Ship Texture Upgrading Project

[Armada]

Here's a little something I've been working on for the past couple of days, which is an attempt to bridge the gap between the game world and the real world:



Yep, it's one for the HMS Victory enthusiasts out there.
This is the most accurate texture I've made for the ship, based on high quality photos.
After hours of work cutting, pasting and correcting the perspective of parts of the photos, I managed to blend the details into the stern texture, and I was stunned by the results.

Here's some pics of the ship in-game, showing not only the new stern textures, but also the new figurehead and mast textures:



Technically, the only issue with this ship now is the nameplate, for reasons of standardisation within the game.
However, the new details are so similar to the real ship, they may as well be considered just as 'unique' as the nameplate.
So, the only way this new realistic version can be used in-game is as a Vanderdecken exclusive (and hopefully in Legendary_Spider's US storyline once it gets going!).
I know the real Victory has no quest purposes yet, but maybe an exception could be made...?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

BRILLIANT! She does seem to have become rather orange-y though.

 

[Armada]

The reason she's more orange than usual is because that's what's shown in most of the up-to-date photos I've seen.
I believe she used to be more yellow a few years ago, but was repainted and changed in a few areas at some point.
I don't know that for sure, but that's what I've deduced from what I've seen. I decided on orange mostly to differ from the standard version, anyway.

I've just looked for an up-to-date reference, and I remembered a timelapse video showing the construction of the new Mary Rose museum, right next to Victory, which is updated daily: http://www.maryrose.org/new_museum/videoplayer.html
There, you can see the colour for yourself, in just about any lighting condition over the past few months!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Fair enough.

 

[Armada]

Now, about this:

Technically, the only issue with this ship now is the nameplate, for reasons of standardisation within the game.
However, the new details are so similar to the real ship, they may as well be considered just as 'unique' as the nameplate.
So, the only way this new realistic version can be used in-game is as a Vanderdecken exclusive (and hopefully in Legendary_Spider's US storyline once it gets going!).
I know the real Victory has no quest purposes yet, but maybe an exception could be made...?

Am I being reasonable this time?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

A ship looking THAT good HAS to be included, don't you think? Now she might serve as a reason for people to seek out Vanderdecken.

 

[Armada]

Good point! I'll include her in Patch 7, along with the other ships I've re-textured and ported lately.

 

[craiggbrown]

I like it mate!

 

[Armada]

It's been a while, but I've finally finished an improvement project for the Constitution models!

The main aim of this was to adjust the UVs on the hull to allow for better texture mapping, especially on the stern.
The result, as well as being my first proper Maya project, made the following things possible:

1. The stern now supports a textured nameplate, different windows and other small details which were not possible through texturing before.
I've also enhanced the Constitution's eagle and stars decoration, again by remapping the UVs.
Here's what the stern now looks like (the eagle and stars are still a separate GM file; this is two images blended together):



2. The unwanted extra red lines on the French 'Acheron' repaint of the Constitution have been removed from the bow and stern, as well as new windows being textured on:



As a bonus (or more like a result of Legendary_Spider's nagging, combined with my own experiments ), the model now has bow chasers installed:



The upgrades, which apply to US_Constitution, FR_BattleFrigate and RN_BattleFrigate, are available from the FTP here.
To install them, simply extract the files on top of your main game folder, and follow these steps for the code:

In PROGRAM/Ships/Ships_init.c, find "US_Constitution", and scroll down to the lines:

refShip.CannonsQuantity			= 54;
// NK cannon qtys 05-04-18 -->
refShip.Cannons.Borts.cannonf.qty	= 0;
refShip.Cannons.Borts.cannonb.qty	= 2;

Replace with:

refShip.CannonsQuantity			= 56;
// NK cannon qtys 05-04-18 -->
refShip.Cannons.Borts.cannonf.qty	= 2; // Chasers added by Armada
refShip.Cannons.Borts.cannonb.qty	= 2;

Do the same for the entries of "FR_BattleFrigate" and "RN_BattleFrigate", and save the file.
Start PotC, and then press F11 in a loaded savegame for the changes to take effect. No new game required.

Note that the normal Constitution model now does not incorporate the eagle and stars or the nameplate.
Instead, a new 'unique' version with both will be released at a later date, same as the HMS Victory.

In the meantime, enjoy.

P.S. If anyone from the GOF team wants any of this work, you're welcome to it.
Just make the same sort of changes to the code, and you should be good to go.

 

[Armada]

Does anyone have any feedback on this, yet? It's been very quiet around here. :will

 

[Captain Armstrong]

those look like great improvements to me! I might have used the eagle and stars part for the non-unique version as well, but I guess they also make the unique one stand out that much more

 

[Armada]

Thanks matey.
Yes I was considering leaving the eagle and stars on the standard version, but seeing as the nameplate on the unique version is a bit hard to see, I figured it was best to keep them unique.


Anyway, I've just finished modifying another texture, this time to enhance the damage effects that appear on ships.
The idea was to make the damage more realistic, so there are now holes created by cannon fire, instead of purely scratched/splintered patches of wood.
Here's a demonstration using HMS Surprise:



The new texture can be downloaded from here, and needs to be placed in RESOURCE/Textures, to overwrite the old version.
That applies to PotC, but I assume CoAS has a similar folder. No new game required.

So, what do you think? Does it look better than the current damage effects?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Cool.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Now this something worth talking about! The blots we have been using are too big and look especially bad on the most common ships. The small ones.



Ding dong dilly dag nab it! This new Firefox crashes every time I try to dl something. :boom

 

[Armada]

Glad you like the improvements!

@Hylie, I know what you mean, and the size of the cannon holes just goes to show how oversized the old blots were.
Which version of Firefox is that? I'm using Beta 7.0, and I've never had it crash when downloading anything. :?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It just updated itself to Firefox 6.0.1. I never had the crashing problem before, but this new one is incompatible with most of my addons.

 

[Armada]

That's the biggest pain; the browser is evolving much faster than the addons.
Still, I've no idea why you're getting these crashes.

At least you can get the texture from my FTP folder using FTP Commander, if Firefox proves too unreliable for downloads.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I seem to get the dl, and then it crashes. But is the dl corrupted?

I dunno. Maybe it's time to get another browser.

 

[Thagarr]

Hylie, I am using 6.01 and I have no problems at all mate. My suggestion is to go through each individual add-on you have and turn them off, then turn them back on one at a time and browse for a bit, then turn the next on. A bit of a pain, but it may help you track down the offending add-on. Firefox is way to good of a browser to give up on simply because of a badly written add-on!

 

[Armada]

I've just updated the upgrades for the USS Constitution-based frigates, which fixes a crash related to locator errors of mine.
However, I'm surprised no-one had reported this! Did anyone actually test the upgrades...?
So, going by the assumption that no-one has, I simply updated the full download with the fixed models (available from this post, for those who didn't know).