Shipmaker's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

[Arcalane]

On the offchance that people will actually read this thread, I'm going to try to compile answers to some of the more commonly asked questions.

Template;

Q:

A:

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Q: How do I assign targets to Aegis Deflectors and Boosters?

A: Select the module in question, hover your cursor over the desired target, and press T. Easy.

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Q: How do I fix the weird glow bug on custom sections?

A: There are a couple of ways to do this.

1: You can turn off the glow for all ships, in the Options menu ingame. Use the Colours selector and cycle until you reach 'Glow', then set all the sliders to the left.

2: In Shipmaker, select the offending section(s), go to the Effects tab, and toggle "Disable Glow" to "On".

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Q: Can I use custom sprites for modules?

A: Not at this time.

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Q: How do I use custom weapon and bullet sprites?

A: Select the weapon you wish to modify, and open the ED2 tab. From there, you can assign any valid custom sprite within your Custom Sprites folder. You may use either .png or .gif images.

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Q: How do I make an animated .gif for a custom weapon, or for posting a 'demo' on the forums of a movement/rotation-based ship?

A: Look no further than LactoseTolerant's Guide to Making an Animated GIF. This process is pretty much the same for custom weapons as it is ships.

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More to come! If you have any frequent questions that you think need their answers logged, post them here.

[LactoseTolerant]

Q: How do I get glows on my ship?

A: This is best done with the shaded Fraxy ball (fraxy_112) and Ixranin's gradient (Ixra_Gradient_Straight), but can work with other sprites as well. Select the sprite, then the EFF tab. Set Blending to Additive, Effect type to Fake Aegis, set Alpha to a low number (<.2), and increase the Spread.

Cycerin also has a guide here.

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Q: How do I add custom sprites/doodads to use on my ship?

A: In Shipmaker, go to Tools, then Group Arrange. 4 columns will appear with your current sprite palette. You can delete and rearrange them as needed. To import sprites, open up your Custom sprites folder normally, click on the selected sprites in the window, and drag onto the columns in Shipmaker. Press Esc once to close the Group Arrange. You can save and load this configuration with the "Save Sprites Ini" and "Open Sprites Ini".

For doodads, select the parent sprite that it will appear on, and drag the doodad from the window into the normal Shipmaker Window.

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Q: Why do I get a error message when loading my ship in the Sandbox?

A: There's 2 most common causes of this: Weapon depthing and section usage. BSF as a whole can't load extremely large ships. Weapon depthing, however is more subtle. The general rule is to never depth a weapon, then mirror it. You can mirror it, then depth it, and continue on the rest of the ship without problem.

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Q: How can I recolor engine exhausts? I keep changing the color in the options, but it keeps on coming out blue!

A:Some sprites can't be recolored, while others will turn out an odd color if you do (Flash bolter is a good example). Simply replace the sprite with a recolored one in your folder.

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Q: It takes so long for me to get my color palette. How can I save this configuration?

A: You can adjust the default color configuration by going into the "smconfig.ini" file and editing the color values for each slot. Or, Ctrl + Right Click the a colour on the colour palette and click "Save"

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Q: What's the proper way to prepare a ship download?

A: It's highly recommended that you do this to alleviate sprite problems. Open up your ship, then Use the Export Custom Sprites function in Shipmaker (Tools). Create a .zip/.rar file and load the ship file and the exported custom sprites folder inside. Then rename the sprite folder in the .zip/.rar file to "Custom sprites", exactly as it is spelled here, without quotes, exact capitalization. This is so that when the folder is extracted into the BSF folder, it automatically extracts the sprites into the Custom Sprites folder. The same goes for multiple ships; extract all of the ships to the same folder name.

[James_Markam]

Q:I am having problems with custom sprites. I can get them on to the ship maker but not the actual game. Y would this be?

[Anna]

Q:I am having problems with custom sprites. I can get them on to the ship maker but not the actual game. Y would this be?

I have no idea. That sounds like an error. You do get an error log when you try to load a ship with custom sections into the game, I take it? Copy-paste that here, perhaps? Hm.

[James_Markam]

Ok here it is :
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object __newobject1016:

Missing sprite!

Custom sprites\Wiki_Sections\Micro Fighter.png

Press ignore to replace with '?' sprite, or abort to terminate the game.
__________________________________________

How do I fix this?

[Aurafire]

Q: Where are my screenshots saved? I don't know where to look when I need to upload them to photobucket.

[jwa8402]

A: Your screenshots are saved in two places I believe. Shots taken in shipmaker are saved in Battleships Forever .90d\SMScreenshots folder while shots taken in game are saved in the main BSF folder.

[Ramoth]

Is there any way to give the ship core a custom sprite?

[Preacher]

A: no, there is no way to change the core sprite, however you can change which core you use and you can even cover it up with other sections.

[mato9020]

Q: Should sections be children to the core

[Kiltric]

The core is always the master parent of sorts. It is impossible not to have at least one section as its child. Not everything needs to be directly "childed" to it though.

[12321YYH]

Ok here it is :
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object __newobject1016:

Missing sprite!

Custom sprites\Wiki_Sections\Micro Fighter.png

Press ignore to replace with '?' sprite, or abort to terminate the game.
__________________________________________

How do I fix this?

I have the exact same problem. The ship I got has custom sprites. I have the sprites, but BSF can't find the custom sections when i try to use them in the sandbox. Ive already tried to take them out of their folders individually and put them into the custom sprites folder directly.

[calvin1211]

Most sprites should be in their respective folders within the custom sprites folders..

[12321YYH]

Q: In shipmaker, theres this dc link group option, i read the description and know what it is but there are 3 different settings among others that I don't understand. They are LMB, MMB and RMB. can someone pls explain

[Doogie12]

DC mode is where (in game) you select a ship and hit ctrl+c to directly control it. There are different modes that only vary in controls; however I don't remember exactly what they are. Most of them use WASD [someone correct me if I'm wrong]. In shipmaker you can set a weapon to be fired by pressing a button in-game while in DC mode. LMB=Left Mouse Button and so on.