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[AxleMC131]

Thank Seth, I agree that balance is positively vital to creating a good mod. The community here has definitely proved itself to be hugely friendly and helpful already, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more before this mod is finished.

[Nick XR]

More mods the merrier!

My personal thoughts on a creative process fwiw: Don't get stuck over thinking things (like "can I steal from myself"), you can't fix what's not there so get to work. 

[kazi]

A few thoughts - like the others, I started out like you, just changed a couple things in a text file, found it wasn't hard, then things got a little out of hand 

A few bits of advice on what you actually end up doing:

Your absolute first priority needs to be on making beautiful sprites and graphics. No one cares how interesting the gameplay or how well balanced things are if everything looks meh. Likewise, most people will overlook most flaws with your stuff if you create a good-looking product (I feel pretty guilty of this hehe).

Be more creative with your factions and don't make any of them "good guys" or "bad guys". It's more interesting if they live in a morally grey area where you actually have to think about whether or not you want to side with them or not. If you do end up making a faction "good" or "bad", give them a reason to do so (it's kind of dumb when you see a villain in a movie who just goes "I'm evil, just because" or the classic "no one ever loved me, so now I'm naughty"). Also, be wayyyy more creative with your faction names. Your current factions ("United", "Freedom", "Independence") might as well be named "America", "America #2", and "America #3". Choose something super weird instead. Perhaps the "Grand Duchy of Ostilgrad" (feudal, backstabbing Eastern European kingdom in space?), "The Tranquil" (definitely not a cult...), or the "Conference of Non-Aligned Worlds" (they already sound weak and defenseless)?

Make the mod you want to play. If you don't want to play your own product, no one else will. As an extension - if you don't find a weapon/ship satisfying to use, chances are that no one else does either.

[Seth]

A few thoughts - like the others, I started out like you, just changed a couple things in a text file, found it wasn't hard, then things got a little out of hand 

A few bits of advice on what you actually end up doing:

Your absolute first priority needs to be on making beautiful sprites and graphics. No one cares how interesting the gameplay or how well balanced things are if everything looks meh. Likewise, most people will overlook most flaws with your stuff if you create a good-looking product (I feel pretty guilty of this hehe).

Be more creative with your factions and don't make any of them "good guys" or "bad guys". It's more interesting if they live in a morally grey area where you actually have to think about whether or not you want to side with them or not. If you do end up making a faction "good" or "bad", give them a reason to do so (it's kind of dumb when you see a villain in a movie who just goes "I'm evil, just because" or the classic "no one ever loved me, so now I'm naughty"). Also, be wayyyy more creative with your faction names. Your current factions ("United", "Freedom", "Independence") might as well be named "America", "America #2", and "America #3". Choose something super weird instead. Perhaps the "Grand Duchy of Ostilgrad" (feudal, backstabbing Eastern European kingdom in space?), "The Tranquil" (definitely not a cult...), or the "Conference of Non-Aligned Worlds" (they already sound weak and defenseless)?

Make the mod you want to play. If you don't want to play your own product, no one else will. As an extension - if you don't find a weapon/ship satisfying to use, chances are that no one else does either.

As ordinary, every day mod consumer, I'm gonna disagree on some points here, if I may?... 

Visuals are important, yes, but more than once I have refused to use certain mod simply because it was unbalanced, despite I LOVED sprites and overall graphics, examples are Neutrino Corp and ApproLight. But I still use mods which sprites I DON'T like (and I don't mean those are ugly, I just personally don't find it appealing), examples would be Pegasus Belt Council and Junk Pirates, but since they are well balanced I find joy in battling against them, so they are must in my every big playthrough. Problem with SS is, that mods are too intertwined, and if one thing isn't balanced enough, it destroys entire construction, so user like me would avoid it at all costs.

Now, about lore and sides, I wouldn't mind completely evil or good faction. I think this game seriously lack some through and through evil satanic cultists, would be fun to see, eh? But what would be real turn off is if this faction would conflict with all or too many other factions in the sector, so that's the only thing I would pay close attention to. No expert on names here, but gotta agree with kazi on this.

[AxleMC131]

Your absolute first priority needs to be on making beautiful sprites and graphics. No one cares how interesting the gameplay or how well balanced things are if everything looks meh. Likewise, most people will overlook most flaws with your stuff if you create a good-looking product (I feel pretty guilty of this hehe).

This is something I really didn't want to see, but it's here so now I have to address it. XD Truth is, I'm of the opinion that my sprites are pretty good looking, and even better, fit in with the stock game fairly well. The problem is, I have no idea if other people will think that. In all honesty, I'd love to get some opinions on my work so far. In fact, why don't you give me your thoughts on some sprites I have so far?

Spoiler

Two ships (frigate size) from my concept work so far. Both have pirate-owned "D" variants as skins. Bear in mind they aren't necessarily final, and while detailed, may be further polished over time.

       

       

[close]

Further however, I must disagree with your saying the gameplay is unimportant as long as it looks good. I - like Seth here - am a strict believer in balance, and I will do everything I can to make the game fun and exciting, without being super easy or super hard. Powerful ships and weapons are expensive; large heavy ships are slow; ordnance points are carefully added or removed to prevent a ship from being ultra-powerful with a loadout; and so forth.

Be more creative with your factions and don't make any of them "good guys" or "bad guys". It's more interesting if they live in a morally grey area where you actually have to think about whether or not you want to side with them or not. If you do end up making a faction "good" or "bad", give them a reason to do so (it's kind of dumb when you see a villain in a movie who just goes "I'm evil, just because" or the classic "no one ever loved me, so now I'm naughty"). Also, be wayyyy more creative with your faction names. Your current factions ("United", "Freedom", "Independence") might as well be named "America", "America #2", and "America #3". Choose something super weird instead. Perhaps the "Grand Duchy of Ostilgrad" (feudal, backstabbing Eastern European kingdom in space?), "The Tranquil" (definitely not a cult...), or the "Conference of Non-Aligned Worlds" (they already sound weak and defenseless)?

This you don't need to worry about at all. The factions I mentioned in my private mod are based on actual government sectors in the science fiction story I'm writing - completely unrelated to this mod. Hopefully without giving too much away, the mod "faction" I have in mind is effectively a neutral organization. They'll have some enemies and allies, all with decent reasons why, and hopefully some original features, but as yet I'm not putting any "Good or Evil" pin on them. I hate to label people. Rest assured they'll be unique though.

(Incidentally, the faction names there from my private mod/story are just short names, and don't really do justice to the factions themselves. For instance, what I refer to as "United" is actually a democratic military government organization with some serious laws against piracy, named the "Unified Frontier Parliamentary Syndicate". Mostly because it sounds cool, and often shortened in the story to "United" or "UFPS".)

[kazi]

On the graphics front, I'm still going to stand by my position. Again, while graphics aren't the be-all-end-all for games/mods, they're what generates a first impression and if your stuff ends up looking visibly worse than other people's stuff, people will go "meh". Good graphics also make people overlook deficiencies in other areas. Anyhow, my advice here isn't to totally disregard everything else, it's that graphics should be your highest priority when putting out your initial product (as it's what's gonna convince most people to pick it up).

If you want an art critique, the silhouettes, detailing, and all-in-all general design are quite good already. If you want to improve things however, there are two big things that stand out: the color balance/use of true greys and the lighting (or relative lack thereof). For color, you should try to never use true grey colors (100% desaturated), use greys that still have a little bit of color in them. It's really hard to quantify, but gives things a lot more "life". The colors could also stand to be a tad bit brighter (but you're totally welcome to disregard me on this one, could just be my laptop screen). As far as lighting goes, right now it looks like theres only a very diffuse light source directly from the top... if that. Starsector sprites (modded and vanilla) all have a distinct light source that is above and slightly in front of the ship. Furthermore, the highlighting and shadows are barely there on your sprites - there is almost zero dynamic range in terms of lighting. You can add some convincing lighting pretty easy in a tool like Krita or GIMP by painting over white/black in a soft-light layer on top of your existing sprite. Also colored lights (if you want to go that route), work reeeeaaaallly well to establish depth in areas with heavy shadow.

So TL;DR for art critique - don't use true greys, beef up the lighting a crapton. Don't like the pirate sprite paint, but that might just be me.

[AxleMC131]

Interesting. I think you might have a computer screen difference - all the greys, especially the armour plating on the larger one, are slightly greenish. It's possible there's some serious contrast going on between the darker greys and the bright yellow warning stripes, but otherwise there isn't much "pure grey", at least not up-close. Even so, perhaps I could get away with knocking the saturation up a little.

As for lighting, apparently I'm not shadowing enough. I've made some attempts at introducing light as well as shaded areas on the sprites where light would be blocked by various parts, and I'm aware that Starsector lights things from above and in front, but what I have so far might not be enough. I'll see what I can do about that. This is something that I was planning to go over at a later date in the "clean up" process, but I didn't realize it was quite that bad.

What's your issue with the pirate paint out of interest? Not enough of it (I know the stock pirate D-variants have a lot more paint), or wrong shade of red?

[NightfallGemini]

FWIW I like the designs you have in those screenshots, OP. With mods, the more the merrier.

[AxleMC131]

FWIW I like the designs you have in those screenshots, OP. With mods, the more the merrier.

Thanks, glad you like the look of things!