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1

Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery

« on: October 29, 2023, 12:29:17 PM »

Download page doesn't seem to be working @CapnHector

Hey sorry! Time had run out on the download site. Here's a new link: https://filetransfer.io/data-package/N1k3uOr6#link

And a raw civilian Invictus...

Spoiler

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery

« on: October 22, 2023, 09:11:54 PM »

Thanks! Sorry all I got on this huge language model and AI kick and expanded to making tons of other kinds of art and prompts! So I kind of forgot about this stuff. Let me try to finish this at some point though.

In the meantime you may use these sprites any way you like, too. Credit nice but I'm not the sprite police. Re the site, it's not supposed to require a login. Just press "download data package".

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Philippine Presidents Portrait Pack

« on: September 23, 2023, 11:00:02 AM »

Using Automatic1111 you would use the img2img tool. However you can see in the example that I used 3 ControlNets instead, t2iadapter-style, canny, and reference (giving Duterte's portrait to canny and a Starsector portrait to the others). You can see all their parameters in the image. If you are actually going to pursue this I am highly impressed. Here is a good tutorial https://stable-diffusion-art.com/controlnet/

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery

« on: September 23, 2023, 10:54:43 AM »

The beauty of it is that if it is done then which ships look like what is fully customizable. For example as is, all ships will only use base skin, except faction ones that would use a special skin in Vanilla. You can make factions different from each other through liveries, or only give them to a subset, some elite fleet, or have everything continue as before but put the League skin on your ships for example.

But in other news Invictus turns out to be a complete bastard. I thought it would be an easy and fun ship but it is incredibly detailed and asymmetrical to boot which is not great for the AI. I am having to render it at a very high resolution and even them I haven't found a way to make it look good. Well, we'll see. Good thing I promised a "glacial pace", and nobody uses thar ship except me.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery

« on: September 21, 2023, 09:45:56 PM »

Thanks for the feedback! It's a bit of a challenge because I could redesign the ships to a greater degree but I also want to keep the same weapon mounts, engine placement and sprite bounds so that gameplay balance is not altered. By centermost Legion that does this successfully, do you mean "League"? I suppose the key to implying upgrades is then that the sprite is more streamlined but with added tiny lamps. I will definitely try to make the upgrades more natural, good thing I have better tech now as I think the Legions are much better than the Onslaughts.

I really want feedback on the visual language, because I'm making the League and LC styles up as you noticed, and the Pirate and LP skins get more extreme in design. This is because the base game only has a LC style for a few small freighters, otherwise it's just "low tech"; why not have glorious church ships when it is a space church? League style also doesn't exist so it is "brushed brass" as implied by midline ships but with the blue implied by their flag. Pirate and LP styles get more extreme because the base game skins are just... ugly? They look like they're just splashed with paint randomly like they couldn't even really be bothered. But sometimes there are also better painted ones like Enforcer P or Venture mk II. When upscaling I have the opportunity to add details, so why would I replicate the extremely ugly blotches of paint style when it could be awesome instead? Keywords being evil, pirate, black and crimson, skull motifs, red lamps for pirates and evil, worn-down, dark metal with crimson, verdant green graffiti, red lamps for path. This should make them look much cooler.

But at the same time I don't want to deviate from the Vanilla sprite so much that people would consider it a new ship rather than a visual enhancement of the original, so this is where feedback is absolutely necessary because in my experience judging one's own visual work wrt. is this 'bland' enough is extremely hard, you always want to make it more exciting even if it shouldn't be.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery

« on: September 19, 2023, 04:57:26 AM »

Legion sprites are here! This upgrades this to v 0.08. Now providing 121 new sprites in total. Note to self: the proper colorscheme to phase is black-magenta-silver, not black-purple-silver. And Diktat is mediumvioletred, not maroon. I will probably need to re-do the old ones with better skills later but let's get all ships done once first.

This was a hard one. Depth controlnet was not accurate enough so I had to switch to a normalmap controlnet and do these in a 1024 x 1051 (IIRC) resolution with latent upscaling, and also manually draw for the AI where I wanted each bit of color, slowing things down. On the other hand they are gorgeous. I post-processed them with custom color layers again and adjusting luminance curves for some, another note to self is the luminance curves on the base variants probably needs to be adjusted to be darker to better correspond to vanilla, but someday. They still are nice.

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General Discussion / Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons

« on: September 18, 2023, 08:34:26 PM »

There is a very simple and prosaic reason, which is that DCR is inaccurate (at base speed) when it comes to beam weapons:  https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11551.msg399848#msg399848 There hasn't been a fixed release, so this is still in effect. At base speed you would call it exaggerating. However the effect is combatspeedmult dependent and at something like 3x speed you will see numbers inflated many times over. In my ships' case I use a 2x multiplier and I only have beam weapons dealing good damage to hull (IR Autolance). In your case it would inflate armor damage.

This is usually easier to see on your ships because Remnant use beams and there are fewer variables. For example, you reported above that a Paragon took 1401 hull damage and ended the combat at 95% hull. However, that implies a starting hull HP of 28020, while your Paragons have a max hull hp of 18000. Since the hull HP number is reliable (available from Starsector base), the correct amount of hull damage taken was 900. Alternatively taking 1401 hull damage should have placed it at 92% hull. Not the most dramatic example but the only one available from those reports, could look at some ships that took more damage, you might see them taking way more than they have hull HP.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.07 + Hull Livery

« on: September 18, 2023, 06:14:16 AM »

I was actually considering in the very distant future to associate minor buffs for each hull livery. Like the Livery (Hegemony) actually granting you the effects of the XIV hullmod. This would probably mean that you have to find the liveries rather than start with them. This would also immediately uniquify the factions in an alternative way if they are made to automatically put the livery on each of their ships. I could make the Special livery grant ship-specific unique bonuses and be very hard to find as a modspec but ships with the hullmod findable otherwise.

However, that's a pipe dream for now, will be months til the sprites are done. And it might be best to release as an alternative version, since goal #1 is to improve game visuals even for people who prefer Vanilla.

While we're at it some even further plans if these don't exist already: custom engine flame color and shield color hullmods. 0 OP lamps/decorations that can be put in weapon slots you would otherwise leave empty (think faction symbols for example, but would need to make sure AI doesn't try to aim them)

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General Discussion / Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons

« on: September 18, 2023, 05:53:25 AM »

Yeah. It should also lose the silly PD, gain Hardened Shields, not be a hull tank, gain 30 caps for starters. I was playing pretty badly back when this was new.

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Suggestions / Re: The currant character sheet discourages and nerfs players flying their own ship.

« on: September 18, 2023, 04:10:31 AM »

It's just two people but we did have a fun contest with SCC (caution, spoilers) about who could destroy 824 DP of [REDACTED] with the lowest DP. I have a fleet playstyle with Derelict Operations and all ships under AI control, he flies a Doom manually. I could only manage to do it with 37 DP (Monitor-Afflictor-Nova-Kite under AI control + D-mods and Derelict Operations), he managed 35 DP (1 Doom under player control). Hiruma Kai also posted a 66 DP vs 814 DP player control run.

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General Discussion / Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons

« on: September 18, 2023, 04:02:32 AM »

Nice, thanks for sharing. The AI tweak is likely very helpful, because non-HSA Tachyon Lance (and apparently Phase Lance for that matter, but I've honestly never even really tried that weapon as it never gets past the sim stage in builds) is otherwise often wasted vs Remnants. You could consider including that in your AI mod in case somebody wants it without editing files themselves.

I've been unable to create a monofleet of Executors that would dominate a 5 Ordo fight to that extent, unfortunately. The mobility of the Executor certainly helps, but I would not let them move towards the enemy spawn point other than in the late (Apex-Radiant) stages of the fight, after all fast ships are gone, because they are very vulnerable to being swarmed.

I still have a theory that Paragon (specifically 5x Paragon with D-mods) would be the one to do 7 Ordos, specifically because with the same level of gameplay I invested in the Gigacannon Executors (so, much better than in this video) they would likely be the most durable ship in the game while also being extremely deadly, and because the 5 Ordo in particular is so easy with them. I now regard the build I posted in the OP as highly suboptimal, and there's much room to cut things, and the gameplay was bad, yet it's still clear that at the end they had another Ordo in them, if barely. Radiants kiting Paragons shouldn't be a problem, since Paragons outrange most/all Radiants depending on build. However I got obsessed with the art project, so haven't played much recently. Beating SCC's 35 DP vs 824 DP is still on the table too, unfortunately my idea (Solo Nova + distraction Monitor) didn't work or at least it didn't work in such as 10 tries, largely because the ship eventually gets surrounded without a frigate to cover its rear.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.07 + Hull Livery

« on: September 18, 2023, 03:03:51 AM »

Yeah - "Special" liveries are intended to be cool playership / elite ship skins, don't follow the usual rules of design. This one is meant to look mean, fast and advanced, just like the Odyssey.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.07 + Hull Livery

« on: September 18, 2023, 01:57:23 AM »

Version 0.07 is here, adding Odyssey. I am very pleased with these sprites, quality keeps improving.



If you think there's a stylistic difference between the first 3 and the rest, you are not mistaken. The first are generated using DBM++ SDE 10 iterations as I detailed above, the rest using Euler 60 iterations which I ended up preferring and realized I can use with decent speed if I batch generate. Also the downscaling is R-ESRGAN for the former and ESRGAN for the latter.

This also fixes a bug introduced in 0.061 where League livery wouldn't actually be available in game. Whoops.

Edit: after some further testing I decided the original all-red Pirate sprite is more interesting and looks excellent ingame despite its extreme color scheme, so I'm restoring it. If you want the metallic pirate sprite it is available in the mod graphics folder, just replace odyssey_pirates.png with it.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.061 + Hull Livery

« on: September 15, 2023, 02:44:28 PM »

I'll now describe a new workflow to generate sprites, based on learning more about SD's workings.

1. The original sprite, on black background, is scaled to 512 x something, using R-ESRGAN 4x+ Anime6B.

large image

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2. I use two controlnets, Canny and Depth. To generate new details, Canny but not Depth is released at the start and/or end of generation. Previously I used 100 iterations of Euler, but 10 iterations of DBM++ SDE and generating 20 images, then picking the best one is better. We use latent upscale here. The prompt should encourage a vanilla-adjacent style, so, strong lines and not low contrast. This is where I'll also improve the image by hand, for example highlighting parts or drawing the Sindrian pattern, though that's usually not required for pirate liveries.


3. Using R-ESRGAN, we scale the image to 3x the size of the original (so, 504 x 1200), then pixelize to 1/3. This results in a 168 x 400 sprite, but the colors often get distorted here.


4. Using GIMP, we apply the original ship's mask, and the original SD-generated image scaled in GIMP as a LCH color layer.


Nice.

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Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.061 + Hull Livery

« on: September 15, 2023, 12:34:50 PM »

That's the same crash as Genir! The crash will be fixed if you download the update in the OP (0.061). At least in my testing. If it persists then let me know.