New ship builder, ohnoes!

[Kazutek]

After finishing the campaign (on easy ), I headed over to the ship builder and did my best at learn-as-I-go-reading-maual-and-trying-stuff-out routine.

I learn best this way, also hurts the hardest, but hey, no pain no gain...

Anyhow, I've just hit a wall bout part-way into making my own ship (starting off with a mid-line destroyer class, working off the game's balance level atm), coming in the form of "am I maximizing the ship builder enough artistically?" and loads more questions, like what the weapons will base off on in terms of stats, how do I balance the ship properly, AI routines, speed, turn rate, when and how the ship should use stuff I put on...

*brainexplode.gif goes here*

So, I simply just took a picture of what I've done so far and hopefully I'm getting somewhere with my fledgling ideas (and I'm currently looking for my old grade and high school stuff, cause I happen to have drawn a lot of sci-fi ships in those and am looking for some inspiration... and nostalgia XD)



edit: just figured out how to get to the other sections that are in the game, oops! Goes to show that I'm getting slow with age...

[Kaelis]

Your best bet would be reading the shipmaker manual first (F1, or here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3494 ), followed by the Advanced Features Documentation ( http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3556 ). Then look into Custom Content forum to get some shiny new sprites.

As for balancing, don't worry about it, its all arbitrary anyway. Do whatever works for you best.

Oh, and regarding screenshots:

You can now press F9 to initiate screenshot mode, then DRAG A BOX around the area you want captured. It will be dumped to your "SMScreenshots" folder in png format.

Its best to stick to png, too, since its the best format for BSF ship screenshots.

[25000st]

That's a rather nice looking ship for the sections you've used. As Kaelis said, get some new sprites in the Custom Content. I would suggest adding an engine at the back of the core.
Keep building!

[Silverware]

Your ship does hold promise, the basic idea and shape of it is worth going with, I definitely recommend using PNG's from now on.
Also try grabbing the other section packs available on the site. They make more things possible without scaling sections, which most every good shipmaker avoids, I cannot tell whether you have resized the sections due to the JPG's loss of detail.

Don't worry about making it balanced with any ships but your own, unless you are building for the Metagame, or to combat someone else's ship.

Just have fun.

[Kazutek]

After having a night to sleep on (badly needed, was seeing double, bad), I went over the documentation and advanced docs and still have some questions that must be completely obvious to people and/or are located elsewhere...

1. Depth. Limit? Any do's and don't's? Any way for sections to share a depth layer?
2. Weapons. What is the default settings? How do I know what weapon I'm adding on my ship? Any way to see them in action in Ship Maker? Direct Control doesn't work in Ship Maker so...
3. AI. How does the AI behave with custom ships. Will they automatically recognize what a ship is capable of from the weapons and speed/turning, etc? Do I have to program the AI myself per ship? Is there a way to default a certain AI mode like flanking/broadside?

[thanto_]

1. Depth reasonably, and shade according to depth. I'm not aware of any limit. No, no two sprites may share the same depth.

2. in SM, there is a button for adding weapons. It's the second one down. The one you see there is the one you're adding. Use the up and down arrows next to the button to choose different weapons. As for the stats, see this thread. Check the stickies in the Shipmaking Info and Resources forum.

3. AI is dependent on the AI setting you choose for the ship. There are multiple types of AI, like flanking and broadside. The AI type and distance determine how the ship fights. Nothing else. See the Shipmaking Info and Resources forum for more info. To set the AI type, click on the bottom button on the left sidebar in SM. There will be a pop-up menu with a list of your ships main attributes, including AI type. Set it through that.

[Kazutek]

Couple of more advanced questions before I go poking in the ship maker again:

4. Certain sprite availability: I've gone ahead and searched around on the Custom Content section and havent found certain sprites that I see are part of the ships that some people show off here. Sprites like engine exhaust, shaded-in sections, and animated gifs as sections.

5. Default ships from BSF: Is there any way to load them in the Ship Maker as a basis?

6. Multiple SM: Any way to have multiple instances of the Ship Maker up so I can refer to current ships as a basis for balance?

edit: I love figuring stuff out on my own. Was poking around smsprites.ini for a way to multi-box the SM when I noticed the list of the sections that show up in the SM. I can simply replace them with the sections I get from Custom Content

[Arcalane]

2. Weapons. What is the default settings? How do I know what weapon I'm adding on my ship? Any way to see them in action in Ship Maker? Direct Control doesn't work in Ship Maker so...

No offense, but the second question there is pretty obvious.

First part: default settings are preprogrammed into the weapon's Edit panel.

Second part: See above. Also, what thanto_ said.

Third part: Nope.

4. Certain sprite availability: I've gone ahead and searched around on the Custom Content section and havent found certain sprites that I see are part of the ships that some people show off here. Sprites like engine exhaust, shaded-in sections, and animated gifs as sections.

Engine exhaust is usually the result of the ThrusterEx module. The custom recoloured ones are in my Misc Crap thread. Look harder; TSA's thread, Kaelis' thread, the DST threads. All have shaded stuff.

5. Default ships from BSF: Is there any way to load them in the Ship Maker as a basis?

Unfortunately not, unless someone rebuilds them (again). Even then they're not going to be 100% accurate to the stock ships in a few ways. Long story.

6. Multiple SM: Any way to have multiple instances of the Ship Maker up so I can refer to current ships as a basis for balance?

Yes, just start it twice... or however many times you want/need it. It's a bit CPU intensive though.

[Chiiro]

Yes, just start it twice... or however many times you want/need it. It's a bit CPU intensive though.

It is? *glances at his three instances of SM and then the little sticker on his computer that says CORE i7 inside* Oh right.

[Kazutek]

Guess my poor workhorse is starting to show its age. can't seem to get another instance of the SM open without either one erroring out and basically ruining any work I've done.

From the looks of some of the work people are outputting, I see that most don't resize sections, default or otherwise. I take it this is a recommended habit to learn?

From reading around, cloning sections is fine, but cloning weapons isnt and produces weird aftereffects? I take it this is a bug/limitation of SM?

Lastly, before I step on more people's toes over stuff that isnt clear enough, even after some searching, and I'm pretty sure this is a common error that has an easy fix that I've somehow missed...

Code: Select all

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Other Event: Game Start
for object obj_sidebar:

Invalid format!

Custom sprites\

Press ignore to replace with '?' sprite, or abort to terminate the game.

[Bentusi]

i have the same error in some ship test, my solution is:
1-Open the ship
2-Do anything with the weapons (move it and undo, change the color and undo, etc).
3-Save the ship
Doing this the error disapear.
A failure saving the ship, i think.

[Silverware]

That one is in Shipmaker.
Its because the Sprite Ini is trying to call a sprite that is just "Custom Sprites/"

rather than
"Custom Sprites/sprite.bmp"

[Kazutek]

I found the errant problem in the ini and I believe I've fixed it. Some pos entries were doubling over.

Thats the problem if you've got 200+ sprites per group

EDIT:
My second attempt after much reading, testing, and some face-desking...

I even took time out to add fancy thrusterex's to add that little bit of graphical touch.

Now the hard part is balancing the ship with two flaks, 2 blasters, and a gatblaster to match something as close to as a Hestia as possible...

[Kiltric]

As far as small ships go, this is great.

Although, it does look a bit... chunky I suppose? The central gray section almost looks entirely separate from the "ring" of green sections around it. Perhaps a touch of green sprites or very small sections over the center would help.

I might be nitpicking too much, but it's what I see.

[Kazutek]

Another update before I go to bed. Think the lack of sleep's starting to get to me...