Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Trylobot]

I hope David won't be offended by my saying so, but these sprites are on-par with Vanilla quality. I officially bestow my congratulations to you for establishing your own unique look and process, and for implementing it so exquisitely.

Thanks also for posting a miniature tutorial for the rest of us! I'm sure my fellow modders and I look forward to seeing what will become of your shiny new faction!

[keptin]

I just woke up at 3pm in the afternoon.   I'm not an experienced digital painter, so it took all night--I justified it as a learning experience.  For the most part, I'm really happy how it turned out and I feel the Jardain Empire's "sinister and alien" style is coming along nicely.  Thanks for all the great comments, now test test test!  

The Soothslayer will be added next patch, it won't have phase "shields", but it may eventually get a phase system once those are released in 0.53.1.  Onto the Cyclotron Eviscerator!

[Ambient]

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

That looks amazing. I love the (what im assuming will be the missile pod slots on the right side). More asymmetric the better imo.

[keptin]

The Cyclotron Eviscerator



Strikes fear in the hearts of Federation commanders

Animation is a b!^#&.  I found the best approach for me was quickly modeling and animating the barrels in Maya, shooting a top-down render sequence, and then touching up in Photoshop.

[K-64]

That looks rather nasty, although no offence, but the colours don't seem to go with the ships.

My custom animations I just did manual stop motion (good job I had experience with that kind of thing... slightly ).

Another point on that weapon, it seems to have quite an old-school sci-fi look which I'm liking there

[keptin]

Since it's still common weaponry available to other ships, I wanted something bright and weird like the Hadron Accelerator.  There's a bit of color weirdness because of the GIF 256 palette.  I may desaturate it a bit to tone it back; I haven't actually seen it mounted to the Soothslayer yet.

*edit* Yep, it was converting to sRGB.  Since I dug in and messed with the saturation, I actually like these colors better.  

[DNAz]

Since it's still common weaponry available to other ships, I wanted something bright and weird like the Hadron Accelerator.  There's a bit of color weirdness because of the GIF 256 palette.  I may desaturate it a bit to tone it back; I haven't actually seen it mounted to the Soothslayer yet.

*edit* Yep, it was converting to sRGB.  Since I dug in and messed with the saturation, I actually like these colors better. 

Looks like some kind of futuristic self pleasure device.

[keptin]

Looks like some kind of futuristic self pleasure device.

You have a dirty mind, sir. 

[Uomoz]

Fits the ship really well

[robokill]

so what are that cyclones stats and the other ship load outs

[Erick Doe]

Fits the ship really well

I agree. That's some quality work right there Keptin. Don't rush things! I know I sometimes do in my enthousiasm.

This has the potential to become the highest quality mod/ faction to date. What with this high quality artwork and your eye for finetuning a faction balanced toward itself and to vanilla.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Wow, this mod has come a long way.  Playing with the vanilla balanced mod compilation (U's Corvus), your ships are no longer the cannon fodder they were before.  I especially like the best ship the faction has - the Titan Class carrier with the hadron transporter.  That, combined with the nucleon ram, makes for one hell of a capital ship.  Moreoever, it's got enough points and slots to make it a well rounded warship with no major weaknesses.

I've equipped mine with :  1 Cain (this gun is AWESOME.  the sound effect it makes, plus the extremely high shot velocity means it actually doesn't suck like most ballistic weapons)
                                   1 Peacemaker (a tier 3 heavy mauler, basically.  This covers the rear so it can shoot at smaller ships that have snuck around back)
                    1 nucleon ram, 5x dual flak cannons, and 2 harpoon MRMs.  The dual flak cannons slot right in for 360 degree coverage against fighters and missiles.

I gave it 50 flux vents, accelerated shields, integrated targetting unit, auxillary thrusters, advanced optics, and advanced turret gyros. 

   It is one badass ship.  It can easily beat any 2-3 ships in the vanilla game, and it has an answer for almost every situation.

[hadesian]

That animation looks strange.

The animated part looks oddly disconnected from the still part, resulting in some weird illusions in my head, IE the still part is flat, and I mean really flat. The rapid change from the dark grey to this sickly green is a bit weird but fine. It also kind've looks like there is actually a full gun where the animation occurs, which is something part of why the still part looks strange. And it might just be me, but it looks like the barrels go a little to the right before firing rather than dead center.

That's what I see, at least.

It looks good though.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

I get what you mean, the non-animated part almost seems like it's floating on top of the gun and is hiding the inner workings underneath.

[keptin]

@Xareh, I agree.  Getting the art to match between render and sprite is an easy enough fix, but the animation is something that probably won't change.  There are a few technical hurdles to overcome:

- fire animation lines up with barrel
- frame 00 isn't at some weird rotated angle and/or has a barrel recoiling
- fewest frames possible

The animation looks odd since the round is coming out before the recoil occurs.  I could throw more frames at it with a firing delay, but that would take time that I rather spend on something more fun.  The Cyclotron had to be made to match the Hadron, but I rarely play with either.  I much prefer destroyers and cruisers with small & medium weapons.  Things get all boring toward the end game once you can fly swat Onslaughts.  My favorite part is building up to mid-game when I have a few destroyers and frigates and purchase my first low-tier cruiser.

Hopefully, once multiple systems comes about, there will be even more powerful bad-dude fleets elsewhere so the game doesn't end abruptly when you achieve Corvus dominance after two hours.