Retsof's Ships

[Retsof]

So, I've lurked for a bit, and I think I have something that is fiarly flame resistant, but I guess I'll find out. These are fairly small and simple. They are not balanced to the default ships, but they are balanced for thier own continuity. I have not put too much thought into a backstory yet, aside from blatantly stealing from freespace 2. These ships do include some custom weapon sprites (one or two are simply SWized default weapons). Also used Kaelis' SW sprites and one of HorseMoster's cannons. Things I would like advice on: Coloring, I made these shades of grey because I couldn't think of anything else that would look half decent. Also Doodads, I have not put any on because I am bad at good doodad placement.
Oh, and my sprites are not in the proper naming format, I will correct this if I make a Custom Content thread for them.

EDIT: Updated 9-19-2010

[Aurafire]

The first three are fairly good, the shape flows and it's nice to look at.

The last three aren't appealing the two big, flat sections throw it off. Try covering it up with smaller sections to add more detail.

But yeah, the nice, shiny steel looks very flame resistant.

Also, kudos to creating a new balance system. That's often time consuming to do.

[Retsof]

The first three are fairly good, the shape flows and it's nice to look at.

Thanks

The last three aren't appealing the two big, flat sections throw it off. Try covering it up with smaller sections to add more detail.

These are fairly small ships, so I don't want to use too many sections, but I'll see if I can slip some more detail in there. I want to keep them rather blocky in shape though.

kudos to creating a new balance system. That's often time consuming to do.

Thanks, it takes a lot of tinkering to get it right. I used ally ships with the AI fleet controller during testing. Then you just watch and see what happens, change a number here or there, maybe move a section, and repeat. Incidentaly the blocky "terran" ships will usually win in an even fight, but not by much, so the alieans (guh, need a name) will need a small numerical advantage to win.

[Water_and_Wind]

Welcome to the community! Your ships are a bit too simple for me to make any judgement from, but its good to have newbies who've lurk a bit and have checked out what others have done. My advice for colouring is to use colours with low saturation (below 50%) and read up on some colour theory (e.g. http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html), which can be easily found on the search engine of your choice.

[Retsof]

Replaced the flat sprite, better?

Your ships are a bit too simple for me to make any judgement from, but its good to have newbies who've lurk a bit and have checked out what others have done.

Thank you, I plan on making at least two more size levels, but figured I had enough done for now to post and get feedback. I may check out that color theory thing, it's just finding out where to put the color that has me stumped.

EDIT: Forgot to add the image.

[Anna]

Pro-tip: Press "Home" before taking your screenshot. That will take the screenshot at the default zoom level, and means we can see your ships without them being big blurred messes. You can also change the background. Changing the background to an ordinary flat black .bmp file makes seeing your ships a lot easier.

The ships themselves seem decent enough for a beginner.

[Retsof]

Updated first page.

[vidboi]

i actually preferred the terran ships when they had the "flat" sprite, it looked clean, wheras now they just look messy. there's nothing really wrong with small ships as they are good to play with in game, they just don't have as much scope aesthetically as larger vessels

[Retsof]

Thoughts?

[Kiltric]

Is this meant to be an entire ship? If so, the square-ish shape isn't very appealing.

It looks to me like a ship sitting in a dock that's attacked to nothing. If that's the case, then this looks pretty good, assuming you actually make the dock look finished.

[Retsof]

It is supposed to be a dock in the process of constructing a Mercury. The dock was a rather quick build, I guess I should have put a little more time into it... *yawn* but not tonight.

[Son Tzu]

Quite like the Seth & Thoth, nice shape. Guess it's personal taste when it comes to how much detail you put on. Sometimes more is too much, and if I'm building ships to use them in sandbox or encounter maker I prefer to keep the sprite count as low as possible in order to have LARGE scale battles without massive slowdown.

[Retsof]

Well, I think I am going to redo my terran ships from the ground up, just to let you know. By the way, is there any way to change the ratio of forward to sideways/backward movement? It annoys me that I can place these nice big thrusters on a ship but it still goes nearly as fast backwards or sideways.

[Lord Aries Greymon]

No, there's no way to change that ratio. Sometimes I wish there was.

[Preacher]

although STARSTRUCK did a used triggers to give the impression that the ship was accelerating in his Viking ships check it out to see if its what your after, of course your relatively new so I don't know what your trigger experience is like.

On the whole though a decent start, you show some skill so hopefully with a bit of practice you will be churning out awesome ships in no time .