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[Toxcity]

I'm guessing that ship is part of a faction that is a higher tech counterpart to the Cult of Lud?

[Cycerin]

That wouldn't make a lot of sense. It's something different.

[xenoargh]

Doing some testing on building sprites to make use of a shader that can take full advantage of data generated from a 3D model. 

Still working on the mesh for this puppy, just exploring stuff atm; probably more wankery than a tech demo deserves, lol. 

If nothing else, I've learned that this really isn't going to save me time compared to painting up a drawing, but we'll see what SS can look like with all the modern bells and whistles... eventually

Spoiler'd for size, it's about 2X final atm.

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[Makina]

Because Taurus was strangely lacking detail, here he is in mode fashion Christmas greebled tree :

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And in the passage Nightmare Moon recolor and slightly modified, become Ophiuchus :

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And his its own unique turret, that it will have in three copies, the Lunar cannon :

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[Toxcity]

Those 2 ships look good, I especially like the Taurus.

[MesoTroniK]

Makina, one thing about that Nightmare Moon sprite.

It is too large, it will not work in the game...

[kazi]

Another WIP sprite. Needs more color, finer greebling (beyond simple paneling). Old version on left.

[MesoTroniK]

Ah nice upgrade there Kazi, the new design makes much more "sense"...

[HELMUT]

Xeno, is it a Glaug ship? I'm very curious to see how that 3D lightning effect would look on some bio-mechanical ship.

Meso, you think? The Ophiucus is just a bit taller than a Zorg cube. Sure it's a lot thinner and the AI will probably act weird when piloting it but shouldn't that game-breaking, right? If not, i can see some spots that Makina can cut down to remove 200/300 px in height. By the way, i'm a bit bothered by the straight lines on the edge of the bridge section around the bottom. Waaaay too clean, some bits that stuck out would improve it a lot. Perhaps even making it a bit wider at this level? The AI always have trouble with long, thin ships.

kazi, it's much better indeed. I still think the center grey spot wouldn't look as strange if it was black though.

[Erick Doe]

Meso, you think? The Ophiucus is just a bit taller than a Zorg cube. Sure it's a lot thinner and the AI will probably act weird when piloting it but shouldn't that game-breaking, right?

The problem won't lie with the AI piloting the ship. But at that length and lack of width it will rather suffer heavily from how AI opponents target the ship. That's why the Zorg Cube is one big square.


As you can see in the above image, opponents will target roughly the ship's radius. Weapons will connect rather well on the back and front of the ship, but other than that they will probably miss. Especially with things like beam weapons. The longer (and thinner) the ship, the bigger the problem. The AI will try to keep its maximum distance for its weapons. This means that opponents will likely just fire their weapons from a distance and never connect with the target ship.


By the way, Zorg Ultra-cube: (unique ship for the Zeta AI - WIP)

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[MesoTroniK]

Yea the basics of it is that Starsector just works better with ships that are closer to a circle in shape. The larger the ship is the closer to a perfect circle it should be. For long ships, the vanilla Odyssey is about the most extreme length to width ratio that should exist, and that rule goes out the window as the ships grow in size any more than that example.

Like Erick Doe said, it causes issues with beams, proximity fuse weapons, or just general AI targeting and projectile fade outs. In my opinion 850 by 850 is about the largest practical SS ship. You can go bigger but it can cause totally unfixable problems like refitting it etc.

[Amazigh]

By the way, i'm a bit bothered by the straight lines on the edge of the bridge section around the bottom. Waaaay too clean

The reason that those edges are there is the Original Sprite He based it on is from a vertical scrolling shooter, and the ship fills the whole width of the screen.
This also explains any perspective issues with the sprites, as the original they were based on was made to be viewed from one angle.

[ahrenjb]

Another WIP sprite. Needs more color, finer greebling (beyond simple paneling). Old version on left.

Really liking this new design, seems much more in line with the rest, and more "functional" at that.

[xenoargh]

Xeno, is it a Glaug ship? I'm very curious to see how that 3D lightning effect would look on some bio-mechanical ship.

Yup, although this is more of a "classic Glaug" (i.e., vaguely referencing the designs of stuff like the Zentradi, where it's more of a smooth, organic flow than a Giger-esque bio-mech mashup while keeping to the spirit of the "space bug" drawings of my favorite little person).  Anyhow, haven't had much time to mess further with it this week, but perhaps I'll knock out the final bits tonight; I think I might have some free time then

[MrDavidoff]

I didnt have time yet to properly dig into the Omega again, but I re-did most of my frigates, destroyers
Some examples in the pattern, that I chose to follow.

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