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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Topics - Tartiflette

Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7]
91
Modding / Alchemy: powerfull tool to find interesting ship silhouettes
« on: November 29, 2014, 04:31:31 AM »
I saw many new spriters struggling to find interesting shapes, and I wanted to share a small free tool that can greatly help with that:
silhouette


In short, this little program can add various effect to your stroke, creating unexpected shapes, and help finding new ideas.
Heres something I made using it:



The step 1 is the shape I created in Alchemy, the rest is the refinement in Photoshop.
Beware, this tool do no feature a "undo" by design: it is meant to force users to experiment many shapes, not refine them. To start quickly, I suggest ticking Create/Speed Shapes, Affect/Mirror, using the Solid Shape style in either Freeform or Straight lines Shapes

92
Suggestions / UI and Interactions streamlining (lots of big images...)
« on: November 19, 2014, 06:28:39 AM »
While the game is still in alpha and probably all the interactions dialog will get some polish before the end, I wanted to share my own idea about UI streamlining: the goal isn't to simplify, or remove, features and player choices, but to limit the gameplay interruptions, and assemble the player choices to single dialogs instead of spreading them in many. This is something the game is not very good at (sorry Alex) and lead to a lot more frustration than it should.

I'll start with the refit menu:
Right now you have to scroll in a massive list of weapons, sometimes represented many times for the open market, the military market, the black market, your cargo hold and the storage area. Only with vanilla weapons, you could have a list of more than one hundred entries on a medium ballistic mount. The worst being they are sorted by size but not by market, spreading the same weapon to several spots in the list. Now, to limit the clutter, I propose to only show each weapon once, colored by the best market availability: Cargo > Storage > Military > Open > Black. This removes the need for the market indication and price, witch could be used for other info like range and damage:



(note, the total of available weapons could still be useful to show...)

Then, when hoovering the cursor next to the weapon you want, you could see an availability display:



Less clutter in the list, and a clearer display of the available numbers. The mouse wheel could still be used to scroll the weapons, allowing to only pick from the market you prefer. Also, in the example, the military market is clearly inaccessible. The displayed markets would only be those available, no need for a storage tab if you don't have a storage area. Finally, the weapons could be sorted by OP first, and "normal" price second.

The most frustrating thing in 0.65 are the tolls. But I think most of the frustration they create is due to how tedious it is to interact with them:
Current process with some emphasis:
Spoiler
[close]

3 game-flow interruptions and 7 clicks for one single player choice: "Do I want to pay the toll or not?".
So, here's my proposition:



The scanning is automatic because if the player want to stop them, he can simply click on the fleet to interact. Then the player receive the report directly and choose if he want to pay, to negotiate his way out, or to engage if the total is a bit higher than his expectation (or his drug stash has been found). One game interruption, one player choice, one click. Simple, much less frustrating and certainly less prone to clicking errors leading to rage-quits.

Now there is something missing, the warning. That's where I'd love to see (and many other people I'm sure) campaign map interaction. Instead of stopping the game and displaying a big black dialog screen whenever you have to interact with a fleet, how about small message display:



It doesn't pause the game, it deliver all important information and you can just ignore it, or discard it quickly with a click. Of course it could be useful in many situation like planting a comm sniffer: why do we need the second dialog interruption asking us if we want to remove the sniffer if we just installed it? A small message would suffice:



And going a bit more crazy (or planing ahead), add in a small icon and you get in-campaign message board: hoover the icon for a second and you get a description, click and you get the job:



or rumor, chatter and comm spying:



That could also be used for faster, more convenient iterations (I mean, you can get prices updates from hyperspace but you have to actually be next to another fleet to call them?):



Some simple interactions could be done without stopping the game, like the comm sniffer again, maybe salvaging or asteroid mining if these get into the game someday...

That's pretty much it for the UI, I hope at least some of those will give Alex some idea to streamline the game-flow because right now it's very choppy. The campaign messages would probably require some significant modifications of the current code, but I'm sure they could also open up a lot of new possibilities.

93
Bug Reports & Support / Non navigable intel map
« on: November 04, 2014, 03:51:08 PM »
Maybe not a "bug" but an oversight: the intel map is much smaller than the actual size of the sector, but can't be panned around. This makes systems that are far from the center not appear when searching for bounties or events.
Granted for now it's mostly a modding concern, but it will becomes a vanilla one too as soon as more systems comes into play.

94
Modding / About ships lights and how to shut them off
« on: October 31, 2014, 05:43:36 AM »
Many of us modders tried to create lights that shut when the ship died. Problem is, using a simple check like this:

Code: java
if (lightOn && lightsCheck.intervalElapsed()){
   if (weapon.getShip() != null && weapon.getShip().isHulk()) {
      weapon.getSprite().setColor(new Color (0,0,0));
      weapon.getSprite().setAlphaMult(0);
      lightOn = false;
   }
}
leaves the light visible for no apparent reason. The simple workaround was to use a 2 frames animation with one empty frame and one frame on, or to force the sprite off every single frame... After several face-to-desk rages episodes, I found out that the game set all weapons sprites color to (128,128,128) while hidden in the explosion cloud! And unfortunately for us, it don't do it immediately, overriding our scripts changes. But knowing this, the answer is simple, the script just need a delay to apply the modification AFTER the game darkened the sprite:

Code: java
public class SCY_lightsEffect implements EveryFrameWeaponEffectPlugin
{
    private boolean lightOn = true;
    private boolean runOnce = true;
    private final IntervalUtil lightsCheck = new IntervalUtil(0.5f, 1f);
    private float range = 0;
   
    @Override
    public void advance(float amount, CombatEngineAPI engine, WeaponAPI weapon)
    {
        if (engine.isPaused() || !lightOn) {return;}
       
        if (runOnce) {
            weapon.getSprite().setAdditiveBlend();
            runOnce = false;
        }
       
        lightsCheck.advance(amount);       
       
        if (lightsCheck.intervalElapsed()){
            if (weapon.getShip() != null && weapon.getShip().isHulk())
            {
                range++;
                if (range>1){
                    weapon.getSprite().setColor(new Color (0,0,0));
                    weapon.getSprite().setAlphaMult(0);
                    lightOn = false;
                }
            }
        }
    }   
}

95
Modding / Market Conditions: What does it do
« on: October 28, 2014, 02:53:36 PM »
Trying to setup a mostly autonomous economy for my mod I found myself lost by not knowing exactly what facilities produced and what exactly where the modifiers doing. To remedy this problem I collated all relevant modifiers into a more intelligible form, and I figured I could share it with everyone.

note that ">" means production and "<" mean consumption.

Spoiler
Code
////////////////////////////////////////

                PRODUCTION

////////////////////////////////////////

AQUACULTURE

>FOOD
0.2 * population
>ORGANICS
0.05 * FOOD
0.001 * population

<HEAVY MACHINERY
0.001 * FOOD
0.0005 * population



AUTOFACTORY HEAVY INDUSTRY

>HEAVY MACHINERY
1500
>SUPPLIES
15000
>HAND WEAPONS
10000

<HEAVY MACHINERY
50
<REGULAR CREW
495 (supply) + 5 (demand)
<ORGANICS
1000
<METALS
20000
<RARE METALS
1000
<VOLATILES
1000



COTTAGE INDUSTRY

>DOMESTIC GOODS
0.01 * population

<ORGANICS
0.01 * population



CRYOSANCTUM

>GREEN CREW
50
>ORGANS
500

<REGULAR CREW
0.0099 * population (supply) + 0.0001 * population (demand)
<VOLATILES
0.1 * population
<ORGANICS
0.1 * population
<HEAVY MACHINERY
0.1 * population



FUEL PRODUCTION

>FUEL
30000

<REGULAR CREW
495 (supply) + 5 (demand)
<ORGANICS
20000
<VOLATILES
20000
<HEAVY MACHINERY
2000



LARGE REFUGEE POPULATION

>GREEN CREW
10 + 4 * normal production
>ORGANS
0.00001 * population



LIGHT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

>DOMESTIC GOODS
0.1 * population
>LUXURY GOODS
0.01 * population

<ORGANICS
0.01 * population
<VOLATILES
0.01 * population
<HEAVY MACHINERY
0.0001 * population



MILITARY BASE

>MARINES
100
>REGULAR CREW
50

<SUPPLIES
1000
<FUEL
2000
<HAND WEAPONS
1000
<HEAVY MACHINERY
50
<MARINES
990 (supply) + 10 (demand)
<REGULAR CREW
4950 (supply) + 50 (demand)



ORBITAL STATION / SPACEPORT

>GREEN CREW
25
>REGULAR CREW
10
>VETERAN CREW
5

<REGULAR CREW
990 (supply) + 10 (demand)
<SUPPLIES
500 (supply) + 500 (demand)
<FUEL
max between
0.0005 * population (supply) + 0.0005 * population (demand)
or
5000 (supply) + 5000 (demand)



ORE MINING COMPLEX

>ORE
5000
>RARE ORE
250

<HEAVY MACHINERY
10
<REGULAR CREW
99 (supply) + 1 (demand)



ORE REFINING COMPLEX

>METALS
2500
>RARE METALS
125

<REGULAR CREW
99 (supply) + 1 (demand)
<ORE
5000
<RARE ORE
250
<HEAVY MACHINERY
20



ORGANIC MINING COMPLEX

>ORGANICS
5000

<CREW
99 (supply) + 1 (demand)
<HEAVY MACHINERY
10



SHIPBREAKING CENTER

>HEAVY MACHINERY
500
>SUPPLIES
10000
>METALS
10000
>RARE METALS
2000

<REGULAR CREW
9900 (supply) + 100 (demand)



VOLATILES MINING COMPLEX

>VOLATILES
10000

<REGULAR CREW
99 (supply) + 1 (demand)
<HEAVY MACHINERY
10



VOLATILES DEPOT

<VOLATILES
10000 (supply)



VOLTURNIAN LOBSTER

>VOLTURNIAN LOBSTERS
500


////////////////////////////////////////

                POPULATION

////////////////////////////////////////

<FOOD
0.1 * population
<SUPPLIES
0.1 * (crew + marines)
<MARINES
getRollingAverageStockpileUtility() ????
<REGULAR CREW
getRollingAverageStockpileUtility() ????

if (market size>=3)

>GREEN CREW
0.001 * population

<DOMESTIC GOODS
0.01 * population
<DRUGS
0.003 * population
<HAND WEAPONS
0.001 * population

if (market size>=4)

<LUXURY GOODS
0.001 * population
<ORGANS
0.001 * population


////////////////////////////////////////

CONDITIONS

////////////////////////////////////////

DECIVILIZED

>GREEN CREW
production * 5
>ALL PRODUCTION
production * 0
>FOOD
production * 0.25

<DOMESTIC GOODS
demand * 0
<LUXURY GOODS
demand * 0
<ORGANS
demand * 0
<HAND WEAPONS
max between
10
or
population * 0.01
<SUPPLIES
max between
10
or
population * 0.01
<DRUGS
demand * 5



DISSIDENT

>GREEN CREW
production * 5

<MARINES
population * 0.01

<HAND WEAPONS
max between
10
or
population * 0.01


FREE MARKET

<DRUGS
max between
100
or
population * 0.01



FRONTIER

<HAND WEAPONS
max between
10
or
population * 0.001

<SUPPLIES
10
or
population * 0.01

<LUXURY GOODS
demand * 0.1



LUDDIC MAJORITY

<LUXURY GOODS
demand * 0.1



ORBITAL BURNS

>FOOD
production * 2



ORGANIZED CRIME

<VOLATILES
0.02
<ORGANICS
0.02
<DRUGS
max between
500
or
population * 0.015
<HAND WEAPONS
max between
10
or
population * 0.001
<MARINES
99 (supply) + 1 (demand)

>ORGANS
max between
10
or
population * 0.001



OUTPOST

<FUEL
495 (supply) + 5 (demand)
<MARINES
if (market size=1)
5
if (market size=2)
10
if (market size=3)
50
if (market size>3)
500



RURAL POLITY

<DOMESTIC GOODS
demand * 0.5
<LUXURY GOODS
demand * 0.5
<ORGANS
demand * 0.5
<DRUGS
demand * 0.5

>FOOD
production * 2



URBANIZED POLITY

<DOMESTIC GOODS
demand * 2
<LUXURY GOODS
demand * 2
<ORGANS
demand * 2
<DRUGS
demand * 2

>FOOD
production * 0.5



VICE DEMAND

<DRUGS
max between
100
or
population * 0.01
<HAND WEAPONS
max between
10
or
population * 0.001



WORLD ARID

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.0005

>FOOD
population * 0.1
>ORGANICS
FOOD * 0.05
population * 0.005



WORLD DESERT

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.0005

>FOOD
population * 0.05
>ORGANICS
FOOD * 0.05
population * 0.0025



WORLD ICE

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.0001

>FOOD
population * 0.01
>ORGANICS
FOOD * 0.05
population * 0.0005



WORLD JUNGLE

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.0005

>FOOD
population * 0.05
>ORGANICS
FOOD * 0.05
population * 0.0025



WORLD TERRAN

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.001

>FOOD
population * 0.2
>ORGANICS
FOOD * 0.05
population * 0.01



WORLD WATER

<HEAVY MACHINERY
population * 0.0005

>FOOD
max between
population * 0.1
or
10000
>ORGANICS
max between
population * 0.005
or
500



WORLD UNHABITABLE

<ORGANICS
population * 0.005


[close]

Some interesting findings:

Space Ports and Space Stations do exactly the same thing

Ship-breaking Complex consume a lot of crew but oh boy is it powerful! It produce pretty much anything you'll ever need.

There is no way to directly produce regular crew but:
Oh, also: yes, regular crew is interchangeable with green, but at a ratio - that's what the "utility" column in commodities.csv is about, couple with the demand class. All crew shares the same demand class but higher ranks have higher utility, which means less are needed to fulfill the same demand.
So if you need 20 REGULAR CREW you can use:
40 GREEN CREW
10 VETERAN CREW or
  5 ELITE CREW

[attachment deleted by admin]

96
Suggestions / Stations lights
« on: October 24, 2014, 03:12:19 PM »
Like the planets, stations could benefit greatly from a glow map to make their lights visible on their night side. To push things further, they could be entirely dark except for these lights when the planet they orbit is between them and the star.
Granted this is a tiny detail, but it could be a nice one I think.

97
Modding / Massive fleet spam when using mod factions
« on: October 23, 2014, 10:59:46 AM »
I was trying to make Scy and Shadowyard play nice together and this is the result:
Spoiler
[close]
To make them spawn fleets I had to edit the Vanilla economy.json and starmap.json with all modded systems, then archive the modded version of these files. I tried both with one then with the two factions and I think the number of fleets double for each additional faction. Here the log from the campaign simulation

98
Suggestions / Less eye burning forum skin (and more fitting maybe)
« on: October 03, 2014, 12:11:19 AM »
So, I'm surely not the only one that find the current forum not spacey at all, and even quite eye searing. It really messes the screenshots contrasts and if you went to the Spriter thread, it isn't facilitating sprites readability.

I don't want to distract Alex from wrapping up the next release, but there is a simple solution:
I found this theme rather fitting (could only be improved by using vanilla yellow instead of red) and free.

So what do you think people, should we ask for the forum to get a coat of paint after 0.65a?

[edit]
Wrong version of SMF, so what about these:
theme 1
theme 2
theme 3...

99
Bug Reports & Support / Modded weapons with "under" sprites
« on: August 21, 2014, 01:34:33 AM »
Took me some time to find out why some of my newest weapons didn't displayed correctly but I finaly found out why: the "under" sprite of a weapon is only rendered for the "projectiles" weapons specClass. Beams can't have them! I really hope this is unintentional and can be fixed, as I have some interesting stuff coming...

100
Modding Resources / Textures Pack for New Systems
« on: July 24, 2014, 04:04:09 AM »

Ever thought that while vanilla textures are great for making vanilla stuff, they become a bit limited when you try to stretch the boundaries of the game?
Well then these are the textures you were looking for! More variations in your planetary rings, dusty systems, shiny giant stars, sharper clouds for big planets and a huge collection of backgrounds. Everything here is free to use in your mods. Click on them to get to the High resolution image.

Collection of system textures:

New texture elements to populate your systems. I'm providing an already named archive: do not change their names or place if you didn't modified them, that way if several mods are using the same texture the game will only load them once. Given the memory issues rising, that seems like a good idea. Here's how your mod folder should look like.

Spoiler
   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   



Star halo
Star corona
Soft clouds
Medium clouds
Heavy clouds
Giant clouds, can add a bit of life in giants when used with low opacity.
Star clouds, can add a bit of life in stars when used with low opacity.
Swept clouds

Cloudy ring
Vanilla sized rings
Dusty ring
Saturn rings, can be cut in quarters to make thinner rings.
Small rocky ring, works well in conjunction with the Dusty rings, several can be combined together to form a Oort cloud.

And here the result using some of those:
Spoiler
[close]
[close]



Collection of backgrounds:

The collection is growing steadily, so check back from time to time if you didn't found the background of your dreams  ;) Unlike the planets textures, backgrounds are loaded on demand and can be duplicated across mods without any memory concerns.
 
Spoiler
   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   



   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

      
[close]

If you want one of them without stars to make your own sauce, just ask, I'll upload the file.

About the rings texture:

The API says about the rings:
            /*
             * addRingBand() parameters:
             * 1. What it orbits
             * 2. Category under "graphics" in settings.json
             * 3. Key in category
             * 4. Width of band within the texture
             * 5. Index of band
             * 6. Color to apply to band
             * 7. Width of band (in the game)
             * 8. Orbit radius (of the middle of the band)
             * 9. Orbital period, in days
             */
After spending some time fiddling with the values I've come to the conclusion that:
The indexes are determined by the division of the texture size by the texture width in game (*7)
The index is placed in the middle of the band and they start with 0 on the left
One should always use the same value in both *4 and *7, the games does not stretch the bands in texture width but in the length. This can lead to unwanted results, see this for visual reference.
For the textures I provide, Cloud, Dust and Rocks NEED to be 1024 in *4 and *7. Sharp can be either 1024, 512 or 256 depending on your ring size, and Small have to be 256.



This is a simple process to get some nice nebula that almost match the ones in the game. Once you get used to it, you can churn out new backgrounds every 45min to one hour.
It is a Photoshop only tutorial! It should work with any CS version.

Spoiler
Phase one, THE CLEANUP

   For starter, you need an image, obviously, of relatively high resolution. Don't worry if it's a bit under 2048px, but don't take a highly compressed thumbnail. Also avoid all the already retouched ones, as they are often compressed, or burnt in the white and black. The best is still to get them at the source: the Nasa and Hubble websites. This is especially a good idea since all those images are NOT COPYRIGHTED.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html
http://hubblesite.org/

Since it's a game background, I'd suggest to avoid pictures that have large bright areas or too much contrast, as it might be too distracting.



   It's a classic, true, but a nice one. Now we need to get rid of all those pesky stars. To do that, we will use the Clone stamp tool, and the Healing tool.
The Clone Stamp allow the pick some area of the image (clicking with ALT) and then painting that area elsewhere. This allow to erase the big stars with  nebula or space rather than with a solid color.
This is only useful to erase the biggest stars, the small ones will be taken care of later.



   Now to erase the small ones there is truly a magic tool: the Spot healing brush. After each stroke, the software will check the highlighted area for mismatched patterns or bright spots and erase them with surrounding details... It' like an automatic stamp tool that only erase small stars!



   In a few minutes you can get rid of most stars, don't bother whit the tiniest ones if they aren't too bright. A few Clone stamp strokes to erase the couple of spots the healing tool might have messed up (like on the borders) and you're good.

Phase two, THE EFFECT

   If your image wasn't at the right size before, this is the time to crop it to 2048x2048. Why now and not before? Well the healing brush does some artifacts, so the tinier they are, the better.

   Now to get a somewhat painterly effect: You may have noticed before, most of the "painting" effect in photoshop don't work that well... However there is one unrelated effect that, if overused, give a nice airbrush aspect. That effect is the Reduce Noise. The settings are simple: max strength, no sharpness! Generally you need to use it between 6 and 10 times to get a nice smooth effect. Also keep a copy of your layer after a couple of effects, for later use.



   A second useful effect is the High Pass. This effect will allow you to give back some local contrast to your image (meaning contrast between shapes, without crushing your whites and blacks). Duplicate your less denoised layer several times (I personally go to 4) and apply the high pass effect to each of them, each time with a different precision (in my case, 2 pixels, 5px, 10px, 20px). After that you can combine them in Overlay fusion mode. Why to use that cumbersome method instead of applying a simple sharpness effect? 2 reasons: much less artifacts, and more control since you will be able to change it's opacity or paint a mask later.



   Then all is left to do is combine those layers: The smooth one at the bottom, the sharper one above in Multiply fusion mode and 25% to 75% opacity, then the High pass on top in Overlay mode and 25% to 75% opacity.



Phase three, THE COLORS

   This is the fun part: curves, color correction, hue saturation, gradients, layer in Color fusion mode, everything is good to change the color of the nebula to your liking. As a finishing touch, I sometime add an different image on top in Color mode after blurring it. It add some nice variations in the color that might be missing when using too many gradients and color corrections.



   Don't forget that too much contrast and saturation can be distracting when playing!

Phase four, THE STARS

   This can be a tricky part. You may have noticed, it is actually quite difficult to find a nice starry background on the internet. Most of the time there is too much stars, not enough, too bright, too small,  with a nasty star-glow or even a lens-flare! Things are even more complicated by the fact that the games background use a very stylized aesthetic (slightly blurred, often not completely white in the center). Of course the best course would be to take a brush and paint your own stars, but there already is a starry background in the game. So most of the time I don't bother and directly integrate the background_4 in mine (the subtle nebula in it often add a nice effect) that way I'm sure to stay close to vanilla.



You'll notice there are more tiny stars behind the nebula rather than in front for obvious reasons.

After some finishing retakes, I get this:
Spoiler
[close]
[close]


And for further improvement of your mod, check SniZupGun's BoomBox to find sounds!

101
Bug Reports & Support / No custom mission backgrounds in devmode
« on: July 21, 2014, 04:00:17 AM »
After a quick search, I think nobody came up with this issue:

By the way i know what caused the mission backgrounds to not appear, it doesn't work with DevMode. No idea why.

I tried it myself, and indeed in DevMode the game always change modded backgrounds to the "standard" one. It only happen with mission backgrounds though, campaign environements are fine.

102
Bug Reports & Support / Error loading a 100+ frames animation
« on: June 15, 2014, 12:25:36 PM »
Just so you know, the game can't load an animation that have more than 100 frames: when using a "sprite####.png" nomenclature, it looks for "sprite00100.png" instead of "sprite0100.png".

I doubt it need to be corrected, it's an extreme case for deco animations so I'll keep things shorter. I just wanted you to be aware of this, in case you were planning some long animations yourself.

103
Modding Resources / Animation tutorial - Now with PSD link
« on: June 02, 2014, 10:10:02 AM »
     Hi everyone, I've been asked a couple of time about my workflow animating, so here I am!



Foreword

    This tutorial will not be about perfect 2d animation, but rather on animating sprites the most efficiently possible within the very specific constraints of such small resolution. If you want a formal animation tutorial, there is plenty of them on internet already. If you want just the basics, take a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_basic_principles_of_animation
http://vimeo.com/93206523
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animator%27s_Survival_Kit (the animation bible ;D)
Also, I work on photoshop, but excepting some specific tricks, I'll try to stay as much software neutral as possible.

01 Animation, what is what

     In sprites, I differentiate three main types of animations, each animated using different techniques:
The translation animation is very straightforward, it's about moving pieces "as it is". No modification is made on the part, and it's mainly use for barrel recoil, or sliding panels.
The fade animation consist to make a layer appear on top of an existing piece, but without animation on itself. I use that to brighten a part that is heating, or to add some lighting.
The frame animation is traditional 2d animation, where each frames of the animation is individually drawn. Pieces that deforms, or moves in perspective will be drawn that way.

Then there is an hybrid forth animation type, very specific, witch could be called the random sparkle animation where you draw several small events on different layers and randomly make them appear and disappears. This is useful for lighting effects for example.

     I can't stress enough that animating in pixel art is more about careful preparations than pure animation skills, compared to "full size" 2d animation. You need to think about what you want for animation even before starting spriting. If you don't, you'll end up with a nice sprite with animated bits glued on top, or redrawing a large chunk of your ship.

Good integrated animation, it's part of the sprite:          Bad slapped-on-top animation, feels completely artificial:
                                                          

     Also you need to refine your idea to keep only what's truly necessary for the ease of understanding. Too small details animated will only look like noise.

Bad animation: it's fluid, but out of place and distracting:                That's better, often less is more for the sake of readability:
                                                                                                                        

 A rule of thumb for the absolute minimum movement length for a piece to appear sliding, is 2px. If you want to add an acceleration and deceleration, it's 6px. Symmetrize this and you need already 12px of space for your animation, the size of a small weapon.
Spoiler
Shameless self-promotion to show what you can do with the tiniest movements possible. Loose any pixel, and you loose readability or meaning:
  -  http://ccpotteranimator.deviantart.com/art/eat-THIS-308867786
  -  http://ccpotteranimator.deviantart.com/art/Colour-switcher-177524810
  -  http://ccpotteranimator.deviantart.com/art/LovToshop-177775426
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02 Preparation, aka the bulk of the work

Now with these animations types in mind, lets take a look at this bad boy and see what animation we can come up with:



Okay, I want the whole front section to open, revealing the massive gun it's housing. I want heat, light and lighting, the works. If I breakdown my idea I got this



and now I'm off to prepare said animation...
...
Look, I'm back 5 minutes later, how's that possible? Well remember when I said "think about your animation even before spriting"? I did, and I had all the parts in different layers:



You can see the doors, the chargeup heat, and the cannon heat. And I even already have the interior of the ship drawn, isn't that great?
Well, I think I'm ready to animate.

03 Translation animations

To animate things smoothly at low resolution, you need to use the old cell animation trick of doubling frames: unless you want to animate with anti aliasing the minimum movement between two frames is 1 pixel, but in most cases that's already too much to show the illusion of an acceleration. To to simulate a slower movement you can use the first frame twice. Here some examples:



The first one is the 2px minimum movement to show a sliding, the light color change helps to smooth the animation without further movement.
The second is a recoil-like animation: it start at full speed and then slow down to it's final position.
The third is a full symmetric accelerated then decelerated translation. As you can see, it require quite some space. The pixel movements are 1-0-1-1-2-1-1-0-1, you can cut the the middle movement to reduce the width of the displacement but then the acceleration will be less noticeable.

An other useful trick to smooth your animation is desynchronization:



All doors have the exact same animation, but on the right they all start at 1 frame from each other. That way the doubled frame is less visible than in the first animation. It also can make some animation less rigid, or more interesting if you have an old ship barely holding together. If you have several piece on an axis animated, desynchronizing them from the first to the last give a nice ripple effect:

At such low resolution I suggest that you animate your pieces in the main axis (up down or diagonal). Any other axis will need you either to animate in subpixel, blurring your part, or to go farther that 1 pixel away as minimum movement:



If you really need your part to go in an other axis, you can try an arc:



That way, the movement is already accelerated when you have to go 2px away from your previous pose.
Okay, now applying just that on my cruiser doors I get:



Desynchronization, accelerations, decelerations, arcs, double frame... Everything is there.
You'll notice I made the opening in two steps. First an "unlocking" and then the opening. If you read the link about the 12 principles of animation (or watched the video) you can tell this is both an anticipation and a staging: it direct the attention of the player on this spot and prepare him to see a doors movement, without the actual movement so that he doesn't miss it.


Photoshop ProTip
Spoiler
Photoshop animation tool is very quirky when animating using the move tool, and often mess your anim when you're trying to modify it midway, or touch the first frame of the timeline. To avoid that, work in small steps and convert your animation frames in layers as soon as you are satisfied. And to keep track of what is what, rename your layers BEFORE animating, because they will multiply like gremlins at a pool party:



There, everything's tidy and ready for animating.

When I'm satisfied, I duplicate and flatten the copy at each frame. That way, the new layer will be visible only on the current frame, keeping the animation intact.



And look, they are already nicely named! When I'm done flattening all the frames, I hide the group with the original animation and never touch it again to avoid screwing it...
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04 Fade Animation

Now we enter the fun part, lets add some heat during the chargeup time. For that I use the little trick called glow:
In photoshop you will find it in the list from the effect button under your layers panel, or through "layer style" in the layer menu.



Make a nice gradient of the color you want (save it for later use!), set a low size and you should get something like that



Now for each stroke on this layer, you'll get an small glowing effect. Using a low opacity white brush, you can add lighting. With a more reddish one, it looks like heated metal. Don't forget to set them as additive/screen blending, since they are supposed to lighten the image underneath.



And now, only animating the opacity of the layer I get this:



not bad for something that isn't animated in itself.

If you don't have a glow effect on your software (unlikely but you never know) you can make the effect manually: make your basic brush strokes layer, duplicate, blur 0.5px and add a yellow tint, duplicate, blur 1px and add a orange tint, duplicate, 1.5px blur red... Then set them in additive mode with low opacity.

Photoshop Protip
Spoiler
To add some life in my painting easily, I often add some color randomness in my brush:



1% is good for spriting large flat areas. For the special effect you can dial up the jitters sliders a little more. Remember to uncheck it if you are painting masks, else they'll be noisy too!
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Using this technique, I draw the heats layers for my cannon, power plant and the pipes underneath. Since the power plan is very white in the center, it would look grey at low opacity. To avoid this state, I also make an intermediary step more red. In the same order of idea, for the cool-down I want the barrel to cool faster than the muzzle, so I draw two different layers. In the end I got theses:



(The "power plant light" layer was an afterthought addition)
From this state, I only animate the opacity: 10% on the first frame, 20% on the second etc (if you have a very specific key frame you want to keep, just start by this one and go backward!)
And after a bit of patience I get



This is starting to look good, only missing the muzzle flash and the lightnings! Almost there...

05 Frame Animation

Muzzle flashes are animated frame by frame, so there isn't much advices I can give you except to experiment a lot. Most of the times it's only 2 to 4 frames long, it's not taxing to try two, three or more versions before settling your choice.
I make them using the same trick as heat and light, but with a larger size. Here some examples:



They are appearing so quickly that you don't need to draw them very precisely. Depending of the size I use either the sharp pen tool, or a 1px brush (this is actually the only time in all my spriting process I'm not using the pen tool). To add some emphasis, I also need a large flash (most of the times two bright blurred spots), and a layer for the light emitted by said flash:



With those layers in place, I can experiment freely the muzzle animation. After a few tryouts I got these:







Well I don't know witch one to choose. The first is a bit too long, the second is great, but will probably be redundant if I add some lightning bolts during the cool-down as planned in the beginning, and the third... Well he is not bad actually, maybe a bit classic for a cannon flash, but this gun is supposed to be a non offensive weapon:

Spoiler
[close]

Well I'll probably make a fourth version then...



Mmh... Nope, I'm still digging the second the most. I'll shift the colors toward a more purple tint, to add emphasis to the electric aspect, but other than that it's good as it is.



There! Good to go.

06 Random Animation

To show you the last type of animation, I'll use this little thing:



It's intended to house an overpowered EMP emitter (the kind so powerful that it knock out enemies and friendlies alike). The firing will use the vanilla emp effect, but I want some lightnings to sparkle randomly as soon as it's charged.

For that I use the glow effect ("Again?" I'm telling you it's the magic tool!!!!)
Given the size, I'll use a medium opacity pen to draw several lightnings on individual layers:



Then I only turn them on and off in one frame. Sometimes randomly picking the one I make visible, sometimes trying to find a good rhythm between them. Like the muzzle flashes, it's an iterating process where you can quickly try and try again until you're satisfied.
After a few moments I got this:



You might notice I didn't put all the layers in the animation: no need to, it's the point to have something random.

     Then you only have to export everything and your ready for in-game integration. For the photoshop users, it's "file/export/render video". Be warned, PS is sometimes dumb about framerate and frames durations: it can double or omit some frames. I always slow down my animation to 10fps before exporting it, that way small decimal variations won't mess anything.

Closing words

     That's it, you now know as much as myself about sprite animation. Of course it's mainly tips and trick to make the work a bit easier, and taking a look at some more regular animation tutorials wouldn't hurt. But I'm positive that it require more skill to draw a decent sprite than to animate it (If you carefully planned it!). If you're not sure about the frame rate: for animations with moving parts I usually go for 20fps, but given how many things are displayed on the screen while playing, you could go as low as 10fps for animations without movements.
     It is important to note that given the nature of the game, people will be starring at your animation for extended periods of time. When animating it is imperative to watch your work again and again, if it's not boring after a hundred cycles, then it's probably good! If not, maybe the rhythm isn't right, maybe a part movement is awkward, or maybe it's simply not a good thing to animate this part.
    Animation motto: Preparation, patience and reiteration.

     I'm always available for suggestions, critics or help, so don't hesitate to poke me.

That's all folks!

Bonus track: "Get da Psd" by MC Glowy feats Photoshop CS5
https://www.dropbox.com/s/crvafs7v23ej5rt/tutoAnimationCruiserSiren.psd

104
Mods / [0.95.1a] Scy V1.66rc3 (2023/03/19)
« on: May 23, 2014, 03:14:07 AM »


     


Earliest compatible version: 1.66

Always DELETE the old version before extracting the new one
Requires LazyLib and MagicLib



Having problems running mods?  Visit the Mod Troubleshooting Guide!
          


No Stripe alternate skin pack

[close]


Scy Nation's origin and history


        The Scy Nation literally emerged from the ashes of the "Science Colony of Yggdrasil". Before the Collapse, the S.C.o.Y. was a nomadic colony built inside an asteroid to travel the stars and study the universe one system at a time. When the Great Collapse occurred and the gate system shutdown the colony became trapped in the Sector, its inhabitants found themselves at the unfortunate center of attention of the Tri-Tachyon Corporation, the Hegemony and the Luddic Church, all eager to get their hands on Yggdrasill's mini-autofactory and its intact pre-collapse UAC library. Using the gigantic ship as a Cryo-arch, two thirds of the population would escape the crossfire while the rest were put to the stake by Ludd fanatics for worshiping the "demonic autofactory".

   They tried to rebuild their life in a remote system, away from the core worlds Collapse, but circumstances always seems to pull them back, always forcing them to take further extremes measures to ensure their survival.
        You can dive deeper into the story of the Scy Nation with these documents:

     

     


Gameplay


   Skirmisher to the core, Scyan ships have a deep flux pool to make the most out of an hit-run, and slightly better speed to manage to disengage. On the other hand they have slightly more fragile hulls, narrow shields, terrible flux dissipation (relying on venting instead) and fewer weapon mounts. They have to rely on wolf pack tactics to kill isolated targets while the bigger enemies are tied up pursuing smaller prey. Their weapons usually have worse range than vanilla one but superior damage, making even the smallest ship a potential threat if left completely unchecked. When pursued however, they can fold very quickly due to their exposed sides and low staying power.

   This faction mixes all techs in a melting pot of advanced engineering craziness, producing ships and weapons unlike any others. It features ships with modular armor, teleporting guns, phase missiles, laser torpedoes, all sorts of miniguns and more.


Scyan Navy showcase


Spoiler


[close]



Recent Changelogs

1.66
[RC3]
 - Fixed Scyan fleet effect not being removed properly.

[RC2]
 - Added a null check to prevent an obscure crash in refit related to modular armor.
 - Scyan Engineering hullmod now use merged modSettings.json entries to define incompatibilities. The tooltip diplays that list.

 - Removed the Lightweight Plating, Reactive Armor and Minimal Preparation hullmods, moved them to the Torchships And Deadly Armaments mod.
 - Added two tiny outpost stations in vanilla sectors to increase Scy's presence outside of Acheron, particularly with Nexerelin.
 - Removed the Lightweight Plating, Reactive Armor and Minimal Preparation hullmods, moved them to the Torchships And Deadly Armaments mod.
 - Added two tiny outpost stations in vanilla sectors to increase Scy's presence outside of Acheron, particularly with Nexerelin.

BALANCING:
 - Mild miscellaneous buffs to:
   . LVDS (range)
   . Laser Torpedo Rack (op)

 - Siren-class cruiser:
   . Base number of special teleporting shells reduced to 4 from 5. (regeneration unchanged at 50s per ammo)
   . Toggling off the Siren ship system without firing returns the unused charge and negates the cooldown.
   . Teleporting shell now only deals Frag damage. (to make it more usable to save an over-extended allied ship)

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Added a stat display to the Modular Armor hullmod
 - Fixed missing stealth mechanic for the player fleet.
 - Hopefully finally fixed the Keto's main gun crash.
 - Fixed missing system for the Aklys fighter.
 - Clarified many short descriptions and stats.

1.65

BALANCING:
 - Cluster Torpedo Launcher: Added 3s arming time to the carrier missile.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Fixed various crashes due to 0.95.1 API changes.
 - Removed the civilian and raider hullmods from all logistic ships.
 - Renamed the Manticore-class to Androphagos-class.

1.64
[RC6] Fixed Nexerelin Random mode crash.
[RC5]
 - Nemean Lion system now behaves properly under AI control.
 - Acheron's generation tweaked so that there is no longer so much empty space with the next procgen system.
 - Miniguns no longer listed as benefitting from energy modifiers (they still do, but the mount type shenanigans broke the refit screen).
 - Hopefully plugged the last memory leak from Scy.
 - Added Civilian and fake Militarized Subsystems hullmods built-in to all civies, as a horribly convoluted workaround to the skill thresholds issue.

Singularity Torpedo:
   . Removed from all variants and from Scy's available blueprints.
   . It is now only available from rare salvage, and will probably be moved to Seeker/TaDA at some point along the Light Plating, Reactive Armor and Economical Maintenance hullmods.

BALANCING:

 - Phased Missile Launcher: Ammo increased to 15 from 12.

 - Cluster Torpedo Launcher: Ammo increased to 10 from 6.

 - Arc Missile:
   . Hp raised to 400 from 200,
   . Damage stats messed with (but not the arcs),
   . Rack OP cost lowered to 3 from 4.

 - KAcc mk.1:
   . Damage per shot reduced to 150 from 160,
   . DPS increased to 150 from 140,
   . Flux to fire reduced to 165 from 173.
   . Overall slightly more efficient with a cleaner stat card, fits better as a third alternative between the Railgun and LDA.

 - KAcc mk.2:
   . Flux to fire reduced to 480 from 500,
   . Now fires in bursts of 2 rounds.
   . A smidgen more flux efficient, half the burst damage of the Heavy Needler, but a decent armor pen and causes very long overloads.

 - KAcc mk.3: DPS increased to 333 Kinetic dmg/s from 300.

 - HEMor mk.1: Flux to fire reduced to 210 from 235.

 - HEMor mk.2: Flux to fire reduced to 600 from 700.

 - Light Energy Blaster: Flux to fire reduced to 360 from 400.

 - Most PD weapons received the NO_TURN_BOOST_WHILE_IDLE tag with adjusted turn rates.

 - Balius-class freighter: Cargo capacity increased to 350 from 250.

 - Balius-class tanker: Fuel capacity increased to 600 from 500.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Restored Nexerelin random mode compatibility for 0.95a.
 - Fixed *many* memory leaks. (Can't say how significant they were, but every bit helps I suppose)
 - Slight code optimization.
 - Fixed some typos here and there.
 - Cross-mods compatibilities updated.
 - Every single weapon was redrawn to ensure they are displayed sharp in the game. Lots of reworked muzzle and glow effects.

1.63

Barebone compatibility update for 0.95a

BALANCING:
 - Akhlys escort wing:
   . Wing size reduced to 3 from 4.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Acheron's second star now properly show up in the planet list
 - Amity Freeport:
   . Discount market ship selection vastly improved in variety.
   . Now uses modSettings.json

1.62

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Phased Torpedo Launcher: Fixed NPE when mounted in hidden mount (because hidden large missile slots are a thing in some mod apparently)

1.61

 - Added Panotti grenadier wing:
   . Small and cheap.
   . Limited payload but much faster than your average bomber.
   . Imagine a Piranha that could hit reliably (isn't that terrifying).
 - Added support for Industrial Evolution.

BALANCING:
 - Erymanthian Boar rework:
   . Lost one large missile hardpoint, but gained a medium missile turret.
   . System changed to Missile Forge Vats from Radar Ping,
   . Now has permanent double sensor range.
 - Nemean Lion rework:
   . New system allowing to trade range increases between offensive and defensive weapons,
   . Holding fire toggles the "Lion's Hide" with improved damage reduction. (AI ships won't use that yet)
 - Ker bomber OP cost raised to 22 from 18.
 - Corocotta deployment cost raised to 20 from 16.
 - ORION Artillery has yet again changed: it is now "just" a smart gun with weak tracking. (probably a coping measure before I remove it entirely)
 - Phase Torpedo Launcher:
   . Now deploys a mine with significant AOE when emerging from phase.
 - Arc Missile Rack OP reduced to 4 from 5.
 - Arc Missile Pod no longer has any flux cost to fire.
 - Anti-missiles Pad:
   . Increased burst firerate to 2 rpm from 0.66,
   . Increased ammor regen rate to 2 every 5s from 1 every 5s,
   . OP reduced to 10 from 12.
 - Nano-needle Minigun Mk3:
   . Fragmentation dps increased to 1000 from 800,
   . Extra damage raised to 300 energy dps from 200,
   . Range increased to 900 from 800.
 - Laser Torpedoes:
   . Now will detonate on direct impacts for half its rated damage.
 - Ultra-Heavy Energy Blaster:
   . Range extended to 750 from 700,
   . Fires in volley instead of staggered salvos.
   . Flux efficiency improved to 1.2 from 1.33.
 - Ricochet Gun:
   . Flux efficiency improved to 1.33 from 1.5.
 - Heavy Modular Swarmer:
   . Ammo raised to 600 from 360.
 - Coasting Missile Pod:
   . Ammo raised to 20 from 16,
   . Range increased to 10k from 6.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Fixed a couple of miss-aligned weapons on the Dracanae.
 - Scy's compiled strings are now using the vanilla system instead of a custom one. (my apologies to translators for that change, but at least it's an easy change to make)
 - Updated support for Version Checker.

1.60

BALANCING:
 - Triple Energy Blaster:
   . Range increased to 600 from 500.

 - HeMor mk3:
   . OP increased to 18 from 16.
   . Damage per shot decreased to 500 from 650, flux reduced to 600 from 700.

 - Dracanae-class cruiser:
   . Deployment cost reduced to 15 from 19.

 - Campaign faction fleets:
   . Auto-resolve battles for the AI fleets now more even and consistent with player battles.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Externalized all compiled strings to ease translations
 - Alternate skin pack now provided as an independent addon mod
 - Nosos interceptor can fire its swarmer.
 - Definitely fixed the modular ship death upon deployment.

1.58

RC4:
 - Singularity Torpedo:
   . Ammo now limited to 15.
   . Pull intensity reduced by 80% but duration increased by 600%.
 - ORION Artillery:
   . Fixed max skill lightspeed bug.
 - Fixed a few descriptions.

 - Added Starship Legend compatibility.
 - Added Commissioned Crew compatibility.
 - Added Ruthless Sector compatibility.
 - Added New Beginnings compatibility.
 - Added Vayra Sector compatibility.
 - Improved Nexerelin integration.

 - Prism Freeport removed (fully given to Nexerelin instead), replaced with Amity Freeport and its Discount Seller.

BALANCING:
 - Burn rate of several ships increased by 1 (but before reaching for your pitchfork, remember they have a higher sensor profile while moving)
 - Scyan Engineering hullmod:
   . Stealh/Signature effect slightly toned down to -25/+25% when still/moving from -33/+33%.
 - Orion Artillery rework:
   . Range reduced to 1000 from 1500.
   . Projectile acceleration massively reduced.
   . Removed HE to KE damage conversion (now fully KE).
   . Added slight target tracking.
   . Ammo reduced to 4 from 8, clip size reduced to 2 from 8.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Siren's system cannot move stations anymore (sorry).
 - Economy slightly reduced in regard to other larger factions.


1.57

BALANCING:
 - Significantly nerfed the Nosos Interceptor:
   . Halved the beams DPS.
   . Gave them a 10 deg arc to improve the time-on-target against other fighters.
   . Missile swapped to 4 swarmers from single kinetic rocket.
 - Eris Interceptor buf:
   . 6 fighters per wing from 4
   . OP raised to 3 from 2.
 - Interception gun ammo regen slowed by 30%.
 - Dramatically reduced the base value of Intelligence Data Chips (10000 from 50000).
 - Improved the Intelligence Command reveal rate of Pirate and Pather bases.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Fixed Singularity Torpedo making fighters taking off invincible.
 - Fixed missing package illustration.
 - Fixed undercrewed Nexereling start.
 - Removed Acheron's abandoned mining station.


1.56

CONTENT:
 - Alternate skin pack available.

BALANCING:
 - Frigates and some destroyers buffed (longer PPT, slightly more armored...)
 - Minimal Preparation Hullmod no longer use a Logistic Slot.
 - Scy now uses an improved vanilla station for Elysee's defense.
 - Miniguns chargeup time increased by 50%.
 - Manticore system switched to Engine Jumpstart from CIWS drones.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Massive VRAM optimization.
 - Removed Prism military market.
 - Vastly improved High-End Seller weak weapons selection,expanded the ship selection too. (only for non Nexerelin games)
 - Hopefully fixed retreat bug using ships with modules (please report to me if it still happen regardless of the ship's mod).
 - Clarified some (in)compatibilities between hullmods.
 - Improved Laser Torpedo detonation logic, slightly modified flight behavior.
 - Added a third blueprint package dedicated to weapons.
 - Slightly raised the Antimatter station orbit to avoid fleets bumping into the corona and unable to reach it.


1.55

BALANCING:
 - Ship prices raised to 0.9.1 levels, some fleet points and deployment costs reductions.
 - Deployment and Maintenance costs normalized to each-other.
 - Scyan ships now have their monthly maintenance halved when flying under burn 3 instead.
 - Industries shuffled around according to 0.9.1 rules.
 - Custom industries prices and maintenances adjusted for 0.9.1.
 - Prism's Ship Market heavily nerfed as an industry all around.
 - Interception Gun:
   . Now can reliably hit ships and fighters too.
   . Added 50 EMP damage (25 sustained dps).
 - Scyan blueprint packages prices lowered to vanilla levels.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Acheron system moved a bit away from the core.
 - Astrapios:
   . Trail now renders below the explosion.
   . Projectile now passes through missiles.
 - Anaplekte CIWS drones now use Interception Guns instead of Miniguns.
 - Akhlys escort fighter Micro Flak replaced with Active Flare system.
 - Nemean Lion large mounts now turrets instead of hardpoints.
 - Keto modules now equipped with Interception Guns instead of Vulcans.
[close]



You like the mod? Help making it better: Donations will be used to commission content I cannot create myself, such as illustrations or music.
Additionally if you would enjoy playing with a custom paintjob, I also take commissions for a reasonable rate. PM me for more details.



  Big thanks to all the modders that helped to create this mod:
Cycerin, Debido, Mesotronik, Dark Revenant, Silentstormpt,
Histidine, SniZupGun, Deathfly, 19_30 and many others.

Music composed by Fastland, aka Cycerin


To whomever it may interest:
As it has become pretty obvious, this past year I for the most part moved on from modding this game. While it may be disappointing to hear I cannot promise to ever returning to the debit of frequent updates I once held. I however do not want to let this mod die. Thus in the case I have yet to show up 3 months after the next major game release, anyone is free to update Scy and/or change it however they want.

In the meantime, Scy's code can freely be re-used by anyone and the sprites can freely be kitbashed from without asking with 3 conditions: It must be for a Starsector mod, that mod must have a similarly permissive license, and I am credited.


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