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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

ART - Combat Armor


Guest drewid

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Guest drewid
The legal status hasn't been resolved yet.

I'm just starting the animations for LastHope. I'll do them in such a way that we can change models if we _have_ to.
If I do them with that in mind it will make that process easier. The only restriction would be that the limbs are roughly similar, otherwise it means animating them again.
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I agree that the respirator does stick out a bit, but it should look a little alien IMO, as it's totally based off of alien technology, right? Maybe rather than having all the various bulges in it, it's a little smoother, with some of the pieces welded onto the outside if that makes sense. But then again, if it's an armored astronaut suit, it would have a lot going on in the design.
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Another concept for a powersuit.

Hopefully it speaks for itself. Any of you uber modellers out there want to pick this up and run with it feel free. :)

The pack on the left side of the pic is meant to be a hover unit for when the suit is upgraded to a flight suit. Same with the control panel on the front.

The colour is just for concept, I realise in game we're going to have the gorgeous metallic Irriduim sheen to alien alloys.
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Now, I don't know about you, but would it be wisest to keep all the presureising tubes inside the suit? I personally wouldn't want a alien to take a potshot at my precious air-supply and what not.

This is a game, not reality, easen up on the realism. Love the rest of the suit, though.
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That's easy to sort. They're made of alien alloys. :)

Realism wasn't the goal of it Cubik. I was looking at keeping he human tech within the style guide which is to keep the look of human based stuff, human looking. Yeah it's based on alien alloys but that's just the base not the overall design. The aim is to keep human based tech recognisable as such. That's why I used a familiar reference in the design.
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Guest drewid
I would say the helmet probably needs a little more visual seperation from the body, to make it more obvious that you can look round.

And maybe bulges/ridges on the surface to make it look more muscular? Thinking of the shoulders, maybe a little bigger to make it look harder?

Don't mind the tubes myself, they could be armoured, like a braided brake hoose or an armoured steel cable. They ought to be clipped to the surface though otherwise they'd get caught in weapons n stuff.

I Like the backpack. That ariel adds some nicely grounded realism. The flight version could have big faceted elements and look a bit more alien, (I reckon the facets are part of the propulsion system, kind of like the Morton effect).
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this is a simple and ordinary gas mask :) IMO this is a good base to start thinking about helmet :) the aiming crosshair, mission objectives etc are being displayed in interior part of glass (alien alloy :D) window.
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Here are some ideas I found online: the rendered one looks like personal armor to me, the suit on the right is definitely power armor. Maybe some concept art based around things like this?
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Sort of reminds me of cyclone armor, could work quite well.

Edit: Doh! Just saw the Zentraedi item in the pic, so yah, that's probably cyclone armor in there.... Edited by Breunor
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The first armour pics look they're from Starship troopers. :) very cool series.

One thing we do have to be careful of is making the design look original. If we go for looking like another already established design we could run into a lot of trouble. I don't know how many of you play or have played Battletech, but they had to drop some of their designs because another company sued them over the designs.

In the mecha communities there has been careful wording of where the inspiration of their designs originate. I'm a big fan of warhammer 40k, battletech and Heavy gear but I've tried to stay away from their design stylings because it'd be obvious that the designs come from and we don't want problems further down the line. Maybe I'm just being paranoid but that's why my design isn't based on anything mecha related. :)
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Yup :)

Here's concept no.2 A few changes I've made are that the armour is now more rounded off. Two reasons, firstly and primarily so we can show off the iridium sheen effect. Secondly and purely a fluff reason that rounded armour deflects plasma 34% better than flat panels :)

You know what they say about 98% of statistics, well it applies in this case too :D I made it up casue I wanted more than one reason for having rounded armour.

Also I wanted to include a nod to the original power and flight armour from the original game.

I know it's the wrong colour so far but the blue is a neutral colour good for showing shape. The armour being made from alien alloys will have the iridium sheen to it.

We could make some fluff up about that as well in that alien alloys can't be painted and that's why power and flight armour doesn't have camoflage patterning on it.

I've taken into account what people have said about giving the head area more definition. It now sticks out slightly like a dogs jaw.

The split visor comes straight from my other concept, the avenger. This I really like as it gives a mean look to the armour. Visually speaking in the dead area in between the eyes fluff text could state the communications gear and a mini heads up display are in there which make up for the small dead area where ou can't see out of. :)
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Hey -

I really like how its comming along. I just had a thought though.

I think it would be a great idea to have the textures for the armor easily moddifiable. Why, you ask! So that individual users can open up a template "skin" in any graphics program and apply personal touchs. The same as with aircraft in all flight sims.

The original template could stick to the eridium sheen. Then users could modify them as they see fit. The only complication I see in terms of coding, is making it so that if users want multiple "skins" they can do this. So instead of each armor type having a texture, the individual units may need one. I'm not sure how this is generally done in non-flight sims, but I have a good idea of how they do it. I think it could be applied in this situation.

The reason I suggest this, is that it could be a whole lot of fun. You have a favorite trooper? Give him a special mark on his uniform. Have a base up north that works mostly in the tundra, give em all snow camo of your choice. Want to play muliplayer(eventually) and have your own player/squad easily identifiable to all? The options go on and on. Plus, it allows for the community to have "skinners" and databases full of community made skins.

I know its this ability that gives flight sims a special...personalization..that I really think Xenocide could apply to itself with great results. And it should not be too hard to code for such an ability.

Gold
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I like the idea. However having discussed how to do the iridium sheen, it might not be possible to just replace the skin on the model. As I understand it the effect is going to be a hardware shader so I don't know whether it'd be modifiable. After all if you do want to have your custom skin you don't want it looking crap. :) Maybe a +v1.0 thing?
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Guest drewid
I like that helmet, it's got something of the medieval about the eyes, Maybe they should be slightly shorter and wider tho, then you could get a real scowl.

I like the big shoulders
The extra 'muscles' work nicely as well these guys have to look powerful so echoing huge muscles will really help. (like when car designers put bulges around the real wheels to echo a predators flanks)

It might be worth doing the ribcage/big chest thing like in the first pic that Breunor posted (the sketch on top right). The combination of curves and edges where they meet will show up the surface sheen too and look really good.
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So your telling me that noone whether intentionally or not cant pull those cables/tubes out by accident? how bout the aliens... one lucky shot and instant death.. if off planet anyway...
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I agree with losing the cables, at least across the front. Perhaps they're on the back, which explains why the armor rating is always lighter there.

If we label the textures correctly for mods, you should be able to swap it out as you like. However, that texture will probably be recycled for all the iridium-based models, so you'd affect more than just the armor. Extra copies could be used, but that's just the opposite of what we'd want ot do. The more space saved the better on textures, as Drewid's mentioned elsewhere, every texture has to be loaded into vieo card memory, so while the idea could be done easy enough, it increases the demand on the hardware. By the release date though hardware may be much further ahead and it's no big deal, hard to know.
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Well -

I'm not giving up on the idea of customizable texctures for armor...be warned :sly: ! But I do understand what your saying and where its coming from. I just REALLY think, in this regard, option should be kept open. Its community moddability that keeps projects alive long after their shelf-life...

Gold
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I'll address the cables issue first. Seeing as no one like them they'll be adjusted.

Something you guys seem to be forgetting though about the design process is that it's not just about looking cool or making the armour impenetratable. We could make the armour so that no hits at all penetrate it. It would just be phenominally expensive and the wearer wouldn't be able to move.

Remember that any armour designer will allow for maximum protection, no matter what, then the engineer comes along and tell him what can and can't be done. The cables on the outside were ther because the armour is form fitting and there would be no space on the inside of the suit. The other consideration is that those pipes may well have been there for another reason. Cooling purposes. The coolant may well be highly toxic and exposing it to the skin of the wearer would cause problems for the soldiers.

See when I design something I don't just slap something together because I think it looks cool. There are a lot of real world considerations put into all my designs. So you guys might not like the design but please be aware that I don't post something without having though about it firstly. Consider that the weapon will also cover the area that that the cables are in.

Xcomvic, yes one lucky shot and it spells instant death. But hey that happens in game anyway. <_< The cables wouldn't just get pulled out by accident anyway, we're not talking about a tv aerial here. Nasa use similar cables in space do you think they'd allow for a cable to be unarmoured and accidently pulled out when an astronaut's life depends on it?

Anyway as I've said I'll lose the cables. I just thought it might be interesting to have something no one else has and is clearly not a copy of any mecha and armour out there.

About the skins. The skin for the model is going to be grey apart from the areas around eyes and any detail area. Yes I understand about modability but, if the alien armour is going to have the iridium sheen to it, it is going to have to be done with hardware shaders. RK and I have been looking into the possibilites and currently the best way so far is using anisotropic lighting and refraction dispersion to achieve the effect, even that isn't set. An environment map might work as well but we'd have to test them both out before we decided on which method would be better. So please lets consider what's more important, getting v1.0 out looking good or delaying v1.0 so we can include modable models. Lets leave the idea of changing skins for a +v1.0 please.

Remember the original game never had modability and it's stood the test of time, hence why we're all here now. Yes there were convoluted ways of modding the game but it wasn't easy. We've got to remember what we're making here isn't a first person shooter but a strategy game with a defined style. Or why bother creating up our own concepts, we might as well just use models that are freely available. Edited by Deimos
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A compromise on the cables could be to have areas where you can see there is cable underneath creating a bulge, but still has some armor over it. IMO there should be something out there for the advanced armor, you've got a full environmental suit that can fly, it's going to have doohickies sticking out of it unless you go to some kind of all encompassing, heavy battle armor, making the soldier look like that lower right sample I posted earlier. It becomes a slow, lumbering hulk unless you include powered actuators, and then you're entering the realm of mecha.

Every battle short of the final one is on earth, so getting tubes or cables damaged isn't going to be critical (unless it's the power to the flight suit while in the air). Only the mars battle requires a full environment suit, so maybe a super suit for that battle could be used.

I hesitate to tell Deimos over and over to change his design, seeing as how I'm not submitting pictures of my own. :D
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Guest drewid
I think you've got it. D and I have been discussing things like armoured cables with little access panels and other bits similar.

You're right about the lumbering hulk. Like Troy and his anti-bear armour. He might be able to stand having a 300lb log dropped on him, or being pushed through a wall by a bulldozer, but once he falls over he aint gettin up again.
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Here's a helmet sketch, showing options for respirator and goggle area. A/V transmitter like that used in Aliens, ties into how you can see the battlefield from the home base.
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Here's a front shot with some cables. The stomach plates and hip plates are articulated for movement. This is loosely based off the armor I use for the SCA. The cables could feed from the backpack into the sides of the torso to pump coolant or whatever. They are visible but not as vulnerable that way.
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Deimos -

I see where your coming from on this, and if its a coding issue I completey agree that getting it right is more important than making it look pretty. All that I'm asking, is that if we could make this a post-v1.0 idea, that we leave a possibility of implementing it that doesnt involve writing new code.

It doesnt look like that is a possibility, so I'll just have to let it go... -_- .

In regard to all these desings were seeing, I think it might be a useful idea to start with the personal armor design and then use that as a premise for the armors researched after that. This way, same as with the sound department, there is a continuous theme that screams "Xenocide" everytime you see the design.

Gold
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Yeah, I noticed that after doing it too. So long as the armor isn't white...

As to the theme, I think the sketch done already for the personal armor, would work well. Maybe a little thinner/less bulky to represent the lower armor rating, or less coverage at the joints. If they all have similar textures the designs Drewid and Deimos have done will tie together better. But the power suit/flying suit will be made from alien alloy, right? So you'd have a variation of the shiny metal there. It wouldn't be on everything, just the main plates IMO. Then the visible joints would be perhaps a darker material to make the shine stand out.
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Here's another helm design. Lines would run into a slightly raised back panel of some sort I guess.
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Guest drewid
I like that. i'll stick that (or something similar) on the personal armour, and we can use the helmet I already had with a kevlar vest for the first combat clothing. Deimos threw a couple of ideas at me earlier, and I'd like to use those as well.
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[quote name='GreatGold' date='May 23 2003, 05:12 PM']Deimos -

I see where your coming from on this, and if its a coding issue I completey agree that getting it right is more important than making it look pretty.  All that I'm asking, is that if we could make this a post-v1.0 idea, that we leave a possibility of implementing it that doesnt involve writing new code. 

It doesnt look like that is a possibility, so I'll just have to let it go... -_- . 

In regard to all these desings were seeing, I think it might be a useful idea to start with the personal armor design and then use that as a premise for the armors researched after that.  This way, same as with the sound department, there is a continuous theme that screams "Xenocide" everytime you see the design.

Gold[/quote]
Sorry Greatgold. I didn't mean we'd drop it altogether. Definitely consider it as a +v1.0 thing. :D


There's been a lot of talk recently about tieing in wishlisty stuff into v1.0. We've got to draw the line somewhere unfortunately and though I too want all kinds of cool stuff included in the game (especially the ability to skin models and put in new models for the mod community) we have to draw a line and say this is as far as we're going with v1.0. Everyone gets carried away with what we could put into v1.0 and as I've said I'm just as bad as everyone else, just remember that every feature or graphic has to be coded or modelled or drawn by someone and our resources are limited. I don't want to upset anyone with it but in the timeframe we've got we can only spend so much time working on any particular area.

As for the continuity in the designs, Drewid's personal armour was an inspiration for the power armour. There are elements of his design in the power armour. I agree that there should be some degree of uniformity throughout the range of armour, but we do want each type of armour unique enough for the player to instantly recognise each type as a visual guide to what armour they're wearing. With that in mind I'm currently designing a 'Flight suit' which will be significantly different to the power armour. Not like the original where the only difference between the two was a backpack and control panel on the front ;)

Bruenor, you must have been reading my mind as the buldges are exactly what I had in mind as you'll see in the latest revision. Drewid and I have been bouncing the design back and forward and came up with what you see below.


What's changed is that the armour is now in three pieces which allows for more manouverability, the cables have been placed behind a partially covered plate which still allows for cooling and gives the impression of more plating. We did consider having the pipes coming out of both the sides under the armour but felt that the asymmetric design looked better. Drewid pulled the faceplate visors together which results in a meaner 'don't mess with us' look to it.
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I'll post the flight suit as soon as I've finished it. It's going through some tweaks and I'm not in the right frame of mind today to finish them. Biorythms are in a double cautionary period, not that you guys needed to know that :)

For now here's how the two classes of armour look put together.
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At first I was curious about the bulges in the thighs of the power armor, but seeing the two next to each other it slapped me in the head, it's the storage spots for the legs. Duh. I like that design a lot, the texture over the cable looks very nice too. Sort of a spider silk/kevlar mesh look to it for protection.

I was thinking about the flight suit and how it would represent the ability to maneuver. I was looking at gundam designs, but everything is a bit too flashy in that realm. But I thought it would look good to have something reminiscent of that in the flight suit. Mostly a glorified backpack, but maybe some small flares on the arms and legs, miniature control surfaces I guess. Might make it look too much like a transformer though! ^_^
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I haven't really looked at Gundam for a long time, but I like the idea of control jets on the legs. Here is what I've got currently. The armour looks slightly heavier than the power armour and has two modes flight and walk.

In flight mode I've got a small hydraulic motor that locks a pin in the knee joint which basically makes the leg one unit. Then arond the feet area there will be some of the faceted control surfaces like on the ufo's to give directional control. Meaning the wearer of the suit controls balance and minor movement by shifting his/her weight and legs.

There'll also be smaller control surfaces on the elbows, but they'll be more for minute control. The main control surfaces are as suggested covering the lower back up to shoulder area. Above this will be the PLLS (Primary Life Support System). On the chest of the armour will be an integrated control unit that controls the gross movements of the armour and switches on and off the anti-grav generators. There'll be a touch panel on the left and right forearms facing in toward the body. These will control things like forward motion and height and give feedback data on the suit's systems. Why both arms? Well simply that the wearer can choose which is their dominant hand and use the other to hold whatever weapon they're using. That leaves the other hand free to operate the controls.

The armour again will be form fitting in a similar way to the power armour. Entry/exit will be through the sealable 'blue' ring around the waist.

However I'm thinking for the flight suit that the images should be fed directly to the interior of the helm either by means of stereoscopic goggles or better still direct retinal/neural interface. The wearer will literally see and feel what the armour feels. We could go the whole hog with the flight armour and include the 'chameleon skin' LEP matrix over the top of the armour so the armour reacts to the wearer's emotional state. In it's neutral form the armour would sustain whatever camoflage pattern stored in it's memory but when the wearer is injured, scared or has gone beserk it changes colour to reflect the wearers extreme of mood.

Maybe a dark red for Beserk, yellow for panicing, Bright red for injured and so on.

When the armour is damaged the area affected would turn black or dark grey to represent the area hit. I don't know how this would translate up in game as the detail might be too small to notice, but the gross colour changes would be an excellent visual guide to the operative's state of mind. We could on the equip screen have a choice of camo schemes or even have the user choose the default colour for the armour. That way we could keep Greatgolds wish for modabilty in the game.
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Surfaces are good idea
two surfaces on boots will be resposnible for moving up and down
two surfaces on armour's sides one for each shoulder will be responsible for flying left/right
and one surface on back responsible for moving forward and backward
Here is the "theory"
As everyone knows Earth generates magnetic field. And everything charged enough with electrical charge will be moving in this field. So combining together alien alloys and elerium(because thay are "alien" thay can be source of GREAT power :devillaugh: and there is no need to explain why) we get a very durable material which can endure the electrical energy generated by elerium. As a result the surfacecs will be charged with electrical charge. The consequence of interacting of charged surface with earth's magnetic field will be levitating soldier :).
The whole thing can be controled via soldiers voice :) or implant
I don't know if i used a proper phisics terminology but i hope you can understand about what i was talking:D. I hope there is a phisicist on forum ;)
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I like it. However I saw a paper a year or so ago explaining that gravity is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a really really low part of it.
Bob Lazaar (supposed to have worked on UFO's at area 51) said that Ufo's could travel long distances instantaneously by folding space. Think of two opposite corners of a piece of paper and folding the paper to bring them together the ufo hops the macro distance between the two and then open up the paper flat again the Ufo has traveled the distance of the paper without having moved in time or space. Now think of the piece of paper as a sheet of rubber and the ufo stretches and squeezes the rubber sheet and moves the macro distance between the two an the rubber snaps back into place. Thats the theory of how UFo's travel interstellar distances.

Now to how they work in our atmosphere. There is basically what Lazaar says is three large tesla coils that work in unison to alter the electromagentic spectrum so that the ufo can hover and perform the amazing maneuvers the'yve been seen doing. Basically these coils bend our planet's natural gravity waves to give the ufo propulsion. Which also give the classic ufo sighting 'wobble' that's been reported many times.

To control the 'tesla coils' and give enough power to generate the gravity bends the coils need a huge amount of power, something that Lazaar was never able to replicate. That's where our ufo lore steps in and gives us Elerium 115.
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Guest drewid
Perhaps they could control it with their feet. They wont be doing anything else. or maybe it works like a segway thing.
Lean forwards goes forwards, backwards to stop or backwards.
lean sideways to go sideways. you can only lean so far then the gyros in the suit stop you falling over and diving into the ground.

up and down ------hmmmm Toes up to go up toes down to go down.

Both hands free for killing bugs!!

(Anyone every played Paranoia? I once got a set of thought controlled boots, but "The Computer" got the control words wrong, so I suddenly found myself flying along backwards and upside down and not knowing how to stop. Needless to say that clone didn't last very long - bridge in the back of the head.)
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I had same idea as Drewid, beat me to the punch with segway design. Internal gyroscope senses body motion, since you have legs locked for thrust support, have the sensors in the waist area. You bend your torso the direction you want to go, and power is redirected to move you.

I agree with the magnetic field manipulation for anti-gravity type flight. I've met a (strange) theoretical physicist who has designed a device that runs off of a 9 volt battery, converts the voltage to 50K+, and is able to recharge the battery in such a way the it lasts quite a while. He has (supposedly) used the excess voltage to generate powerful magnetic fields to reduce the effect of gravity on objects. The item was on a scale, and when the device was activated, the weight dropped to near nothing. Almost burnt his house down in the process, but another (weird) person saw the results and believed it. For some reason though, he's never shown anyone else how it worked. He's a physics professor here in Memphis, so he's at least somewhat legitimate. So using an elerium power source, these inversed magnetic gravity wells could be generated at various points on the suit to allow silent flight.
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deimos: remeber what happens when you press the brakes in car? your body "flies" forward. Now imagine that you are driving car with speed around 3000km/s and press the brakes ;). I mean that if these tesla coils give UFO ability to achive such great speeds and ability to instant change of direcction there must be some device that works like seat belts and also reduces the G effect. Anyway these post is not about UFOs but flying suits :) and we don't want soldiers to fly with such high speeds ;)

drewid: hehehe I like it :)
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True. High G moves would have newtons' third law tested to the limit, however I'd imagine there would be some kind of gel like substance to slow the accelerations forces. Heinlen mentions it briefly in Job: A comedy of Justice.

I'd envision something similar for the inside of the the flight armour otherwise it'd chafe a bit, constantly being jostled around. :)
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