Zoltan Heavy Cruiser

Kataklistika · Post by **Kataklistika** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:07 am

This is my first ship that I actually put an effort into. I made it about 6 months ago and never got around to registering and posting it on the forums. Therefore, the image is also old and I have no idea why I highlighted the weapons >_>

I made quite a few custom sprites in the design and I put some of Arc's turrets to good use. All comments and suggestions are welcome, and if I can find the time I'll see about updating my ship

jwa8402 · Post by **jwa8402** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 6:18 am

This has some interesting aspects to it. I'd love to get ahold of that wheel. It and some of the rest has an almost steampunkish quality to it that I think you could enhance. Adding pipes and such along it would probably help. I like the turrets, at long as your making them properly and not just photoshopping the barrels together. If that wheel rotates, I'd also put some smaller weapons on each protrusion so that they cycle before firing again to simulate long load time. Also think you could do something better with the engine. Not that I mind the flares in every direction, but depth the thrusters(w) and maybe do some interesting exhaust manifold or something. Asymmetry is always a good design to go with though.

Kataklistika · Post by **Kataklistika** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 7:50 am

Thanks for the feedback jwa. I really like your idea about making the wheel rotate and somehow firing a weapon when each protrusion reaches the bottom of the turn. I'll have to see about setting that in motion in the future

Also, the wheel is simply a 90 degree section copied and rotated 3 additional times. The turrets do work properly and I actually have a vid on youtube if anyone's interested. This ship is from an older version of BSF and I haven't had time to mess with the newer versions (Can't wait tho!). Now that there are some more resources available I might see about improving that engine too. Oh, and I did use a couple of sprites from steampunk cuz that's a really good sprite set.

Here are few of the sprites that I created and used. Knock yourselves out

25000st · Post by **25000st** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 8:28 am

Nice sprites. The ship has a very nice shape to it. Just refining some sections usage will help. You may also want to switch to the newer TSA sections because they make ships look a lot better. Other than that keep building!

.. and Welcome to the Forums!

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 9:56 am

TSA-style doesn't necessarily makes things look "better".
It makes them look "different".

HorseMonster · Post by **HorseMonster** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:13 pm

Whether or not a any given style is better or worse than another is pretty subjective, but like it or not black outlined, shaded sections which are generally but not necessarily accurately refered to as TSA or SWA style are what is in vogue at the moment. The warning forever derived style native to BSF is fine, but if you want the spaceships that you make to attract attention and to be popular then you would probably benefit from doing what is currently fashionable.

But yeah your spaceship looks okay.

Post by **Arcalane** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:17 pm

The rearmost turret's guns would probably look better if the inner/upper pair had the muzzles end further forwards than the outer/lower pair, similar to the way the autocannons are used here;

I'd also suggest ditching the custom sprite for that turret and replacing it with the section you see used as the center, then attaching the other two upper parts to that section. I only made that one a single-piece because of errors with BSF at the time which were fixed soon after, so that "nub" on the front shouldn't be overlapping the guns. It was actually a piece I parented the guns to in order to depth them underneath the larger blocks. You can see part of the section in question on the screenshot above if you look closely.