck lighting goes a long way towards making a ship feel large on screen and making it look more alive. As you can see in the movie clip image i embedeed, they used deck lighting in the movie models as well. Combined with lighter textures, I think the ships would look much better. A deck light is a gives the mind a realworld referrence to size. By simply adding larger deck lights to the middle class ships you might be able to minimize the scaling problems that people have complained about without having to edit actual model sizes as much. An optical illusion if you will.

 

Unit Control: If you are going to have units on three different plains, I think it would be handy to have the unit icons in the HUD displayed on 3 different tabs. Three tabs could be located right above the unit selection area that would allow you to go to each group. You could have a fourth tab for "all units" perhaps. I think this would make managing units, and finding a particular unit more easy.

 

Sorry for so much posting, I'll tone it down from here on out. I've made most of my points.

[Shalashaska]

I have a lot to say, as i've thought to a lot of things reading this thread. It's also my first post on this forum(oh and please excuse the bad english that i didn't see in my post though i reread it: it's not my mother tongue)

 

As it's the most recent point, i'll begin by this:

 

Ship textures addentum:

 

That's right, cap. ships (further called CPs) are not made with two pieces of hull, neither do they avec a sheet of plasteel that is 1 km long, the hull is supposed discontinued, maybe welded and probably RAMDOM - let me explain: the surface of an ISD for example is not fully stright, there is some boxes, why are they here? dunno, but they are, and it seems random, why not letting it this way and - with the ship's names - let it caracterize each ship?

 

 

Also, how many windows is there on a CP? a lot! and it produces light! not like an X-wing fuselage. These lights are part of a capital ships (at least in SW).

 

Derivating on the ship combat system:

 

Why do i have the baaaad impression that lasers are homing? god dammit, They all concentrate on 1 invisible piece of equipment and never miss! is this normal? it's OK for heavy rockets and proton torpedoes, like missiles, but not for lasers that function like canons/machine guns and goes straight and do not correct their trajectory if the target moves (unless the gun servant leads the target).

 

On this regard it would be a lot more SW realistic that equipment are not located on the ship (but DO exist) and are generally aimable via a command on the menu, but are not hard points (though parts can be destroyed). The best being a 'red faction engine' effect: every shots on the bare hull or the armour plating (without shield) leaves a mark or a HOLE, digging more and more the ship and finally destroying important part of inside structure: generator's core, structural pieces (inducing the ship to be cut in half for example) and not simply because he recieved too much shots WHEREVER THEY LANDED, the ISD ALWAYS cuts itself in half on the same place (it could also remove my impression of always seeing the same ISD of the same battle being destroyed)

 

When we dig into it, we should make a difference between hits on the shield, the plating and the hull (considering lasers): sparks/deviated, sparks and finally a burn (and a hole maybe leaking gasses). Strong explosives should make BIG blue explosion on a shield and maybe energy waves on the hull (depicting the energy redirecting) and on the plating and the hull the same thing as lasers except always with an explosion (and a bigger hole )

 

Also CP are not paper shells, they are a hulk of steel, so when they 'die' (EaW's engine-wise) they should not disappear, or at least like the death star in RotJ: a big flash and lots of particles, though the Mon Cal cruiser in the video make a *small* flash, and then disappear in thin air (well, you get the point), nothing is powerful enough to completely disintegrate all that matter, without a mass energy deployment (look at the sun, how it shines, it converts matter into energy, e=mc²) in such a short time span. Look at Nexus: the jupiter incident, it lets the ship (or what remains of it) floating in space.

 

Generally speaking

 

Let's not forget that the devs spoke about EaW as a very scaleable game, we could play the game as we should like: at the scale of an Emperor, of a commodore(space)/general(ground), maybe a squad leader! (board a ship and take it, killing everyone on board as I recall seeing in one video of EaW, I think it was an interview). On the video of the topic, the battle doesn"t show a great deal of tactics, it's just BEAUTIFUL hence I think the main problem was just for show (though it wasn't really good, see my impressions above), and it explains why it was fast. How to elaborate a strategy with such a pace of action? how to place the ships, to send order even? The cinematic mode looks nice but is not the game.

 

On to the TIE crafts

Except that TIE refers to the general form of the TIE fighter, it also means Twin Ion Engine, so WHERE ARE THEY ON THE fighter, Interceptor and the prototype of Dark Vador if the thrusters are the nice-looking blue shinings? It makes me sick! Lucas Arts is making a big mistake: after SW: Galaxies JTL, they want to make the crafts have these blue engines! what are they thinking? that we are dumb? Where they placed it DO NOT appear in the films! It's a total non-sense!

 

Ground combat

They should simply isnpire themselves of the graphic atmosphere of relic's excellent strategy game: Warhammer 40k: Dawn of war. It gets you the thinking of being on the frontline! though for the jedis with ligthsabers, the best thing to do would be to adapt from the jedi knigth serie the move for the saber to deflect laser bolts and to deviate missiles, this way Lord Vader would no look like a Zombie, more af an untouchable black tornado and Luke/Ben like dancers (we cannot make it like DoW because heros in this game are REALLY zombies).