Oh, I'd actually prefer ship models over characters. Anyway, I'm sure they'll release at least a dozen new ship designs, I'm not worried in the long run.
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Ship themes/My concern that i hope will be adressed
- Thread starter tim1983
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Oh, I'd actually prefer ship models over characters. Anyway, I'm sure they'll release at least a dozen new ship designs, I'm not worried in the long run.
25k a year to keep on staff? That's probably not even paying their salary, let alone their benefits. If we make it 100k a year that means a $50/hour cost, which would give them ten hours of work between concept art and modeling on each model for it to cost $500k to make all of those models. Can a model be concepted and finished in ten hours? Does it take more time? Less time?
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Yeah, having different models for like every avatar is somewhat illusory, but at least having slightly different colors or so would limit the times when the same looking ships would fight each other.
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I don't want to sound rude, but I'm curious : where are you from ? I'm not an expert salaries in Nordic nations, although I hear it is very high in Norway. In France, a 10 dev team would consist of one or two leads, 5 devs, and three under-paid slav.. I mean interns. 25k on average is probably a very high estimate - in a small company, the medium salary can be 12 euros an hour. Of course, you then have to factor in social security / taxes.
To give you a comparison : I'm angling for two jobs, either a bursary for a doctorate, or a job at the French MFA. A bursary is 1200 euros a month (and rent in Paris is 600), while a job in the diplo service starts at 2000 (but can double within a few years). What you describe as a game developer's salary seems very high, at least for me.
I looked up the wage of a programmer in Sweden. It's definitely higher than $25,000 a year, and I presume they get good benefits (considering what I've heard about Sweden's liberal vacation time laws).
If we count by the median pay for a programmer in Sweden, the cost with social cost etc would be around 55-56k Euro a year
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Hmmmm... Then those benefits aren't as costly as some would have you believe.
So I guess the next question is if their 3D modelers and concept artists cost roughly as much to keep on staff as a programmer. And how long it takes to make a ship model.
So I guess the next question is if their 3D modelers and concept artists cost roughly as much to keep on staff as a programmer. And how long it takes to make a ship model.
It must cost a lot to get good artists with those high taxes over there.
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Ohh and the median wage for a programmer over here is about 3 300 Euro a month.
Another idea is that they blorg befriend some schools and make the students work for the glory of friendship
Another idea is that they blorg befriend some schools and make the students work for the glory of friendship
I think that instead of dividing the aesthetics by phenotype (fungoid, mammalian, etc) they should have grouped them by simple descriptors: organic, boxy, angular, etc. And then have them randomly distributed among the AI races regardless of phenotype. That would give a lot more leeway for the re-use of models, and some simple color variations (grey, blue, green, black, etc) would make ships look a lot different even if they technically use the same models.
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100 styles is probably a bit excessive. 2-5 per phenotype would probably be sufficient, especially if more phenotypes are added later on. After all, there's a maximum of 44 starting races (I know there will be more if you include the 'late starters', but who cares about them
? Plus it kind of makes sense for breakaway states and uplifted species to share the same ship designs as the original empire). On average, that's 7-8 species per phenotype each game. If you had, say, 4 ship styles per phenotype and the RNG didn't screw you over you wouldn't be running into too many repeats, especially if you add colour variations as well. Not a bad idea - maybe they could combine both systems? Say having a set of 10-12 generic designs and 2-3 per phenotype. Each race could then randomly be assigned a design from either the generic set or their phenotype one.
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What I'm even more interested in is about how they set it up for modding. A rigid system for modding of modules would open up many possibilities
I actually made a thread regarding the same concern a while ago, I figured an easy way to create more variety between races fleets would be to implement a fleet painter similiar to the one used in Homeworld. Heres the link https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...and-shine-in-your-own-way-ship-design.920866/
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When someone mentions Homeworld I simply upvote. But yeah, that would be a good way to create a more varied space
Any particular reason? Pretty much does not matter what colour you paint them. Historically it was only from the rifle era that militaries adopted subdued colours. There's no real reason spaceships should be any particular shade, since visual camouflage isn't going to be a factor. Likewise with Space Navy uniforms.
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One way to stop absurdly coloured ships entering the game could be to limit the fleet painter to a palette of acceptable colour schemes. Nothing too garish but still enough variation to allow lots of choices. In the Homeworld fleet painter you had the choice of choosing two different colours for your ships (a stripe and a base colour). This could be a way of introducing even more variation.
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I don't think it will be necessary, since I am the couchsitting type of strategist. For me, the empire icon near the fleet strength number is enough. For ships to have individual colour or appearance changes nothing for me. Then again I play HoI3 with counters...
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Don't forget that each new model needs its own textures. I don't know how many the game engine needs, but it's typical to have three texture maps for one complete model i.e color, bump/displacement and specular. In some design house, a separate texturer needs to be hired to finish those. On the other hand though, texturing can be an easy way to add variation to the existing models.
I think the best solution here is to have flexible in-game object management system that can allow modders to easily modify textures, as well as to add new models in most straightforward manner i.e standard model format recognized in many 3d packages, no need for a chain of converter just to import one object.
A good example here is FSX (and FS series) which survives because of mods. The vanilla only comes with at best a couple of rather inaccurate planes. Now you have hundreds of custom aircraft available out there complete with their own accurate subsystem. I don't know anyone who plays FSX without any complete albeit paid mod like PMDG.
On the other side of the bridge, CA is especially notorious as to prevent modding and increase DLC potential profit they went out of their way to make sure that adding new model is as complicated as possible with custom .pak compression and encryption.. I don't think the newer games are even moddable beyond some config mod.
I think the best solution here is to have flexible in-game object management system that can allow modders to easily modify textures, as well as to add new models in most straightforward manner i.e standard model format recognized in many 3d packages, no need for a chain of converter just to import one object.
A good example here is FSX (and FS series) which survives because of mods. The vanilla only comes with at best a couple of rather inaccurate planes. Now you have hundreds of custom aircraft available out there complete with their own accurate subsystem. I don't know anyone who plays FSX without any complete albeit paid mod like PMDG.
On the other side of the bridge, CA is especially notorious as to prevent modding and increase DLC potential profit they went out of their way to make sure that adding new model is as complicated as possible with custom .pak compression and encryption.. I don't think the newer games are even moddable beyond some config mod.
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Ok 'Absurd' might not of been the best word to use. I'm thinking more colours that would detract from the designs of the ships themselves. So for example no colours that are the same as the details on the ships so they don't lose their definition. Choosing a selection of colours that have the right tones so they look good on the ships eg. a bright red ship might obscure the details and not look realistic but a red that is more moderate enhances them.
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