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Author Topic: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame  (Read 3625 times)

braciszek

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Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« on: October 17, 2019, 07:03:38 AM »

Hello all,

I am new on the forum, so this suggestion was probably made already a long time ago. I bought Starsector a couple weeks ago after seeing gameplay on Youtube, and I've been playing it since. I was wondering if it is theoretically possible for there to exist such a feature that would allow you to change the skins of ships ingame (and by changing skins, I mean just recoloring them). After you enter the colony phase, you get an itch to mark everything as yours, and the nicest way to do this would be the ability to change the appearance of your fleets to your liking. I don't know how the game works, but this kind of customization feature would greatly satisfy my obsession with homogeneous looking fleets. I am a new force to be reckoned with in the sector, and I can't go around flying a hodgepodge fleet of everyone's ships with their respective markings. Of course, I always name my faction the Imperium of Man, and my mission is to reunite humanity by conquering everyone.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2019, 07:11:14 AM by braciszek »
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Plantissue

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2019, 10:15:07 AM »

there's no reskinning feature in the game. It's possible that there may be a mod that will allow you to do so.
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Hrothgar

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2019, 10:25:53 AM »

Very unlikely, as all sprites (and skins overall) are handcrafted.

You can always paint them yourself if you're good enough in , well, paint...
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Thaago

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2019, 10:39:12 AM »

This would be a nice feature - something like adding a few stripes to ships with a user selected color. However to make it look good I think might actually take a fair amount of work. Not insurmountable, but probably unique stripe positions for each hull at least plus the user interface to add them in game.
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Alex

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2019, 11:53:03 AM »

Yeah, we tried this way back... not saying it couldn't be done, but after spending some time in it, didn't get anywhere particularly good. And since it's also a decent bit of work per ship...
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2019, 09:40:50 PM »

Yeah, we tried this way back... not saying it couldn't be done, but after spending some time in it, didn't get anywhere particularly good. And since it's also a decent bit of work per ship...
What about the ability to swap ship skins from already existing ones?
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2019, 10:40:17 PM »

It might be worth working up a quick demo mod with some sample skins and a blueprint pack so people can see how it works for creating their own custom hull paintjobs; it's not ideal, but it's a lot closer than what we have now.
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Alex

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2019, 08:47:30 AM »

What about the ability to swap ship skins from already existing ones?

I think that gets real messy - some skins make a few hull changes, some don't, and conveying that to the player for the end benefit of being able to switch between a couple of skins on a very few, mostly low-end ships doesn't seem very worth it. And if this was taken up by mods - i.e. tons of skins for players to switch between, etc - I don't think it's practical as far as the amount of extra vram it would require, at least offhand.
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bobucles

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2019, 10:11:04 AM »

I think players are more looking for an opportunity to paint on "team colors" or maybe a "sticker" for a faction logo.  My experience is limited so I can only think of things like palette colors, colored mask overlays and stuff like that. The kind of stuff you might expect from a paint job.

If the hull changes, that's more or less a new ship.

Yunru

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2019, 10:23:59 AM »

I think players are more looking for an opportunity to paint on "team colors" or maybe a "sticker" for a faction logo.  My experience is limited so I can only think of things like palette colors, colored mask overlays and stuff like that. The kind of stuff you might expect from a paint job.

If the hull changes, that's more or less a new ship.
That'd require redoing every ship to make them accept palettes, plus the coding to specify which colours to not tie to a palette, no?

Dread Lord Murubarda

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2019, 01:46:43 PM »

well how do the pirates do it???
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Yunru

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2019, 02:15:38 PM »

well how do the pirates do it???
...
In the off-chance you're being serious: By having a defined version and/or skin just for pirates.
Which wouldn't work for the OP's request.

Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2019, 02:47:45 PM »

Yeah, all the skins in-game are defined by handmade skin files in data/hulls/skins. D-mods are added to ships procedurally, but those that appear to be generated skins (like the pirate Wolf or Afflictor) are actually d-mods added to handmade skins of those ships. If you look in the files, you'll see that.

There's no way to procedurally create skins in the engine, but it's easy to make a mod that adds a set of ship skins and a blueprint pack to learn them if you're so inclined. No coding required, although you may end up having to use Console Commands to get the blueprint (you could also build a unique Nexerelin start with a faction file that would assign you those blueprints to begin with, but I digress).

There are a lot of options if you want to add your own, homemade ship skins. They're just more effort (for the end-user) than doing it in-engine (which would be a huge effort for Alex and David) would be. You can look at Tartiflette's Paintjob Tutorial for an easy technique to create your own skins. It would also not be all that hard to assemble a community template package for recoloring or decorating ships, to save some of the Photoshop-challenged folks some work. And making a template mod that has examples of ship skins and blueprint packs would also not be all that hard. So in theory a small group of new modders who wanted to create such a thing could spend a weekend or two on it, and that would mostly consist of learning the tools.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2019, 02:49:25 PM by Soren »
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bobucles

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Re: Modifying Skins of Ships Ingame
« Reply #13 on: October 21, 2019, 07:53:30 AM »

Quote
well how do the pirates do it???
Pirate hulls are just that. They're entirely new ships with similar stats and a similar hull.

The real question is "how can a ship look completely different as it takes damage?", since that shares a lot of the same issues needed repaint a ship.