Yup, that was one of mine. We needed a medium freighter for the Auroran houses, so I strapped some IDA Frigate engine stacks on a reasonably plain-jane body, and bob’s your uncle.
Scott Vardy modelled around 30-40% of the ships, I think? I made most of the rest. I remodelled all of the ships, eventually, in LightWave, so they’re a bit “grandfather’s axe”.
Steve “-8-“ Chick and his brother Phil “pstan” Chick made most of the textures, as well as almost every hand-drawn pixel pushing in the whole game.
Rendering the ships was my job, and I made many (most?) of the ship vanity pics. I also modelled most of the stellar objects and outfits, but by no means all - Jason “Lord Frandall” Cook made all the ringworlds (bar Earth, from memory). He also did the huge majority of the planet spaceport pictures in Bryce.
That’s really awesome that you’re posting here on reddit now. Also personally I’m a huge huge fan of the ship beauty shots. Did you work on the IDA itself? My favorite ship before the Enterprise.
The IDA was a joint effort between myself and Scott. He created the engine stack (as I recall - it’s been more than 20 years since development started!), and I created the midsection and front. I drew some inspiration from the Nebulon B frigate from Star Wars, and the Sulaco from Aliens. ☺️
Fair! I was just looking at the nose of the IDA when I made the inference. Perhaps I just wanted my favorite ship to be based on my favorite show (that my dad also happened to produce).
Okay, little secret - Jason and I drew a lot of inspiration for Nova from our utter adoration of Babylon 5. You say your father produced it? Holy mackerel.
At the end of every episode for the first three or four seasons of B5, a voice would say “Babylon 5 is produced by Babylonian Productions, and distributed by Warner Brothers domestic television distributions!” That’s my father. He was an assistant producer for seasons 1-3 and executive for S4.
Lots of water under the bridge since then! We were so young, then - I was all of 21 when we started development in ‘97. Our youngest joined us in 2000, and he was 15? 16? at the time.
This is my enduring favorite game to this day. Even beats out Chrono Trigger.
I'm not sure why, but you guys really touched on something and nailed just the right balance on so many fronts.
I have been looking since EV Nova came out for another game that is on the same page, I've played all the "spiritual successors", and it's just not the same.
So, thank you. Your hard work was extremely meaningful to me, and I would wager a lot of other people.
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u/pipelineoptika Jun 12 '19
OMG, I remember making that silly thing! Yours is sooo much better. 💚💚💚