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Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 10:41 am
by Silver Swordsman
Dunno if Anna will complain about using the same pieces over and over again (Actually nevermind), I like the feeling that this ship has smooth, plated armor all over it. It actually looks decent, better than your previous ships. No clutter. Try using different shades of grey instead of just two, however. Sharp contrast means great difference between the two places, so unless you were aiming for the bridge area and the bluish thing to be high above the ship, make some medium-grey pieces bordering them and the rest of the hull.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:54 am
by Sazabi
Update, I haven't gotten around to coloring it yet, I think that middle line of plate there sticks out to much


Image

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:58 am
by Anna
I just... I...

What?

I don't even...

Okay, okay, compose yourself Anna. Compose yourself. Take a moment. Breathe. Deep breaths, in and out... all right, I'm good.

I don't even know where to begin critiquing this thing. I really don't. You somehow managed to sort of follow the advice given and yet not do any of it right. Have you looked around? Have you seen how I, or ArcaneDude, or Arcalane, or any of the other established shipbuilders do it? Do you not see the flaws in your own design? Just... eugh.

I can't think of anything to say. I want to insult this thing, but it practically insults itself, so I feel that would be redundant.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:29 am
by Sazabi
Actually, I'm not liking this ship now that I look at it. so I'm going to trash it and start a new one.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 3:25 pm
by Anna
Just to be clear, by the way, I'm not saying you should do all your shipbuilding the exact same way we do, that would be pretty horrible, and I'd never advocate such a thing. But... well, there are pretty severe design flaws in your ships that should be fairly easy to spot if you look at the works made by those who've had time and practice to iron out their techniques and figure out what works well and what doesn't.

You don't need to rip off other people's design style in order to improve your own, but actually looking at how other people put things together, figuring out what would and wouldn't work with your ships, etc, is a really good idea.

I mean, this most recent ship is at least an improvement over your earlier ones in this thread, but it's... still pretty far from good, in my opinion. I'm sorry if I came off as excessively harsh in my "criticisms" of it. That's a habit I've yet to fully shrug off.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 4:14 pm
by wingstorm
I feel that you have great ideals for your ships, but seems to break down when it comes to putting them together.
As it stand now, your ships have too much stuff on them. While this is not a bad thing, in your case the parts don't feel organized.

As a user not a builder, I can't give any sound advice to ship building. But as a user, I have to say that your ships need to be improved.

I suggest having a look at vVhorpax's approach to building a ship at viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4692&start=15 (scroll down).
I am NOT suggesting you COPY his DESIGN STYLE.
But instead look at how he works, applying layer after layer to his ships. Adding stuff that make sense to the design.

Not everyone picks up ship building in a day, but I am sure given time, you could improve and impress others with your designs.

I hope to play your ships in BSF someday. Good luck!

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:19 am
by Sazabi
Okay after looking around and taking notes. I hopefully built a better ship. Using the stock parts as a underline while using the higher detailed parts on top(unfortunately this led to a bit of part replication) I hate the outriggers, but I need practice with them. I worked a lot harder and attempting to not have clutter around the ship while keeping lines going in the same direction here, but I need to work on my shading a lot.


Also how do you get your colors to stay ingame. I usually put custom colors in the color bar, and have to change them everytime and the ship is a ugly green in game.

Image
Its a Missile Cruiser, I don't have a name as of yet, enjoy ripping it to pieces.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 2:15 pm
by calvin1211
It's oaky I guess.
Kinda looks like a Battlestar. There don't seem to be a lot of missiles for it's name though.
Sazabi wrote:Also how do you get your colors to stay ingame. I usually put custom colors in the color bar, and have to change them everytime and the ship is a ugly green in game.
Use the colours below the top three. Those are reserved for team colours (and thus will change).

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 10:43 pm
by Sazabi
Those Tubes are Torpedoes, I tend to classify torpedoes as missiles to even thought thats blatantly incorrect. I didn't even see the BattleStar in it until you said something, it was originally based off

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w78/ ... nFleet.jpg

the top ship there. At least thats where the thought originated from.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 11:48 pm
by Anna
It... it doesn't look anything like that, though.

As to the ship itself, I have nothing nice to say about it. Well, that's not true. There are parts of it, small clusters of sections that look really good. But somehow the whole thing put together... it's a mess. It's a god damn eyesore of a mess. Flat, bland, poorly shaded sections are thrown together with large clusters of bright, densely detailed and textured DST sprites and the whole thing is just a clusterfuck.

Just... god, could you try making something smaller? You don't need to use upwards of a hundred sections to make a ship, you don't need to make your ships 500 pixels long, and you clearly don't yet have the skills to do either of those things well. So start small, and work up, because small is easier, especially with SWA sections.

Ugh. At least you got shading more or less mostly right, this time.

Re: Sazabi's Custom Ships

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 1:10 pm
by Silver Swordsman
Suggestion: start with small ships first, then go big motherships.

Gives you more practice and control over the parts, and its considerably easier to clean up (a mistake costs you five minutes for a small ship while a flawed carrier is a loss of several hours).