tank destroyer

[adzling]

hmm good suggestion check out these revised images

note:

per turret previous location gun depression max was 10degress

now its 15 degrees

the tank destroyer has depression 1o degrees, elevation 40 degrees and traverse of +/- 15 degrees.

Both of these figures account for some realistic depth/length for the breach mechanism of the guns

[yurch]

Perhaps even a tad further, as the axis mechanism is unlikely to be in the very tip of the turret. I'm tired of that rear-mounted Apollo turret.

Still, much better though.

[adzling]

ok here's a final stab at it

a lot of the final subtle details will be added via texturing (i.e. some hatches etc) rather than geometry

I will add smoke launchers to this as well

you're now getting a gun depression of -17.5 degrees and elevation of about 25 degrees

and yes that's with a pivot point set back from the apex of the turret geometry (hence the glacis sub-plate that moves with the gun)

interestingly enough all this fiddling with gun elevation is making me think that tank destroyer could fill a dual role of direct fire and indirect fire (i.e. self-propelled gun).

With an elevation of 45 degrees that afv could shoot over a lot of hills and other obstructions.

This would fit with it's role of sitting back at long range and plinking at targets....we could give it an increased HE load with the capability to indirect fire those HE shells.

Wouldnt be as powerful as a true mortat carrier but the 120mm HE should work nicely to remove turrets and inf from a distance...any thoughts on that dual role?

It would still suck big-time if anyone gets within 2000 meters of it as the whole vehicle would have to turn to bring their weapon to bear meanwhile that 20mm is ripping them a new escape hatch

there's also some room adjacent to the gun for the coax

let me know if there are any other details you'd like to see on the model and i'll consider whether or not it makes sense to add as geometry or texture map.

once i get the obj model for the main 120mm gun and coax from clay i'll drop that in place of mine...

i really like the way it looks, very agressive....i'm not looking forward to you killing me with my own creation tho!

haha

[yurch]

Originally posted by adzling:

interestingly enough all this fiddling with gun elevation is making me think that tank destroyer could fill a dual role of direct fire and indirect fire (i.e. self-propelled gun).

With an elevation of 45 degrees that afv could shoot over a lot of hills and other obstructions.

This would fit with it's role of sitting back at long range and plinking at targets....we could give it an increased HE load with the capability to indirect fire those HE shells.

Hell, I was considering sticking a hurricane style mortar of a lighter caliber on it.

once i get the obj model for the main 120mm gun and coax from clay i'll drop that in place of mine...

I think it's MBTGunLoiter0.cob in DropTeam\data for the 120mm. Those things are added in the XML. I'm fairly sure we can get the glacis sub-plate to move with the rest of the barrels if you keep it a seperate model. Not sure how penetration should work with it, as it's now a seperate entity with nothing to damage, but the other guns are already like this and nobody really complains.

For extra detail, I guess some slightly 'raised' bits on the armor (as in, somebody's wrapping extra armor around the turret in places) could be used to give it a slightly asymmetric but militaristic look. Sorta like that 'square' at the front of the Thor chassis. Some of dropteam's units have a rather lumpy look once you get close up.

Speaking of those, what's that lumpy thing on the front right side of the turret?

[adzling]

well as far as the mortar goes i think it would be overkill for the tank destroyer.

it has such a high gun elevation that it seems a shame to waste it and the game has no self-propelled gun to speak of so a dual-use tank-destroyer/ s.p.g would seem to make sense.

the HE shells can stay as is i think just requires upping the ammo load from 20/20/10 to 20/20/20 i think and allowing the t.d. to fire in indirect mode with the h.e. shells.

as far as the yurch-mobile goes making the sub-glacis (there must be a more accurate name for that bit of steel) part of the gun makes sense as it would then move with it...

roger about the raised reactive/active armor (a la chobham)

if you want me to stick a 60mm type mortar on the turret i can build it into the rear of the turret, there should be enough space in there...

the lumpy thing on the right of the turret is the commander's hatch and vision blocks for when the on-board camera's get shot-out.

the lumpy-bit at the front left of the chassis is the hatch and vision block for the driver.

i'm not sure how the game deals with elements like those.

for example if I add driving lights to the front of the tank will the game treat those as simply a vertical armor face and penetrate through them by-passing the underlying armor plate?

Or is there a way to make eye-candy geometry exterior to the main armor plates that won't let an accurate shooter exploit them?

[yurch]

Oh, kinda odd that the commander hatch is tilted forwards. Do any of our other units have such a hatch? Being space-sealed units, it might not be necessary.

Not sure about the 60mm. Poor Thor would definitely be left in the cold then. (although - I'd certainly be happy to make evil use of it) That's also something that I think would be a little more invovled then an extra hole in the roof, which might be difficult for a sealed vehicle.

No idea on the extraneous geometry. I actually have no idea how that polygon-XML generator works. How is each polygon grouping chosen?

[yurch]

As far as cheesy-dropteam-god names, we can probably get away with Mjolnir for the Light MBT. It is, afterall, related to Thor.

For the tank destroyer, a friend suggests 'Gozer' (of Ghostbusters fame, of all things...) because of the, well, 'dozer blade.

Gungnir (Odin's spear) sounds fun.

As does Sleipnir (8 legged horse) if we ever end up with a 8 wheeler IFV.

Wouldn't blame you if you want something more recognizable, though.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Do you have some over-all dimensions for the various AFV's currently in-game (like height, width, length)?

The most important thing to keep in mind is that all objects are modelled at 2x scale (some historical discussions about that here and in the 8th post down in here).

On top of that, many of the current unit types are simply big to begin with. The Paladin, for example, is a big IFV because it needs to accomodate Medium infantry.

The Thor MBT is 17 meters long - about twice the size of an M1 Abrams. The Shrike is 9 meters long and 3.5 meters tall.

i wonder if it would be within the realms of game balance to include a fold-up dozer blade on the chassis as the s tank has

You can implement a blade just like the Cutter's (it simply has up and down positions). If you want more elaborate fold-up "stowing" of the blade or something like that then layout specifically what you want and I'll tell you whether or not it's currently possible (and what it would take to make it possible).

camo textures

I don't have flat, empty camo textures available. Marco hand paints all of the vehicle textures and Gordon then goes in behind him and applies the camo. Gordon may very well have the "empty" camo textures that you need. I'll try to find out.

[adzling]

aah ok i suspected as much re: size.

i will adjust the size of the vehicles accordingly

i'll look at that blade and see what would be the best way to make it work

hmm i'm surprised about that textures, i would have expected a base camo that gets used as an underlay for the varoius other details that are painted over it.

that would seem like the best way to maintain camo consistency across vehicles.

I'll see what i can extract from the afv's as they are.

hey yurch as far as the names go i like mjolnir for the medium tank but people might have a hard time trying to pronounce it.

I think Odin is pretty good though, easy to pronounce, catchy name.

I realize it's a little off when you think of the relative power of the gods in the pantheon (odin being the #1 main man which you would think would be the Thor's duty) however i do think the medium tank will be more versatile than the Thor and so may end up getting used more.

So I think we should call the medium tank (or light MBT depending on how you see it) Odin.

Not sure about the s.p.g. yet......still thinking

[B0nes]

For the SPG how about: Vidar - Son of Odin and the god of silence and vengeance.

[B0nes]

Also: Ares, Kali, Zeus, Hades, Nemisis, Seth and Osiris.

They all sound suitably bellicose.

[yurch]

I think the cutter just flips between an 'up' blade and a 'down' blade. Crazy animations be damned.

[adzling]

it looks as though we are going to have to wait for clay to get the .obj file format supported in-game.

I tried opening some of the .cob files with Blender and while I was able to open them there is no decent way to import them into sketchup.

The come in at the wrong size and with useless facetting.

omfg blender sucks so hard i felt my soul disappearing as i used it...

the good news is that i think i can extract some of the texture info i need from the .png files included in dropteam's data folder.

stay tuned for some textured renderings later today.

[Chilibird]

Originally posted by yurch:

As far as cheesy-dropteam-god names, we can probably get away with Mjolnir for the Light MBT. It is, afterall, related to Thor.

Did I pick up on a Marathon/Halo reference there?

FYI- The player, in Marathon, and Master Chief, in Halo, both wear a 'Mjolnir Mark IV' battle suit in the games.

[yurch]

Mjolnir is the hammer of Thor.

I have an... epic distaste for Halo, actually.

Adz: I've managed to import an .obj (a sphere stuck on the end of a barrel) into the game. It's rotated 90 degrees in at least one axis (may be my fault in the converting) and I don't know how to texture, but it does work.

[ August 17, 2006, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[adzling]

well cool i like mjolnir as it would be the "hammer" the thor the "anvil" hehe

still a mouthfull tho'.

[adzling]

ok here's how the things starting to look with the woodland camo texture

note: i don't think it makes sense to pursue my current strategy for texturing this model.

what im doing right now is cutting bits out of the .png texture files that come with the game and then applying them as decals over the base camo texture in-model.

The problem with this is that it is laborious and will have to repeated for each and every camo scheme.

desert.woodland.ice

ack

any hoo it gives you a sense of the amount of time battlefront spent in building the initial texture set....gack

the proper way to do it would be to compose the texture in layers with them all sharing the same "3d" components (hatches et al) as alpha-mapped files that let the underlying camo texture show through.

then you only need to map them to the model once and simply change out the underlying camo pattern to suit.

problem is that would entail a H_U_G_E amount of work as i would have to replicate each "painted" 3d component.....believe me there are a massive amount of these elements embedded in the texture files (hand-holds, vision blocks, decals, vents etc).

So unless i can get the original source files from battlefront (and i understand that may not be possible) i may just tough it out....or put this on hold until i can figure a better way to deal with this....any bright ideas are gratefully received.

a couple of other niggling visual things...

1) if you look closely you can see the camo pattern repeat/tile and that the camo pattern on the hatches et al don't match the surrounding camo patterns....oh well

2). If I was modelling this as a real object (i.e. i was building a real tank) i would put some rounding/chamfers on the edges to make it look more realistic (no surface mates 90 degrees to another without some kind of break or round) problem is that round would be very small (like 5mm or less) and would greatly increase the polygon count on the model for little gain. I'd like to check out how the original modelmaker dealt with this but...well...that's gonna have to wait until i can figure out a way to get the existing 3d models into my 3d package...

[ August 17, 2006, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

As far as softening edges use some lightening at the pointes where faces meet on your texture and it can create the illusion of a soft edge without the need for uneeded faces.

[adzling]

tnx i was noticing that on the uv maps in dropteam...you should look at those things marco is freaking genius......the detail he puts into them reminds me of when i used to build scale models....weathered metal.....grease stains etc...

[yurch]

Yeah, they're pretty impressive.

Adz: if you want you can send me the textures/models you have now (yurch (at) theonlinegaming (dot) com) and I'll see if I can get them in-game. No need to have everything right the first time, we'll probably run into all kinds of fun scaling issues anyway.

[adzling]

yeah i want to get the scale right before i hand it off to you

right now i doubled the size (so the chassis is @ 12.5 meters long) problem is the height for the medium tank then comes in at a whopping 4.9m!!!

i wonder how tall the apollo/ thors are?

[Redcon-5]

FYI the sub-glacis is called the GUN Mantel or just Mantel like a mantel above a fire place. Dont know why thats just what it was called.

Love the models by the way. Makes me want to try making my VERY light recon tank. But i know nothing about modeling.

[poesel]

'Mantel' in german means 'coat'. Maybe that is where it stems from.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Another option for your Mjolnir would be to go ahead and give it Thor-like armor thickness in addition to its already excellent sloping, an ion beam for the coaxial, heck, even an AutomatedGun for point defense on the turret or chassis. In short, go ahead and make it Bad to the Bone.

Then copy a few of your favorite scenarios (DeadGulch, Raid, whatever) and rename them DeadGulch-Mjolnir, Raid-Mjolnir, etc. Then set the team inventories in your new scenarios so that one team has only 6 or 10 of these fearsome Mjolnir's and nothing else. The other team has our usual full inventory that we're all used to.

Could make for an interesting new asymmetric game?

[Jalinth]

Sounds like Ogre Junior

I like it.