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Author Topic: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources  (Read 142937 times)

connortron7

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #195 on: May 04, 2023, 03:06:54 PM »

Having been quite annoyed by AI-generated images flooding stuff in the past, I do agree that it would be nice if AI stuff was mostly limited to its own thread as opposed to being mixed together with this one.
Agreed, there are fantastic sprites here that people put good work into and seeing some crumbs made by an ai that most likely "learned" from proper artists without their permission is quite insulting.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2023, 04:15:42 PM by connortron7 »
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #196 on: May 06, 2023, 03:35:46 PM »

OP is updated!

Sadly, a couple of images from 2021 were lost to Imgur purges. If you contributed that long ago and see that your image link has failed (we're talking pages 10 or so forward), and want it up here, PM me.

I try to upload / hardlink before we lose things here, but sometimes I don't get to this soon enough; every time I do an update, it takes a couple of hours of work, and I've been pretty tight on free time lately.
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #197 on: May 06, 2023, 04:18:13 PM »

On the AI-art stuff: I've updated the OP with my policy regarding that stuff going forward.
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Lukas04

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #198 on: May 06, 2023, 05:33:24 PM »

On the AI-art stuff: I've updated the OP with my policy regarding that stuff going forward.

Quote
4. AI-generated works are permitted here, so long as they've been turned into sprites for people to use in their mods. From a copyright perspective, AI-generated works, unless they've directly copied a particular image, have been held by courts in the United States to be uncopyrighted material, because they're not derivative of anybody in particular and were produced by automation, much the same as using a Photoshop filter or other algorithmic techniques. Image-generation AIs are basically giant pattern-recognition systems; they don't "think" so much as try to figure out what a given thing might look like, based on the billions of images they've been trained on.

If using techniques such as img2img, inpainting, etc., the question of whether the artist can claim copyright to the resulting image is still being figured out by the court systems around the world, but it appears the answer to that will be "yes", because the input data was intended to produce a particular visual outcome. When you take an AI-generated sprite and edit it for use as a spaceship sprite, however, it's obviously copyrighted to you, and it's OK to post it here.

Look, your not making your image better by saying how its okay to steal sprites from other community members by putting them through an un-copyrighting tool.
You could have just said that its okay to post AI-generated sprites here and thats it, but instead you had to make it about how this post tolerates art theft.

The issue in a scale of a small community like this often isnt legality, but just good conduct. Trying to play the legal card here about how the artist technicly looses their copyright just gives of sense of bad faith.
I do think the AI Art is fine, though it should get its own thread instead of you trying to keep it on this. Im sure you will find people that are fine with feeding their sprites in to an algorithm there if your just front up about it.
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #199 on: May 07, 2023, 09:25:55 PM »

This AI stuff is such a silly controversy. Let's talk, one last time.
Spoiler

I've heard a picture's worth a thousand words. So, here's a screencap of me in action today:



OK, so it's a screenshot. I'll give it more context, for those of you who haven't been following the posts here in detail in a moment.

But first, let's deal with the confusion I'm reading in the commentary above. I'm afraid I wasn't clear enough, and how I wrote the policy update may have muddied the water, and I apologize if that's the case.

If somebody makes a 1:1 copy of your ships, that's clearly copyright infringement, regardless of the source. If it's a kitbash that's obviously a kitbash, ditto. Those rules have been in place for years, and AI stuff isn't going to change those rules.

I'm not excusing or condoning any form of copyright violations. Using AI to make it doesn't change the copyright status of your work, obviously. So, if anybody infringes on your copyrights... I'd be first in line to take it down from here. I hope that's a satisfactory answer on that point of contention, and again, I apologize for the misunderstanding that appears to have happened, due to me not wording things carefully enough.

Lastly, I've updated the policy, to make everything I've said here clear. If you think it can still be improved for clarity, please PM me; your feedback will be taken seriously. But don't clog the thread here, please.



Now let's talk about what you can see in that screencap above. What you're seeing there is a screencap of my browser, while I used Easy Diffusion to make one of the two ships in this post.

See the Model field? It's just the current version of Dread. I've already discussed that model in the detailed directions I gave out about how you can get started with AI. It isn't trained on anything remotely like Starsector's art, so far as I know. Its creator is into horror imagery. I just like how it produces muted colors, gritty details, rust, stains and biomechanical references.

All the settings, etc. are visible, too. You can clearly see the source image. It's not one of your ships or anybody else's here, either now or from the past. It's an original design I made in 10 minutes in Photoshop.



So, let's go over what facts you've been given:

1. You've all been taught how to make your own art this way. You can- quite literally- see for yourselves that everything I'm saying here is true by using the technology in exactly the same way, yourselves. There's no "trust me, brah" involved; you just have to go set up the software and follow my detailed directions and examples.

2. You know, with as much certainty as I can provide, that I'm using this stuff, exactly as I've described. IDK how else to "prove" that to strangers on the Internet, but at least I cared enough to try?

3. You know it's legal, and not considered infringement, because the tech doesn't just copy things; it attempts to recognize patterns, which are then reinforced by subsequent passes.

That part's pretty complicated to explain to non-techies, but basically... when it's used the way I use it, it's trying to guess what I'd like the results to be... via inference. Basically, the AI looks at the source image and tries to infer what it's seeing. "Is that a wing? I think that's a wing; let's make it look more like a wing" and so forth. It does that a few million times and spits out a result that, hopefully, looks like a spacecraft.

4. In the screencap, you can see the source image- it's an original design, made by me.

5. I've tried giving a non-technical answer about why I can't train a model to copy your work, even if I wanted to. Here's a slightly-more technical version.

Basically, it's because there isn't enough artwork here to generate inference well. Stable Diffusion's main model, which every other model gets merged with, was trained on billions of images. It still can't quite figure out human hands, lol.

Dread, according to its author, uses 30,000 images to train with... and it does an OK job, sometimes, at what it was originally meant for, which is certain types of horror imagery. That some of what it does works well for my purposes is just luck, really- I tried a bunch of models out, and kept returning to Dread, because it works for the things I'm doing with it (which largely aren't SS-related, but that's neither here nor there).

Generating inference is a hugely complex computational task (like, starter-kit for doing this is an A100), and for it to work on visual art stuff, you generally need at least thousands of images of the type you want the AI to infer from. There aren't that many ship sprites in every single mod on this Forum from the last decade (and they're all sorts of different styles, to boot). It just wouldn't work. Not "wouldn't be great" but "would be so awful that it would be worse than useless". We can, via good ol' Occam's Razor, safely conclude that I'm not doing that... and wouldn't bother, to be really honest, because that sounds like work, just to... er... give away free spaceship sprites for anybody to use? Who does that? Some Evil Genius, with an infinite budget... wastes their time on giving away freebies? It's not terribly likely, is it?





So... go look at the tutorial and try it out. Don't take my word for it- I'm not asking for trust. Use it and try to make a spaceship sprite; you've got all the knowledge right here, in a few Forum posts. You'll realize super-quickly that this tech doesn't magically copy some poor artist's work; you can't just say a few magic words to the AI and get a cool, pixel-art spacecraft.

If you have questions about using it, ask me via PM. I'm willing to discuss this stuff with you- any of you, on any question you like- but I do expect that the posts here that aren't about giving away free art to the community will stop, as of now. If that doesn't happen, I'll have to report your behavior to Moderation, because this is really starting to feel like harassment. I don't like doing that. I think that it's better to have a polite, adult conversation in private, and not mess with this thread. Please understand that this really is the last time I'm going to warn you that this behavior is pretty clearly in violation of Forum policy, and my own desire to continue to provide this service to the community is largely dependent on whether I feel welcome here.

AI-generated art is clearly an important technology. But, in the end, it's merely an accelerator. You still have to have good ideas, and in the case of SS sprites, you need to do final pixel-art work, or the results will be meh at best. I strongly encourage everybody to experiment with the technology; it's useful and fun, and can save time. But it's not a magical copying-machine; it takes some skills to use, and other skills to get a polished final result, and it's simply impractical to copy your stuff, because the tech just won't do that.
[close]

Meanwhile, here are ships for anybody to use:

AI Image Source Note: these images were all made with img2img prompts and Stablity AI's Stable Diffusion, using the model known as Dread_V3. Text prompts were probably something like, "spaceship, ((aerial view)), panel lines, greebles, (((detailed and intricate))), rocket engines, jet engines, small details, dirt, hydraulics, hatches, struts, grunge, rust, oil stains, post-apocalyptic, low-tech, steampunk, dieselpunk".

Spoiler
If you like fluff:
The ship on the left is a Midline Patrol Cruiser, Camelback-class. This type was originally developed as a freighter, much like the much-beloved Venture-class, but has been repurposed for the violent realities of the Persean Sector. Ko Combine fleet techs have installed greatly-improved shield generators and a powerplant capable of sustaining a mix of Energy and Ballistic weaponry. This is rounded out with six Small Missile hardpoints. The Camelback's designation as a Patrol Cruiser is in recognition of its strengths and weaknesses: while it is a capable fighter and can still carry reasonable amounts of cargo seized from pirates and smugglers, it's somewhat slow and inefficient of both Fuel and Supplies. So, while it is utilized by many smaller parties in the Sector, it lacks the ability to intercept small ships and tends to struggle if engaging purely military craft.

The ship on the right is the Coldwulf-class, a Pirate Commerce Raider. Originally conceived during a lengthy flame-war between Pirate clans at the Thulian Raider Base over "what a proper raiding ship" would look like, the arguments soon turned towards bets on whether, should the class be built, it would actually work as intended. Built by the clandestine custom ship-builders of Atnak Industrial by a small group of ex-Merc shipwrights, the Coldwulf is equipped with a fearsome collection of weaponry- five Small Ballistic Turrets, five Small Missile hardpoints, and, most importantly, two custom beam weapons in special mountings under the wings.

Unlike many Pirate vessels, the Coldwulf relies largely on speed and firepower to achieve victory, and the design is rather fragile, with a narrow waist and cramped quarters that allow very little cargo, Fuel or Supplies to be carried, so it must be accompanied by freighters and fuel tenders to have any reasonable radius of action outside merely local systems. However, its Hyperspace Drive, essentially an off-record copy of the drive used by the Wolf scaled up, is capable of superior speeds, making the vessel quite useful for catching small fleets of Independent traders and other likely prey. While this class has remained largely obscure, its status as the Pirates' best glass-cannon ship is acknowledged by all the bettors in Thule.
[close]
« Last Edit: July 23, 2023, 04:03:47 PM by xenoargh »
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Big Bee

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #200 on: May 08, 2023, 03:30:06 AM »

On the AI-art stuff: I've updated the OP with my policy regarding that stuff going forward.

Quote
4. AI-generated works are permitted here, so long as they've been turned into sprites for people to use in their mods. From a copyright perspective, AI-generated works, unless they've directly copied a particular image, have been held by courts in the United States to be uncopyrighted material, because they're not derivative of anybody in particular and were produced by automation, much the same as using a Photoshop filter or other algorithmic techniques. Image-generation AIs are basically giant pattern-recognition systems; they don't "think" so much as try to figure out what a given thing might look like, based on the billions of images they've been trained on.

If using techniques such as img2img, inpainting, etc., the question of whether the artist can claim copyright to the resulting image is still being figured out by the court systems around the world, but it appears the answer to that will be "yes", because the input data was intended to produce a particular visual outcome. When you take an AI-generated sprite and edit it for use as a spaceship sprite, however, it's obviously copyrighted to you, and it's OK to post it here.

Look, your not making your image better by saying how its okay to steal sprites from other community members by putting them through an un-copyrighting tool.
You could have just said that its okay to post AI-generated sprites here and thats it, but instead you had to make it about how this post tolerates art theft.

The issue in a scale of a small community like this often isnt legality, but just good conduct. Trying to play the legal card here about how the artist technicly looses their copyright just gives of sense of bad faith.
I do think the AI Art is fine, though it should get its own thread instead of you trying to keep it on this. Im sure you will find people that are fine with feeding their sprites in to an algorithm there if your just front up about it.

I don't care about the legal argument either, it just kinda muddles things here. Would it really be so hard to make a second, dedicated post for AI generated stuff, while keeping this for handmade sprites?

Like, if you wanna get AI sprites then go there and if you wanna post sprites you made but won't use, or want to find sprites like that made by other people then use this thread? It'd be nicer from an organizational standpoint than having to sift through AI generated images. It would just make more sense, even without any arguments about the ethical or legal aspects.
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BigBeans

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #201 on: May 08, 2023, 02:51:36 PM »

My only comment on this AI stuff is that it should be split into its own thread instead of being part of this one.
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #202 on: May 08, 2023, 07:05:18 PM »

If somebody wants to host a thread where only AI-generated stuff is allowed, great!
Spoiler
That's not sarcasm, I promise.

I'm totally serious. If people want to do that much work for the good of the community, I'm 100% supportive of that.

So, are you part of this posse and you want to volunteer? Great. A place like this has to have a bunch of things:

1. Somewhere to park all the data that's 100% reliable. Up for eternity on a web-host where you have FTP access, basically. Not a Google Drive, Dropbox, etc., but a real host. It's cheap these days.
2. Understands that this only really works if it takes all entries (i.e., no gatekeeping, no elitism, etc.) while dealing with the occasional copyright drama.
3. Has a person in charge who wants to put in the hours of work it takes to update the OP (because otherwise, the thread's useless, the images get buried).

If somebody really wants to do that for AI-generated spaceship sprites, I'm totally supportive. I'll even post there :)

But... not me. This is my little job, and it's all I'm able to find time for.

The people who think this is "just a thread" have never, ever maintained something like this one, and might want to stare at the OP posts for a while. It took something like 3 hours out of my Saturday afternoon to finally collate, label, sort and upload the last batch (roughly 8 new artists, 60 entries), then make sure everything was working properly with the posts, etc., etc. Maybe longer- I tend to lose track of time when I'm playing Sprite Librarian (most boring game ever, -10/10).

So if you want that vision and are willing to do the work, it's totally cool with me. Get it off the ground, and I'll happily jump on that bandwagon. Again, not sarcastic- just be aware of what you'd be expected to do. It's a big deal. Keep in mind, folks... I took up this job from Medikohl, after he'd been doing it for 3 years. I've been doing it for 6. So, this is a very serious commitment. When I say, "basically forever" on the OP, I meant that.

But, if somebody wants that level of commitment... I'd be the first one to give them a massive thumbs-up.
[close]

 Meanwhile, here's a spaceship:
AI Image Source Note: these images were all made with img2img prompts and Stablity AI's Stable Diffusion, using the model known as Dread_V3. Text prompts were probably something like, "spaceship, ((aerial view)), panel lines, greebles, (((detailed and intricate))), rocket engines, jet engines, small details, dirt, hydraulics, hatches, struts, grunge, rust, oil stains, post-apocalyptic, low-tech, steampunk, dieselpunk".

Spoiler
The Longhaul-class freighter is frequently seen making the shorter runs between the Core Worlds. It's a fuel-hungry, but relatively fast cargo hauler with excellent tonnage capacity inside its modular cargo bays. It's poorly armed, but moderately well-shielded and reasonably quick, so it's sometimes converted into a drone-swarm assault vessel by Pirates, who regard such a design as an excellent first chance for a younger captain to prove themselves.

A little irony here: this is "AI-generated" in only the loosest sense. About 95% of the pixels there are me, because I had real problems getting the AI to figure out the cargo pods. Next time I'll do that as a separate job and see if it can do better, lol.
[close]
« Last Edit: July 23, 2023, 04:04:10 PM by xenoargh »
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Big Bee

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #203 on: May 09, 2023, 03:57:37 AM »

If somebody wants to host a thread where only AI-generated stuff is allowed, great!
Spoiler
That's not sarcasm, I promise.

I'm totally serious. If people want to do that much work for the good of the community, I'm 100% supportive of that.

So, are you part of this posse and you want to volunteer? Great. A place like this has to have a bunch of things:

1. Somewhere to park all the data that's 100% reliable. Up for eternity on a web-host where you have FTP access, basically. Not a Google Drive, Dropbox, etc., but a real host. It's cheap these days.
2. Understands that this only really works if it takes all entries (i.e., no gatekeeping, no elitism, etc.) while dealing with the occasional copyright drama.
3. Has a person in charge who wants to put in the hours of work it takes to update the OP (because otherwise, the thread's useless, the images get buried).

If somebody really wants to do that for AI-generated spaceship sprites, I'm totally supportive. I'll even post there :)

But... not me. This is my little job, and it's all I'm able to find time for.

The people who think this is "just a thread" have never, ever maintained something like this one, and might want to stare at the OP posts for a while. It took something like 3 hours out of my Saturday afternoon to finally collate, label, sort and upload the last batch (roughly 8 new artists, 60 entries), then make sure everything was working properly with the posts, etc., etc. Maybe longer- I tend to lose track of time when I'm playing Sprite Librarian (most boring game ever, -10/10).

So if you want that vision and are willing to do the work, it's totally cool with me. Get it off the ground, and I'll happily jump on that bandwagon. Again, not sarcastic- just be aware of what you'd be expected to do. It's a big deal. Keep in mind, folks... I took up this job from Medikohl, after he'd been doing it for 3 years. I've been doing it for 6. So, this is a very serious commitment. When I say, "basically forever" on the OP, I meant that.

But, if somebody wants that level of commitment... I'd be the first one to give them a massive thumbs-up.
[close]

 Meanwhile, here's a spaceship:

Spoiler
The Longhaul-class freighter is frequently seen making the shorter runs between the Core Worlds. It's a fuel-hungry, but relatively fast cargo hauler with excellent tonnage capacity inside its modular cargo bays. It's poorly armed, but moderately well-shielded and reasonably quick, so it's sometimes converted into a drone-swarm assault vessel by Pirates, who regard such a design as an excellent first chance for a younger captain to prove themselves.

A little irony here: this is "AI-generated" in only the loosest sense. About 95% of the pixels there are me, because I had real problems getting the AI to figure out the cargo pods. Next time I'll do that as a separate job and see if it can do better, lol.
[close]

Ah, then it appears that it is so hard to make a new thread. Quite a bit harder than one would expect, if it requires many hours and actual money. That's fair enough. In that case I suppose the next best thing we could ask for would be a clear separation of AI generated assets within the main collection.
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Lukas04

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #204 on: May 09, 2023, 05:12:28 AM »

How is seperating work from one thread in to two threads that much more work? Its a bit annoying but its not as much as you make it out to be.
Nobody is asking you to do it because nobody has made an AI thread yet, people are asking because you are turning this in to an AI thread, so clearly you already spend the required effort on it?
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #205 on: May 09, 2023, 01:39:18 PM »

@Big Bee: I'm glad you get it. What you've proposed is a workable compromise.
Spoiler
I am willing create an AI sub-section, per artist, when they submit works made in that way.

Caveat: I can't create new blank posts in the OP to make it into some special animal all its own. This is a technical limitation, not me being unwilling. IDK whether even Alex can do that. I'll consider asking him, but I hate asking him for favors like that, because he has better things to do with his time.

When I started this, I never imagined the OP's would get so big, frankly, so I didn't reserve enough posts for this to go on for, well, we're getting nearly to a decade now, lol. At some point, the posts will hit the character limit and  I'll be forced into consolidating artists' submissions into big PNGs, which will involve more work and make it a little harder for people to use.

This compromise, of course, would require that artists say that they used AI art tools in the first place. So that's going to have to be on the honor system. If you haven't already figured it out... it's going to be nearly impossible to tell, when talented artists use this tech as a base and spend some time on polish.

Since there's <counts fingers> only one person doing this right now, that won't add much new work for me, other than creating a new sub-section under the artist's other works.

Note: this isn't a blank check on my time. The policy would have to be reviewed if there was an actual flood of polished AI-gen ship sprites from a significant number of artists (like, if five artists all whip out 100 beautifully-polished ships in six months... I'll both be delighted that people have chosen to give so much work here, and horrified at the workload, lol).

If people just let the AI do all the work, then submit without polish (turret positions, etc.) I may have to adjust policy there as well, since in theory some kid could use MS-Paint and Easy Diffusion to make a bunch of really awful "ships". But I'll err on the side of, "takes everything" for now, because the whole point of this gets undermined if I feel like I'm having to gatekeep.

But that probably won't happen. In my experience, we get somebody really talented like Bananana who submits a bunch of stuff in a pile, because they have too much sitting around for their own projects... and then nothing but the occasional single sprite for weeks or months.
[close]

Meanwhile, a new ship appears!
AI Image Source Note: these images were all made with img2img prompts and Stablity AI's Stable Diffusion, using the model known as Dread_V3. Text prompts were probably something like, "spaceship, ((aerial view)), panel lines, greebles, (((detailed and intricate))), rocket engines, jet engines, small details, dirt, hydraulics, hatches, struts, grunge, rust, oil stains, post-apocalyptic, low-tech, steampunk, dieselpunk".

Spoiler
The Horse-Thistle class, a new "pocket battleship" design, has yet to be seen outside the occasional Merc fleet, as the sheer expense and specialized role make it unlikely to see military procurement.

The ship is, like the Pirate's Acanthus-class, an unusual "flying wing" shape, which permits it to use an unusual amount of frontal-facing weaponry. However, this design imposes the terrible limitation of being ineffective against flanking opponents, and it's woefully under-equipped for anti-missile defense. Only its built in Plasma Jets allow it enough mobility to strike hard, then run away before being overwhelmed.

Artists note:  this was made with a simple grayish flying-wing design. Why it came out green-blue, IDK, but I went with it. It's really, really hard to get inference AI to make this kind of design well; this took several tweaks to both the text prompts and the base art.
[close]

« Last Edit: July 23, 2023, 04:04:26 PM by xenoargh »
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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #206 on: May 09, 2023, 04:32:16 PM »

@Big Bee: I'm glad you get it. What you've proposed is a workable compromise.
Spoiler
I am willing create an AI sub-section, per artist, when they submit works made in that way.

Caveat: I can't create new blank posts in the OP to make it into some special animal all its own. This is a technical limitation, not me being unwilling. IDK whether even Alex can do that. I'll consider asking him, but I hate asking him for favors like that, because he has better things to do with his time.

When I started this, I never imagined the OP's would get so big, frankly, so I didn't reserve enough posts for this to go on for, well, we're getting nearly to a decade now, lol. At some point, the posts will hit the character limit and  I'll be forced into consolidating artists' submissions into big PNGs, which will involve more work and make it a little harder for people to use.

This compromise, of course, would require that artists say that they used AI art tools in the first place. So that's going to have to be on the honor system. If you haven't already figured it out... it's going to be nearly impossible to tell, when talented artists use this tech as a base and spend some time on polish.

Since there's <counts fingers> only one person doing this right now, that won't add much new work for me, other than creating a new sub-section under the artist's other works.

Note: this isn't a blank check on my time. The policy would have to be reviewed if there was an actual flood of polished AI-gen ship sprites from a significant number of artists (like, if five artists all whip out 100 beautifully-polished ships in six months... I'll both be delighted that people have chosen to give so much work here, and horrified at the workload, lol).

If people just let the AI do all the work, then submit without polish (turret positions, etc.) I may have to adjust policy there as well, since in theory some kid could use MS-Paint and Easy Diffusion to make a bunch of really awful "ships". But I'll err on the side of, "takes everything" for now, because the whole point of this gets undermined if I feel like I'm having to gatekeep.

But that probably won't happen. In my experience, we get somebody really talented like Bananana who submits a bunch of stuff in a pile, because they have too much sitting around for their own projects... and then nothing but the occasional single sprite for weeks or months.
[close]

Meanwhile, a new ship appears!

Spoiler
The Horse-Thistle class, a new "pocket battleship" design, has yet to be seen outside the occasional Merc fleet, as the sheer expense and specialized role make it unlikely to see military procurement.

The ship is, like the Pirate's Acanthus-class, an unusual "flying wing" shape, which permits it to use an unusual amount of frontal-facing weaponry. However, this design imposes the terrible limitation of being ineffective against flanking opponents, and it's woefully under-equipped for anti-missile defense. Only its built in Plasma Jets allow it enough mobility to strike hard, then run away before being overwhelmed.

Artists note:  this was made with a simple grayish flying-wing design. Why it came out green-blue, IDK, but I went with it. It's really, really hard to get inference AI to make this kind of design well; this took several tweaks to both the text prompts and the base art.
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Thank you for the consideration! While I do have a general distaste for AI stuff for various reasons, that's not really relevant here and this addresses my concerns about organization and stuff.

Also mad respect for all the artists who submit stuff here. I gave kitbashing a go recently and was gonna submit the results here, but decided to try to make a proper mod instead, gotta start somewhere and all that. Just kitbashing something decent from vanilla assets is tricky enough, to say nothing of making so many you won't even use some, or making new stuff from scratch in the first place!
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PsychoThruster

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #207 on: May 20, 2023, 12:02:26 PM »

Tinkering with the ai thing is pretty interesting, simply inputting 2d shapes or very basic free use sprites with an appropriately detailed prompt has created some nifty results. I may turn some into ships once I get my head around the tutorials.
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xenoargh

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #208 on: May 20, 2023, 02:46:26 PM »

Fantastic!

Please do add turret positions, etc., (there's a template PSD file of those here, and here, you can use mine, no credit required) if you want it featured on the OPs.

Meanwhile... do you want a Faction that's kind of steampunk, dieselpunk and grimy? 

Here is the Ironclade:
AI Image Source Note: these images were all made with img2img prompts and Stablity AI's Stable Diffusion, using the model known as Dread_V3. Text prompts were probably something like, "((spaceship)) ironclad, ((aerial view)), pipes, rivets, panel lines, greebles, (((detailed and intricate))), rocket engines, jet engines, small details, dirt, hydraulics, hatches, struts, grunge, rust, oil stains, post-apocalyptic, low-tech, steampunk, dieselpunk, machinery".

Fluff, if you want it:
Spoiler
Because this is basically a whole Faction's-worth of ships, I'll have to be unusually brief.

The Ironclade are misfit miners who were out at the very edges of Domain space in the Perseus Sector when the Collapse occurred. Deep-space miners are a very hardy, cantankerous lot; the Ironclade's infamous for its taciturn nature, penny-pinching attitude about money, and ruthless business acumen.

Their ships reflect their environment: far from the safer lanes of Sector traffic, the Ironclade lives independently of the Core Worlds, and only interacts with them to trade and occasionally recruit Indies who appear to have the "right stuff". Their ships use pre-Domain tech that's very tough and easy to maintain.

All Ironclade ships are shieldless, but have very unusual levels of armor protection, making them dangerous opponents in a short engagement, but putting them at a severe disadvantage vs. long-ranged foes. Most ships of the Ironclade are equipped with rams and many of them can "dump V" to deliberately collide with opponents, often causing catastrophic damage in the process. Some Ironclade ships use Integrity Fields to greatly improve their overall protection, and many use Regenerating Neutronium armor technology, that allows them to gradually rebuild damaged armor plates with early-Domain nanotech. (Should anybody actually make them into a Faction, other than me, the Ironclade would have pretty obscene Armor values and come with some nifty Hull Mods for improving impact damage and survivability of pure-armor ships, as well as using nastier variations of Burn Drive to ram).

The Ironclade's main weakness in combat is their ships are inherently very mass-heavy compared to anything else in the Sector, and are hence rather sluggish compared to their Core Worlds counterparts, being slow to turn and reverse. So Ironclade tactics tend to be pretty simple, if effective: charge their ramming vessels in amongst their foes, using their broadside weaponry and ramming attacks, and get the job done before their armor is penetrated, while their support vessels hang back. The Ironclade eschew fighter-craft entirely, as they feel that the cost in valuable trainees is too high to justify the investment. Instead, many of their ships are armed with a variety of weapons designed to neutralize strikecraft.

Short descriptions of the ships, from left to right:

1. Livingstone-class Dreadnought: this huge, ungainly monster is rarely seen in Ironclade fleets. Only a handful are known to exist. The Livingstone-class has surprisingly-weak armament for a vessel of its scale, but boasts an incredible amount of armor- the outer hull alone is meters thick- and its System allows it to very briefly use the Travel Drive to rapidly cross a long distance without colliding with normal-space objects, allowing it to be tactically placed on the battlefield, or show up when it's not expected.

2. Knightsbridge-class Heavy Cruiser: a typical product of the Ironclade's military arm, this vessel strikes terror into Pirates everywhere. Utilizing a souped-up Burn Drive, the Knightsbridge can launch itself into an enemy fleet like a huge, armored torpedo, and then follow up with a blistering barrage of missiles and gunfire.

3. Clerkenwell Support Cruiser: the many ships of the Ironclade need support vessels to provide some long-range fire support, and the Clerkenwell provides this. Boasting a wide variety of Composite type weapons positions, it can be outfitted to either deliver large numbers of missiles, blistering long-range support gunfire, or a mix of both.

4. London-class Mining Rig. The heart of the Ironclade's fleets, the London-class, despite its ugliness, is a highly-utilitarian craft that combines the roles of fleet tender, mining vessel, cargo ship and fuel tanker. While its relatively poorly armed and lightly armored by Ironclade standards, it is dangerous enough to give a small pack of Pirates pause.

5 . Liverpool-class Support Platform: this unusual design complements the Clerkenwell in the support role. Boasting very thick armor and a multitude of heavy guns and equipped with a long-range targeting system, the Liverpool's main problem is its relative immobility when not dumping lots of Flux into its drives for a very brief burst of high speed. Typically these are dispatched into the center of a firefight, with the Clerkenwells performing a more traditional standoff role.

6. Dublin-class Fast Frigate Destroyer: the Dublin-class, while outgunned by many ships in the Core Worlds, is certainly capable of briefly out-damaging them, with its incredible array of 8 Medium Missile mounts running down its flanks. A relatively fast vessel, it can speed up for short periods while turning on a high-end Integrity Field system, allowing it ram even larger vessels with impunity or crush Frigates beneath its keel.

7. Bristol-class Destroyer: this vessel is much less swift and maneuverable than the Dublin, but has much more armor. Its distinctive "fanged" prow is designed for ramming, allowing internal boarding parties to attempt to take control over the enemy vessel.

8. Manchester-class Destroyer: perhaps the most typical of Ironclade designs, this vessel is often seen guarding trade fleet convoys during the long runs into the Core Worlds. Slow but heavy-hitting, its giant Composite mount allows it to mount weapons large enough to keep most Pirates at bay.

9. Birmingham-class Armed Freighter: filling a role roughly analogous to the Core Worlds' ubiquitous Mule, "the Birm" as it's usually called, is a tough little vessel with just enough weaponry and armor to keep it intact throughout long journeys in Hyperspace.

10. Sheffield-class Patrol Frigate: in the Ironclade space, these tough, dependable vessels are usually used as search-and-rescue ships, saving miners whose vessels have suffered damage or who need assistance against Pirates. There are faster and better-armed frigates in the Core Worlds, but everyone knows that these are perhaps the toughest and most reliable.

11. Nottingham-class Long Range Patrol Frigate: perhaps the strangest of Ironclade designs, the Nottingham was conceived as an, "if everything else fails" design. Using lifting-body glider principles that were ancient before the Domain was even considered, it can land on the most primitive of worlds, so long as it has an atmosphere. Easily maintained using simple technology, it can be cheaply deployed en masse. It is, compared to most Ironclade designs, both primitive and fragile; more akin to a Kite or a Wolf in terms of overall protection. But it's cheap and roomy enough inside for a small crew of new members of the Clade to learn the details of prospecting and exploration whilst being available for local military emergencies, should they arise.
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« Last Edit: July 23, 2023, 04:05:12 PM by xenoargh »
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PsychoThruster

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Re: Spiral Arms II - Free Community Sprite Resources
« Reply #209 on: May 20, 2023, 03:07:10 PM »

I love the round ones! The boxy ones look a tad out of place next to the rest in my humble opinion.

Edit: the link you provided returned a server error
« Last Edit: May 20, 2023, 03:08:49 PM by PsychoThruster »
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