Mod Idea, Need Help/Advice - Ship Test

[the1sean]

Very cool woodman!

Also 2guncohen, I like the Armageddon Empires art, great game!

[2guncohen]

ORIGINAL: the1sean

Very cool woodman!

Also 2guncohen, I like the Armageddon Empires art, great game!

Yeah, That game has some kick ass art.
Im making a mod for space empires IV with art from this game [8D]
A kick ass an mean looking Earth Defence Force

[WoodMan]

Spent ages putting the friggin pictures into the game tonight, I thought it would take half hour or so, but it actually took about 3 hours to resize, convert, move all pictures to correct place. Also, I have used full body shots of the characters for the small images, it looks pretty neat, and the large zoomed in face pics already shown for the diplomacy/communication screen graphics.

Ship graphics, a bit of a nightmare. I've been using the Galactic Civilizations 2 ship editor and taking screenshots to design ships in the past. I think this is okay for personal use, but I'm hesitant to upload them for others to use because of copyright reasons. I read through the EULA and I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to do it. So, I have decided to use the DW graphics and modify them in Photoshop instead. I thought this would be too hard and almost gave up on having custom ships in the mod, because I don't really want to use the already existing graphics, and I don't have the skill to modify them to look like new ships. But I gave it a try anyway and really happy with the result, it took less than 5 mins and its a new ship [:D] This won't be used in the mod, its just a practice ship, but its a good example of the technique I'll use.

[Igard]

I think that looks very good, sleek and stealthy. I don't recognise it from the game, so I guess that's mission accomplished in that respect.[;)]

I'm thinking that ship would be perfect for either Blackwing or the Psi.

If I could make a suggestion that might make things easier for you? Certain factions may use very similar tech since they are, or have been, closely affiliated at some point, so you can get away with using very similar ship images. Even just changing the colour could work. For example, the Archivists may have some kind of contract with the Terrans and therefore use the same hull designs. The Revenant could use a mixture of ships from the other factions, only they would have their own crazy paint jobs (dead bodies attached to the bow, optional).

Obviously you can't give all the factions different ship images yet, you're limited to 9, so this could be just a temporary solution for now until more support is added for additional ship families.

[WoodMan]

Hehe, I thought it looked Blackwingish too [:D]

Brilliant idea about the Revenant, I hadn't thought of that! Made a quick example using your idea, an innocent Ackdarian ship is taken over by Revenants (of course no Ackdarians in the mod but don't have a custom ship handy yet).

Edit: ok i can see this bit is going to be fun [:D]

[the1sean]

wow, that looks really good!

[WoodMan]

wow, that looks really good!

Cheers dude! Thanks for encouragement!

If I could make a suggestion that might make things easier for you? Certain factions may use very similar tech since they are, or have been, closely affiliated at some point, so you can get away with using very similar ship images. Even just changing the colour could work. For example, the Archivists may have some kind of contract with the Terrans and therefore use the same hull designs. The Revenant could use a mixture of ships from the other factions, only they would have their own crazy paint jobs (dead bodies attached to the bow, optional).

Building on that idea I came up with the 9 shipsets.  I thought of companies that provide the ships rather than faction specific, but some factions do have their own set.  I guess this early version of the mod which is set at the exact moment the civil war end will see the exiled/refugee factions like the changeling and psi using old, tattered ships (anything they can get their hands on), in future version of mod when the modders patch/expansion come and we have 20 sets available I will advance the story 100 years, and then Psi etc will have the high tech looking ships they truly deserve [:D]

Shipsets I'll make this time around are:
Terra Corp - Terran company, provided most of galaxies ships before the Empire collapsed
Delphi Luxury Line - Luxury company providing high end performance ships for wealthy individuals and megacorporations
Omega Security - Provide ultra secure prison ships
Blackwing Special Ops - High tech warships used by the Blackwing (but not their civilians)
Megastruct Ultra Heavy Industires Inc. - Ships for ultra heavy industry, mining and construction
Revenant Infested - Any ship infested by Revenants
Mechan A.I. - The Mechan fleet
Novacore Research Institute - High end science vessels and their escorts
Fringeworld Freighters - Cheap, unreliable, numerous and readily available, built by the Junkers and sold to anyone desperate enough to buy

[WoodMan]

This way of making ships is pretty hard, at least trying to make them look different enough from the normal DW ships. Hopefully one day I will finish [:D]

Tried making some Terra Corp ships and their Revenant infested equivilent. I will probably make a Revenant version of every single ship, so Revenant players can choose their own shipset [:)]

Not sure how much I like them, but, its a start, practice makes perfect [:D]

[Igard]

Excellent looking ships, WoodMan. [&o]

Are you going to splash a bit of blood on the side of the Revenant ships or do you think that would be copying the Reavers a bit?

[WoodMan]

The Revenant ships are really easy to make once you have the normal version of the ship, I'm thinking of changing the texture I use for the Revenant, it only takes a minute or 2 to convert a normal ship to a Revenant one.  So if I do change its not much work, which is good.  Adding spikes or something on them is something I would like to try, but that would be more time consuming, so I might leave the details until last if I decide to put them on.

Edit: Same technique can be used to make Borg ships btw, I mean Fed ships assimilated etc, if you ever add Borg to your Trek mod I can give a quick guide to do it easily if you need [;)]

[Igard]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan
Same technique can be used to make Borg ships btw, I mean Fed ships assimilated etc, if you ever add Borg to your Trek mod I can give a quick guide to do it easily if you need [;)]

I'd appreciate that very much. I will add the Borg eventually, once I'm able to make their ships the correct size![;)]

[WoodMan]

Update! Terra Corp are building more ships [;)]

I made the windshield type areas red, but it looked weird, so keeping the grey theme, I mean real spaceships would probably be greyish.

[Igard]

Looking good, mate.

I get the impression Terra Corp have a 'no nonsense' design policy.[;)]

[WoodMan]

How would you recommend handling the no special governments allowed in custom races problem?

Certain races like the Marketeers, Junkers, Utopians and Psi really rely on their government type both for gameplay and story reasons.  Do you think I should edit their stats to reflect as if they had a different government?  This isn't ideal because a I  went through the list of other governments and none really suit this, because of the -stats they give.

The other thing is to leave the races that use special governments named the old way, Utopians named Securan for instance, and the player will have to rely on using the game start screen or in-game editor to set the Empire names to at least represent the custom race.  For example the Utopians will be called race Securan, but their Empire can be called Utopian Paradise or something like that. [:(] I hope for modders patch real soon.

[Igard]

There's no guarantee that the modders patch will allow for special government types. I don't think it's too hard to tweak the race stats so I would probably change them to reflect the style of government. You can then change them again after the modders patch if there's the ability to add a special government.

So, the Utopian Paradise would actually be a Democracy.[&:]

[WoodMan]

Well we can only hope [&:] Probably this is my number one most wanted thing in a modders patch, followed by the extra shipsets.

Didn't do much work on the mod today, but here is a test of Delphi Luxury Line ships, which will be used by Marketeers and Arbiters:

(frigate & escort)

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Igard

Excellent looking ships, WoodMan. [&o]

Are you going to splash a bit of blood on the side of the Revenant ships or do you think that would be copying the Reavers a bit?

Igard...you just made me go stream Serenity from NetFlix to watch again doggone you.....LOL!
Great ideas and work Woodman! Possibly an idea for an Matriarchal Race could be Amazonian
type women endowed with psychic powers and strength similar to River Tam on Firefly? Just a thought!

[WoodMan]

Having great fun working on the ships! I won't have any new info on the mod for a while now because I'm currently just working on the images, but I'll post some random pics as I make them.

Megastruct Ultra Heavy Industries colony ship, probably Guilder and Nautilus, maybe another faction too, haven't decided yet, also I'm too lazy to put on lights and exhaust yet, will do that probably when I complete a full image family.

[2guncohen]

Looks nice.

How are the space-stations ?

[WoodMan]

Haven't made any yet [:D], I'll try one next.  I managed to do a pretty effective practice conversion, but I didn't texture it.