Destroyer Class--- Star Dust

Joystick · Post by **Joystick** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:40 am

Star Dust is a New type of Destroyer for my fleet. It has absolutely no deflectors but makes that up in a large amount of particle guns.

Parenting lines were enabled in this picture so I could show that its not going to be blown apart if one part of the ship is gone. It has 4 Shock Beamers for its main attack power. It has 8 Blasters and 2 Gat-Blasters. It also has 2 Twin lasers in the front along with 2 Gat-pulsars. It has 1 Repeating Artillery on each side. Directly behind the core is a twin laser. I put the twin laser there so it could still defend its self if something got behind it. I really don't know how many Particle Guns and Flak Guns are on it though.

Download the .shp ---> http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... -_show.shp

god froggy · Post by **god froggy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:46 am

Ok. Try using SW sprites. Search them on custom sprites. If you post a ship here, you want people to see how good the sectionwork on the ship is, so don't put weapons on. The colours, actually the colour, it is limited. As in, mono-colour sort of limited. Things that are higher up structurally are brighter and lower parts are darker. Don't take that harshly, thats just how I am.

Joystick · Post by **Joystick** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:50 am

Okay, I get it. Thanks for the info, but whats so special about SW sprites.

god froggy · Post by **god froggy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:58 am

nothings special about them really, it's just they're considered better than normal sprites. When you use them in the game remember to turn off glow in options.

inteuniso · Post by **inteuniso** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:18 am

Listen, you don't have to switch over to SW sprites. Just because people use them, doesn't mean we don't appreciate new posters making non-SW ships.

The ship has a good shape, but next time, take a screenshot in preview mode (F11). There are some lines that need to be fixed, such as the front fins. And there's a mirroring error on the back two stock sections. Other than that, it's a good first ship. Remember, to get custom sprites, just extract them to the custom sprites folder to their proper folders, and then drag them over into group arrange. Save the sprites .ini, so you can access them any time.

To turn off glow, set the glow to black (0,0,0) and it should be fine.

god froggy · Post by **god froggy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:27 am

I didn't say he had to switch to SW sprites, I was saying it would be good if he did because they look better.

Joystick · Post by **Joystick** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:31 am

I see the error, one piece is overlapping the other. How would I go about fixing that o_0?

god froggy · Post by **god froggy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:48 am

You can't, just move them further apart or rotate them. Oh and don't stretch sections.

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:52 am

god froggy wrote:I didn't say he had to switch to SW sprites, I was saying it would be good if he did because they look better.

Not necessarily.
Someone made some glowy ships that would have looked like shit in TSA style.
They're not considered better than normal sprites, just an alternative.

@Joystick:
You probably want to turn off parenting when taking screenshots (hit p!)
You probably want to do it at default zoom (hit home!)

Makes everything clearer and looks better too, without you having to touch your ship in any way!

About the overlap: You could also put another section directly on top to cover it so noone notices.

Joystick · Post by **Joystick** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:19 am

god froggy wrote:You can't, just move them further apart or rotate them. Oh and don't stretch sections.

Whats the disadvantage of stretching sections?

god froggy · Post by **god froggy** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:28 am

Nothing really, they just look worse. Especially at default zoom where everything else is pixel-perfect. Try looking at some bad ships by going to like page 40 of custom ships, or in the hall if shame. Most bad ships are bad because of repetition and... stretching. Oh and if they say god froggy in the corner they can't be good, because I suck

jwa8402 · Post by **jwa8402** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:51 am

Ok, you can stretch sections, but try not to increase by more than 1 or 2 because after that the pixles distort, and make sure you increase both width and length the same. Same with shrinking, though they don't look as bad shrunk. Biggest problem is that people tend to only stretch in one direction instead of using more, smaller sections to create the same shape.

As far as weapons, its fine to put them on, though if your still constructing the majority of the ship they usually get in the way. If you press W while selecting a weapon though, it will lower to the depth of its parent, meaning it will be covered by any sections 'higher' than it. I recommend using this method to reduce the appearance of weapon clutter.

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:10 am

Stretching is also bad because there is no need to do it at all IMO. It's bad design to do so. With so many different sections available, why do it?

(Unless of course, you're really good at using stretching and use stretched and it's not noticeable at all.)

Even stretching a bit makes it blurry (the lines loose their crispness) and look worse. Then again, I admit that I'm obsessed with crisp lines to the point where I avoid even rotating sections in orientations other than 90-degrees if possible.