Excalibur | NX Class

[Mark]

Hi all,

Many thanks for your support at the Indie of the Year competition where as many of you probably know we made it into the top 100! The team are holding their breath with anticipation to see exactly where we end up. The project itself is progressing well and we are now very close to getting the game into a very playable form. Hopefully there will be a lot more to show of that in 2012.

I don't know how many of you now remember/use the NX Mod Pack for Bridge Commander, but it was one of my favourite ships and I remember the work we all did on it very fondly. It's largely for that reason that Luiz made a great model of the NX Class for me to texture (that and a cruel sense of irony).

I've been dying to share this ship since we finished it some months ago, particularly with the BC community who supported us so much the first time round . We have finally posted some pics of it up on Facebook and IndieDB for the festive season and I wanted to share them with you all.

The ship has been done 100% from scratch, unlike the old Bridge Commander ship which was textured with renders of the original CGI ship, and it took around 72 man-hours to complete.

[eclipse74569]

Remarkable

Good to see you again Mark!  NX is looking mighty stunning!  I've cast my vote in as well,  And hope you guys win!

[FarShot]

I vote every chance I get.  Excalibur for teh win!

[086gf]

72 hours total!? Thats incredible. And I checked out the new cloak pics too very nice.

[Tony23310]

Wow! Nice game! It looks interesting from the screenshots you posted and I hope this game to be better than bridge commander.    

Do you have any forum or website?

[Captain Galaxy]

Hi all,

Many thanks for your support at the Indie of the Year competition where as many of you probably know we made it into the top 100! The team are holding their breath with anticipation to see exactly where we end up. The project itself is progressing well and we are now very close to getting the game into a very playable form. Hopefully there will be a lot more to show of that in 2012.

I don't know how many of you now remember/use the NX Mod Pack for Bridge Commander, but it was one of my favourite ships and I remember the work we all did on it very fondly. It's largely for that reason that Luiz made a great model of the NX Class for me to texture (that and a cruel sense of irony).

I've been dying to share this ship since we finished it some months ago, particularly with the BC community who supported us so much the first time round . We have finally posted some pics of it up on Facebook and IndieDB for the festive season and I wanted to share them with you all.

The ship has been done 100% from scratch, unlike the old Bridge Commander ship which was textured with renders of the original CGI ship, and it took around 72 man-hours to complete.

Its good to hear how well Excalibur is progressing and the NX Class was one of my favourite ships as well 

[Jb06]

Do you have any forum or website?

Look on bc centrals links

www.stexcalibur.com

[moed]

Outstanding model.

Really look forward to Excalibur!

[Tony23310]

Mark, are there any other ships except the Akira Class?

[FarShot]

Mark, are there any other ships except the Akira Class?

This shows most of their stuff:  http://www.facebook.com/stexcalibur

[Killallewoks]

Just out of curiosity how rig friendly is this going to be?

[Nebula]

there are no set system requirements as of yet.

[JimmyB76]

questions about Excalibur would be answered quicker and more in detail over at their forums...

[086gf]

Though obviously high end preferred based on everything i've seen.

[Mark]

Sorry, haven't checked back here since Christmas .

Just out of curiosity how rig friendly is this going to be?

It's DirectX 9 up to DirectX 11, so at the very least you will need a SM2 compatible graphics card. After that it is all pretty scalable, we have a lot of texture information available to the engine but the actual amount being held in memory will depend on what's going on on-screen and what your settings are. The meshes are slightly more detailed than Bridge Commander but nothing mental.

We can't be more specific than that until we finish the GFX and get everything optimised.

[majormagna]

I know it's unlikely, but having DX11s Tesselation technology in Excalibur would simply blow my mind...

[moed]

I know it's unlikely, but having DX11s Tesselation technology in Excalibur would simply blow my mind...

Agreed... but unfortunately it would also "blow out" the possibility for those of us that don't have higher-end systems from enjoying the eye candy in the game to its fullest. And with a game like Excalibur, I would want to experience everything it offers to the highest levels.

Ah... if only computer hardware were a lot cheaper across the board.

[Killallewoks]

I always stand by that a strong engine negates the requirments for hardware ten fold, SoaSE is a great example of engine refinemt at the highest levels.

[majormagna]

Agreed... but unfortunately it would also "blow out" the possibility for those of us that don't have higher-end systems from enjoying the eye candy in the game to its fullest. And with a game like Excalibur, I would want to experience everything it offers to the highest levels.

Ah... if only computer hardware were a lot cheaper across the board.

Well the thing is that Tesselation can work off Normal Maps, so people without DX11 cards, or less powerful ones, can simply turn of the Tesselation and still use the Normal mapping on the model.

[Mark]

I know it's unlikely, but having DX11s Tesselation technology in Excalibur would simply blow my mind...

The map needed for it is a part of our texture standard, so even if we do not support it in the engine now we will be able to enable it for all ships further down the line.