paint

[medic-]

can the game be modeled to allow a player to
custom paint his or her plane?

this would allow a great feature. much like
the red baron or nose art style of nostalgia.
medics.

[Downtown]

How about a little utility where you could paste in historical nose art, Pin-Ups Painted on the side of Bombers. Aircraft Camoflage paint schemes, Etc. Before you took off?

I think B-17 Flying Fortress had a thing where you could choose the name of your aircraft, and pick the Pin-UP on the side of your aircraft.  Could this option somehow be added to AH?

Just another idear

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG

[miko2d]

 Let's see... You cannot see the noseart on your plane while you are in it!
 Of all the useless features requested from HTC this must be the most useless.

  How many people would spend time downloading megabytes of unknown quality bitmaps for all your planes just to see it if you happen to fly by?
 I am not going to notice the noseart of your plane if I am fighting you, let alone download the crap.
 The only people who would be able to see it are your wingman on the flight to the destination. And only if they care to download the bitmap for your particular plane in advance.

 And because of that you want HCT to programm that stuff and use precious bandwidth to transfer that information to everybody?
 Get a grip.
 If your squaddies want to see the noseart of your plane, post it on your squad website, like our squadron did (http://416rcaf.org/).
 Paint the nose art on the side of your monitor. Build the whole cockpit if you want. Or just pretend the noseart is there... You cannot see it, so what is the difference.

Respectfully,
miko--

[Quasar]

Hi. Think about 4 stripes in the rudder of every plane. With 8 colors available for each strip, there would be 65536 combinations!
When you create a squadron, you choose the 4 colors that will be displayed in the aircrafts of your squadron.
It's not that hard to code, but sure it's not a top priority.
[]'s

[Sascha JG 77]

I m repeating myself:

"Would it be technically possible to put a player's handle (or the first couple of letters or initials) on his/her plane for all other players to see?                           If a player would choose to reveal his handle to others, the FE would simply replace the standard unit markings of the AC in                             question with the callsign."

That doesn t seem too hard.

Sascha

[hitech]

How much frame rate is it worth to ya Sascha ?

I always luv how non programers just luv to add to there idea's somthing of the sort "that dosnt seem to hard" when the way it works is once you know how to do it it's always easy, if you dont know how to do it it's hard. The rest is just a balance between the time in a day and the top item on the list.

Anyway suscha ive been considering doing this for a while. Dont look for it any time soon, There just isnt enof gain for the time spent doing it at this stage of AH development.

HiTech

[Sascha JG 77]

just being curious here HT, as you pointed out: I m not a programmer  

Would ve been cool though..

Sascha

[hitech]

Thx for the sugestion Sascha keep the idea's comming.

HiTech

[Downtown]

Hitech, could it be done only at the Front end.

Miko is kinda right that alot of people aren't looking, and don't care.

But On my Gun Camera/Flight Data Recorder movies that I make and keep.  I would like to see it.

And at 600 mph closing speed, who is gonna have time to read the other guys handle off his fuselage?

If you set it up so only the front end sees them.  And only used it for GC/FDR Playback and Screenshots, it shouldn't affect FPS and Data Transfer over the internet.

I mean, I'm the one who cares the most about how my ride looks.  And If I want everyone else to know, I take a screen shot and post it on my webpage, so everyone who shot me down know what my plane looked like in my mind while they were shooting me down?

Your right its not a high priority, but it would be nice.

Did you see the application in Flying Fortress #1, with the Pinups and Etc.

Also the camoflage thing would be good for Theatres.  Dessert Camo for North Africa.  OD Green for Army Planes.  Gray and Green for the Brits, Etc.

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG

[Downtown]

Punting, to get a response on the FE only thing?

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG

[indian]

What Hitech should have said and probably will in time is to get all these pictures and different color scemes on every computer we will have to download all of them everytime some one changes his color or id. Do you have any idea how much disk space this will take and if you want the server to handle all this  how much bandwidth do you think this will take, Im not a programmer but have some programming background from way back and I know this will really slow the game down. To have a plane editor for your own use would be fine something like the SAC utility from AWIII that way we can all make plane skins and post them for all to use.

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon

http://www.geocities.com/~tltoon

[Windle]

I liked Jedi's idea (I think it was Jedi's) about Aces High offering each plane type in 2 or more different schemes. So when you went to the 'choose a plane' menu you would select 'fighter' / 'F4U-1D' / then 'scheme'. This describes the WB selection boxes of course but you get the idea. Just add a small sub menu for each plane type. The F4U for example would have a US Navy 'tri-color' skin, a US Navy 'deep sea blue' skin, a 'Royal Fleet Air Arm' skin, and an 'RNZAF' skin. This finite number of skins would be standard HTC creations and offered with the basic download. There would be no player created skins (although players could certainly play a part in helping HTC choose schemes). This would allow players to have a semi-personalized aircraft, or at least one with winterized or desert camo to match particular terrains. Squad nights could be enhanced by choosing one of the less popular schemes for the squad in order to offer quicker identification of one another.

This is a much more realistic approach than the idea of player generated 'skins'. It's easy on the megabytes and still offers players some degree of personalization.

As much as I loved the F4U-1D scheme in WB's, making 2 or 3 more schemes available for the plane would have given it MUCH more of a character factor. Also when you see a 'desert camo' Bf-109 in WB you know what type it is and all its secrets. During the war pilots didn't have such luxuries. Offering 2 or more schemes would add to the 'fog of war' in a very interesting way. I definately think it would go a long way in adding more diversity to the game.

So HiTech, does this sound a little more reasonable from a programmers POV?

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Windle
*Future Aces High VF-17 'Jolly Rogers' squadron 8X

[Spof]

Nose/tail art .... are you going to notice it when you're dogfighting? Of course not but I don't think that's why people want it. Since I can't speak for them, I'll tell you why it interests me.

I'm in a squad. There's no way you can tell that in Sim Brand X unless you keep an eye on the text buffer and see "kill of xxxxxx awarded to Spof of the 900th Bloody Jaguars" (watch carefully, it's a rare occurrence, hehe). One the other hand, wouldn't it be cool in AH for an enema to see a group of redtailed, bluenosed 51s and think "Oh toejam, that's the 900th! Let me quickly hide in the ack and hope for the best!" (or something to that effect)?

In my squad, we often take screenshots of us in formation or attacking bases/CVs. It would be awesome to see those pics (guncam!!) with us in our squad colors and would be a great recruitment tool as well.

Couldn't this be implemented mainly on the client side in the form of an optional art download? The server would spit out what the plane's supposed to look like to the client (51d1, 51d2, etc) with the default 51 with standard art displayed if the client hasn't dl'd the art pack? While this would increase the dl of art packs (optional), wouldn't the bandwidth req be low/non-existent?

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Chris -Spof- Singleton
  spof@dogfighter.com  
Spof's News @ Dogfighter
 www.dogfighter.com

[hitech]

In princple im for the idea of squad markings. Problem is when i do the math of both download size and texture memory limtions things start getting ugly.
Things i can say that wont happen are fully customizable plane skins for squads or indeviduals.
What i might (REPEAT MIGHT)consider is a 32x32 tail or nose marking or the ability to change plane skins on your front end only.But do you want the ability for people to make neon type skins so they can see other people's planes better? Or make pieces of there plane invisble?

Hitech

[eagl]

HT,

How about something "simple" like color bands on aft fuse and wings?  Kinda like D-Day stripes, but customizable.  Allow the player to pick from a limited palette of colors you define (keep bitcount down) for oh, maybe 4 stripes.  Make this an option to turn on or off for your own plane so player can be "anonymous" or not.  Paint those stripes where allied invasion stripes went.
Make the colors bright enough to be seen inside a couple of hundred yards if they're turned on, otherwise the plane's normal skin shows.  Maybe allow plane nose/spinner/rudder to be colored too?

Or not    Payoff vs. effort involved might not be high enough.


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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!