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Author Topic: Adding custom ships  (Read 229492 times)

DarkMajor21

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #360 on: May 26, 2012, 02:04:21 PM »

Wow I feel really stupid I never even bothered with the variant mode thing. Thanks for the help man.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2012, 02:10:27 PM by DarkMajor21 »
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DarkMajor21

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #361 on: May 26, 2012, 03:29:20 PM »

Well now I can't figure out how to add it to the game.  :(
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #362 on: May 26, 2012, 03:33:49 PM »

Well now I can't figure out how to add it to the game.  :(
Which part?  The wing_data part or the ship_data part?  If you're having trouble, just PM me or take a look at the stock .cvs to see what needs to be done.
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #363 on: June 02, 2012, 12:32:39 AM »

I'm messing around with a new style of making ships (non-kitbashed); its much faster than my old method, makes for not-greyscale ships XP, and I think it gives a relatively visually consistent look.

A couple examples: [Note, these aren't for re-use in other people's mods unless I explicitly give permission, edited, whole, or otherwise. Just saying this since the last time I posted whole sprites, someone kitbashed some of them really poorly without approval]

Here, I was doing some preliminary experimentation. I hadn't really figured out how I was doing this. Went back and touched it up after I made the frigate. Still needs some work I feel, might just redo it later.


Here, I had a better idea of the methodology I wanted to use, and manged to make a much clearer image, which I hope feels visually consistent (which is partly why I kitbashed so much)


The background of this faction is one I planned out ages ago. These are bleeding edge ships; all prototypes developed just prior to and following the collapse of the gate network by a secret Dominion R&D installation in the sector; specifically, they were tasked with designing heavily automated and fully autonomous ships. The installation was a fully self-contained habitat vessel landed in the arctic region of a terraformed but lightly inhabited agricultural world, which had a rather conspicuous autofactory in orbit, which tended to "go offline" much to the population's displeasure due to "unspecified technical difficulties". Despite this, the world would become very attractive later on due to having an autofactory (Despite its reputation), and an agricultural base. The research installation maintained their secrecy even once the gate stopped functioning; it wasn't until factions started forming, and multiple invasion fleets were sent their way that they revealed their presence... and the fleet of drone ships they had constructed. While nominally they were under the control of the Domian's military, it was the scientists who took charge of the operation, as they were the ones with the command codes (and backdoor over-rides...). When it became clear that the gates were probably not going to be coming back on line anytime soon, they organized into more of a coherent body of governance (in this case a meritocracy focused on intellect). They became the Directorate. They focused first on defense, second on maintaining their knowledge base, and third on acquiring as many blank blueprint roms as possible; while they had a large number on hand, the roms would not last forever, especially since it often took quite a few flawed prototypes before a production-grade design was produced. This stash ran out less 50 years in, and the creation of new ships and weapons has ground to a near-halt, with only a few roms trickling in over the years. On the other hand, there were other practical limits as to how quickly the Directorate could expand its fleet and territory; the autofactory required raw materials, and infernium was always hard to come by. A number of blueprints have trickled out of their hands over the years, all of which were incomplete or nearly-complete versions of less-critical weapons and ships. The rate at which the Green Sun pirates manage to accumulate them suggests that there are some pretty heavy dealings between them, likely in exchange for hunting for new roms and raiding hegemony supply convoys, however nothing truly conclusive has come up yet.

As to the stats of these ships, they are generally built with defense in mind; a lot of the initial designs were re-worked early on to be more defensible, since every ship lost meant that more raw materials would need to be maintained, and in the case of non-drone ships, that their already tiny population base would be further reduced. Superb shields, decent armor, but anemic slot counts and/or slot-size are all common attributes of Directorate ships. Many of them also incorporate defensive systems (well, for the next update anyways ;P) such as systems to foil missiles or targeting.

Archduke Astro

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #364 on: June 02, 2012, 10:50:58 AM »

Lovely little sprites you've shown us, Avan! Those are really sweet.  :)

I'm messing around with a new style of making ships (non-kitbashed); its much faster than my old method, makes for not-greyscale ships XP, and I think it gives a relatively visually consistent look.

Emphasis mine. This is of considerable interest to me (and I'm sure, to others as well)! Perhaps you'd care to describe your techniques & workflow for the forum? I like the visual appeal of your results, and if there's an alternate method to arrive at a quality product while also avoiding the mechanical tedium and general visual predictability of kitbashing, I would enjoy hearing how to do it. Thanks.
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #365 on: June 02, 2012, 12:17:09 PM »

Sure, I actually saved my file in a manner that would allow me to step-by-step show progress, and explain what I was doing in each layer.

Its very layer intensive, but I made that frigate in about half an hour. I'm using paint.net, which is free, and I actually don't recall using any of my plugins (well, none that were vital, you could still use the stock versions of them.) so that simplifies things.

I am using a tablet for this however; it /vastly/ simplifies the artistic process I find.

First I make a basic outline using a low-alpha pencil tool:


Next I use a 50% tolerance 'wand selection', and select the regions that are 'not part of the ship'. I copy this blank area. I then take a solid 'base color' I want to use for the ship, and then create a layer under my line-art and use the paint bucket to dump it all in. I then paste the 'not part of the ship' area I copied onto this layer, and then hit delete on that selected region, which leaves only the region under the ship colored:


Next, I then take a low-alpha pencil tool again and begin painting on the top layer by layer: (each layer is a different color) - Note that I put all the drawn color layers /on top/ of the line art; this allows me to 'soften' it as I go, removing the hard black lines that I initially had.







I then collapse and mirror these layers to then cover the whole ship.


However, I felt that the lines were still to harsh, so I then duplicated my still transparent color layer to get this:


Now, I take that upper layer, and mess around with that layer's alpha, its saturation and its lightness (and maybe even hue if you wanted to. This may have... hideous results though, but minor changes in the slider can often produce nice effects) until I achieve an effect that I like:


The final step is to add on all the hardpoint and turret slots (the only kitbashing required), like this:

Trylobot

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #366 on: June 04, 2012, 09:12:22 AM »

Wonderfully excellent tutorial - I will have to try this Avan
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Wyvern

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #367 on: June 04, 2012, 09:36:44 AM »

Very nice ship design, albeit a bit monochromatic; a touch of some color other than teal & grey weapon slots might improve it.
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #368 on: June 04, 2012, 04:48:29 PM »

The larger designs will likely have some more exposed greebling sort of stuff, couldn't really find any place to put it on the small design without it feeling a bit too messy.

MShadowy

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #369 on: July 16, 2012, 08:03:30 AM »

Well, yeah.  I kinda am an easily distracted jerk, so... I was on the verge of publishing the Morningstar ff as it was, when I suddenly found other shiny distractions which diverted my attention away from Starfarer (sacrilege I know).  Like I said, easily distracted jerk.  Intending, several times, to pick the game back up, it's taken me until now to do so, and in turn until now to resume the modding work.

First up, finishing the Morningstar class frigate.  As you may recall, it was about completed, looking like this:



And at the time I was like, "yeah, that looks okay."  And it does, I suppose.  But after finishing futzing around with the raws and getting it in game, I found it was, just perhaps, a little too compressed.  As in, looks ridiculous with the guns practically on top of each other.

So, once again, I went back over it, keeping the same vague idea in mind and...



It's way too big to be a frigate.  Doh!

But I'm too happy with how it looks now to redo it, so I guess I'll just have swallow my pride and relabel it a destroyer.  Though it'd probably be under armed for one with it's current configuration; I'll have to add a couple hardpoints I guess.

Also, bonusy thing, the 4x sized original:

Spoiler

Yeah, originally it had those four radiator... spine... things.  But they looked flarging ridiculous so I nixed 'em.
[close]

Edit:

Well, not that anyone seems interested, but have a quick look at a rather messy concept piece for a couple fighters (and a missile) that I've started working on:

Spoiler
[close]

I'll probably release these (and the Morningstar) in a pack once I've finished them all up.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2012, 10:56:34 AM by MShadowy »
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mendonca

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #370 on: July 19, 2012, 03:19:18 AM »

Hey! I was just wondering the other day where you had got to  :)

Your ships are really beautiful, keep it up!
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Sproginator

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #371 on: July 19, 2012, 03:23:25 AM »

Hey! I was just wondering the other day where you had got to  :)

Your ships are really beautiful, keep it up!
I concour! Amazing ships there my friend!
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MShadowy

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #372 on: July 19, 2012, 07:35:58 AM »

Aheh.  Sorry bout leaving you wondering at me, mendonca.  Glad you and sprog are happy with the work so far.





I had the day off yesterday, so I managed to rush (perhaps unwisely) through getting the Skinwalker and Neriad finished up.  There are a few more things I need to do before releasing the package though.  Obviously there needs to be some balance testing done for the three ships, but...

Firstly, I want to get them (and the Charybdis, as well) campaign integrated, which is something I haven't really done before.  I don't expect it should be too hard.

Secondly...



I added two missile systems for the fighters - the Shrike class anti-ship missile on the left, and the Blackcap Space-to-Space missile predictably on the right.  I need to add graphics for the launcher systems though; I threw together some quick ones last night but they look terrible.

Finally, have a lil' preview thing for another ship, the Enlil class frigate:

Spoiler


... which I have no idea what purpose it should be for.  Don't want to add just another generic attack frigate.
[close]
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Wyvern

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #373 on: July 19, 2012, 09:13:04 AM »

... which I have no idea what purpose it should be for.  Don't want to add just another generic attack frigate.

Make it a multi-role frigate - make it on the large end of frigate sizes, and give it a single medium universal slot (hardpoint or narrow-arc forward turret), along with a few small slots - I'd suggest two universal slots (also hardpoint or narrow-arc forward turret) and two energy turrets covering its back.  Give it a decent sized fixed-forward shield, enough ordnance points to make that an omni shield without crippling its weapon loadout, and what you've got is a second-best-at-everything frigate.
Need ballistic combat support?  Well, it can't quite match the Brawler for forward firepower, but it should be a bit more survivable.
Need long range missile support?  Well, it can match the Vigilance's LRM launcher, and its secondary armament is probably more useful... but it (should) cost a few more fleet points to field, and it's not like the extra guns do much good if it's sitting back away from the fight.
Need a point-defense escort?  Flak cannon, needlers, the hull mod to make those needlers also point-defense, and maybe some LRPD for the rear turrets.
Etc.
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MShadowy

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #374 on: July 19, 2012, 04:39:38 PM »

A Jack-of-All-Trades, eh?  Heh, I think I like that idea, and I'm going to go with it; certainly it's a lot better than the lack of ideas I was having before.

Thanks for the help, Wyvern.

Also, I've gotten the Morningstar (and variant) in game now.  One step closer to next release.


Standard variant in the simulator.


An earlier version of the standard type, with burst pd emitters.

Other variants are Point Defence/CWS, Close Support, and Strike.  Not much left now - finishing the custom weapons up properly and adding a station for the ships in campaign.
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