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[Princess Idle]

Hi there,

I'm new to this forum, and new to this game as well. I rarely play RTS game, but this one is just too good to miss.

After I played the vanilla version for a couple of weeks, I start to think about creating my very own ship. I believe am not the first one who think about this, and will not be the last one as well.

Thanks to the Trylobot's ship editor, creating a ship from a sprite is not a difficult work. But when I start to design a ship from scratch, I find that I need something stylish, more than a pretty sprite.

And then, occasionally, I find this GIF:

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I have to say, this thing is so cool! I want one as well!
Why transformable? Coz it's cool!

And then I worked out my one, which is much awkward compared to the one above.

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Well, I just move parts around to a different position, assuming it is "transforming". I know it's not a good sprite, but this should be enough to show you what kind of stuff I'm working on. I have a modified( actually just painted) version, although still looks somehow awkward.

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I have already make this ship a mod, which just contains a ship, the weapon of this ship, the ship system of this ship, and the ai used for the ship system. I have no idea how to share it to others, but it looks nice in game. I feel it get better in game when rendered. lack of detail is not a big problem as this ship is small, about 20% smaller than Lasher Class frigate.

And naturally, I start to think about better, larger, more complex transformable ship. If I can create more ships, maybe I can put them into a faction. but currently all I want is a stylish transformable ship.

However, there is actually some limits on transforming in this game.

• Transforming is just a visual effect, the actually collision border of the ship will not change. The weapon slots will not change as well. This is not a big problem for small ships, as the difference in shape before and after transform is just a few pixies , but if you scale up to a cruiser size, then it might not be OK.
• As the weapon slot cannot be moved, it doesn't really make sense if the ship just moving parts around to compose a slightly different shape. Each form shall have it's own style, but sharing same set of weapon making this difficult to achieve.
• Most transformable ship/fighter/ actually transform between a certain form and a human form. However, it doesn't really make sense to create a human form in a top-down view, which all you can see is the head and shoulders.
• Also if you have ever created and played a transformable ship, you will notice that it is significant stronger than most ships in its class, and difficult to balance. A typical transformable ship will most likely to have a high-mobility form and a high-firepower form. Few ship have both mobility and firepower, but a transformable can benefit from both by simply switch between two forms.
• Something else but I cannot think up now

So, if you have some idea about transformable ships, and willing to share, please leave a comment. I personally would like to create a few more transformable ships, but it is a hard work as I need to draw the transforming animation frame by frame.

Ok, it's time to continue my work on my second transformable ship......

[Morgan Rue]

The ship in that gif is from the Diable Avionics faction mod.

[Midnight Kitsune]

The ship in that gif is from the Diable Avionics faction mod.

Which also has another, larger ship (a frigate versus the fighter posted in the OP) that transforms and I think Tarti, the Co-Author and creator of the transformable ships, said that anything bigger is too much of a hassle

[Chaos Farseer]

Out of curiosity, would the upcoming station stuff enable larger transforming ships? It seems like that'd technically be the case, but would it be practical?

[Ranakastrasz]

Is is possible to disable/enable weapons via script, similar to critical damage or whatever it is called? Like when you have low CR or have that uselessness hull mod?

If so, you can hide/reveal weapons like that. Maybe. Although I don't think you can actually make them appear behind the sprite without drawing it separately ontop of the weapon somehow....

[Princess Idle]

The ship in that gif is from the Diable Avionics faction mod.
Which also has another, larger ship (a frigate versus the fighter posted in the OP) that transforms and I think Tarti, the Co-Author and creator of the transformable ships, said that anything bigger is too much of a hassle

Thanks, that is an awesome mod! I tried that and, the fighter is actually much smaller in size than I thought, but that's what it should be as a fighter. I am surprised at the transformable frigate, which actually have a pair of turret weapon that can take part in the transformation. I think they achieve this by locking the facing angel of the weapon, and thus its location is predictable and can take part in the transforming animation. I never thought of this kind of transform. Great job for the mod author!

I should not be the only one who expects some larger, more complex transformable ships, for example transformable battleship. I can say it is possible as the techniques of creating such a ship is exactly the same as those for a smaller ship. However it is much more difficult due to the reason below.(and this is why I am here seeking help)

• Weapon slots never move, thus you cannot mount weapons on the moving parts of the ship. Larger ship will need more weapon slot, and therefore need more space if you want a decent layout. This makes designing much more difficult as you also need more moving parts which fighting for space against weapon slots.
• Same thing for the border outline. It will not change, so the design need to be carefully, making sure not to change too much in shape(otherwise the collision box will be somehow weird) nor too little to be called "transforming".
• More ideas for the two forms of ships is wanted. The classic high-mobility and high-firepower modes is good, but if you have a whole faction of ships which share the same two mode, it's still Ok but less excited. Something more interesting for each ship will be great, take the siege tank in StarCraft as an example, which transforms between a normal combat mode and a long-range shooting mode.
• Transforming animation itself will be a challenge for large ships. Moving parts around horizontally is the easiest way to make animation. how ever, as large ship tend to have more complex structure, it is impossible to achieve the transforming by merely moving parts horizontally. And moving parts up and down, rotating or folding, is actually quite difficult in a top-down view.
• Lastly, and again, lack of cool ideas. Most transformable vehicle I know is designed to transform to a humanoid, which does not make sense in this game due to the locked top-down view.

An awesome transformable battleship will be cool, but it seems to take a lot of work before I can create one.

[Princess Idle]

Is is possible to disable/enable weapons via script, similar to critical damage or whatever it is called? Like when you have low CR or have that uselessness hull mod?

If so, you can hide/reveal weapons like that. Maybe. Although I don't think you can actually make them appear behind the sprite without drawing it separately ontop of the weapon somehow....

Yes, you can control a weapon with a script, and this is what I am currently doing. I do this by setting remaining cooldown time to disable/enable a weapon, according to ship system status(ON or OFF).

To reveal/hide weapons is a good idea. making a ship looks like a freighter by hiding all the weapons is interesting. But few will do that in game if there is no other bonus when all weapons are hidden. Normally I give a bonus on mobility, and this goes back to the classic high-mobility/high-firepower model.

BTW, weapons are always rendered on top of the ship sprite, but you can create an animated weapon to make it feel like revealed/hidden.

Thanks for your comments!

[Tartiflette]

Out of curiosity, would the upcoming station stuff enable larger transforming ships? It seems like that'd technically be the case, but would it be practical?

Doable? Yes, absolutely. Desirable? This is the right question!
First, there will be a performance hit from using multi-part ships. If you deploy five ships composed of a hull and four mobile parts, it's is almost like you deployed 20 ships instead.
Also those sub-parts are destructible by default, so do the ship explode entirely then? Or you need to make them indestructible and somehow transmit the damage to the main ship. Or your ship must also be functional with some parts destroyed...
Also supposedly, the larger the ship, the slower the transformation. Unless it is something really simple like the Nemean Lion in Scy that currently only open and close large slab of inert armor. (I wonder if I'll make something for the Siren front opening to reveal the gun though. Right now I'd say it would be too much of a hassle for little benefits but you never know)
And even then, the transformation must still occur in the game's 2d plane or conserve each part silhouette. So yes that means no Macross Superfortress transformation.
And finally while it makes things possible, it is still a huge endeavor to code the actual animation! That little fighter has 400 lines of code just for the visual effect. Not including the code for the gameplay effect, or the AI for the system's usage.

All in all, I expect that modders will use the module system to make multi-part ships (either with extra armor bits or ships that can have large sections cut off) that the game will supports natively rather than getting into animating transformations. Or exactly what I did with Scy but is quite a pain to put in place with TwigLib.

Thanks, that is an awesome mod! I tried that and, the fighter is actually much smaller in size than I thought, but that's what it should be as a fighter. I am surprised at the transformable frigate, which actually have a pair of turret weapon that can take part in the transformation. I think they achieve this by locking the facing angel of the weapon, and thus its location is predictable and can take part in the transforming animation. I never thought of this kind of transform. Great job for the mod author!

Actually the frigate transforms only by sliding decorative "weapons" around. The weapons themselves are hidden and the decos share the same pivot. The fighter is a mix of sliding decoratives plus some of them having simple 4-5 frames animations. There are several other transforming/animated ships in my main mod Scy.

Yes, you can control a weapon with a script, and this is what I am currently doing. I do this by setting remaining cooldown time to disable/enable a weapon, according to ship system status(ON or OFF).

Beware that won't work for every mod weapons. Some types of burst beams are really tricky to lock down.

To reveal/hide weapons is a good idea. making a ship looks like a freighter by hiding all the weapons is interesting. But few will do that in game if there is no other bonus when all weapons are hidden. Normally I give a bonus on mobility, and this goes back to the classic high-mobility/high-firepower model.

BTW, weapons are always rendered on top of the ship sprite, but you can create an animated weapon to make it feel like revealed/hidden.

You should do that the other way around actually: put a decorative weapon looking like the ship on top of the weapon. Otherwise you will get issues with damage decals.

[Princess Idle]

Thanks Tartiflette, appreciate all your advise.

Honestly I haven't played your SCY mod as I previously focus on the vanilla version. but I benefit a lot from you tutorial about animation.

Back to the topic, I'm not worried about the performance, as I do the animation simply by animated decorative weapons. There is no multi-part included, and actually it is far to difficult for me to do it that way(I know little in coding, all I did is just copy and paste from Alex's code and then modify some numbers, something like that).

But I do find it annoying for the damage texture shows on weapons and ships. those damage effect is of course not animated and they make the animation looks very weird. I don't really know how to fix that but probably I can set weapons to be hidden and make a dummy decorative weapon at the exactly same location.

Regarding for animation, yes you are right. Large ship with complex animation will be kinda weird, when you cannot afford more than 5 seconds to transform in the battlefield. The border is a issue when you change shape too much as well. Transformable battleship will be definitely cool if properly made, but I wonder if it worth all the effort for nothing but a decent visual effect of transforming.

I decide to still have a try, but this time I start with a destroyer size(less than 200x200 pixels) and see how things going when the size of the ship goes larger.

I personally is trying some new ideas, one of which is for "glowing parts" with fade effect. Something like the beam saber, you simple get an extra glowing part(the blade of beam saber) when it is active, and little movement is required for any existing parts. This can be fast, easy and not affecting the borderline. But I'm worried if this looks good enough.

Thank you again. I learnt a lot from you advise.