// Copy of discussions from the old Bioware group //
-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 10:46 AM on 2013-10-14
I am going to make this a short opening for what I hope will be a discussion that most people in this group will participate in. Given the small number of people with full modelling skills in the group, this may well end up as just a wish list. Be that as it may, let's try and stay positive.
While I have my own ideas on where we should go with this, I think we should try to reach a consensus. My starting position is do we have the tools (custom content, scripts, etc.) to make a distinctly spelljammer module? At the moment I don't think so. We are a good way to achieving that but we are not there yet. Before I specify what I think we still need, why not tell me if you think my starting position is right or wrong and if wrong what your starting position would be.
TR
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CaveGnome Posted at 02:16 PM on 2013-10-18
I can't say if you are right or wrong as Spelljammer is new for me but it depends on the ambition level of the module i suppose. My opinion is to define a really bare minimum module to help with the learning / creating process even if the assets palette is incomplete. We can use text or other proxys to fake the missing parts.
Perhaps do some sort of simple sub-module / sub-plot one area thing, to begin with but thinking it like a part of a future "real" adventure. If we do something like that, it could help to use an existing PnP work as a template.
Ok now, what are the really fundamental minimal things defining a SpellJammer module? Is there any Spelljammer (or space related) operational module on the Vault we can play and study?
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-> Rolo Kipp Posted at 05:36 AM on 2013-10-19
I think one of the fundamental things missing is the fullscale ship decks useable and walkable.
I *am* working on that (slowly) but I think using them for transitions from port to space/atmosphere/sea and for boarding/close combat will be very important to the whole SJ immersion.
Re a base to build off of: We do have the Arcane Space demo mod to start with, though I'd really like to see something all new built as a starter template. I just don't have time to do the building :-P
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-> CaveGnome Posted at 05:37 AM on 2013-10-23
@Rolo Kipp
Agree, useable fullscale ship deck sets are fundamental. Are those placeables or a specific tileset ? I remember seing something like that (Hammership deck) on the old vault... Thinking about this, if you are working on a tileset, will it include a working tilefade ? Because it would be useful to have an option to clean masts and sails to ease unobstructed viewing of the bridge. In other (less?) fundamental parts, i haven't seen a helm merchant (Arcane) or a Dohwar and we need specific SpellJammer merchants. I could try to build a new simple starter template, but we need to make some plan first of what we want.
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 06:38 AM on 2013-10-23
Links to the hammership. There are 2 versions. The original (but out of date) version and a version that someone reworked so as to work with a specific tileset of LoW's. Unfortunately I can't remember which is which.
http://nwvault.ign.c....detail&id=3918
http://nwvault.ign.c....detail&id=6823
I am working on what I see as both the ideal (ie it'll never happen ( 
)) requirements and what I think is the minimum needed to make an sj module. Unfortunately (as I am having to actually think about it) I am getting brain ache ( ). I should have a post ready on this in the next 24 - 48 hours.
TR
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-> Rolo Kipp Posted at 07:49 AM on 2013-10-23
For my part, I'm hoping to make all the decks as placeables. Specifically, they'll be designed to be used with modified water/atom/space tiles that have a walkmesh at deck height.
Invisible obstacles will be spawned in around the ship to keep players on deck. Gangway obstacles will be removable to allow boarding/combat between ships.
This approach will allow multiple ships at random orientation and also allow off-ship monsters to wander about/attack.
My first model is a conversion of a great clipper I found (credit is somewhere and will be included). Second project will be that Hammership :-)
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-> ShaDoOoW Posted at 03:30 AM on 2013-10-24
placeables can have tilefade too, just fyi
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 12:36 PM on 2013-10-24
Here is what I think we should aim for, split into ideal, minimum and what we can get away with.
In an ideal world split into custom content (e.g. models etc), scripts, blueprints and modules -
Custom Content (split into Tilesets, Placeables, Creatures and misc.)
Tilesets
Wildspace (check)
Phlogiston (ish)
Water World
Fire World
Air World
Asteroid/Moon
Asteroid City (re-skin?)
Miniature (for flying over)
Fortunately we already have a decent Wildspace tileset so that doesn’t need anything doing to it. At the moment I'll also leave out the Phlogiston as well. So next we have the elemental worlds (air, earth, fire and water). Both Earth and water can be left off this list as they are adequately dealt with by using existing tilesets (earth worlds are the normal worlds with continents and water worlds are mainly ocean with maybe a few islands). Surprisingly Fire worlds are also catered for with an old tileset (or is it more?) that is labelled as the Plane of Fire on the Vault. I'll come back to Air Worlds a little later. Asteroid/Moon (moon being like our moon in this context) tileset - this would be entirely rocky, with no dust or dirt. Ideally there should also be craters of varying sizes and have cave entrances. There is a non-ideal alternative here as well in the shape of one of LoW's extreme tilesets (can't remember the name of it at this time though). Also if I remember correctly, LoW has said that he doesn't mind people modifying his stuff (obviously with proper attribution).
For the Phlogiston and the Air world tilesets I need to ask 1 question. Is it possible to make a tileset that rather than having differing terrains, to make one with an effect similar to the dry ice mist that you see on stage and in films for such things as dream sequences? If so than you would have the ability to set the tile colour to red, blue or green and have placeable colour lights/glows to modify the colouration so as to offset the squareness of the tile-mist. Then in the toolset you would make the fog (in the toolset area settings) a little denser.
Air worlds come in 2 general flavours - Gas Giants and Normal sized planets primarily consisting of atmosphere. For the Air World (Gas Giant) we need to be able to colour the mist light brown, dark brown, chestnut and black starting from a base of white. The smaller Air Worlds are more complicated. While they are mostly "air" they may also contain free floating globules of water and "flying" mountains or earth islands as well as normal clouds. Spelljamming ships often make use of these latter worlds to replenish their air. It is not uncommon for these worlds to be populated by (amongst other flying creatures) by intelligent avians such as the Aarakocra. These intelligent creatures will often have trading posts situated on the top of towers that poke through the clouds, where they buy and sell to passing Spelljammers. It may well be possible to adapt the Atmosphere tileset already in the sj haks, for these smaller Air Worlds.
As I suggested in the list of suggested tilesets, I think that it may well be possible to get away with a re-skin of an existing tileset to make an Asteroid City one. This just leaves the Miniature one. During my examination of all the custom content challenge entries I came across something that I thought was very interesting. In the November 2012 (Sea, Air & Land Travel) there is a flying system by Andarian and Estelindis that looks like it should be reasonably easy to adapt. My idea is that using this system and the already created scaled down models already extant in the package, it should be possible to make it so that ships can be seen to take off and land on planets under player control. In fact it should be possible to have it so that it seems that the ship is flying at whatever height above the planet's surface that you wish (within reason - no point to use this when the ship is leaving/entering the atmosphere). But using the already created miniature ships does mean that a tileset would have to be made that gives the impression of height.
OK at this point I have typed more than I intended so I will make a break here and carry on in another post a bit later. Remember, the above is just my ideas and open for discussion.
TR
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 05:48 AM on 2013-10-25
Placeables
Full Size Ships (Without the Tardis effect)
Placeable Star/Phlogiston charts (Yea something I can do)
Crystal Sphere Portal (i.e. how ships exit a crystal sphere)
I personally think that we need some full size placeable ships to match some of the placeable miniature ships that already exist. These do not need to have walkable decks... yet. That can be added later. It's not that I think it a bad idea (I actually think it's brilliant), it's just that I am thinking that in order to be able to get a module started we at least need to be able to see (at full size) what the pc is travelling aboard and by no means all voyages in arcane space result in ship to ship combat. I mentioned the Tardis effect above because I seem to remember (I am possibly wrong) that the Hammership mentioned earlier in this discussion, being way too big because of it. Here is the list of ships I think we need at full size.
Armed Galleon
Caravel
Clipper
Dragonship
Eel Ship
Hammership
Lamprey
Nautiloid
Squid Ship
Wasp *
Tradesman **
These ships were chosen because they are the most likely to be encountered by a pc on a planet and quite a few of the others cannot land anyway. All except the last two can only land on water. Of these, the first three float at the level you would expect. The next grouping sit lower in the water than you would expect being designed primarily for travel in arcane space. The Wasp is the only one on the list that cannot land on water, being designed instead to put down on land (hence the legs). Finally (and at first glance surprisingly) the Tradesman cannot put down on the surface of a planet at all, despite being the commonest ship encountered in arcane space. Now if I remember correctly there already exist models for the galleon and the caravel. I also think OTR has created a model of a Tradesman as I remember seeing it in the background of a screenshot that he posted in one of the ccc threads. This is (one of the reasons) why I hope he returns to these boards soon.
The star charts are a no-brainer as we say in the UK. The portal is a "hole" to the phlogiston through the wall of a crystal sphere. This "hole" is big being 500 feet in diameter. Fortunately as the wildspace craft are 1/10th scale this makes it only 50 NwN scale feet (roughly 12 meters) in diameter. The surrounding wall is black.
It should be noted that there are a number of "normal" sailing vessels that have already been created that could be incorporated into this project including those that are in the ccc. There is even an airship (created by OTR) that looks remarkably like a picture created by silverblade (frequent contributor to deviantArt and supplier of free (but with too many polygons) 3d Spelljammer ships). In these cases it would of course be a matter of creating miniature versions of them instead of the other way around.
http://social.biowar...1931/291074.gif
OTR's ship
http://social.biowar...1931/291075.gif
Silverblade's Gnomish Ship
Misc.
Holdable/usable items/weapons
Smokepowder Guns
Telescope/Sextant/Astrolabe etc.
With the possible exception of the astrolabe, all of these are already available either in a ccc or the vault(s).
TR
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-> CaveGnome Posted at 09:46 AM on 2013-10-26
@Rolo Kipp
"For my part, I'm hoping to make all the decks as placeables... ...My first model is a conversion of a great clipper I found (credit is somewhere and will be included). Second project will be that Hammership :-)"
- I like your approach. Placeables are far superior to tiles for something like a vessel deck.
@Tarot Redhand
Generally agree with your list. What i see as a big need is a animated placeable Cristal sphere Entry and Cristal sphere Exit portal. This would be very handy and permit making wildspace passages in whatever tileset we like. I don't know how it is supposed to look, but imagine something like a opening/closing rotating maelstrom. Something like the "black hole vortex" tile from the wildspace tileset but vertical and bigger. For bonus points, perhaps if we could see a little Phlogiston-like space (Enter portal) or Wild / Normal space (Exits portals) in the center? But a minimal lone universal portal will do... Perhaps there is something useable in the big VFX collection made by PHoD. Those Plush Hiena placeables not only are funky! :-) but include things like flowing fluorescent rivers or big transluscent symbols we could certainly use.
http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=7999
Edit:
Ideas for important placeables i think would help a lot:
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- Cristal sphere Entry / Exit
- Simple straight (not curved) Cristal wall sphere element (medium size... the existing curved wall is beautiful but much too big). To make a cristal wall, add elements like bricks.
- Boarding plank placeable for ship access or realistic "walking the plank" ! (No... rugs don't do it :-)
Ideas for less important placeables i would like to have:
*********************************************
- Long vertical rope ladder: for moored floating airship access.
- Long vertical rope attached to a floor stake (floating airship mooring).
- Good looking metal / wood mooring posts to tie our ships.
- Some half finished hulls without masts and sails to do a shipyard
Being playing the old 2003 SpaceJammer demo v 1.0 module lately. Do you think we could adapt it to the (much better) new system ?
CG
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-> Rolo Kipp Posted at 07:28 AM on 2013-10-28
Regarding the tilesets, I think we have at least placeholders for Atmosphere and Phlogiston, so the priority would be for the unique tilesets that we *don't* have - Asteroid and the elemental worlds.
Regarding the portal through the crystal sphere; why black? I rather like the ruby texture of Hellfire's section placeable. Modifying that for an opening and an on/off anim would be moderately simple. Conversely, the placeable could be straightened into a wall tile for Wildspace & Flow tilesets with animloop portals.
Re full-scale ships: They are walkable or not depending entirely on the tileset they are placed on. It's built into the concept.
The order I plan to work on them is something like this:
Clipper (wip)
Hammership (wip - already have a good start with the tile group)
Tradesman (too ubiquitous to wait)
(these would be next because they can be used in other settings)
Armed Galleon
Caravel
(these next because they are so cool ;-)
Nautiloid
Wasp
Dragonship
Eel Ship
Lamprey
Squid Ship
Having said that... that is just the order I'm thinking of attacking them. I'd certainly consider a different order and be overjoyed if someone else committed to one or more of those :-)
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 03:42 AM on 2013-10-31
You ask why black? Let me put it this way. When you look at the night sky (as opposed to clouds, stars etc.) what colour is it? Is the night sky on Krynn, Oerth or Toril a ruby red colour? The other thing is that, that is the colour seen from the Wildspace side of the crystal sphere. From the Phlogiston side it is pearlescent white or "mother of pearl". Given the sheer size of a crystal sphere, its wall compared to a spelljamming ship will appear flat anyway whichever side it is viewed from.
TR
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-> Rolo Kipp Posted at 05:32 AM on 2013-10-31
*mutter grumble mutter*
Sure sure. Use *logic*. :-P
Ok, domino walls. Got it.
Luckily, someone (TAD, I believe) did some decent pearlescent (opal) and black (obsidian) textures :-)
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 07:30 AM on 2013-10-31
And if you look in the pre-release (god only knows when it will be) mm stuff I sent you, at the texture I included for Crystal spheres...( )
One other thing - there is an exception (there always is isn't there?). The cs where the fal resides. The whole of the inside of the cs is the living space (somewhat like a dyson sphere -> http://en.wikipedia....ki/Dyson_sphere). IIRC it has an atmosphere 1000 miles thick and a central star. And no I not proposing that we add this to the list of tilesets ( ).
TR
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-> CaveGnome Posted at 05:55 AM on 2013-12-06
Hello, i was wondering if we could make some invisible placeable with a walkable ramp (like the standard tileset ramp linking 2 different heights). My idea behind this, is to give a pseudo-realist take-off or landing impression with a ship-polymorphed creature runing the "slope". Is something like that doable or only limited to tileset moding?
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-> Tarot Redhand Posted at 07:48 AM on 2013-12-06
I think it has already been done to quote myself from an earlier post in this thread
During my examination of all the custom content challenge entries I came across something that I thought was very interesting. In the November 2012 (Sea, Air & Land Travel) there is a flying system by Andarian and Estelindis that looks like it should be reasonably easy to adapt.
TR
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-> CaveGnome Posted at 07:15 AM on 2013-12-31
@Tarot Redhand: Yes, but Andarian/Estelindis contribution is a tileset. I tend to think a placeable system would be more versatile and easier to integrate for SJ needs. It could be used with any tileset you like. By some incredible luck, Santa, er... "TheOneBlackRider" came with just what i was dreaming of... :-)
This:
http://neverwinterva...-block-tile-wok
- Did you see the gorgeous new Thri Kreens made by Draygoth28 for the CCC Dark Sun theme. These could be a good upgrade for the SpellJammer project, don't you think ?
- I am sort of making a Phlogiston Skybox. What do you prefer:
A skybox with only multicolored clouds. A skybox with colour clouds and a "black ceramic" cristal sphere in the background. Both or... Suggestions ?
Happy new year to everyone !!!!
CG
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