Earth-mars Cut Scenes

[Cpl. Facehugger]

How about you just google an image of the Gizan pyramids and paste one of those on?

 

Seriously though, The texture seems to move when the camera is moving (more than it should. Almost like static.)

 

Anyway, I like the night landing better. It just seems more covert and cool.

[Breunor]

I think you're seeing artifacts from the resolution being used. If Deimos rendered the animation at normal resolution it would take forever to do and to download. So the trade-off is seeing the shimmering effect get muffled by the lower res image. This is my "in my own mind, educated" guess.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Ohh! So its the resolution? That is good to know.

[Deimos]

I don't know whether this is goingto get included or not yet as a part of the animation but I'm putting it up to show I am working on it. I know I mentioned in my log ages ago that I was working on it but no pictures were forthcoming. Simply becasue I didn't feel it looked anywhere good enough to post.

 

Here's the Space station that was originally based on the ISS. Other than extra modules this one sports four rotatable laser cannon placements on each of the extemities. Yuo should be able to make out the one at the top and the frontal one. Don't worry if you can't as I'll post some detail pictures if there's the interest.

 

Just below the top turret is a high resolution telescope that's loosely based on the hubble.

 

Its still a WIP as there are some modules that aren't as round as they should be but I am working on it.

 

{Attachement removed}

Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[Cpl. Facehugger]

So we might be getting to see an avenger docked to that bad boy?

[Deimos]

Yeah there's a docking bay at the bottom middle. If I go ahead with it I'll do a pass around it and see the Avenger undock and fly off.

[demich]

welll x-com engineers can manufacture avanger docking bay module and attach it to ISS. This module will contain fuel(big engines), food, o2, emergency stuff etc. Edited January 22, 2004 by demich

[Deimos]

Demich you wanna build a module with all the bits you mentioned?

[Breunor]

That's looking awesome Deimos, I like the mirror effect from the panels. It would be cool to see the Avenger pull up to dock, then maybe a shot inside a module looking out a window(you wouldn't see interior details, it's just the angle shot) as the booster module is positioned behind it and a voice confirms 'badass booster rocket is locked and ready'.

 

If you want, we can have Arnold Schwarzenegger be supreme commander of Earth by then (he's governor already! Aliens attack? You know they'll make him head of the UN at least! ) Then I can do some voice-overs of Ahnold giving the pep talk- "crush the enemy, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women!"

[Cpl. Facehugger]

"They will be terminated!"

[demich]

They'll be back"

[Robo Dojo 58]

Badass booster? Like, a huge gravity engine w/a truckload of Elerium strapped on to the Avenger? That would be neat to see.

 

Will the Avenger have some sort of shield as it goes barreling through the Sol system? Such as a block of ice, or an aerogel shield? Both would be easily put into orbit with the Avenger, and easily handled with the gravity engines. Although, I guess something like that wouldn't be needed for "clean" space. It'd be better suited for going through the Oort cloud, or the asteroid belt. But, a little precaution against meteors (or cosmic rays) never hurt anyone.

[Breunor]

Badass booster was meaning something like the booster packs used in Robotech for space flight. The booster was like 5 times larger than the veritech fighter. When they reached a combat zone they could pop out of it. As for a debris shield, that makes sense. Perhaps the big booster has a small shield generator on it?

 

It sure is a lot easier to come up with ideas than to model, animate, and render them!

[Guest drewid]

Nice work deimos. The martian surface looks spot on, You ought to stick the wreck of the beagle in there somewhere

Is the pyramid a generated texture? the surface is boiling a bit on the render, lower contrast and a larger pattern would help.

 

I like the avenger lurking in the crater, that's cool. The more I see that craft the more I like it.

[Robo Dojo 58]

The large booster sounds like a good idea. I'm concerned that it'd make the Avenger look too weak on it's own. I mean, it can outrace and outgun a battleship, but it can't do space flight without a booster? I feel so conflicted.

 

I suppose, that the Avenger's engines would make alot of heat, which is easily handled with a cool 5400KPH breeze. But it would have trouble in space, so it would need a booster.

 

 

You don't really need a "shield" like in Star Trek. A giant rock/ice shield will suffice, and is easily available. A gravity shield won't work, IMO, because you'd need to deflect particles coming in at thousands of KPH, and the gravity engines can't do that IMO.

 

Here's a list of possible shields for travelling to Mars:

 

A large hunk of rock/ice is put in front, and takes the beating instead

Shields that protect the Avenger (Aka. Star trek)

Pinpoint barriers (Aka. Robotech. But there's no protoculture...)

Gravity shields "deflect" space debris (seems too far advanced IMO)

A large, thick alien alloy "Cow Catcher" in front

Blow up a UFO in orbit, and use that instead!

Hide the Avenger in a battleship. How covert, but the overmind would probably know...

The alien alloys are tough enough! They can take it, with maybe a small dent or two.

 

Does anyone know how long the Avenger trip to Mars will take? It'd be easier to decide on extra equipment/etc. for the Avenger, then. The aliens might have just enough time to make one, Final Assault. :wink:

 

I guess we're getting a little off-topic here, but it will have an impact on the Earth-Mars scene. Better to decide before the final rendering, then after.

[Whitewashed]

I don't think a shield and booster is necessary...

[Breunor]

I think Whitewashed brings to the front what I hint at, it's fun to think about but probably way too much work for the limited benefit... The reason for the big booster is just to provide fuel to accelerate the craft, consider how much elerium was used in normal flights-Mars would require like 1000 elerium, where do you store it? So the booster could be an effecient, non-elerium alternative to help push the craft along. It was just a thought, but not really needed to explain the flight.

[Robo Dojo 58]

Mars would require like 1000 elerium, where do you store it?

 

Well, a landed UFO has 50 Elerium for every engine on it. That seems to be enough for a return trip to Mars.

 

The Avenger can circle the Earth twice with the 12 Elerium that it has for fuel.

 

So, my guess is that the Avenger will need somewhere between 20-100 Elerium fuel for a two-way trip to Mars. That could be stored on the outside (Ie. a booster) or the inside. You might lose 1-2 cargo space for extra supplies, perhaps? Or you could throw a few boxes on the hovertanks, no one will cry.)

 

Don't forget, that when the Avenger gets up to speed, it can simply coast the rest of the way to Mars. It won't need fuel for the whole trip, just the initial Accel/Decel and landing/takeoff.

[demich]

I don't think that baddass booster is required. I've made some calulations...

 

Mars is (avarage ofcourse) 674 000 00 km away from Earth. The speed of Avenger is 5400 km/s. Dividing 67400000 by 5400 we'll get aprox. 12481 seconds=208 minutes. And this is 3h and 28 minutes.

 

As you can see we don't need to boost avanger by adding booster. However avenger with booster will look cool :]

[Deimos]

Drewid, thanks. The texture is actually a shader. I think the main trouble is like you say, it is tightly packed, but I did that to give a crystalline glitter effect (crystals in rock). It needs more work but I'll get it

 

Guys if we're gonna get technical about the whole thing then here we go The aliens presumably use their gravity wave generator to bend the intervening space between Mars and Earth, imagine a sheet of A4 The Earth on one corner and Mars in the opposite. All the craft would do bend the paper until the corners touch and move from one point to the other. The engines would then shut off and the A4 sheet would snap back to its original shape. Ok space is a lot more complex than that but I'm guessing that's how the ufo's travel (or more accuratley not travel) the distance between the planets.

 

Or if we do want to actually travel the distance between at high speed, the thing to remember about space is there's no friction so once the avenger is moving at 5400km/s it won't slow down unless it turns around. That is if the engines work in a conventional sense.

 

So basically the distance under forward burn would be 33,700,000 km. 180 degree flip and the remaining half distance under the same amount of time under main engine burn to slow the craft down. The time would actually depend on the G level of accelleration so at a 1G burn the the time would be similar to what Demich preficted. As I understand it the speed is a square as you go up the G scale but the fuel consumption is much greater. So it becomes uneconomical to do main engine burns at anything more than 2G. Not to mention bloody uncomfrotable

 

That's as I undersand stellar ballistics, I might well be totally off the mark

[Breunor]

And the other typo in the speed calc is that the avenger flies at 5400km per hour, not per second. So it's 12,481 hours to get there, or approximately 1.4 years.

 

The inertia felt under Gs would be greatly reduced, as this craft as well as the firestorm and lightning can turn and accelerate way beyond conventional craft without killing the pilot. You have an accel of 3 on the interceptor, which can pull enough G to make you pass out in a second or two, while the avenger has an accel of 10-enough to kill you in about the same time. So there's an assumption that the gravity waves that propel the craft might be reducing the relative weight and momentum of the craft and occupants, so 15-20Gs can be stomached. So if the craft can accelerate friction free at a constant 15G, the passengers might feel like they are being slightly pushed back, but nothing more than what you'd encounter on a large plane during take-off IMO. I expect the Avenger reaches its top speed in a few seconds in atmosphere, but frictionless flight would let it keep accelerating way beyond 5400km/h.

 

You are right to say though that the engines could hold enough fuel to send it there and back, because it's not a constant burn, just accel-coast-reverse burn.

[Robo Dojo 58]

Exactly what I was going to write up, Breunor, except you make it sound better. :crying: Our current trips to Mars don't quite take 1.4 years, I think. Many of the craft that we send into space go at 10,000+ KPH, so the Avenger definately has to go faster than that. It shouldn't take longer than a month for the trip, IMO.

 

The inertia felt under Gs would be greatly reduced, as this craft as well as the firestorm and lightning can turn and accelerate way beyond conventional craft without killing the pilot.

You don't have to reduce the inertia at all. You can just have the engines make a gravity well where you want it. It's the effect that I made up for the Grav shield. (Other X-COM craft can do it too, just not as well as the Avenger or GS :wink:) You simply use gravity to make things "fall" where you want them. Like "falling" into a 10G evasive turn, or "falling" towards Mars at 20 G's. Falling hasn't hurt anybody IIRC. Except when you hit the ground...

 

 

So it becomes uneconomical to do main engine burns at anything more than 2G. Not to mention bloody uncomfrotable.

The Avenger uses gravity engines, so the pilot can counter any G forces that the crew might be feeling. Similar to safely "falling" where he wants, he can also keep a nice 1G environment going for the crew inside. No more vomiting inside those pretty flying suits. It's described a tiny bit in the Grav Shield CTD. That also means that the Avenger could accelerate at 5Gs, 10Gs, anything that seems reasonable, and you won't have to worry about having rookie pancakes in the rear end of the craft.

[demich]

breunor:With conventional technology we are able to get to mars in 9months :] Edited January 24, 2004 by demich

[fux0r666]

This is more a matter for the ctd, but with a concentrated gravitational field the craft should be able to bend space so that the trip is considerably shorter. I would not limit the gravity drive to a 'miles per hour' definition.

[Deimos]

The 5400kmh is based on the maximum attainable speed inside the atmoshere with the friction and drag associated with it. Out in space without those constraints I do think it would be able to rach much higher speeds.

 

Out of interest if the Avenger is attaining those kinds of speeds in atmosphere it will create quite a pressure wave in front of it and also a considerable amount of heat over the skin of the craft which it would have to counterract.

 

I'd say in game terms the trip should be taking hours, not months. After all the Avenger team sent to Mars might come back to an overrun Earth which'd suck.

 

Fux I really think that we must keep the 'miles per hour' simply because not everyone playing will have a degree in astrophysics and keeping it simple for the layman with references to something they understand be it Kph or Mph.

[fux0r666]

What I was thinking was that interplanetary power would be motivated a little differently than otherwise... Like it would jump in a straight line to mars in a matter of hours or minutes, but that locomotion would not be attainable unless you had a definite, distant end point in mind.

 

edit: and the idea that gravity acts as if space was a 2d plane and gravity wells are depressions in that plane is fairly common. The ctd has other, more outre concepts on the hotplate like alphawave brain controlled interceptors and monomer muscle fibre control surface articulation...

 

This isn't an argument for bent space, more an indication as to the kind of technical depth that the ctd is working on.

 

And in any situation where a movement of distance over time is made, a velocity can be derived... and the stats in the vehicle write up are for combat and interception purposes. I figured that the journey from one planet to another would be a special case.

 

Also, how would the supplies get to the ISS if the aliens have air superiority?

Edited January 24, 2004 by fux0r666

[Robo Dojo 58]

but with a concentrated gravitational field the craft should be able to bend space so that the trip is considerably shorter.

Hmm... reminds me of Warp drive from Star Trek. But, it seems waaaayy too advanced for X-COM to even think about. Using gravity just to push craft around is much simpler to do, considering that the aliens gave us the engines.

 

Also, how would the supplies get to the ISS if the aliens have air superiority?

That seems like something the player has to find out. Since alien UFOs are going to be made more intelligent and harder to take down in Xenocide, the player will already be fighting for air superiority. Making a safe path to the ISS would simply add to that, although the Avenger could try getting there by stealth.

[fux0r666]

Also, how would the supplies get to the ISS if the aliens have air superiority?

 

That seems like something the player has to find out. Since alien UFOs are going to be made more intelligent and harder to take down in Xenocide, the player will already be fighting for air superiority. Making a safe path to the ISS would simply add to that, although the Avenger could try getting there by stealth.

 

 

So the gameflow will be slightly different than xcom then? This is the first of any of this I have heard.

 

but with a concentrated gravitational field the craft should be able to bend space so that the trip is considerably shorter.

 

Hmm... reminds me of Warp drive from Star Trek. But, it seems waaaayy too advanced for X-COM to even think about. Using gravity just to push craft around is much simpler to do, considering that the aliens gave us the engines.

 

I don't know anything about how startrek, and I remember embarrassingly little about the origins of alien life in XCOM. Is it sufficient to say that all of those races are martian? I always thought that they came from somewhere else and Mars was a staging area. Having all of those aliens living on mars simultaneously seems a little crowded.

 

edit: And since I thought the aliens came somewhere else, and their mission was to find genetic diversity to utilize in their own... group... that they would have interplanetary/interstellar craft capable of travelling supahfast.

Edited January 25, 2004 by fux0r666

[Robo Dojo 58]

So the gameflow will be slightly different than xcom then? This is the first of any of this I have heard.

I guess you're not in the Secret Tommy Club, then. Oops, I already said too much.

 

From what I read, I thought that UFO's are going to be made smarter, (IE. Shooting down Skyrangers) thus making air superiority tougher for X-COM. Even though it had no consequence in the original X-COM, you said that it might in Xenocide.(with the ISS) I didn't mean to say that Xenocide was going to change, and I'm sorry if I did. :crying:

 

To clarify on my earlier post, using gravity to make trips shorter seems like something that X-COM scientists wouldn't be able to figure out, IMO. (And yes, that's how Startrek does warpdrive.) They don't really need to figure it out in order to kill all the aliens, anyways.

 

After reading this article, though, I dunno. Warp might be a good idea, Fux0r. It wouldn't have much impact, if any, on Xenocide, but it would affect the Alien Origins.

[Deimos]

Guys, the storyline won't be differing from the original, all this extra stuff about ufo's shooting skyrangers down and clearing paths wouldn't happen until +v1.0 if it were going to happen. We're not there yet so there isn't any point in speculating about it here. That's what the labs are for

 

Fux, the Avenger gets to the ISS (if it gets used at all, remember I only showed the model to say what I'm working on) because its in the script. No need to worry about trivial details like that. If you were going to go to that level of detail, how did the Avenger ever leave Earth orbit in the original? How did it get into Mars space and how did it land on the aliens front doorstep undetected? Because it was in the script, somethings just have to be taken for granted.

 

Like all this talk of how long it takes to get to Mars in the Avenger is moot because we know it gets there in the original and everyone assumes its done quickly. My animation reflects that speed, it doesn't go into the nuts and bolts because its unnecessary to the story. All the hypothetical theory stuff is better served in the appropriate place. Thats a slap on the wrist for me contributung to it as well

 

Now back to the plot.

 

I asked in my ISS post whether its worth my carrying on building and texturing it for addition into the Earth Mars transition or do we want a lack of a reference point at the start of the animation.

[Vaaish]

I think the avenger leaving earth and maybe passing a burned out ISS would be good. We already have a point of referance in that the craft is launching from your base. in fact we could stick a few seconds of the actual launch from Xcorps base kinda like as was done in the Hegemonia intro.

[Whitewashed]

Yeah, I don't think we have to explain every detail to the player. If someone hasn't got anything better to do than to think how this and that is possible instead of enjoying the game it's their problem.

[fux0r666]

Fux, the Avenger gets to the ISS (if it gets used at all, remember I only showed the model to say what I'm working on) because its in the script. No need to worry about trivial details like that. If you were going to go to that level of detail, how did the Avenger ever leave Earth orbit in the original? How did it get into Mars space and how did it land on the aliens front doorstep undetected? Because it was in the script, somethings just have to be taken for granted.

 

 

That's not my question. My question was how those supply shuttles got to the ISS in the first place... like, before the avenger, how did they get there? By your answer, is it correct to infer that the Avenger brought its own supplies up to the ISS itself, then strapped on the provisions, then went to mars?

 

 

I don't believe a stop at the ISS is really necessary. You launch a mission to mars with alien spacecraft technology... I think the player would rather see it get there on its own power. I think watching it dock and strap on stuff and then go again would break the tension of going to the alien's base of operations. We can finally do it! Let's go whipe out those alien parasites once and for all!! ...But first, let's stop for lunch.

Edited January 25, 2004 by fux0r666

[Guest drewid]

Drewid, thanks. The texture is actually a shader. I think the main trouble is like you say, it is tightly packed, but I did that to give a crystalline glitter effect (crystals in rock). It needs more work but I'll get it

Could try using the shader just in the specular channel, with something much bigger in the colour channel?

 

edit-

I like the idea of the burned out ISS, that could be quite poignent if handled correctly, hmmmm. I'll have a think while I'm walking the dog.

Edited January 25, 2004 by drewid

[Guest drewid]

summat like this perhaps

 

 

edit--- I'll try attaching it this time.

Minimum of onscreen lip-sync

Edited January 25, 2004 by drewid

[fux0r666]

Mmm... storyboarding. Plantastic! ***drool***

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Hmm... Could we make the space suit's visor be partially see through and splattered with blood? That would certainly be creepy...

[demich]

hmmm frozen head and broken visor will be better

[Breunor]

(slaps own wrist for babbling off-topic) As to Deimos' question of having the ISS, my point for suggesting it originally had been so we wouldn't have to worry about where on earth the avenger came from. You could have a shot at ground level as the avenger is lifted above ground and takes off, then a cut as it approaches the ISS. You wouldn't need to show the region of earth it came from, which had been a request from some but requires several different scenes if done that way. Having it torn apart does make sense, the storyboard idea looks good.

[Guest drewid]

Another option would be to have the head/body bounce off the canopy of the avenger.

 

The ISS could be torn apart during the game intro, which would then hook into this idea, and would give the player some "righteous anger" to kick the game off with, always a good thing.

[Guest drewid]

There are a couple of fringe physics projects that point to the possibility of "Inertialess Drive". These generate a field of no inertia confined to the area of ship, but the drive itself is reasonably straightforward and conventional. Because it is pushing against near-zero mass the acceleration is phenomenal. Small dust and debris entering the field should just bounce off the hull because it too has no inertia.

 

In an atmosphere this would create a wavefront of gas molecules at the fringes of the field, and massive air friction /shock waves, But in space this is not a problem.

 

 

IIRC the theory also says that physiological effects would be BAD, all those body processes that rely on a certain amount of inertia (heart, lungs, digestion) would have problems, not to mention breaking bones as muscles can't cope with limbs with no mass (Not the same as being weightless). (try a salute and smash your skull).

 

So that's the crew strapped down under sedation for the duration of the burn then. (wearing rubber underpants too).

[Robo Dojo 58]

(try a salute and smash your skull).

How could you smash your skull? Your arm doesn't have any inertia to do damage with!

But, then again, neither does your skull, so I guess it balances out.

 

My guess is that your arm will go very fast, but the hit would be as hard as you moved your arm. You'd be like The Flash, who must've been conceived in an 'inertaless drive' room.

 

--Edit: Hey, The Flash wears rubber pants, too! Hmm... :alienlol: --

Edited January 26, 2004 by Robo Dojo 58

[tzuchan]

Seeing the recent discussion in here touched on FTL, I figured it's it pretty good time to turn this loose...

(Of cause Bruenor may just shoot me for bring this thread off topic again...)

 

FTL Drive CTD

 

It has become become obvious that we cannot defeat the alien menace by fighting a defensive war. They not only outnumber us, but also have seemingly limitless resources. As such, not matter how many aliens we kill, how many UFOs we intercept, they will keep on coming until we are finally whittled down to nothing. However, we now have a trump card up our sleeves. Our research team have finally managed to replicate the FTL drives used by UFOs. Unfortunately, the aliens have the superiority in sheer numbers, much less technological advances. As such, the only possible way for us to succeed is through a single decisive covert strike.

 

 

The alien invaders travel through the vast distances between the stars by creating wormholes by means of their ability to create and manipulate gravity waves. Our scientists have managed to create wormholes under controlled conditions in the lab using the [uFO power source]s, until recently, we lacked the ability to control where the wormholes would take us. In other words, it would have been like taking a trip down a highway that not only is the destination unknown, a second trip down the same highway would lead to a totally different location.

 

However, with recent intel obtained by Section 9 of the X-Corps Research and Developement department, we have confirmed our suspicion that the tachyon emitters found in all classes of UFOs play a very important role in the creation of stable controlled wormholes. This is only possible due to the fact that tachyons can travel instantaneously through the vast distances in the universe. As such, through the use of controlled tachyon bombardment, the quantum states of the departure point and the destination points in space are forced into identical states. As a result, when the space at the departure point is manipulated through the use of intense gravity waves to form the wormhole, the quantumly linked point at the destination would mirror the events occuring at the departure point, and as a result, a two way connection is created.

 

Unfortunately, the tachyon emissions given off by this process is hard to miss, and while the alien may dismiss the amount of tachyons given off by the relatively small experiments conducted by our researchers, a tachyon emission of the scale needed to transport a craft would likely cause the alien invaders to up our threat level, and as such forgo their current doctrine of terrorism and covert operations and escalate to an all out war that we can not possibly hope to win. As such, it is imperative that information regarding our breakthrough must be classified Ultraviolet For-Your-Eyes-Only until we can find a way of using it in a single decisive strike against the aliens. Fortunately, Section 9 reports that they may have some valuable intel in that direction. We reccomend that priority be given to their research immediately.

 

[Puasonen]

A question popped to my mind. Since there's nothing (like air) slowing avenger down in space, why does it have it's engines on all the way? Just for eye candy?

[Guest drewid]

(try a salute and smash your skull).

How could you smash your skull? Your arm doesn't have any inertia to do damage with!

But, then again, neither does your skull, so I guess it balances out.

 

My guess is that your arm will go very fast, but the hit would be as hard as you moved your arm. You'd be like The Flash, who must've been conceived in an 'inertaless drive' room.

 

--Edit: Hey, The Flash wears rubber pants, too! Hmm... :alienlol: --

Ermm. If your head doesn't have any inertia the but it would catch the full force of the muscles moving??

 

but your arm wouldn't have any inrtia but the muscles are still apply enought force as if it had, which has got to be like some sort of mega karate thing, but with no inertia at the hit

 

Maybe do muscle damage with the muscles pulling against each other in wierd ways???

 

Now I've confused myself.

 

 

I like the idea of standard issue rubber pants though.

 

"Yes trooper you do have to wear them. You'll understand why when you get out on that battlefield..."

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

A question popped to my mind. Since there's nothing (like air) slowing avenger down in space, why does it have it's engines on all the way? Just for eye candy?

It's faster (albiet not much...you hit the point of diminishing returns about 2 days into the flight, IIRC). You accellerate untill you reach the halfway point, then flip around, and decelerate (okay, negative accleration..I know someone will jump on that) the rest of the way.

 

I vaguely remember reading that an ship could reach mars in about 2 weeks accelerating at 1g all the way.

 

-The Captain

[centurion]

2 weeks with 1g acceleration with the flip in the middle=cca 40 million km distance, Earth-Mars best distance cca 75 million km; 3 weeks it is IMO.

[Breunor]

.... I won't slap you tzuchan, I'm not THAT bad...

 

I guess we should all just agree that the avenger can get there on its own? Do we really need to bother with the How of it all? I'm sure we can spend all kind of time discussing this if people want to, but that's time wasted on something we probably will never see in the game, right?

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

I agree....we don't need to go into the details of Avenger acceleration. Just say it can make it to mars in a day or so, and leave it at that.

 

-The Captain

[Puasonen]

Okay, sorry. Was just asking..