Planetarion Forums

kamikaze69 · 13 Jul 2005, 18:17

I'm not sure if anyone remember's this, but there was talk as to having graphics for the ships of each race. I thought that was a rather cool idea, I can't remember the result of that discussion.

I also remember some suggested graphics to be used for the designs of ships, and I was just looking thru my ship descriptions wondering to myself what does a Black Widow actually looks like. Maybe if there was a link at the bottom of the ship description drop down saying "click here to see the ship" and it takes you to another page which has the ship graphic in it so that it doesn't bother people with slow connections and if they feel compelled to view the warship they can still.

I seem to remember back in the days of the early rounds that the PA team decided to use some graphics, and I am just wondering what happened to them and is there a possibility of getting them back???

Anybody jog my memory for me???

PS: if the PA team likes this idea but needs some designing help, can they Private msg me please.

wakey · 13 Jul 2005, 19:38

Ship images were tried before, the problem was that by the time the ships were announced and the images to match these were produced to a decent quality then the round was already in full swing.After all theres a fair number of ships to produce and when its being produced by volenteers this just makes it an even longer task

And then when you have them the problem is its very much a one off feature, you see them once and you probally wont look at it again so this is alot of work for little gain. And this can be made even worse if they are then not given fairly big overhauls each round.

If PA had a dull time graphic designer on its staff then graphical features like this might be viable but with volenteers I think this is a task thats asking too much

kamikaze69 · 15 Jul 2005, 15:02

Now, I am no graphics artist, but I have tried my hand at it myself, and have only got 2 sketches done. So I can see where that pessimism comes from. However, I am looking at this as a one time thing too.

You don't want a 'dull time graphic designer' (wakeyism, even though only a small one), just a one time graphics artist, over the course of a round, develop ship designs, and then implement them for the round after.

I might not be the best person to forward an arguement on this topic, mainly because it was back in the day of photoshop 3.0 and 3.1 when I did any form of graphic design, but I know that there are talented artists everywhere, they just need to pull together ideas.

Perhaps making a competition out of it. Each of the ship designs have to be made, so give ppl credits for their graphics artwork??? There are 48 ship designs, give out 48 credits, ppl can enter one design PER unit, but can submit designs for each ship and has the possibility of getting 48 credits to their name if they use their design in the next round.

Might also bring a little more interest to the server methinks???

Supersander · 15 Jul 2005, 15:21

I don't really see a use for graphics plus it's a nightmare for those people that are still on 56k connection. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay or -experience imo. And as wakey said, you'll only have a quick look at it once before you couldnt care less about it anymore.

kamikaze69 · 15 Jul 2005, 18:01

I don't disagree with your second statement Supersander, about it being a look at it once and then could hardly care less about it. But if you read the original post you will see that my proposition was to have a link to the graphics, so that they don't affect those still on 56k (which is going to be outsourced soon anyway).

It is just an idea, and I am just looking for a little response on the topic, thank you Supersander and Wakey

Makhil · 16 Jul 2005, 00:59

Wakey is spot on. Too much (free) work for little gain. Paying people with credits is ok for designing a skin, but the time needed to design ships is another matter. If i could pay my bills with PA credits then it would be ok. Besides you need the same artist to design all the ships for 1 race (for consistency). And lastly, seeing how the skins are shot down in the forum whenever a new one is added, I don't think any artist would want to put the necessary time to design 12 ships just to read bad comments about them, even for 12 PA credits.

Kal · 16 Jul 2005, 08:19

we got virtually all new grpahics for the game this round - we didn;t pay for them. So its quite possible that the future will see optional ship graphics and things.

Yurgeta · 8 Aug 2005, 20:01

yeah. minituer pictuers these days ar not hard to do.. you just need the right programs and the skill of 3D modelin.. if you can 3D model ships it will be better for the ships.. plus with haveing limited size images the file sizes are smaller and faster at loading. i can set my jpg images to load faster than 60% of the sites that use jpg. you can set teh load time and quality.. i set all my jpg images to 2MB and 12 ( highest quality ) and my site loads in a flash.. the smaller the image file the better.. the icons for metal and stuff are reasonable sizes.. mabye a bit bigger would help for ships. for manual.. but ingame they wouldnt help that much.. but i can see advantages for ship images aswell as other images for several different things..

MrLobster · 2 Sep 2005, 17:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makhil

Wakey is spot on. Too much (free) work for little gain. Paying people with credits is ok for designing a skin, but the time needed to design ships is another matter. If i could pay my bills with PA credits then it would be ok. Besides you need the same artist to design all the ships for 1 race (for consistency). And lastly, seeing how the skins are shot down in the forum whenever a new one is added, I don't think any artist would want to put the necessary time to design 12 ships just to read bad comments about them, even for 12 PA credits.

Well you dont have to do one! lots of people have nothing to do, they could earn their job seakers allowance!!!

But i agree with the "consistency" thing.

Igloo · 29 Sep 2005, 12:55

i agree, and this might be what we need to bring new players to the game, to draw them in by the pretty designed ships?

maybe a setting to turn them on? with defualt off, so i u want them on, you can do.

Also, how about on the battle reports, if you loose ships, you can see the wreckage?

or maybe a page when you login of your planet, and close ups of buildings etc, if they have been destroyed by a target. Like CCTV, watch it as it happens etc

and maybe even ships stealing our roids and hopping back into hyperspace.

I personaly think thats a good idea