Trying "unconventional" spaceship design, C&C

Elias_The_Crimson · Post by **Elias_The_Crimson** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:36 am

Hey all!
First new ship since the rather mediocre "Velian faction" navy.
I decided to have a go with Kaelis custom sprite packs, which is unexplored ground to me. Anyway, I spent a day or two sketching on a "low-tech" ship design from an era where flashy lasers and energy shields are replaced with machineguns, cannons and meter-thick steel armor plating.

Enough talk, here's some pics.

I call it the "Iron Scorpion". What you see here is a weird mix of piston engines (don't ask..), gears, boilers and ablative plate armor.
The front of the ship is reinforced with countless tons of armor plating, meant for soaking up huge amount of fire, while the rear is tough, though not as well shielded.

(sorry about the outrageously long/large GIF =/)

In-game shot:

I've been been experimenting with two things; First, a MIX of glowing and non-glowing sections. I've used it here to try and illustrate temperature differences (steel armor = cold, gears and pipes = warm).
Secondly; More realistic ship hull structure. Basically, I've built most of the ship from inside-out, meaning you'll find weaker supporting structures underneath all those heavy plates. This may make blowing the ship up more interesting/realistic, or it may not. You decide.

As you can see, the ship is unarmed. It's a work in progress, I just want to find out if it's worth continuing on, so please tell me what you think!
Thanks

Homer · Post by **Homer** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:43 am

Really genius idea with the internal structure with the girders and whatnot. But for one thing the thrust on the back seems a little over pronounced in my opinion. Good ship though.

Shogoll · Post by **Shogoll** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:55 am

Dude. That's awesome.

It's like steam punk but in space.

Also I would love doing internal structures too, but due to the 2D environment most of the support structure gets blown off at the same as the big cover pieces anyways, so it's really not that worth it.

Elias_The_Crimson · Post by **Elias_The_Crimson** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:11 am

Shogoll wrote:Dude. That's awesome.

It's like steam punk but in space.

Also I would love doing internal structures too, but due to the 2D environment most of the support structure gets blown off at the same as the big cover pieces anyways, so it's really not that worth it.

Thanks! ^^

I experienced this as well, but the trick is to tweak the internal structure section's HP so that they won't shatter when the outer sections explode. This sometimes means that they actually need HIGHER HP than what you'd expect, but since they'll be weakened by fragments from their child sections the player shouldn't really notice this.

EDIT:

And yes, the thrust sprites look like crappers because I can't get the custom sprite to work right. All I did was exchange the plasma-blue shades in PS to warm firey yellow, but now the exhaust sprites gets drawn from the MIDDLE of the sprite instead of from the right-hand side.
Any help with this would be appreciated

Bad Boy · Post by **Bad Boy** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:14 am

Great job, nice animations (the pistons work well), the internal structure looks well done, and the ship itself looks really steampunky.
I don't really like the glow/no glow bits, but your logic behind them is valid.
Your engines look a bit strange, the thruster flares look really blurry, and the cog section as an engine looks weird (and a bit overstretched).
Also, you have some sections overlapping the center line (look near the back)

derekiv · Post by **derekiv** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:05 am

I really like the ship.
A had a series of ships with really complicated internal structures a while back but these look much more realistic

Blackhart · Post by **Blackhart** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:10 am

This is a fairly interesting steampunk ship you got here.
The animations are interesting, colouring is decent, and the section usage is pretty well done. My only nitpick is the dull red sections along the spine of the ship. In my opinion those dull red sections sort of look out of place and kind of stick out.

Other than that, nice job on the ship.

Post by **Arcalane** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:14 am

Elias_The_Crimson wrote:And yes, the thrust sprites look like crappers because I can't get the custom sprite to work right. All I did was exchange the plasma-blue shades in PS to warm firey yellow, but now the exhaust sprites gets drawn from the MIDDLE of the sprite instead of from the right-hand side.
Any help with this would be appreciated

Try this;

The 'origin' of the sprite is set to the center, so you need to apply blackspace to compensate.

MelvinVm · Post by **MelvinVm** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 5:06 pm

Mmh, will it shoot gears?

Elias_The_Crimson · Post by **Elias_The_Crimson** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:23 pm

Thanks arc, that worked

Took the liberty of tweaking the color further towards a bright orange, might be a gamble

The thrust exhaust still looks blurry (due to its large scaling), but this isn't really so obvious in game in motion, especially since the shake multiplier is rather high.

Fixed the overlapping at the rear, mirroring error, thanks badboy ^^

I think I'll keep the red color of the spine midsection however. In-game they look more alive thanks to the ship glow

Speaking of which, I've uploaded the ship file, you can grab it here and have a go at tearing it up...
http://filesmelt.com/Filehosting2/downl ... rpion2.shp

I'm still uncertain on how to arm this thing. I don't think I will have it will hurl massive gears at foes though

I'm not sure on how to make the engines look better either; Haven't really found any better sections for it. Last resort would be a custom sprite, but It'd probably just end up looking just as bad thanks to my MS Paint "skills" :S

Squishy · Post by **Squishy** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:55 pm

Impressive work there, Elias.

You can always go for the usual bullet weapons IE machinguns, autocannons and vulcan cannons until you figure out something better.

Shogoll · Post by **Shogoll** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:32 pm

Long range low arc side winders with a spinning gear bullet sprite?

jwa8402 · Post by **jwa8402** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:28 am

Well I'm not sure what it should fire, but you could surely make a cannon, perhaps with a reload mechanism that 'shows' the bullet being pushed into the breech then locking shut? Might be overkill.

This would be an interesting style to make a pulse ship out of, like some sort of rear facing shield then replace the thrust sprites with explosion sprites?

Elias_The_Crimson · Post by **Elias_The_Crimson** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:06 am

That's a good idea jwa, I guess I could use the same GIF animator that I used for displaying the ship animations to create animated weapon/bullet sprites, or? My MS paint/potatochop skills are lacking however..

But autocannons will work well I think, especially for broadsides. Maybe MGs are too rapid-firing, not sure.

If it's not too difficult, maybe I'll try that sidewinder idea for lulz x)

Boarthephoenix · Post by **Boarthephoenix** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:00 am

The girders under the armor is a really cool idea, I had toyed around with it my self once or twice. Keep up the good work and tone down those crazy thrusters