since C1 is being shutdown and were moving to C2 a lot of people have been whining and saying they will quit when we move to C2. A main reason for why they are going to do this i found is that they liked the old graphics better.
So i was thinking why not have the option to choose 2D graphics in SS2?
The 2D option would use the old SS1 2D images but keep the SS2 GUI and game-play (not sure if that the right word to use but i mean that everything will be the same with 2D graphics as it would be if u used 3D and all players can still see each other etc...)

Im not sure if this is possible or even plausible but it would keep the whiners happy!
I'm not a whiner mind you i love SS2 XD
Let me know what you guys think !

in SS2, press PG up and PG down

In my talks with a lot of people, it turns out this isn't so much their distaste for the graphics, but the ships bases, and projectiles/lasers.

I personally feel that ship modules are of lower than acceptable quality, in the fact that they all feel cartoony/flat (in most cases, they are flat! lol) to me. While I understand some of them are simply place holders, and sadly I'm not artistic enough, it would go a long ways to add a splash of pseudo-realism to the game, to SCI-FI it up, if you will.

The players want eye candy! lol.

Not worth implementing anything like that. Also hyper real models don't do you much good if you play with them being 64x64. It is about balancing performance and visuals as well. You can have 100k poly ships with 4k textures, but if more than a few warp into a gal the game slows to 0.4fps. Already people are seeing that the memory for textures is quite large. Also the flat stuff is silly as allot of ships are based on a central cylinder of sorts and just making it taller doesn't sort a thing. The only place where the flatness really is quite odd looking is on stuff like levis. Adding jutting fins on every ship as well doesn't fix anything and just ends up looking bad. And be specific about which ship you think is flat, it doesn't help being general.

Player base graphic is to be replaced.

And believe it or not some ships are intended to be flat. Also tall ships are near impossible to pilot properly, worse than any heavy banking ship to find out where your going. Asymmetric ships are also quite hard to fly, but not as much as tall ones.

*also suggesting "better ships" isn't that helpful, yeah I can sort a problem area, but if some people actually submitted some quality work then it would be allot easier then just me going at all of them.

reaver is supposed to be flat?

Congratz feathers! i am officialy extremely bloody confused lol!

Some ships seem a bit too round to me as well. I dont feel wingships should be so cylindrical, for example.

Push all the AI bases & Drones more below the players Z axis, I damn hate that model conflict horribleness crap.

If you must keep that model conflict crap, allow rocks to go slightly above the player z axis and below. Would make a nice ring and embrace the "3dness" much more.

Well I would like if ai bases did not bounce over objects and players bounced over them like they do planets and stars. Very annoying not to see ships sitting on bases or know where you are pointing. Player bases probably need to bounce over stuff though.

Imo, the change from C1 to C2 models really drummed down the quality of the models. Both getting more models and what models already exist.

By having to make them "3d", the amount of players(not devs) that can make them has been, as far as I saw, been drastically reduced. I believe Biggee is the only one that still plays, and would do them, that isn't a dev.

Before, we had 20 or so people that could make graphics. Quality enough to be added to game.

For a game where a max of two of the dev team is actually paid professionals, I'd imagine you'd want All the help you guys can get.

It isn't that hard to learn basic modelling if someone wanted to. But even if they have 2d skills they can still work with texture files if they want to help in that area.

True story. I've never taken a formal class for anything i've created. I'm just now starting school for 3d game art, everything prior was self-taught.

Yet another issue I raised several weeks ago.

The backgrounds used in SS2 completely destroy my eyes. When i fly a wattage, i can't even see the front half of it. I would really like to see my ship so i can dodge :S