Spathi Ship

[obsidean]

I'm trying to make a Transcendence version of one of my favorite ships from Star Control 2, the Spathi Eluder.

http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Eluder

This is my first time trying to make a completely new ship, and I had a few questions.

Is there any certain graphics program that anyone has found works best for designing the ship graphics? Either I need to make a 2-d graphic for the ship or find someone that wouldn't mind making a 3-D version with 40 facings for me.

Also, I know how to make a weapon fire backwards,

<Configuration aimTolerance="5">
<Shot posAngle="0" posRadius="0" angle="-180"/>
</Configuration>

But is there a way to make a weapon, say a missile, that only can travel a certain distance before it explodes?

I'm trying to duplicate, at least mostly, the B.U.T.T. missile that the ship uses. I figure the forward weapon will be relatively simple.

[F50]

I'm trying to make a Transcendence version of one of my favorite ships from Star Control 2, the Spathi Eluder.

I love the Spathi

Every morning, we say the traditional Spathi prayer: "O god, please don't let me die today, tomorrow would be so much better."

<Configuration aimTolerance="5">
<Shot posAngle="0" posRadius="0" angle="-180"/>
</Configuration>

It might get confused with the angle="-180", angle="180" is equivalent and possibly easier to read.

But is there a way to make a weapon, say a missile, that only can travel a certain distance before it explodes?

lifetime="X" where X must be an integer.

[obsidean]

Ah, bless you! Now I have at least half of the stuff I need to work on it. One thing always bothered me about Star Control 2 though, only a few vessels ever had shields.

Well, that and most of the ship mechanics revolve around crew, which would make a few ships very difficult at best to reproduce, like the Syreen Penetrator and it's "Syreen Song" weapon.

I think if I get this one working I might try another ship, but I'm not sure which. I don't think you can cloak in Transcendence can you?

[Bobby]

well, there is stealth attribute on armor, it's not quite cloak, but it lets you get closer without being seen, does nothing for the gate-spawners.

[F50]

syreen song would simply have to work differently. How about:

damages ship, creates nanobots that heal syreen ship when close.


The pkunk ship would be interesting. Constantly message the target ship with random insults, and <OnDestroy> have a chance of creating another one.

[obsidean]

Well, got a ship image for the ship choice screen, and the ship coding done. Now I just need the picture of the 40 rotations of the ship.

That and some balancing work, always have to do that.

[obsidean]

Curses! So close, all the coding done except for balancing, got the images even.

The problem is the large image works, but if I try to use the ship image I made Transcendence comes up with a "Unable to add image to library: d" error, it's a bmp file so I know it shouldn't dislike the type. Any ideas?

-- Nevermind, got it working.

By the way F50 if you want to try it out and give me a few pointers on how to balance it I'd really appreciate it.

[F50]

Is it up on xelerus? Post a link.

[obsidean]

Well here it is, flat ship sprites, but I can deal with that. My version of the ship does look a bit out of sorts though.

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=131

If anyone, not just F50, wants to give it a shot and give me some tips go right ahead.

[Fatboy]

I think that the armor could resist laser and particle damage.

[obsidean]

Ah fishpaste. I just realized that I forgot the shield image. I'll make one in a bit then reupload it.

I'm curious though, why would you recommend the armor resisting laser and particle damage? Is it very hard to get or something, or just a nice boon to a starting player?

[obsidean]

Spathi Ship Version 2 is now up.

I added a shield image and converted the bmp files to jpgs to reduce loading.

Also I made the spathi armor resist laser and kinetic damage, especially since I don't recall seeing it in the stdarmor file.

-----------------------

Well, it seems the ship graphic didn't like being a jpg, as it was displaying some assorted pixels around the ship. I have that fixed now though. I believe that makes the ship version 2.1

Either way it displays properly now.

[Fatboy]

Why is the Spathi cannons range so short, the Spathi designers figure that most of the time will be spent running away instead of just firing at the ships from a distance?

[F50]

I think the balance is quite good. Is there some way to make the vapor trail purple (betel, periculi, anyone)?

[Bobby]

change color: (unknown color in example, probably grey)

Code: Select all

				vaporTrailColor="0xd0, 0xd0, 0xd0"

looks like it's in hex to me.

try b6 1d ba