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[Spud_Johnson]

Hey, so I gotta start with a gush first.

This is without a doubt the greatest starsector mod of all time.

You have managed to not only create amazing and lovable characters within an amazing story, but have also implemented fun mechanics that are never boring or unwelcome.

I cannot understate just how much of an inspiration this mod has been to me when it comes to my writing. No less than 4 of my characters are directly inspired by yours, with a couple even having names and aliases that pay homage to the originals.

Thank you so much for creating such a wonderful mod.
Alright, gush is over, time for the actual reason I'm writing this.

How did you make the portraits for the Dustkeepers? I'd love to take some of my existing artwork and recreate them in this style (example being my avatar).

[WeepingDiscord]

Small bug that might involve spoiler stuff as I didn't know about this quest before 

Spoiler

I found inky-echo and his ship completing the quest without having it in the first place, then I went to the warning thus giving me the quest A Lost Thread with no way to complete it as I already found and rescued inky

[close]

[Inventor Raccoon]

Small bug that might involve spoiler stuff as I didn't know about this quest before 

Thanks, fixing this for 0.14 full release.

-snip-

Thanks a lot for the kind words.

Dustkeeper portraits were sort of made sporatically but the process I go by now (since I made Nightingale's one) is roughly, in order:

- I use paint.net (which I don't really recommend but it is what it is! probably Krita/Photoshop would be better)
- Start with a large size canvas (400x400 to 500x500), select their primary color and create the shapes of the avatar at this larger size using shape tools and line tools (gaps within shapes created by making black shapes on top).
- Size the image down to 128x128, check to see if things look right or if you need to go back and reshape it to fit the canvas better
- 30-opacity layer of the AI's primary color applied on a top layer, and then an interlacing effect applied to it for the scanlines
- The entire image is compressed down to one layer
- Glow plugin for the AI's main shape
- Some additional glow added over most of the image (was done via a plugin: still figuring out a good alternative)
- Optional chromatic aberration effect added (e.g for Barrow)
- 10 (15 for Barrow) pixels are randomly selected and dragged rightwards

[BugthePLug]

Download is down, would really love to check this mod out 


Edit: The Beta release still works 

[Spud_Johnson]

-snip-

Thanks a lot for the kind words.

Dustkeeper portraits were sort of made sporatically but the process I go by now (since I made Nightingale's one) is roughly, in order:

- I use paint.net (which I don't really recommend but it is what it is! probably Krita/Photoshop would be better)
- Start with a large size canvas (400x400 to 500x500), select their primary color and create the shapes of the avatar at this larger size using shape tools and line tools (gaps within shapes created by making black shapes on top).
- Size the image down to 128x128, check to see if things look right or if you need to go back and reshape it to fit the canvas better
- 30-opacity layer of the AI's primary color applied on a top layer, and then an interlacing effect applied to it for the scanlines
- The entire image is compressed down to one layer
- Glow plugin for the AI's main shape
- Some additional glow added over most of the image (was done via a plugin: still figuring out a good alternative)
- Optional chromatic aberration effect added (e.g for Barrow)
- 10 (15 for Barrow) pixels are randomly selected and dragged rightwards

Hey, so I got around to making those portraits using the method you described! Took me a bit having to learn paint.net (I use GIMP for my art), but I think they came out wonderfully!

I'm having a lot of trouble getting the images to work, so I'll instead link the twitter post I made where I credit both you and your mod for the wonderful artstyle.

Spoiler

https://twitter.com/Spud_Johnson55/status/1776958556002271487

[close]

Technically, you can see the first one as my new avatar, but I don't know how to grab both, so yeah...

[HopeFall]

Hey, I wanted to thank you for the excellent mod work. I understand burnout is a thing, and I know users are extremely demanding (I certainly can be). Just remember people on the internet are looking for the gaming (addiction) fix, and that the lack of inflection and frustration in finding bootlegs/updates can lead people to being accidentally mean. I doubt there's anyone that doesn't actually appreciate the work that goes into this stuff.

[El Jojo]

Download is still down, is this intended ?

[Shogouki]

Download is still down, is this intended ?

That's...concerning.  I hope Inventor Raccoon is ok.

[Phenir]

He's fine lmao, even posted here 6 days ago. I also see he posted on discord today even. He just hasn't updated the banner to point to the git releases page. If you actually read the OP, there is another link below the banner for a .97 compatible version.

[Shogouki]

He's fine lmao, even posted here 6 days ago. I also see he posted on discord today even. He just hasn't updated the banner to point to the git releases page. If you actually read the OP, there is another link below the banner for a .97 compatible version.

Ahh ok, good to know!  Thanks!

[Tranquility]

I wanna bring up this issue related to the Tactical Expansion module (and affects the latest 0.97 version as well):

The combat objective layout for each battle seem to be completely random and, more importantly, not tied to anything - unlike vanilla, which ties the combat objective layout to the current enemy fleet composition. This means that, with this mod enabled, it is 100% possible to "save-scum" for an objective layout that benefits you far more than the enemy (e.g. more Comm Relays/Emplacements/Spawners on your side). However, it's not even necessary to "save-scum" at all to do this; you can instead "retreat-scum" by entering battle and then immediately clicking "Full Retreat" without deploying a single ship. This allows you to then re-engage the enemy with a completely different set of objectives - a process that you can repeat forever until you get your desired objective layout. Consquently, even Ironman runs have a way of fudging the objectives to the player's benefit, which doesn't seem like a great thing to encourage.

I mostly exploited this in battles within Hypershunt systems to maximize the amount of Omega spawners per battle to squeeze out just a few more Omega small/medium weapons, but I have also done this in more difficult fights like modded boss fleets to not get any objective layouts (i.e. layouts with no player-side Comm Relays or too many enemy-side emplacements) that would hinder me a lot otherwise. It'd be nice if I was forced to actually deal with subpar objective layouts and plan around it, but right now, you can just straight-up bypass bad layouts with enough time and luck.

(Also, at times, I feel the map sizes are a little too big and, thus, the battles drag on a bit too long with this mod. If anything, options to configure all of the battle-related changes would be appreciated.)