Wing Commander Pixel Art-y Unity Remake

[Howard Day]

Remakin Wing Commander 1 in 640x400 in Unity3d! Why? Cause I think it looks cool. Ship re-designs inspired by Arne - https://androidarts.com/spaceships/WC.htm And a running, AI-driven demo here: http://www.hedfiles.net/WCR_GL/index.html So far I just have the one cockpit, unfinished, and two fighters. I plan on replicating most of the ships from WC1 with a very few additions.

Enjoy!

[Ozego]

Looks amazing. What is your process like? I can tell that the ships are put together using mulitple billboards/imposters but I can't grok how it was made. Could you show your sprite sheet?

[Howard Day]

There's actually 17 sprite sheet per ship, for a total of 544 sprites each. Here's a couple!


Basically each sheet holds a vertical angle of a complete horizontal rotation. Then some fancy code is used to figure out the rotation of the sprite and what angle the billboard needs to be at. It was fun to figure out - and it was so long ago, I don't really remember the math involved.

[Howard Day]

Okay - medium update - I've added some animation to the player's legs - it always bugged me that they we static with everything else going on. now they're controlling yaw - I miiight change that to spin? Maybe. I've fixed the eject light and core damage warning lights - Eject will light up with 30% core damage - but only if your shields are < 50%. I've updated the explosions to inherit the ship's velocity when they die, also updated the projectile impacts to spawn debris when you start chewing through armor.  The plan is to have specific Kilrathi/Terran armor and hull chips - but for now it's just spawning a bunch of rings like Sonic getting shot in the ass.  Fuel's been coded and hooked up - a Hornet has the same fuel capacity as a F-14. 2400gals. Seemed a good starting point. In the background, but not quite live- I've been working on camera switching for right/left/back/ chase cam views - they look awesome - but I need to mess with the art-shifing logic a bit to make the m move around right when you turn.
Enjoy!

http://www.hedfiles.net/WCR_GL/index.html

[pistachio]

Without being around for WC1, you've nailed a hand pixeled/index painted vibe. Looks like your last projects were leading into this. And always great to see tributes to Arne's in-depth designs. No time right now but I'm def jumping into this demo soon. Bit nostalgic for arcades now...

What was the process for the UI/cockpit? Straight 2D paint from scratch? 90% 3D model? Or (I'm guessing) a 3D base that was painted over?

BTW the latest hyperlink doesn't work, bronze-age PHP forum doesn't handle anything other than plain URL tags.

[Howard Day]

Thanks, pistachio! The UI and cockpit...are renders. No painting. I directly save images from 3DSMax to Unity. I fiured out how to do index painting in max, and I love the poop outta it. Here's a glimpse at a straight from MAX 3D render of the main menu:

[Vinik]

Thanks, pistachio! The UI and cockpit...are renders. No painting.

They are what the what? Not even some manual adjustments on the pixelized result at all?
Frankly I am shocked. I could guess that on the ships, given the tech displayed on the pixel rendering thread, but not on the cockpit/UI, no.

Also, are the ship's sprites rendered with a parallel camera or a perspective one? I guess parallel, and you zoom by simple scaling, disregarding perspective to cut on the number of sprites? Awesome stuff.

[Howard Day]

They're straight renders. I don't touch them up at all. I'm pretty lazy. I just did a pass on doing damaged versions too - these get dynamically masked in based on your ship taking core damage. Again - these are just renders. I'm happy to share the max file for parts of the cockpit, or maybe give a procedural rundown of how it's done? I need to make a new cockpit for a Dralthi and Valtar, so either one would be a good step-by step tutorial!

[eishiya]

Do you plan to do a clean-up pass on these? At a glance they look fantastic, but I fear during prolonged play it'll be much easier to notice the messy bits. But then again, during prolonged play, the hectic gameplay might keep one's eyes from wandering xP

Nitpick: the shattered glass on the fuel monitor and the one above it seem to have their cracks lined up, making them look like one monitor with a frame across it. If that's not the intent, I think offsetting or h-flipping the cracks on the smaller screen would work better. The two small monitors on the left have this same issue, but to a much lesser degree.

[Howard Day]

Vinik: Oh the ships are rendered at a very narrow perspective, not orthographic. I *think* it's something like 7.5deg FOV. Completely orthographic didn't look right in a perspective-rendered scene. I'd likely go that way in an isometric game, tho.
eishiya: I don't plan a clean up pass, actually...I'd actual;ly love a list of the things you see that would otherwise *need* a pass, and to see if I can fix them on the render side! Thanks for the glass crack line up note - I will *definitely fix that.