Wyrdysm Games

being a total noob to BSF, I know how to build really bland ships and I would like to put a bit more kick into them. Can anyone guide me into how to make weapon/section sprites?

Also could anyone tell me how to add sprites onto the weapon and section list in Shipmaker. Thanks.

In fact, making a weapon/section/doodad/whatever sprite is very easy. You can do it with any kind of image manipulation tool, from MS paint, to GIMP, and from GIMP to Photoshop.

Essentially, you draw a sprite on a said image manipulation tool, then save it, either as a PNG or GIF (if you want to use it as a doodad, or animated ones). And then, it's done, just import the sprite to the shipmaker by simply dragging it to the section palette or the workspace if you tend to use it as a section; or select the 'Weapon Sprite" when tinkering with a weapon, choose your desired sprite. Now you can have your shiny custom sprites used on your ships.

One important note: Please make sure that you maintain a neat and standardized file structure for your custom sprites, or else things will go so bad that others will find accessing your ships is a pain in the ass, for you had messed up the file structure of your custom sprites. (Which something Arc wanted my head off after running my Corp mission.)

Thanks. Now I just need to know how to make GIFs for weapons. Anyone know how to do one (in any program)?

Paint plus MSGIFAnimator
Google it.

GIMP if your good.

needing help with creating a simple weapon sprite...

alright when i try to put one of my simple weapon designs into shipmaker, it doesn't work. Can you please clarify how to put weapon sprite into the weapon list?

I don't believe you can add weapons to the list, just sections through the .ini file. To equip a weapon sprite you should be adding a regular weapon like a blaster or autocannon, going to the edit 2 tab, and clicking on custom sprite. Then you find your weapon sprite in its folder in Custom Sprites, preferably with a straightforward naming system. Also make sure your saving your image in .gif or .png.

No custom weapon feature for now--most you can do is to modify in-game ones to suit your tastes.

For example-you want cluster torpedoes: use autocannons or particle cannons to achieve the "scatter" effect, save replace sprites with missiles.