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Voting closed: October 28, 2014, 01:20:16 PM


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Author Topic: Old Metelson Industries :: Important Update 03/12/2024  (Read 299200 times)

Chaos Farseer

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Re: Metelson Faction Mod developments: New Ships !*Update 9/11/14*![Sprite work]
« Reply #30 on: September 11, 2014, 06:28:56 PM »

Well, you should seek out advice from more skilled individuals, but I think the ships look a bit too painted. Maybe it's a lack of greebling?

I do support the idea of an industrial fleet, and I wish you guys good luck!
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Az the Squishy

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Re: Metelson Faction Mod developments: New Ships !*Update 9/11/14*![Sprite work]
« Reply #31 on: September 13, 2014, 02:06:05 PM »

Believe me, I know... Viymese has been reaming me on it as well. I'll try greebling on some random projects and the spruce up the fleet one I feel like I've gotten the hang of it. Or ask for some outside help more officially in the starting post.

Lakis

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Re: Metelson Faction Mod developments: New Ships !*Update 9/28/14*![Demo and Art]
« Reply #32 on: September 29, 2014, 02:01:45 AM »

Status as of Sept. 30th 0154 -0800 UTC

Playable demo is now out and released. Versions 0.0.1

Features:

Two Frigates and one Fighter wing.

Frigate one: Aenet

Frigate two: Spade

No station, system, or any other custom bits till I can sit down and figure out those bits at a later date.

'Bugs' :

Balance work still needs to be done, but things should play relatively well.

Fighter wings might not separate into the formation they should be in. Claw or Box, can't remember at this moment in time. (This will happen in and out of combat, though in combat they like to separate. Any suggestions to fix this would be greatly appreciated!)


Old postings spoiled to save space.
Spoiler

Status as of Sept. 29th 0201 -0800 UTC

A playable demo is now ready, the NOTA fighter isn't quite finished and might be added either this demo release or the next; There's a little more balancing I need to do before we release it, that will happen tomorrow morning and then a demo release should come around later this week. The Spade has a few extra's from when I was tinkering with things that I need to clean up and I think that's 'bout it!

Thoughts so far:

Hull-mod ideas as well as how to implement them are wandering around, mostly based around drone systems as well as something geared towards explosives and mining...  Dwarf MLS? (Mine Layer System?)

Have to figure out hull-mods and making weapon animations and things of that nature...

Before that though, sleep, work, and life!   and destiny...


Speaking of doing work, I've got a playable demo coming along nicely. I've got the Aenet support Frigate setup right now, the Spade Multi-role Frigate is next and then I'll be fixing up the nail fighters and the NOTA Coffins.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Status as of  Sept. 24th 23.46 -0800 UTC


I've finished The Spade and The Aenet, The NOTA and the Nail fighters are next after I finish up balancing the Spade and Aenet,

The NOTA and Nail Fighters will be a project for my next day off, so till then I'm off!
[close]
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Lakis

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Re: Metelson Faction Mod developments: New Ships !*Update 9/28/14*![Demo and Art]
« Reply #33 on: September 30, 2014, 08:44:01 PM »

So... Nobody has tried the mod?

No feedback, no "It's horrible try again!" or "It's great, but it's missing something!"?

Anyone?

Edit: Also forgot, thanks to MShadowy the Problem with the fighters has been fixed. (Their overlapping in and out of combat.)

New Ver. is attached.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: September 30, 2014, 08:53:14 PM by Viymese »
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ORMtnMan

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I will try to look at it this evening after work, If that makes you feel better. I haven't really played much of anyone's mods lately as I have been trying to work on mine...
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FasterThanSleepyfish

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My suggestion is that you add missions for people to test your ships out in.   ;)
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Lakis

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My suggestion is that you add missions for people to test your ships out in.   ;)

That is something I should definitely do... and that is what'll happen for the next upload. Ver. 0.0.2!

I will try to look at it this evening after work, If that makes you feel better. I haven't really played much of anyone's mods lately as I have been trying to work on mine...

Thank you, I know i sounded hurt in that post, but I'm not actually. That just means people are living their lives and I'm okay with that. ^^
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ORMtnMan

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Alright, I gave your two ships (I skipped the fighter) a run through. Here are my findings :)

First, aesthetically, the ships look a little color-pencil-y. This obviously doesn't fit in with the vanilla ships. but that is up to you. Spriting (as I know from experience) is not easy and people all have their own styles. IF you want to get closer to SS style ships, I would read some blogs on spriting which I posted links somewhere and if you want them I think I can dig them up.

Operationally, both ships ran out of their effectiveness very quickly. (much quicker than the vanilla ships) Which made it difficult to have longer battles which will come up in my next point.

Next, the weapon choices forced any engagement to be very long. In my example I made a quick mission pitting the ships against 1 brawler and 1 hound.

The Aenet was dreadfully slow which made it hard to go toe to toe with the hound. Though, I was able to fend it off with the hypervelocity driver enough to be able to vent when needed. I definitely would have been able to win that fight (eventually) if the Aenet didn't run out of combat effectiveness so quickly. The inevitable malfunctions meant my demise as no matter how hard I tried I could not destroy either ship quick enough with the HVD.

The Spade was definitely more maneuverable (almost too maneuverable with the turning speed)and I think had a balanced level of flux for its speed. I couldn't head on with the brawler but that I think is justified. The two ion cannons were useful in fighting the hound, but the low real damage of the weapons meant I had to rely on the others to actually destroy it, unfortunately the PD laser was always pointing the wrong way and the sabot SRM was easily defeated by PD with a salvo of only 2. Again I could have eventually won that battle basically doing ion drive-bys but the combat effectiveness wasn't enough and again the malfunctions killed me.

So, in summary, this seems like a start, From your description this seems like this will be a mining industrial/civilian fleet. These two ships didn't really feel industrial or civilian with their "military grade" style weapons, but it is still early. Consider creating your own civilian conversion style guns like re-purposed welding lasers etc. It would make it more believable and interesting. Also definitely up the peak CR and CR/second, these ships will get murdered otherwise.

Keep it up, this mod has potential to fill an interesting niche not particularly filled by another faction mod (the Free Miner's Guild might be relatively similar though I don't know how complete or supported that is right now).
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Az the Squishy

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Alright, I gave your two ships (I skipped the fighter) a run through. Here are my findings :)

First, aesthetically, the ships look a little color-pencil-y. This obviously doesn't fit in with the vanilla ships. but that is up to you. Spriting (as I know from experience) is not easy and people all have their own styles. IF you want to get closer to SS style ships, I would read some blogs on spriting which I posted links somewhere and if you want them I think I can dig them up.

      ...

So, in summary, this seems like a start, From your description this seems like this will be a mining industrial/civilian fleet. These two ships didn't really feel industrial or civilian with their "military grade" style weapons, but it is still early. Consider creating your own civilian conversion style guns like re-purposed welding lasers etc. It would make it more believable and interesting. Also definitely up the peak CR and CR/second, these ships will get murdered otherwise.

Keep it up, this mod has potential to fill an interesting niche not particularly filled by another faction mod (the Free Miner's Guild might be relatively similar though I don't know how complete or supported that is right now).


I'm the lead spriter for the mod and yes, I know it's not too... great. But I'm working on it, trust me... What'd help would be a better explination rather than a comment- which is gods appriciated as well as the compliment~! I'm very happy that you see a great bit of potential along with many other people... for the lastest sprite-work, look at the first post, that has all information needed regarding sprites for the most part. Code is handled by Viymese adn we've to talk a bit more on it...

... also, on the links, POST'EM~! Help'll never be turned down, at least, without some legit reason..

ORMtnMan

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EDIT EDIT: Just to point out I missed the part where you said the latest sprites were on the front page... so keep in mind this is in regards to the sprites in the package... I was in a hurry.

Fair point, my apologies for not expounding upon my my comment. In my defense I was tired and trying to get you some feedback before I hit the sack. hence why I am up now early in the morning.

Now always keep in mind my reviews and suggestions are my opinion. I am by no means (I repeat no means) an end-all authority on these subjects. I apologize if this runs a bit long but you asked for it ;)

Alright, here we go. For the following critiques I am using the Aenet as reference.

In most of the solid areas the coloration goes from light to very dark in several stroke like striations. The orange parts are the biggest offender here. Compounded with the heavy outlines that definitely look like pencil strokes instead of computer drawn lines (or better yet realistic lines) make it look like a color pencil drawing.

While having color variation is important it needs to be done subtly. To fix it I would use a smudge or blur tool and make the variation and shading smoother and more subtle from the base color. I'll explain the shading later.

Try to always avoid using black lines, they are distracting and don't look natural with the color. Try to get any outline as a darker version of the dominant color (EG the color of the higher on the ship part). Also try to keep any outline to 1 pixel wide. Use shadows to show different sections of s a ship.

EDIT: The spade is much better on this point, but try to make its outlines a bit thinner.

The whitened sections where you tried to introduce a shine may be a bit heavy fo an industrial ship. This is more your aesthetic but most ships like that are a but more matte do to hard work in harsh conditions. Though the shine does look a bit strange over the line on the lower bluish section. A shadow causing change in elevation on a section is usually dominant over a surface shine. I would consider toning those down a bit or at least making the line more visible.

For the glow sections (the what I am assuming is the dock) and the cockpit lights, consider adding a bit of white to the center of them to make them look more like a resonating light instead of a flat color. The Flight deck does it alright but the bridge lights are the real offender here.

Several sections look a bit flat shading wise. These are the upper part of the bridge section, the bottom left most chunk of grey in the open pipe.wiring section, the grey par just above the engine and the orange part with the emblem. This segues me into shading.

For shading, there are flat parts and the ship lacks depth. I explained the flat bits but the lacking depth is because it is impossible to tell which sections of the ship are higher than others. This is accomplished by creating shadows. To do this I use a black airbrush tool. For instance if the orange section is higher than the blue section create a drop shadow starting darker and moving lighter with the black airbrush. I usually don't go more than a couple pixels with shadows as you don't want to overwhelm the ship with shadow.

The same concept applies for structural shading. For instance if the orange sections are slope toward the outside of the ship (which I assume they do) shad fairly strongly from light to dark, if it is a curve, make the shading more subtle and slow. Be careful not to make the very bottom too dark though as you want your sprite to stand out against the space background.

As for some articles, I would read the blog post that David, one of the creators made a while back. It helped me a lot.
It comes in two parts but I am only linking you to the first
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/05/16/let-me-draw-you-a-starsector-ship/

next he lists a reference to another incredibly helpful instruction (which I used more than the blog)
http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm
http://androidarts.com/pixtut/pixelart.htm

I would start with these links and if you need more google pixel art tutorials. Most everything else I found says the same things as the three references I gave you though.

So there you go! hopefully that gave you some direction, sorry for rambling on...

One more coding technical note. If you are trying to get your ships in balance with vanilla I would have to tell you that a frigate sized carrier is not a good idea. It is impossible to balance, hence why you don't see any in vanilla. If you want some good reasons, talk to Mesotronik, he and I had an in depth conversation on the subject when I tried the same thing.

If you want to still be able to launch the Nail fighter from the Aenet, consider changing them to a drone. That would make it more balanced. If you want to keep the PD drones as well, keep in mind that you can give drones drone systems effectively giving your ship two drone sets. Just be careful not to go overboard with that.

Anyway, keep it up! You have the talent and potential you just need to refine it (hell I still have a long way to go). Everything is a step toward getting better.


« Last Edit: October 02, 2014, 08:30:35 AM by ORMtnMan »
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Lakis

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One more coding technical note. If you are trying to get your ships in balance with vanilla I would have to tell you that a frigate sized carrier is not a good idea. It is impossible to balance, hence why you don't see any in vanilla. If you want some good reasons, talk to Mesotronik, he and I had an in depth conversation on the subject when I tried the same thing.

If you want to still be able to launch the Nail fighter from the Aenet, consider changing them to a drone. That would make it more balanced. If you want to keep the PD drones as well, keep in mind that you can give drones drone systems effectively giving your ship two drone sets. Just be careful not to go overboard with that.

Anyway, keep it up! You have the talent and potential you just need to refine it (hell I still have a long way to go). Everything is a step toward getting better.

Hehe, we've never really had the intention to do a frigate carrier, but a frigate drone Carrier though is far more likely! Hence the Drone ship system.

I have no plans currently to do that, it sounds fun for a test, but for overall game play it wouldn't be as much fun simply because you'd stomp too many people too fast with such a swarm... *shudders*

===============================================================================
Spoiled to reduce size.

Spoiler
Alright, I gave your two ships (I skipped the fighter) a run through. Here are my findings :)

First, aesthetically, the ships look a little color-pencil-y. This obviously doesn't fit in with the vanilla ships. but that is up to you. Spriting (as I know from experience) is not easy and people all have their own styles. IF you want to get closer to SS style ships, I would read some blogs on spriting which I posted links somewhere and if you want them I think I can dig them up.

Operationally, both ships ran out of their effectiveness very quickly. (much quicker than the vanilla ships) Which made it difficult to have longer battles which will come up in my next point.

Next, the weapon choices forced any engagement to be very long. In my example I made a quick mission pitting the ships against 1 brawler and 1 hound.

The Aenet was dreadfully slow which made it hard to go toe to toe with the hound. Though, I was able to fend it off with the hypervelocity driver enough to be able to vent when needed. I definitely would have been able to win that fight (eventually) if the Aenet didn't run out of combat effectiveness so quickly. The inevitable malfunctions meant my demise as no matter how hard I tried I could not destroy either ship quick enough with the HVD.

The Spade was definitely more maneuverable (almost too maneuverable with the turning speed)and I think had a balanced level of flux for its speed. I couldn't head on with the brawler but that I think is justified. The two ion cannons were useful in fighting the hound, but the low real damage of the weapons meant I had to rely on the others to actually destroy it, unfortunately the PD laser was always pointing the wrong way and the sabot SRM was easily defeated by PD with a salvo of only 2. Again I could have eventually won that battle basically doing ion drive-bys but the combat effectiveness wasn't enough and again the malfunctions killed me.

So, in summary, this seems like a start, From your description this seems like this will be a mining industrial/civilian fleet. These two ships didn't really feel industrial or civilian with their "military grade" style weapons, but it is still early. Consider creating your own civilian conversion style guns like re-purposed welding lasers etc. It would make it more believable and interesting. Also definitely up the peak CR and CR/second, these ships will get murdered otherwise.

Keep it up, this mod has potential to fill an interesting niche not particularly filled by another faction mod (the Free Miner's Guild might be relatively similar though I don't know how complete or supported that is right now).
[close]

Regarding ship stats:
Aenet I'll bump up it's speed just a little bit.
The Spade will get a slightly lower turning speed.
Both will be getting a revamped Peak CR time and CR loss per second.

Regarding ship weapons:
Civilian grade weapons won't be in effect until we figure out the sprite work and the code. (Which I'll take a more in depth look at today and get a head start on.)

Good point on the PD laser, but if it were omni directional it might lend a little bit to much power for the frigate (at least I would think that). The Swarmer SRM was chosen due to the lastest set of dev notes, especially regarding it's change from fragmentation to Explosive Damage.

Spoiled quote below.
Spoiler

Miscellaneous
  • Randomized ship deployment order within each row between ships of the same size class
  • Ship AI:
    • Much better survivability/not rushing into a bad situation
    • More dangerous with missiles (aware of how many missiles are in play & how many to fire for a kill)
    • Harder to bait out missile fire
    • Conserves higher-capacity missiles (e.g. Harpoon/Sabot Pods)
  • Missile overhaul:
    • Changed missile behavior to reduce clumping and slightly increase pressure on PD
    • Added nicer-looking continuous missile trails (rather than current particle effects)
    • Harpoon MRM: significantly improved maneuverability, increased hitpoints by 50%
      • Sabot SRM: fires 5 2nd stage projectiles instead of 1. Higher overall damage, much worse vs armor due to being distributed across 5 hits. Fired in a spread, less likely to miss completely.
      • Annihilator: increased speed to 400 (from 250), increased acceleration
      • Reaper torpedoes: faster, much higher acceleration
      • Atropos torpedoes: faster, higher acceleration, very poor tracking
      • Salamander MRM: improved maneuverability and top speed; much more reliable.
      • Swarmer SRM: doubled ammo, first 4 shots per burst, 75 points of HE damage per missile instead of 300 fragmentation
      • Pilum: improved top speed and acceleration. Can still be dodged effectively, just harder. Deadly vs non-omni-shield frigates w/o PD
      • All missile pods: increased burst size to 4 and doubled rate of fire
[close]

That being said, the Spade's loadout makes it very lethal to low Tech. frigates, fighters, and some destroyers if you can keep out of the LOS!

Hrm... the reminds me, the Aenet will be getting it's own drones soon, so the ones you see will be no more! ^^ Some time this month, November will likely be a very dead month due to black Friday’s fast approach.[/list]
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ORMtnMan

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Sounds good Viyamese, I guess I (mistakenly) assumed the Aenet was a carrier... if it isn't, all the better.

For the Civvie weapons, check out the Free Miner's Guild mod for some ideas. I never really played around with it but I imagine it will have some ideas for you.

The PD laser itself will never be too overpowered when it is by itself. Even in an Omni-directional slot. Though you have to take into consideration that anyone who gets the ship in campaign can put anything in that slot... so you are right in that respect. Keep it pointing backward, it protects the unshielded engines anyway.

Yeah, the change of the swarmer will probably make it a bit  more viable as a strike weapon. I agree with the strike ability of the Spade. I could take out many a ship if it didn't run out of CR (but we already covered that), though the Hound made the swarmer ineffective by both its speed and PD capabilities. So I had to rely on the ion cannons which don't deal much damage.

Assault drones for the Aenet may not be a terrible idea...

Anyway keep it up!
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Az the Squishy

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ORmtnMan thank you SO much for the critque among other things. I've always hated the Aehnet, and how it turned out for the most part... It has potential but I've squashed it flat due to poor design and thought. I'm wanting to know what you think of some of the other vassles. not an indepth, but a comment or two on them. So far I think the mk3 spade really puts out what i can do that's the best so far...

As for code, Viymese has allready adressed that and we'll talk at length about the stats among other things regarding the ships.


...


Also to the one who wanted coffins, how've they turned out if i can ask?... hello? person? Yes you in the back 2nd page there, yes you.

ORMtnMan

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Alright, I will start from the bottom and work your way to your favorite.

To prove you should not give up on the Aehnet, I took the sprite and made some of the modifications I suggested. I give you permission to use it but I really suggest you try to do it on your own.

It is far from complete, but it is s move toward what I was talking about.

Anthrom, same suggestion on the black lines and smoothing out the surfaces. A lot more interesting parts on this ship. Again with the glows, remember that when things get brighter or darker than the middle they loose saturation, make the center parts more white, not just a lighter shade. Also, thin out some of the crease lines, 1 pixel wide with shading on either side is much better. More shadow! look at the reference I posted for what I mean. The hangar part looks good but the grey section around it needs to be smoothed out, (and possibly made less bland).

Sprinter, I don't think it looks too boxy, apply what I have said for the other ships to this one and it will look interesting. Also, side protruding jets may make it look more zippy.

Short Runner, The side part inside the orange outline looks like wood... get rid of the striation lines... other than that the crown parts look cool but need improvements on the shading so they look less pillow-y. I like the shape of this one, it's interesting. Again, shadows smoothing.

Long Runner, exact same comments I gave about the short runner apply here.

The fighters (Nota and Nail) aside from possible shading, these look great. I love the mining pod actually.

Original Spade. Shape is very cool, I like the upper side engines. apply the same suggestions to this ship as well, though this (and it's bigger sibling) are probably the least offensive when it comes to black lines and color-pencil-y-ness.

Spade MK3, I can see why it is your crown jewel. It is a vast improvement in both design and aesthetics than the original Spade.Great job on it! just smooth and shadow/shade!

There you go, these have potential so don't give up! Just practice, practice, practice.
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Lakis

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Missions are going to be part of a more major update, ver. 0.0.3 - 0.0.5  is when they'll likely appear. They seem to be the two things that'll take a lot more time and effort on my part to complete and I'm still trying to figure out why my fighters won't spawn properly in the games campaign simulator...  =\
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