The world of Starfarer has lovely 3d planets which roll beneath whatever chaos you are sure to wreak out in space. It is only right, for what good is space without planets to fight over?
Below: Flying an absurdly over-armed frigate past a jungle-covered planet.
There’s more to space combat in Starfarer than nearly-obsolete front-line sluggers like the Onslaught. Meet the Astral class capital-ship carrier: a modern, refined platform for supporting squadrons of small fighters and bombers such as the Dagger torpedo-bomber you can see below. Escorting the Astral is a nimble Wolf class frigate.
This Astral carrier has some top-of-the-line point defense systems on its starboard side while the port has some nasty repeating torpedo launchers. Once you get past the escorts and fighter-bomber cover, you’ll have to be sure to choose your approach carefully — and that’s before dealing with the full-coverage shield. Astral-class carriers should not be taken lightly.
What follows is a bit about how I went about designing the modern ship classes of Starfarer along with some concept sketches for the Astral and Wolf.
Or: Weapon design & graphics modularity in Starfarer
A game which revolves around combat in space naturally places great importance on the weapons used in said space. In short: They must look really cool. Here’s a picture to show how I’ve been going about this:
Click to view full size. You see here the process of taking a weapon design from concept art to pixel-art sprite to in-game screenshot. The barrels of the Heavy Autocannon — a nice standard warship cannon — recoil individually upon firing.
And how about some background on what influenced this outlook on displaying weapons?
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.
I want to introduce myself. I am Ivaylo, I hail from Eastern Europe and I am responsible for the trailer you see below. Please post many approving comments, otherwise I will be fired. Thank you.
Because I know most of you love to multitask, while you post your comments and watch the trailer, you can continue reading this post!
Ahoy there! My name is David and I’m what passes for an artist around here. But enough about me; I’d like to talk a little about how the graphics of Starfarer come to be, starting with the Onslaught-class battleship which we have already featured from a standpoint of gameplay and game fiction. I’d like to show you my process of creating the visual design of the Onslaught from concept sketch to final sprite.
The Onslaught-class Battleship from concept to sprite:
