31
Modding / Re: pixel dimensions of turrets/hardpoints vs. weapon sprites
« on: February 10, 2017, 01:02:01 PM »
Thank you so much for the quick response, this was really driving me crazy 
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32
Modding / pixel dimensions of turrets/hardpoints vs. weapon sprites
« on: February 10, 2017, 12:35:54 PM »
Something odd I've noticed while looking closely at countless sprites...
The hardpoints and turrets all seem to be even numbers of pixels, while actual weapon sprites are odd numbers of pixels.
Now I can perfectly see the reason with the actual weapon sprites, they basically need to be able to turn around
a center, so you'd want that a single pixel, hence odd number of pixels or else the animation would be off-center.
But then I don't understand why this isn't the case with hardpoints and turrets. Shouldn't these follow the same logic, i.e. the
'center' pixel of the weapon sprite should sit dead-center on the center 'swivel' pixel of the turret hardpoint?
Is there some magic reason, like is the ship editor able to place the actual swivel point in half-pixel steps, e.g. perfectly center
even with even number of pixels in hardpoints?
Or am I just suffering from OCD here, and nobody really cares about a pixel left or right?
The reason I'm asking is I'm looking at a particular design line of ship sprites where the weapons are supposed to look fully
integrated when mounting them. If you imagine a front hardpoint, it isn't supposed to look like an installed weapon, but like
a basic version of the hull that had a whole section completely replaced.
From experiments so far, this really needs to be pixel-perfect, or the effect won't come out like I want it to.
The hardpoints and turrets all seem to be even numbers of pixels, while actual weapon sprites are odd numbers of pixels.
Now I can perfectly see the reason with the actual weapon sprites, they basically need to be able to turn around
a center, so you'd want that a single pixel, hence odd number of pixels or else the animation would be off-center.
But then I don't understand why this isn't the case with hardpoints and turrets. Shouldn't these follow the same logic, i.e. the
'center' pixel of the weapon sprite should sit dead-center on the center 'swivel' pixel of the turret hardpoint?
Is there some magic reason, like is the ship editor able to place the actual swivel point in half-pixel steps, e.g. perfectly center
even with even number of pixels in hardpoints?
Or am I just suffering from OCD here, and nobody really cares about a pixel left or right?
The reason I'm asking is I'm looking at a particular design line of ship sprites where the weapons are supposed to look fully
integrated when mounting them. If you imagine a front hardpoint, it isn't supposed to look like an installed weapon, but like
a basic version of the hull that had a whole section completely replaced.
From experiments so far, this really needs to be pixel-perfect, or the effect won't come out like I want it to.
33
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: February 06, 2017, 01:04:02 PM »Thoughts?
Like it, think it could use some kind of filler in-between the front hardpoints.
I've used the front part of one of the Paragons large fore hardpoints for that kind of thing before,
could work well here too.
Maybe some brushing up or rework of the horizontal greebling in-between the turret slots.
Just a quick experiment:
[attachment deleted by admin]
34
Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] Diable Avionics 1.71 (30/01/2017)
« on: February 03, 2017, 07:57:07 PM »
Burchel is pretty effective PD though.
When fitting a ship I fill up slots with those first, then see whats left to crank out
as much burst damage as possible.
Doesn't matter if flux lasts only for 3 seconds, just have to watch the overload.
When fitting a ship I fill up slots with those first, then see whats left to crank out
as much burst damage as possible.
Doesn't matter if flux lasts only for 3 seconds, just have to watch the overload.
35
Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] Scy V0.99e (10/04/2016)
« on: October 18, 2016, 05:28:36 PM »
Wow, that is some major facelifting there 
36
Modding / Re: Bad AI behaviour with slow 360° shields
« on: October 16, 2016, 09:39:51 AM »Alex: it sounds like ur using a decision tree to chose the AI's action?
Have you thought about evaluating it mathematically??
On that note, I think using fuzzy calculation for evaluating situations could be an interesting approach, e.g. s-curve for flux level and enemy distance could decide a if venting is a good idea of not,
and if you make lo/hi parameters dynamic, this could give a good way to incorporate officer personalities, even stress level of the officer (like is he scared / under pressure).
I've worked on a Java implementation at work, it is pretty simple to implement and performance impact should be minimal, plus you can express a complex decision making system easily in XML or JSON (could be very interesting for modding especially, but also for learning and adapting to player strategies).
37
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: October 15, 2016, 06:23:21 AM »
Hah, thanks for the reminder. I knew that guide already, but reading it yet again and it kinda dawned on me that I was treating my camo paintjob as base material, and the results were always poor.
So I added another layer below for "base material", kinda light grey, brush-painted my shadows and highlights on top of that in two extra layers. Even just adding the paintjob as simple overlay yielded much better results compared to my earlier attempts, I'll have to play with this technique a little more when I got a couple hours.
Thank you so much for your advice (and tutorial), really appreciate it.
So I added another layer below for "base material", kinda light grey, brush-painted my shadows and highlights on top of that in two extra layers. Even just adding the paintjob as simple overlay yielded much better results compared to my earlier attempts, I'll have to play with this technique a little more when I got a couple hours.
Thank you so much for your advice (and tutorial), really appreciate it.
38
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: October 15, 2016, 02:57:35 AM »
Another attempt, with a new color layer. Guess it is technically better now, still not really happy with how it turned out, overall kinda more blurry than the first one, and the shape doesn't come out as good in game. Turns out the camouflage makes dodge/burn rather difficult to get it convincing.
On the plus side, I fixed my layer setup, so I can now rework it easily until I get a good result.
[attachment deleted by admin]
On the plus side, I fixed my layer setup, so I can now rework it easily until I get a good result.
[attachment deleted by admin]
39
Modding / Re: Bad AI behaviour with slow 360° shields
« on: October 14, 2016, 02:32:54 PM »I hear what you're saying. It does actually consider how quickly missiles can get to it vs how long shields take to raise, though, iirc. That's not going to be perfect, but it should be good enough to the point where it's not something exploitable.
This doesn't seem to work that well with faster missiles though. I'm making a custom light missile system for a mod, with rather fast missiles, and the AI constantly lowers shields and opens itself up for armor damage where the missiles themselves would do next to nothing to shields.
It actually tries to raise shields when a volley is fired, but that typically is way too slow when the missile threat is from the sides. In my experiments, a Hammerhead that could conveniently tank the whole ammo package from two of my launchers on shields without even building up any significant flux gets itself killed by lowering shields all the time and opening up armor to the HE missiles.
Now my test ships also have a phase lance, so the AI might consider that a significant threat to its flux pool with shields up, but still the correct decision in my opinion there would be to keep shield up, or at least flicker it with the launchers burst delay to minimize armor threat.
Edit: Actually, the point of having the missiles rather fast is exactly to put pressure on ships with slow-raising shields, so I guess everything is working as intended from my perspective, but from your comment I got the impression that isn't the way it is actually intended.
40
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: October 13, 2016, 02:32:13 PM »
Yea, outline is probably the wrong term, I'm not really an expert in the field. What I was aiming for is that "fade to shadow" type
effect that vanilla has on the Astral for example.
Guess I made a mistake with setting up my layers, I started "filling" the outline, and so it became part of the shape instead of
just an orientation, and I'm missing a proper "base color" layer.
I've tried a couple different approaches to fix it, but not with good results yet. Guess I'll have to fix my other layers by pixel
painting and make sure to avoid that mistake in the future.
effect that vanilla has on the Astral for example.
Guess I made a mistake with setting up my layers, I started "filling" the outline, and so it became part of the shape instead of
just an orientation, and I'm missing a proper "base color" layer.
I've tried a couple different approaches to fix it, but not with good results yet. Guess I'll have to fix my other layers by pixel
painting and make sure to avoid that mistake in the future.
41
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: October 12, 2016, 02:46:50 PM »
Thanks for the feedback Tartiflette, getting outlines right has given me a lot of trouble indeed, I have it all in separate layers but haven't worked out a good enough technique yet,
I'll keep working on it though
Thanks for the DSTech link btw, I didn't know that mod yet, but that is pretty close to the overall design style I had in mind, very useful for getting some inspiration.
I'll keep working on it though
Thanks for the DSTech link btw, I didn't know that mod yet, but that is pretty close to the overall design style I had in mind, very useful for getting some inspiration.
42
Suggestions / Re: LRPD needs help!
« on: October 11, 2016, 02:44:52 PM »Leaving the lack of command points in early game aside, "dedicated escorts" for PD aren't really an option when those escorts insist on suiciding to protect the target instead of hanging back and just intercepting missiles.
That's an AI topic though, the escort command should probably be broken up into different commands, e.g. fighter / missile screen, close escort (aka dont run off mowing down stuff halfway across the map), and agressive / enforcing escort.
A simple escort command doesn't really specify what you want the unit to do, say ordering a frigate to escort a cruiser could mean anything from "draw fire to open up attack vector for the cruiser", "flank and harass", "screen against flanking bombers" etc.
43
Modding / Re: [0.7.2a] Corvidae Light Industries v0.1a (alpha / WIP)
« on: October 10, 2016, 05:33:03 PM »Also weird that the ._whatever files would cause problems; they certainly don't on my machine. Still, proper cleanup of "invisible" files before packaging is something I should've done anyway; I'll keep that in mind for the next release.
Windows tends to dislike file or directory names starting with a leading dot, though unpacking an archive should usually not be an issue. Drag&Drop in explorer might be a problem though, since you aren't allowed to create such file names in explorer (works on the command line though).
44
Modding / Re: [Experimental] Missile Fun
« on: October 10, 2016, 05:26:21 PM »In such a situation, would harpoons not also kill that ship?
Dual Sabot racks are pretty much an instant-kill button for most frigates, due to the fact that they tend to
instantly put them from zero flux to overload and have enough punch left over to severely damage armor
and hull.
There isn't really an option to take most of the damage to shield and then expose armor with Sabots,
unless you also accept being helpless in overload afterwards. Harpoons deliver their damage in more
or less a steady stream, the Sabots deliver it more in one massive punch.
Unloading two full Sabot racks will typically outright kill a shielded frigate that is undamaged to start with, while
unloading two full Harpoon racks will typically leave it with high flux.
45
Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« on: October 10, 2016, 05:11:04 PM »
Some WIP for a faction mod, camouflage in space 
The being flat part is intentional, lore-wise the ships are rather functional, primarily military designs engineered for
easy mass production.
They'll probably get a couple of "modernization program" alterations as well that each add minor features to the same basic
design, like for example the various combat value improvements the soviet T-72 has seen over the years.
This one is a mainline combat frigate.
Oh and yes, the camouflage isn't only because it somewhat fits the theme, but also because it conveniently hides me
being horrible at spriting
[attachment deleted by admin]
The being flat part is intentional, lore-wise the ships are rather functional, primarily military designs engineered for
easy mass production.
They'll probably get a couple of "modernization program" alterations as well that each add minor features to the same basic
design, like for example the various combat value improvements the soviet T-72 has seen over the years.
This one is a mainline combat frigate.
Oh and yes, the camouflage isn't only because it somewhat fits the theme, but also because it conveniently hides me
being horrible at spriting
[attachment deleted by admin]