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[Ahne]

Wait, wait, wait. You mean ships can have weapons that don't need a visible mount?

exactly, but it's not recommend to overuse that feature, for this special ship with its little shape it would be an option though

[SafariJohn]

Wait, wait, wait. You mean ships can have weapons that don't need a visible mount?

exactly, but it's not recommend to overuse that feature, for this special ship with its little shape it would be an option though

The reason not to use hidden weapon mounts is that they can't be disabled. Not even malfunctions can knock them out IIRC.

[Lind]

Wait, wait, wait. You mean ships can have weapons that don't need a visible mount?

exactly, but it's not recommend to overuse that feature, for this special ship with its little shape it would be an option though

Given I mostly design frigates, this is gonna be one damn neat feature once I start my own mods. Thanks for the advice man.

Wait, wait, wait. You mean ships can have weapons that don't need a visible mount?

exactly, but it's not recommend to overuse that feature, for this special ship with its little shape it would be an option though

The reason not to use hidden weapon mounts is that they can't be disabled. Not even malfunctions can knock them out IIRC.

Good to know! Guess a small ballistic turret on the front shouldn't break anything. 

That Y-wingesqe frigate actually made my innards warms... for some reason.

I'd love to see more of these Star Wars configurations, not as too similar but the essence of it, since it has been long. But if you choose something else, I'd love it still.

Spoiler

Pardon me with my rather confusion descriptives.

IT'S A TRAP.

[close]

Here's the deal, as much as I love Star Wars ships design, I don't really like mods that are adaptations of TV Series/Other Games, just because they never fit in other universes, and more often than not end up having an hell of a generic lore, and well, lack creativity.

Spoiler

That said, some of my stuff will probably have a "Koensayr Manufacturing" Vibe to it. (I don't really dig the imperial stuff too much, with the only exception being the Tie Fighter, which let's be honest, would look like this in Starsector - l°l )

So I'd never actually "copy" an existing ship, but I'll gladly get inspiration from it, prime example being my Y-Wingish reactors.
Although in the long run I plan on making various different kind of ships, from these very mechanical looking ones, to high-tech curvaceous designs, I'll still take a lot of inspiration from SW, as I think a few of those starships have some of the best designs ever realyzed.

[close]

[Protonus]

Here's the deal, as much as I love Star Wars ships design, I don't really like mods that are adaptations of TV Series/Other Games, just because they never fit in other universes, and more often than not end up having an hell of a generic lore, and well, lack creativity.

Spoiler

That said, some of my stuff will probably have a "Koensayr Manufacturing" Vibe to it. (I don't really dig the imperial stuff too much, with the only exception being the Tie Fighter, which let's be honest, would look like this in Starsector - l°l )

So I'd never actually "copy" an existing ship, but I'll gladly get inspiration from it, prime example being my Y-Wingish reactors.
Although in the long run I plan on making various different kind of ships, from these very mechanical looking ones, to high-tech curvaceous designs, I'll still take a lot of inspiration from SW, as I think a few of those starships have some of the best designs ever realyzed.

[close]

Sounds just about as right as I expected, do your best in making your ships come true. I'd love to test them out.

And I can wait after the patch, so... yeah.

[Lind]

Here's the deal, as much as I love Star Wars ships design, I don't really like mods that are adaptations of TV Series/Other Games, just because they never fit in other universes, and more often than not end up having an hell of a generic lore, and well, lack creativity.

Spoiler

That said, some of my stuff will probably have a "Koensayr Manufacturing" Vibe to it. (I don't really dig the imperial stuff too much, with the only exception being the Tie Fighter, which let's be honest, would look like this in Starsector - l°l )

So I'd never actually "copy" an existing ship, but I'll gladly get inspiration from it, prime example being my Y-Wingish reactors.
Although in the long run I plan on making various different kind of ships, from these very mechanical looking ones, to high-tech curvaceous designs, I'll still take a lot of inspiration from SW, as I think a few of those starships have some of the best designs ever realyzed.

[close]

Sounds just about as right as I expected, do your best in making your ships come true. I'd love to test them out.

And I can wait after the patch, so... yeah.

Trust me, I have so many lores idea for factions, I can't wait to release one, also, I have about 10ish ships ready on my pc, which I ain't publishing because they need polishing.

Speaking of polishing, experimenting with smooth design atm, came up with this while messing around.

Spoiler

Cutlass Class?

     

[close]

[HELMUT]

You know, your ships remind me a bit of the old Qualljom faction mod. Probably because of the color? Kinda sad that this mod never got any attention.

Anyway that's probably your best sprite yet. The only things i would say would be to reinforce the shading on the sides and perhaps changing that weird dark triangle bellow the mount. Here i toyed a bit with your ship to show what i meant.



Oh and did you finally got your hands on the game?

[Ahne]

yeah i like it too, looks nice!

[Lind]

You know, your ships remind me a bit of the old Qualljom faction mod. Probably because of the color? Kinda sad that this mod never got any attention.

Anyway that's probably your best sprite yet. The only things i would say would be to reinforce the shading on the sides and perhaps changing that weird dark triangle bellow the mount. Here i toyed a bit with your ship to show what i meant.



Oh and did you finally got your hands on the game?

Not yet, but I should have it by tomorrow, given I got a text a few hours ago saying my account is gonna be unlocked in the morning. 

Spoilering the full answer for the sake of scrolling:

Spoiler

I don't know, this ship is kind of far from the looks I'd be going for, even tho admittedly is much, much sleeker than my other designs.
Still haven't experimented with lights and mutilayering yet. So from here I could litterally be going anywhere. After all, once I have the game my style will probably adapt to it a lot more, plus I'd like every ship I make to be unique, having a "personality", right now all I made is mostly pretty bland and experimenting with styles, pixel art tutorials and such.
Although I just had a look around and noticed smooth designs seem to blend much better in the game, even tho it's not fully pixel art, which is why I started spriting in the first place, but heh. We'll see where I'm going, my style changed like 4 times in a week since i started working on these. On the bright side, comparing these to my first works, I noticed I'm evolving rapidly, which I'm liking a lot.

One thing for sure, I'll stick with huge reactors for the most part. Cause reactors. Reactors look cool.

About this specific ship, I like what you did there, removing that triangle makes it fairly lighter to the eye, on the shading, yeah, I'm still working on my fear of overdoing with contrasts so yeah. I'll get it right eventually. 

The colour of what my faction will be is kind of in the air still, given I don't even know what most of the vanilla factions look like yet. I grasped hegemony isn't too far from my current colour tho, even tho it's more "yellowish" oriented. Plus I don't even know how much scripting is involved, given my knowledges are  mostly basic.

[close]

[xenoargh]

I like that ship, Lind; great design feel overall, the shading is reasonable and the greebles are pretty good!  Great progress!

I couldn't help it; I did a pass on HELMUT's pass, cleaning up a few minor inconsistencies in lighting, highlighting on some panels, some palette stuff to bring out features, some practical dirt... and lights, which need to be seen on black. I think lights are pretty important; they really help dial in a ship, scale-wise.

[Protonus]

Spoiler

[close]

You have shined the over-shined, shining object of shining.

I say you have declared official Serial Escalation that grows beyond and beneath my beard mustache of judgement. Good day, congratulations and well played to you, sir.

Spoiler

Which means, well... Overnicely done.

[close]

[Lind]

I like that ship, Lind; great design feel overall, the shading is reasonable and the greebles are pretty good!  Great progress!

I couldn't help it; I did a pass on HELMUT's pass, cleaning up a few minor inconsistencies in lighting, highlighting on some panels, some palette stuff to bring out features, some practical dirt... and lights, which need to be seen on black. I think lights are pretty important; they really help dial in a ship, scale-wise.

Looks like you guys had a lot of fun with this babe, I like that, I swear you make me wanna release free resources to see people messing about and kitbashing them. 

I've actually looked up some of your stuff and I've gotta say while I like your designs, our styles are pretty far from eachother. In this case I really dig those darker vents, and I like the deeper shading, it actually inspired to rework most of my stuff, or flat out remake some. On the other hand, the lights and stuff are kinda far from my style, not in a bad way, at all, I like what you did there, that sensor on the front doesn't look out of place at all either. I actually love seeing different styles coming in contact.
Gotta say the part under the mount looks somewhat out of place, but I guess that's because HELMUT didn't exactly have much to work with. (mah bad.  )

Also given it's one of my weak points I'm experimenting with shading, soon I'll be a master! ^{Don't quote me on that!}

Edit:

Speaking of which, messing around with shading I came up with this:
(added it as a free resource for kitbashing and stuff to my thread)

Spoiler

   

[close]

[xenoargh]

The sensor thing is an example of subtle asymmetrical touches; in general, large mechanical structures, including warships, are rarely 100% symmetrical IRL, and a few things like that can dramatically increase the feeling of it being a real object. 

It's a subtle thing and perhaps breaking the contour wasn't the best choice, although I personally like that kind of touch, as vehicles IRL tend to have these things (refueling pipes, radio antennas, etc.) that create subtle imbalances and it makes a uniform appearance break up just a wee bit, as well as reminding us that we're looking at mechanical forms.  I just added that at the last second, though, so perhaps a movement of it a pixel or two to either side would have felt more pleasing; you might experiment with that and see what I mean

Anyhow, the main stuff I was doing there was bringing out forms a bit more.  What looks pretty strong at 2X or 4X zoom often fades into illegibility at 1X zoom; with pixel art in general, you need to be consistently looking for a good, solid read on shape and form at 1X, especially in terms of shade transition.  So doing things that made the panel edges pop a bit and things like that are part of the final process.

Stuff like the lights is just final touches, and largely is about establishing scale (bearing in mind that a rough scale for SS ships other than fighters is 1 pixel = 0.5 meters).  Often, I see work here where the sense of scale is neglected, to the point where huge (pixel-wise) objects look like they should be shrunk down quite a lot to feel at-scale.  There are other ways to go about that that work equally well and it's something I like, as RL fighters, airliners, ships etc. have such running lights, for functional reasons

[Lind]

The sensor thing is an example of subtle asymmetrical touches; in general, large mechanical structures, including warships, are rarely 100% symmetrical IRL, and a few things like that can dramatically increase the feeling of it being a real object. 

It's a subtle thing and perhaps breaking the contour wasn't the best choice, although I personally like that kind of touch, as vehicles IRL tend to have these things (refueling pipes, radio antennas, etc.) that create subtle imbalances and it makes a uniform appearance break up just a wee bit, as well as reminding us that we're looking at mechanical forms.  I just added that at the last second, though, so perhaps a movement of it a pixel or two to either side would have felt more pleasing; you might experiment with that and see what I mean

Anyhow, the main stuff I was doing there was bringing out forms a bit more.  What looks pretty strong at 2X or 4X zoom often fades into illegibility at 1X zoom; with pixel art in general, you need to be consistently looking for a good, solid read on shape and form at 1X, especially in terms of shade transition.  So doing things that made the panel edges pop a bit and things like that are part of the final process.

Stuff like the lights is just final touches, and largely is about establishing scale (bearing in mind that a rough scale for SS ships other than fighters is 1 pixel = 0.5 meters).  Often, I see work here where the sense of scale is neglected, to the point where huge (pixel-wise) objects look like they should be shrunk down quite a lot to feel at-scale.  There are other ways to go about that that work equally well and it's something I like, as RL fighters, airliners, ships etc. have such running lights, for functional reasons

I agree, you bring some really good points. I like the pixel to meters comparison, scale is actually something to keep in mind. And not gonna lie, I'm mad guilty of not spending more time refining details.

[Protonus]

For the future faction I'm working on. Somewhere at patch 0.7a.



Credit for the gun piece by Helmut's Junkyard of "Honest" sales.

[Nanao-kun]

That actually looks pretty cool. I like it a lot better than the your "Blue" ships, truthfully.