Sigma-6

At the moment, I'm envisioning this as a large piece of movable scenery more than as anything for use as a focal point in missions.

Here's a vehicle I'm working on (one of several: pickups, cars, almost all civilian vehicles,) but I have a problem: I've been out of the loop, and I can only assume that some people have managed to apply procedural textures to their addons, If anyone knows how, could they explain the basics of getting a .p3d to point to an .rvmat file? The maps for this truck are complete. . . I just don't know how to apply them! EDIT: Problem solved!

Well, this truck does have a heavy-duty trailer hitch on the back, just like the military trucks . . . it would require someone to write a really good trailer script, I think. I know absolutely nothing about that stuff though.

Thanks a lot. . . I was messing around in the forums (looking places I don't normally look, etc) and I found what you've posted here, and got my 240GD for DDAM all mapped up. It looks great. Next comes the Mack R model. . . which I'm going to still have to rig and config, but I'm not expecting this to be a super-addon, so it should be ready soon. The real puzzling stuff (which I figured out ) was how to make an SMDI specular map out of my grayscale ones. FYI, grab the grayscale one, put it in a layer on top of a layer of just magenta, and then set the top layer to 'screen'. Works perfectly. The only other trick was cranking the NVIDIA normal map plugin way up to get some really visible details. Looks good so far.

Of course, but that's not the problem. The problem is getting the addon to correctly point to an .rvmat material file so it will use my procedural textures, which, as I said, are complete.

Of course. . . What's the max image size? I'll reduce it.

-DELETED- (by me. . . not a moderator)

By the way, just about every attack sub (SSN/SSK) is able to fire SLCMs. It used to be that they were adapted to fire horizontally from the torpedo tubes, but the latest versions, particularly western types (688i, Seawolf, Virginia, etc) have horizontal tubes. The SSGN (Oscar class, etc), a type designed to specifically fire cruise missiles, is an eastern phenomenon, though current eastern SSNs and SSKs do carry SLCMs. Also, attack subs ('hunter/killers' aren't exclusively designed to hunt subs. In fact, they descend from a lineage that was actually unable to engage other submarines. Nowadays, that's only part of the role of an attack sub. Long range strike is most certainly a major modern tasking, as well as the destruction of surface targets (military and civil) which has always been the primary role of the submarine. The SSBN or 'boomer' (like this Typhoon) is an entirely different animal.

That's probably because it is the sub from Hunt for Red October.

I don't think anyone's gone out of character. Did you notice the clever fellow who pointed out that anyone can post a comment using the name 'William Porter'? It's true. Anyone can post using that name. . . Even me.

The BBC referred to Wikipedia as the best source of information in history. Wikipedia articles, whatever else their flaws, are ceaselessly and ruthlessly peer-reviewed. If you're worried about the article's veracity, usually the talk page attached to it will answer your concerns. Personally, I'd be more worried about the relative accuracy of traditional encyclopedias.

Hehe. . . Well, frankly, I have nothing to do with the shipping expenses, since I don't ship it, but you can view the total costs before you purchase on the site. . .

For anyone who is interested, I've finished my first novel, and before soliciting it, I'm attempting to sell it on Lulu.com as a way of gauging potential response. . . It's a military thriller about a counterinsurgency operator (in a future cyberpunkesque North America) who suffers, in the course of his duties, something of an attack of conscience regarding the conduct of a global war. He is forced to confront the possibility that his only reasonable course of action might be high treason. It's got Special Forces action (including a submarine insertion), full-scale armies clashing, air and land battles, and - of course - the obligatory political intrigue. The tech is current to future, including caseless weapons, metalstorm tech, psyops, and some other weird stuff that I won't wreck in a synopsis. If you're interested, feel free to check it out, and let me know what you think. The Well of Fortitude (link)

Thanks, Hellfish. Yeah, Lulu is pretty small and obscure; I'd personally only heard of them through a friend when I went to publish this.

This is the first novel I've ever released (though not the first I've written. . .) and so no, I've never published on Lulu before. It seems like any other online market; if you can promote, you could probably bypass the publishing industry, and I have a friend who seems to have done just that there. . . As for me, sales are what I might expect, given that I know pretty much no-one personally who likes, on principle, the type of book I've written -- that and the fact that it's only been available for a week -- which is to say, comparatively good. There are books up there that have been up for a year or more with no sales at all. . . Of course, not to mince words, most of what is on Lulu is, like any other online marketplace, complete crap. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there is certain stuff that is extremely good, usually (but not always) in the top sellers list.

There are, by the way, Flashpoint Addons that go with the book. I haven't released them yet, but some 3d renders of the caseless weapons from the book; the models in the addons, can be seen on my website at: Well of Fortitude Gallery from wilrichardson.com If anyone would like to see them released, or would like to see a more in-depth rundown, I'm game. There are three weapons, and their tech is based on the HK G11 and O'Dwyer's .metalstorm. They're caseless with prepackaged high-capacity magazines, and the rifles (like the G11) have a quick 3 round burst mode that puts all three in the same spot. I've also taken the liberty of postulating a magnetic recoil reduction system, as well as a number of other bits of high-tech gagetry.

Well, we actually do have a wide selection of new material that's unreleased. Troops, trucks (LSVW and MLVW, as well as a redone Iltis that includes a recce version with a C6 in the passenger seat), but I'm not sure when/if that stuff is going to make it out into OFP. I use it all the time, personally. . .

If it's just the US Tanks pack you're wondering about, INQ's are based on my model. Â If you want an update of my pack, that's it, and IMO, it's fantastic. As for the East ones, RHS is the place to look.

I'm not sure what you're asking. a model in 3ds format can be imported into pretty much any game. It can be used in 2d or 3d advertisement, sold to the consumer market to private enthusiasts or people on contracts who need material to fill out work on short deadlines. That's what any freelance modeller does with their work, even stuff from contracts that don't bind them to exclusivity. There are any number of buyers for that sort of work.

What about Coalescent's exclusive rights to the North American market? Does this mean that BBN got around that by presenting BIS with a fait accompli, or am I reading this incorrectly? If so, any other company could potentially violate what I understood to be a binding agreement between BIS and Coalescent preventing any other company from licensing or pursuing a license to the engine in North America. Clarification? My company was deterred from pursuing a license with BIS, by Coalescent, even after being approached by the Canadian Department of National Defense, on these grounds (Coalescent's exclusive license to the engine in the North American market) .

That would be a pretty odd claim to make. If I made a model, and imported it into O2 and used it as an OFP addon, I'd lose my right to sell it. That's not defensible. The license agreement could not be read that way.

True enough (of the originals), though now the only components that are original BWmod are the interiors. Sorry to interrupt your discussion. .

O2's difficulty is all in the setup. (It demands a root, so 'subst' is pretty useful there, of course, throw DOS commands at some people and they have a conniption fit)That's, of course, because it's a proprietary dev tool and not a commercial product like lightwave. I maintain in any case that there's no comparison when you're trying to develop specifically these type of low-poly models. Sorry, never seen that before. . .

O2 is probably the (I kid you not) easiest, most intuitive, and streamlined low-poly modelling tool on the planet. If you think O2 is quirky, you should try Maya or MAX. . . What you're seeing there is normal for game rendering, you're modelling with quads (one face for four vertices), and if a quad is bent, then at certain angles it will disappear (because the engine can't render a curved surface. OFP is good to let you use quads instead of only tris, but you have to be careful only to use quads on perfectly flat surfaces, every other face should have only three points. As for the Northstar stuff, yeah, that's a Canadian Rifleman in the background, and he's standing beside an LSVW. They will be released; the new Iltis with the topless and armed recce versions, the LS, the new MLVW and a bunch of other stuff. I don't know when though. We are (As Blink Dog and Powerslide will attest) always looking for *dedicated*, skilled, self-starting staff (configgers, scripters, animators, mission designers) and obviously the stuff will come out sooner if we have more people working. . .

I'm voting for the Starship Enterprise.