It's no secret that many of Freelancer's vanilla assets are showing their age, perhaps none more so than the ubiquitous jump gate. Unless you play exclusively in the Omicrons, this old, clunky model with its low res textures is something everyone sees every time they log in.
I've been playing around with the idea of giving it a high-poly makeover to bring it up to a more modern standard, along with other generic assets such as trade lanes, docking rings, mooring fixtures, and perhaps even base components. As the saying goes, "do it when the spirit moves you", and its been moving me lately.
The trouble is, people have been asking for house specific gates and even lanes for many years. This comes with a myriad of problems such as an increased workload, some fundamental lore questions, and where to set the limit on the uniqueness of a model.
Should these solars, manufactured exclusively by Ageira and DSE, have differing appearances? Would Ageira and DSE cater to the various houses they do business in? If so, how different? Would the change in appearance be strictly cosmetic, ie; differing textures, slightly altered details. Or should they be radically different designs, each with their own unique animation?
It also opens up the problem of where to draw the line. If jump gates have unique models, should trade lanes? Or perhaps lanes should have unique models but not gates. And then, what of docking rings and mooring fixtures? Lastly, what about the solars of the independent and border worlds? Should every one of them be using a house specific model? Should an upgraded version of the current gate remain as a generic, should house specific gates become a thing?
I'm asking these questions in hopes of providing something that at least some of us can agree upon, as I'm aware that the development team currently has a pretty bad track record of not taking community input to heart. I'm very interested in hearing your opinions and hope to receive some enlightening feedback on what's obviously a complex and somewhat convoluted situation.
A rework for quality is fine, but in my opinion giving each house their own gates or lanes is somewhat silly. On top of the added workload it wouldn't really make sense lorewise considering that some of these things are most likely old enough that they would have originally been built before the lane and gate networks were nationalized.
Making them all the same sounds ok to me. Just leave the door open, so other devs can customize them a bit, to fit better to their favorite houses - later.
Hmm, if I remember correctly, I once saw a thread with a huge load of house specific bases which looked so damn awesome and maybe there were jump gates as well, I am not sure but anyways. The current model fits into Liberty quite well, in my opinion, I lack the imagination for a jump gate for Liberty right now. For Rheinland, I would take something in its dark green shade with a bulky heavy and menacing look, a bit like the Gallia gate, it shouldn't have many roundings but more like an ALG mover from the front.
Kusari could have a jump gate that fits the look of their battleship color, a bit more light and a few neat cutting edges like the Tokugawa has on its top around the gate, but it is very easy to overdo something in this case.
Bretonia is also not so easy for me to imagine but definitely the dark color shade of the bretonian capital ships, that would be possible and maybe a "skin" that looks similar to the armor on bretonian warships.
EDIT: I agree with the above people though, it would be a lot of work so I would focus on more important issues and see it as a possibility, I would rather see a new model of the Raijin :3
I would think Ageira/DSE would have identical appearances no matter what House the Gates/Lanes are created in to keep interchangeable parts which make construction/maintenance much easier. Each house having it's own gates/lane would likely make it much more expensive to manufacture replacement parts and hull panels than 'cookie-cut' parts which are much easier to replace.
(04-13-2017, 10:28 PM)Shelco Wrote: Hmm, if I remember correctly, I once saw a thread with a huge load of house specific bases which looked so damn awesome and maybe there were jump gates as well, I am not sure but anyways. The current model fits into Liberty quite well, in my opinion, I lack the imagination for a jump gate for Liberty right now. For Rheinland, I would take something in its dark green shade with a bulky heavy and menacing look, a bit like the Gallia gate, it shouldn't have many roundings but more like an ALG mover from the front.
Kusari could have a jump gate that fits the look of their battleship color, a bit more light and a few neat cutting edges like the Tokugawa has on its top around the gate, but it is very easy to overdo something in this case.
Bretonia is also not so easy for me to imagine but definitely the dark color shade of the bretonian capital ships, that would be possible and maybe a "skin" that looks similar to the armor on bretonian warships.
As Discovery's senior art developer I'm pretty well versed in the design aesthetic of each house, Shelco. The question here is not "what should they look like if they look different?", but rather "should they look different at all?".
(04-13-2017, 10:30 PM)Durandal Wrote: As Discovery's senior art developer I'm pretty well versed in the design aesthetic of each house, Shelco. The question here is not "what should they look like if they look different?", but rather "should they look different at all?".
Sorry, just reminded me of that one thread, well, then ignore that and just take what I wrote below.
Given how most branded cars that are sold in several different countries all look the same I would argue that the lanes and gates themselves would look the same no matter where they were placed (or built).
If I had any sort of skill in modeling I would love to help but instead I will opt to beg that the lanes be converted to horizontal lanes like Gallia instead of vertical, which would make my life as a power trader all the more enjoyable. As to the other assets, such as mooring fixtures and docking rings, I'm rather fond of how the Orders mooring fixture is laid out more like a way-station instead of a peg board. Maybe instead of house specific lanes instead there should be house specific mooring fixtures.
I think that the lanes and gates should have a standard look between all of them. Gallia irp wise has the excuse they were cut off for centuries. And since Ageira and DSE are the sole manufacturers and purveyors of the technology in Sirius, it's only logical that they all look the same in all the houses that sport said technology.
There is a good reason not to make gates/lanes house-specific if it increases amount of design work beyond the reasonable level: all of them are built by Liberty's Ageira/DSE with minimal involvement of other Houses corporations, so 'by default', economically standardization makes sense.
From the construction standpoint, the gates and lanes are built as frameworks, in which the actual parts that generate spatial effect (aka Whiteboxes) are integrated. That being said, I think that Ageira would have fulfilled requests for special design of gates and lanes frameworks for certain House systems (like capitol systems or the sovereign space). It won't actually impact their functions as long as the Whitebox parts could be installed in the same positions.
So cosmetic changes to how the model looks like are totally acceptable, from my POV. Moreover, they might help players identify that they are entering rule-wise special (i.e. captiol/sovereign) systems within the house space.
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