Someone else's Newb ship

[keen320]

This is the first ship I've actually posted.

I gave it the rather boring name of "Spade cruiser," because I'm bad at coming up with cool names, and the front kind of looks like a shovel.



I wanted to try out the object driven linked turrets, which I don't think were possible in the year old version of BF i was using before. The two turrets on this ship are actually dual particle rifles turned into a barrel made by Arcalane. Speaking of Arcalane, one of his posts enlightened me about the Shockbeamer Overlay weapon, which is what the main laser on the front is (I'm not trying to flatter Arcalane, I just figure it would be stupid not to give credit to an admin). I think it might be a bit overpowered for this size of ship (it does about 80 dmg for 60 frames). Most of the damage comes from a Megabeam, so it doesn't look horribly ugly.

I don't think this ship is anything even remotely special, compared to a lot of ships on the forum, but I wanted some comments so I can know what to do differently next time. I'm going to be pessimistic and assume it's not great.

Some questions: Are the colors alright? Should it be bigger? Should there be more sections? Is the laser overpowered? Should I use SW parts like everyone else seems to? Is my post going on and on and boring you?

[Imaillusion]

When posting images of ships, use the .png format, the image quality is better, and it makes the ship look less grainy like yours currently is

Onto the ship itself... yes it's terrible. The sections aren't placed together well, the shape and style are both horrible, and it looks as if it was created in less than 5 minutes. Ships will only look good if you put time and effort into them. This ship doesn't show any of the creative shipmaking skills you may have simply because it was a rushed job

Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid

[Preacher]

Is it supposed to be an awful Star trek ship?

don't think this ship is anything even remotely special, compared to a lot of ships on the forum

you got that right!

Heres some advice if you want to stick to stock sections check out some of Anna, Talhydras or Water and wind ships and you can see some of the best techniques to use. Take time when placing sections, use the sections to create the features your attempting to create, and experiment with depthing weapons underneath other sections to hide them a bit, it makes your ships more aesthetically pleasing.

If you want some ship names but lack the creativity to make them (although Spade cruiser is relatively original) look at latin words or google some navy ships names and 'borrow' them, think about what the ships purpose in the fleet is and it will make naming easier, for example 'Hawk' for an interceptor or 'Juggernaut' for a dreadnought.

Its also recommended that you start off by making small ships to develop your skills, use a colour wheel to help you pick colours, and like Imaillusion said png and default zoom please.

Lurk more.

oh and welcome to the forums

[keen320]

Sorry to put up another post so soon after the last one...

Okay, I need some help to get what I want from the ship I'm designing.


I emphasize that it's not finished yet. This is just the bare bones of the weapon system. Also, "Project 1" isn't what it's name will be. I want to finish it before coming up with a name.

What I want to happen is so that when two MegaLaser turrets fire, the "power core" (which isn't Aegised yet so I can work on it) will emit two beams as if it's directly powering the lasers...
...Like so
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/6687/bfscreen010.png

But when it first fires, the Power beams are too long and go beyond the turrets, which spoils the effect.
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/1527/bfscreen09.png

Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Without making the beams too short?
Oh, and can anyone also tell me how to make an aegis power core for the generator? i saw it on a lot of Anna's older ships. other places too. But i don't know how it's supposed to be parented.

Anna Mod Edit: Do not include massive pictures in your posts. Learn how to crop. Also, threads merged. There is absolutely no reason for you to have made a different thread for this post, especially when your other thread was already at the top of the board.

[Anna]

But when it first fires, the Power beams are too long and go beyond the turrets, which spoils the effect. Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Without making the beams too short?

This is a problem with custom beam sprites, which are the only thing I've encountered which consistently cause this error. Custom beam sprites just don't work. If you did not use any custom sprites for those beams, then I'm not sure what could be causing that problem. If you upload the .sb4, I could have a look at it and see if I can solve it.

Oh, and can anyone also tell me how to make an aegis power core for the generator? i saw it on a lot of Anna's older ships. other places too. But i don't know how it's supposed to be parented.

1) The method I used on my older ships is incredibly outdated. There are better ways of making glowy power cores now.
2) The method I used on my older ships is really, really easy to figure out. I'm assuming you mean my pre-SW ships, anyway. And I mean... really easy. It was a single round goddamn section with several aegis modules stacked on top of it and targeting it. Such a method by modern standards is ugly and horrible.

[keen320]

Sorry about the huge pics and the New topic. I don't have much forum experience. I'll remember in the future.

Anyway, the beams haven't been modified with custom sprites. I just changed the color to white. Changing them to normal doesn't seem to help much, either. I also had the same problem with MegaBeams, which is why I switched to beamers. But this is my first ship with Beam turrets, and for that matter, my second ship with turrets, linking, and a super-beam, so this is pretty new to me.

[keen320]

Well, meanwhile I thought of a funny idea. This is not intended as a serious ship, just something funny to do with a super beam. Only spent about 5 min on the body.

So... The Lightsaber!

I guess the Jedi really had to blow up some ships.
And I guess I forgot to get rid of the parenting lines.

It works best with direct control #2. Just hold the left mouse button.
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/8739/lightsaberm.png

It doesn't deflect anything, because i couldn't think of an easy way to do that that wouldn't look dumb.

[Anna]

Well, I tested it out. I can't duplicate your problem. Instead, the first time it fires, the beam bits just don't fire at all, and only kick in the second time. This may be because I don't have surfaces on. Either way, I do know what causes this problem. Weapon linking. Weapon linking causes some very odd things to occur the first time linked weapons fire. I don't know why. I think I may be able to work around it by instead making it a triggered force fire. I'll experiment a little.

But this is my first ship with Beam turrets, and for that matter, my second ship with turrets, linking, and a super-beam, so this is pretty new to me.

All things considered, for a first, it was fairly decent attempt in all those respects. You might want to make it so the circle bits are parented to the beams holding them instead of to the core, though, in the final product. I dunno.

EDIT: Triggered Force-Firing appears to have issues of its own, unfortunately. I'll keep messing around to see if I can get it working, but really, the beams being a bit too long the first time the weapon fires is not that big a deal.

[keen320]

Well, thanks for trying Seraph. I guess I'm fine with the beams. Once they fire, they work right about 90% of the time...well, 50% on a bad day.

I've since finished the rest of the ship. It's also nothing special, but it's certainly an improvement over my first posted ship. I opted for the somewhat silly name of "Scarabus Megakillitus." The name is accurate vs stock ships, due to the huge lasers. Their turrets have a 90 degree firing arc, so they can converge on a target or fire at two separately. I think I need to stop making huge lasers in all my ships, though.


http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/1677/scarab.png Thruster effects are from Arcalane's thruster pack.

I also animated the "leg" sections a bit. Not sure if this is effective or just gimmicky.
http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/1740 ... mation.gif

I think now I'm going to lurk for a while and figure how best to use SW sprites. And yes, I did kinda ignore Preacher's advice to start small. I just really wanted to try the beam turrets out.

Scarabus Megakillitus.zip

(17.18 KiB) Downloaded 766 times

[unitedblah]

Haha, you should make a huge beam at its head", animate the two arms with the lasers to move as if they're legs, and then name it the Covenant Scarab (if you play Halo)

[keen320]

Sorry, Every time I tried to play PC Halo I just got bored. And PC Halo 2 is a rip off. And I don't have an X-box. Personally, I've always been a Half Life Fan. Besides, Making the arms move would be really hard to pull off, because of how it's set up with two walls and the "Energy beams."

[keen320]

Okay I just made an animation That I figure would look cool on a large, purpose built ship.



Sorry its a choppy image, I should maybe have done more frames, but I wanted to keep the size down. It looks smother in the editor.
This is not what a whole ship would look like. I just wanted to build the gun part. My main problem is that I'm not sure how to set up the weapon triggers so the firing animation looks good. My various attempts either don't fire at all for tac-cannons, fire prematurely for torpedoes (plus, a torpedo Gatling gun wouldn't be too impressive), or fire without a target and thus generate errors.
Error is in "Spoiler" for those who don't care to read it.

Spoiler!

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Other Event: User Defined 1
for object TacNukeCannon:

Error in code at line 41:
bullet.alarm[0] = max(point_distance(x,y,l_target.x,l_target.y)/l_bulletspeed,l_special4+1) -

at position 56: Unknown variable x

I would prefer only one "barrel" to fire like on a real Gatling, but I'll settle for all at once.

[Arcalane]

My various attempts either don't fire at all for tac-cannons, fire prematurely for torpedoes (plus, a torpedo Gatling gun wouldn't be too impressive), or fire without a target and thus generate errors.

Are you trying to force-fire via triggers? That might be why. It should work if you use a normal target designation system though...

I would prefer only one "barrel" to fire like on a real Gatling, but I'll settle for all at once.

The trick then would be to use Link Delay on the weapons with reload times synched to the movement of the "barrels".

But TBQH if you want a vulcan, you might as well make a custom sprite for a turret, unless you really do have to make it absolutely huge for some ridiculous reason.

[keen320]

Thanks for the help. I got it to work using a bunch of tweaking I don't entirely get, but the linking definitely was necessary. It doesn't always start the cycle in the same spot, but it does continue to fire from one spot. does 150 damage per shot and cycles at 20 frames per shot, for a total fire rate of 90 rounds per minute. Although it does suffer the drawback that destroying any one barrel would spoil the illusion, as would destroying the only actual cannon. And I did first try and force fire with triggers, which caused the errors.

I wanted to make it absolutely huge BECAUSE it was ridiculous. I don't know If I'll ever make a proper ship out of it, but now I know I can. Makes me want to go all crazy. Bwahahahahahaha! Heheheheheh...hehe.
Besides, while custom sprites aren't technically difficult, I'm not good making art on the computer. Although maybe If I drew it out first, it might help. Besides, does anyone really want to see the kind of overlarge sprite I would probably make, based on THIS piece of work?