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Outcast111 — .HW. Raid On Manaan Carrier
Published: 2011-05-14 21:34:19 +0000 UTC; Views: 1785; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 19
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This will be the last Homeworld fan art I'll post for the time being... this time I wanted to focus more on the damage effects on the carrier instead of ship positioning and lightning...Oh! And YES, that carrier is HUGE. because I always thought that carriers (and all super-capitals by that matter) were not as big as they should be: I mean those thing s are supposed to carry 40 fighters and 20 corvettes while having frigate build capabilities, it needs to be big!
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Comments: 10
Ah, this is great! And I agree with your assessment of Homeworld's scale- It's usually pretty good about it, but things are never as far apart or as big as they might need to be... Well, except for strike craft, which might be -too- big.
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Well, that was just an opinion I had... But in some cases they could have stayed with some larger scales (Like the carriers). I actually don't think the fighters are so out of scale, if you think about it: our current spaceships (Endeavor and Atlantis are the ones that pop to my head right now...) need ALL that equipment. Now imagine that. plus weapons and tracking systems and all that... see?
But a opinion is an opinion.
Thanks anyway!
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I guess it has
partly to do with balancing issues (both concerning singleplayer and multiplayer),
partly with resource issues (Homeworld is quite beautiful - was even more beautiful compared to its competition at the time - and almost always has a lot of units on the screen, each with a lot of particle effects attached to them when engaging in batlle) and
partly because SciFi Writers Have No Sense of Scale . I remember there being heavy debate about the size of units from HW1/HWC to HW2 and some concept art varies ship sizes a lot, too.
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i think it might have to do with not using too many polygons on the models, to not strain the graphics cards of the time, alongside taking more work to create proper textures, since if you look closely the ships dont have many polygons, dont know about the sequel though
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Well, I just did it because it was annoying... But then again, I probably shouldn't have, since you can see the "squares" of the texture on the carrier (someone should mod HW to high-def.
That text is pretty interesting (I'm attempting to write sci-fi too; so far failing... T_T) And Yes, I had been aware of many writers/artists not really taking real scale into account...
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TV Tropes is a massive asset for any ambitioned writer. Its main page and a few links from the categories and indices should give you a good gist of what the site is about. Our search for an entry called "Useful Notes" if you want some more "direct" info.
Are you writing Low Tech or High Tech SciFi? If you're not familiar with the terms, Low Tech is the more down-to-earth Twenty Minutes Into The Future (that's a trope, too) kind of writing and High Tech is colorful lazors and English-speaking aliens and shields everywhere.
I came to writing through a Homeworld forum RPG myself, tho I kept my own ideas to myself I learned a lot from reading the story thread and the "meta thread" where stuff was roughly lined out before it happened so nobody could screw up everything just like that.
I haven't written SciFi in a while, tho I'm brainstorming a little bit right now (guess how I found your initial comment!) and doing some research on viable Low Tech technology, my three main interests currently being Cloak/Optical Camouflage, Gauß-/Coil-/Railguns and human-shaped combat robots (and thus, by extension, cybernetics).
That's what I currently have problems with (tho it's a fun challenge actually), how about you? Something SciFi-specific or more writing in general?
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I'm not sure where I stand in the Low/High scale, though I think I lean towards Low because I'm trying to realistic (Definitely not Star Wars! Lightsabers, Force, Teleports, Starships standing 20 meters from one another...)
However, although I'm trying to keep it real, I do include some stuff for the sake of coolness. As an example: There's no sound or diffuse lighting or explosions in it, but there are aliens species, Hypothetical Jump-drives (Notice the "Jump" instead of "Hyper"...) and the fact that Humans forsake their current governments for a Collective of clans, each clan with different ruling styles (Including people who built a computer to rule them...)
So I'm in the middle ground...
As to RPG, I really never tried it before, though I will through witch, although not having any sci-fi stuff, could teach me something about co-writing. I'll give it a run...
I'm more into writing than visual, though the idea of a comic seduces me, but I do kneed to draw what I mean because I want people to know what I mean...Or to give myself some ground of work. For example, I didn't thought about having modular ships until I made a drawing of the Eropan Lancer.
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I'm actually thinking about a scenario without any FTL drives at all, hyperjump or otherwise, but with advanced AI instead. Basically people on an earth-like planet control robots on neighboring planet that inhabit them instead of humans. Saves terraforming costs, but due to the lag controlling your robot avatar is rather like an RTS. Having a human brain make complex decisions combined with AI restrictions like "don't build/import weapons" make for actually functioning colonies.
And colonizing another planet basically means you get a huuuge mobile space station that can sustain itself with its own ecosystem for multiple generations until the destiny is reached. Still trying to figure out how to keep people - and their children - motivated for that long tho.
Does your Hypothetical Jump work differently from warp drives and hyperjumps or is it just an alias (like Zombies/Undead/Infected)? What's the reason/benefit of the clan structure? Are your aliens the "typical aliens" that speak English, can survive in Earth climate and have a humanoid shape and a human level of intelligence?
By the way, what do you think is more likely in the future:
1. No humanoid robots at all (spider-tanks are much more likely to happen than giant humanoid mechs for example),
2. "Ghost in the Shell"-like robots that become so close to humans the line is blurred ("Japan's approach"),
3. robots that are generally human looking, but with certain deliberate design decisions that make it obvious it's still a machine (hollow voice, mechanical parts showing, maybe not even a human face, "America's approach")
4. Both kinds, and likely both uncannily creepy in their own ways.
What exactly do you understand under "modular ships"? I mean, every piece of complex machinery can be broken down to several parts.
If you're thinking about mixing writing and drawing, before deciding on making a comment, think about the proportions of writing and drawings. The worst comics are those that don't make use of the visuals and are pretty much just people talking and performing simple actions you could've done with writing just as well.
If you'd like to write a lot and only insert images when necessary - for example, so you don't have to use a full page just describing a single ship - think about doing a visual novel. It's basically a little "game" where every click makes a new line of text appear and the background can display a piece of the situation - characters, backgrounds, etc - which supports the narrative, but doesn't steal the text's spotlight. I think you could even do something like this in Flash, if you find the idea attractive. You can also use Flash to make a comic in a similar way, dA should have the tutorials you need if you're interested.
The advantage of converting it all into Flash or a program is that your reader doesn't know when the end is coming by looking at how many pages are left, which can sometimes rob the story of tension. Thumbnails of comics can also sometimes reveal the twist of the last panel before you even start reading it.
The duality of writing and illustrating can be pretty awesome - I went from a random assassin to this wall of text just by keep making visual design choices that gave me ideas for the narrative and vice-versa. One thing just keeps giving me ideas for the other one until I have force myself to stop, haha.
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Wow! That's a huge comment...!
Your idea is really interesting and much more likely than many sci-fi stuff out there...yeah, that's a really hard part to figure out because human behavior is nearly unpredictable...
Well, It's called a jump-drive because the equipped ship doesn't travel, it's just picked up from one spot and put in another. I already wrote a deviation where I explain this system.
Well, that depends on what the goals for robotics are. I mean, why do humans build machines? To assist or to socialize? I believe that the real interest of advanced robotics will be to perform jobs too risky for humans (Mining, High-Construction, etc...). However, I bet there's gonna be always someone reaching to humanize robotics. In my opinion, these people didn't think things through: People don't want to have conversations or socialize with a machine, programmed from the start to be friendly no matter how much crap you do/say to them, it just wouldn't be any fun; PLUS,if I where to walk up to one of these things, I'm not sure I would be able to resist shooting it with a g-22 in the head. (But officer, there's nothing in the law that says I can't shoot a machine!
So probably 4, though most people, including me, would prefer 3.
Well, I said the idea of a comic was seductive, but that's not for anytime soon...I'm not that good yet...And thanks for the tip!
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Yeah, I break comment limits on dA on a daily basis. 
I wouldn't say my version is very likely considering I can't predict the randomness that constantly gives birth to all the great inventions around the world. I think by the time we'd be equipped for space travel we'll have completely different options SciFi hasn't even explored yet. It's been like that forever, just look at how people in the 60ies imagined our current time.
Well, the "jumping" part in hyperjump usually means you jump into a level of hyperdimension in which space is warped in such a way that distances become shorter. If you run loops in school you'll notice the shortest way is the one closest to the center. Hyperjumps basically let you change to tracks closer to the center (and back to normality).
Oh, there are plenty of people that socialize with programs designed to be friendly to you no matter what, that's the whole reason why the Dating Simulation genre hasn't died out yet. The only problem is that current AI isn't advanced enough to trick people into believing they're human, a gap that can be closed in the future.
In Europe our thinking and technology is mainly branded by the USA due to our good connections, it's very different in Russia, South America and notably Asia, focus Japan.
I actually think human-shaped robots will only be of the "socializing" kind. Different tasks could be better solved by robots that don't look like humans and don't have a human level of intelligence, be it resource mining or warfare. Like I said, spider-tanks. So if we see robots emulating humans, I think it'll be "social robots" only, other tasks just wouldn't need all that and would have more specialized hard- and software.
In fact I think future warfare between superpowers (imma predicting China/Allies unless China first gets us through its economy - either way it's on a very good way of becoming way stronger than America in many areas) will be much "cleaner" once AI is advanced enough to enter the battlefield instead of soldiers, maybe with some WiFi backup for strategic planning. Warfare with lesser developed countries on the other hand...
Gonna read your jump technique deviation now~
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