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Author Topic: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?  (Read 1279 times)

Dandlion68

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[Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« on: June 16, 2020, 06:10:31 AM »

The simple gist of it, is that i can make sprites, but i don't know how to actually turn them into a Mod. Here's an example sprite:



Can anyone help me?
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All my ships are (as far as i know) either 'kitbashed' (heh) from vanilla ships, or hand-drawn by myself. They are free to use as long as you tell me which mod it's in so i can download them myself.

SirHartley

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2020, 07:04:03 AM »

Hello there,

I noticed your sprites in spiral arms already, you are steadily getting better.
If you want extensive and sometimes rather blunt feedback on your work, you could come visit the unofficial discord, where there is an entire channel dedicated to spriting and most of the established mod authors are present.

There is a very good and in-depth guide on how to get your sprite into the game here:
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding
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Dandlion68

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2020, 10:29:34 AM »

Hello there,

I noticed your sprites in spiral arms already, you are steadily getting better.
If you want extensive and sometimes rather blunt feedback on your work, you could come visit the unofficial discord, where there is an entire channel dedicated to spriting and most of the established mod authors are present.

There is a very good and in-depth guide on how to get your sprite into the game here:
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding

First of all, thank you! I put a (relative) lot of my time into those sprites. I've tried reading that guide, but after modding ships, i'm stuck at the part where you actually put them into the 'world', so to speak. So i thought i'd ask someone who's more knowledgeable than me, to get these sprites to be an actual ship in the game, before delving into the Discord. Thanks for your reply!
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All my ships are (as far as i know) either 'kitbashed' (heh) from vanilla ships, or hand-drawn by myself. They are free to use as long as you tell me which mod it's in so i can download them myself.

SirHartley

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2020, 10:33:27 AM »

What are you stuck with?
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Nick XR

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2020, 10:34:24 AM »

I followed this guide verbatim and was able to get a ship working in game:
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding

Be sure you follow the steps exactly :)

Morrokain

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2020, 08:19:44 PM »

It's weird no-one's brought up https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding yet, so here's me, bringing up https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding :P

Lol I chuckled at this, but yeah it truly is a good guide though!  ;)

First of all, thank you! I put a (relative) lot of my time into those sprites. I've tried reading that guide, but after modding ships, i'm stuck at the part where you actually put them into the 'world', so to speak. So i thought i'd ask someone who's more knowledgeable than me, to get these sprites to be an actual ship in the game, before delving into the Discord. Thanks for your reply!

Besides the guides, you can make sure the game is correctly loading your .ship and .variant files by putting the game into "dev mode" which allows you to check variants under the "Edit Variants" section at the bottom of the start screen- which is otherwise not available as an option. This also allows you to create simulations with those variants to test balance.

Go to: starsector\starsector core\data\config\settings.JSON and change:    "devMode":false,      to:    "devMode":true,

As general advice: start small.

Look under: data\hulls\ship_data.JSON  -(you can open it with a spreadsheet editor or notepad but an editor makes it easier to read and therefore better understand each ship stat)

That will give you an idea of of all the stats a ship should have and give you some guidance on how to balance yours.

I also highly recommend the Ship Editor to make your .ship file and .variant files.

After downloading and running the application, the right side will show you all the commands you can use to build those files. I'm honestly not sure if a guide exists on all its functionality though, but I can tell you that it will prove to be invaluable for many things regarding ship creation. And of course if you have specific questions or run into problems you can ask here or on the discord.

If you're having trouble or it feels overwhelming, let me know and I will provide a demo mod with one of your sprites (you can pick) so you will have a specific example to go off of.
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Dandlion68

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #8 on: June 20, 2020, 07:04:03 AM »

Thank you to everyone that replied to my question! i have read that guide and decided that i may not be cut out for modding. I might visit this again sometime in the future, or not. Depends if i'm still invested in the game.
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All my ships are (as far as i know) either 'kitbashed' (heh) from vanilla ships, or hand-drawn by myself. They are free to use as long as you tell me which mod it's in so i can download them myself.

Morrokain

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Re: [Mod Request] Mod my sprites for me?
« Reply #9 on: June 20, 2020, 02:23:11 PM »

Thank you to everyone that replied to my question! i have read that guide and decided that i may not be cut out for modding. I might visit this again sometime in the future, or not. Depends if i'm still invested in the game.

If you're still on here, I'll make your sprites into a ship pack real quick. Just post here on what kind of turret types, tech types, etc each one would have if you have any ideas for that. Otherwise you can leave it to my discretion, but I'm no vanilla balance expert and likely won't be able to support the mod much after release. (Obviously I'll try and fix bugs if they come up- but hopefully they shouldn't.) It won't be anything super fancy (so no actual faction, etc) - I'll probably just make them available for sale in independent markets and maybe add them to their patrols. Independents could always use some extra love anyway.  :D

If you have the time, it would also be useful to compile all the sprites into a folder and link it here. That would make it easier on me.  :)

Actually they only encompass one page of spiral arms, so assuming I can just download them at intended size from there I don't need the compilation - just any insight you'd have on weapon types, etc. I can probably go by sprite similarities to vanilla tech types for tech. Also any idea what weapons you would want for the fighters?
« Last Edit: June 20, 2020, 02:28:36 PM by Morrokain »
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