Random acts of violence with Shipmaker

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jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

Thanks BFP!

Ok guys I got a dilemma here. I'm building a station with four levels, three of which will rotate. I want the middle one to rotate counter clockwise. I've tried to figure it out by reading the documentation, and I actually did get it to work for awhile. The problem is that after a certain amount of time it stops and starts moving clockwise. I know theres a border or something involved but every time I think I know which value to change it either does nothing or screws up the rotation all together. Any suggestions on settings to get a proper counter clockwise spin?

Heres the station. Be gentle, its not done yet. The levels are quite distinctive from eachother when rotating, plus there will be glows and such.

Image
Bad Boy
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Post by Bad Boy »

Unless I'm misinterpreting the problem, all you have to do is set Counter as -1. This makes rotation go counter-clockwise until it hits the border, or if there's no border, it just keeps going. The other use of Counter (I may be mistaken, haven't done it in a while), is that you can set Counter to larger numbers to have starting delay.

Also, I quite like the station, it looks like it'll be cool when it rotates. I tried to do something like this a while back, but never really got around to it, so it's nice to see someone else with the idea actually executing it.
jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

That fixed it, thanks a million! For some reason I had a funky setting in there.
I fooled around a bit more, trying to finish off some of the details. Not quite as massive as I was planning on making it, plus I wanted another ccw shield ring so the two would overlap, but the sprite count is getting close to 200.
Image
Image

Probably one or two more days of work and it will be releasable. Its a beast in a fight because it can always focus at least two thirds of its weapons on a target.
Droid
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Post by Droid »

If you find you're using too many sections, fuse a few?
jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

Thank you Droid, that was an excellent suggestion! I was able to cut off over 40 sections, without fusing more than two at a time, and never in a way that wouldn't allow the ship to blow up bit by bit. I finally got around to making a gif, sorry its rather rough.

Image

I took off the shield for now in favor of shielded sections because the big one from GSB was badly lagging the game. Also switched most of the weapons over to beams because this will have a significant role in the backstory.
25000st
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Post by 25000st »

Turqoise may look better if less saturated. Also either my computer is extremely slow or that animation is bad. Really nice concept though. Some the the detail also looks nice.
Droid
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Post by Droid »

About the *.gif, it seems more like a lot of frames were dropped than either of the two things you mentioned.
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Arcalane
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Post by Arcalane »

jwa8402 wrote:I took off the shield for now in favor of shielded sections because the big one from GSB was badly lagging the game. Also switched most of the weapons over to beams because this will have a significant role in the backstory.
Make sure you pick the right size shield. You should probably use the Medium, or a scaled-up Small. The Larges really are large and should be used lightly.
jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

I keep telling myself to hold off on posting ships till I've really fine tuned them, but I can't resist rushing to the forum to post and get feedback. When I get it.

Anyway, remember this guy? Cute right? Well it got a big brother. Shameless ripping off of Danny's Quakerider? Perhaps, but I like to think its unique. Tell me honestly what you think though.
The LYSSA Assault Dreadnought 09x1a
Image

Still work in progress since I've only had today to work on it while procrastinating on homework assignments. The tail is rather weak to me, I'll probably expand it after I've turned in my assignment.
*edit* Better, if slightly older picture
Image
jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

wow nothing? :cry: Ok well I've switched stuff around, added more body panels, and tried to extend the rear. Its still fail in my opinion but I haven't had any inspiration on how to finish it. I'm thinking either have it cut off sharply kinda like before, or an elongated tail. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Image
*edit* Most of the forward facing weapons are slaved to a targeting module. Ends up looking cooler.
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Anna
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Post by Anna »

It's kinda clunky and rather lacking in interesting details. It looks quite messy and has little to no real depth. I mean, there's like a vague nod in the direction of depth, but it's poorly done. And those flat side-panels that you surrounded it with... they just look like crap. Sorry. They make it look even more flat. I do not like it, sir. I do not like it one bit.
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InkFox
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Post by InkFox »

Just noticed the thread and I must say I love the newest additions.
A bit more repetition than I'd like on the edges, but not enough to stop me from loving them. weapon placement is good and your engines work is to die for.
If I had to suggest something I'd say clean up the bridge area, it seems a little cluttered; wouldn't be bad but in contrast to the amazing flow you create in the lower decks it seems out of place.

can't wait for more.
And so I curiously venture into the world of shipbuilding, unsure of what I might find...
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Kiltric
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Post by Kiltric »

It's just an idea, but when I think of something to add to this ship to make the back work, I picture "wings" of a sort. Something like this.

Image
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Anna
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Post by Anna »

Okay.

I get it now. It's not your fault, jwa.

If the average commentary you get on your ships is like the stuff the last two people posted, I'm not surprised at all. Jesus Christ.
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jwa8402
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Post by jwa8402 »

[quote="Anna"][/quote]Thank you for your honesty, its always welcome and appreciated. I have to disagree with you on it being messy; if it is I'm not quite sure what you are comparing it to. I would definitely accept that it is cluttered though and the weapons probably play a part in that. The side panels were an attempt at a glass fleet type of armor.

One of the problems I'm having with shading to create depth is that many sections from different packs aren't the same starting shade. So in terms of shading dark/low to light/high, I did it right but the resulting shades are still different. Only thing I can think to do is go back and manually make some darker and some lighter till they match, but if you have a protip on how to deal with this I'm all ears.

@Inkfox: I agree about the bridge area, I built from the outside in so it turned out kinda funky.

@Kiltric: interesting idea but wrong ship. Maybe if I built something from scratch but I'm not very good at wings. I may take Anna's criticism about it being clunky and try to give it a more interesting profile while keeping the basic star destroyer shape.
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