ORIGINAL: Big B
JWE, you and TOMLABEL are amazing! How many have you two turned out now?[8D]
Almost as many as you, Brian.
ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
Anyone want to sign on to do the art??
Sigh … you know we are your dogs.
Got an email with questions about how the art applies to upgrades. It brought this thought to mind and thought I would share with all.
Art changes are tagged to class upgrade (or conversion) slots. To keep the database a reasonable size (and keep from going blind) we had an upgrade slot point to a new piece of art only if that upgrade involved a visually apparent structural change of the class. When that happened, we tried to paint the new graphic in an appropriate Measure for the time period the upgrade would normally have happened.
So Colorado, for example, might have 5 upgrades in her schedule, but only 3 art changes; a PH look, a first refit (cut-down) look, and a rebuild look. We did not think it efficient to make upgrade slots just for paint-jobs. It would have been gratuitous and actually worked to the disadvantage of the ship artists out there.
We developed a ship art ‘construction kit’ that includes a listing of every ship class, and every bitmap associated to the classes. A ship art modder can easily determine exactly where to plop in their art mods. If it’s 1943 a modder can find just which bitmap to use if they want HMS Packenham to show a Northern Approaches paint job.
Not just the game, but the entire project was designed to promote flexibility. To the fullest extent possible, we will support the artists out there.
