[MOD][WIP]Ship Greeble Graphics Mod

[Estel]

Absolutely awesome, thumbs up, and waiting for this being complete with great anticipation. I can't believe I missed that mod (although, maybe it is for the better, as it would sadden me that it was left unfinished for some time).

After it's done, it will surely land on my "must have" list - not to mention that it will land in CE probably, anyway, as the greebles are just that awesome

[Estel]

Considering how overlapping the floors for Kestrel A and Kestrel C are, I decided to take Lord Trilobite's The Kestrel greebles, and create ones for The Swallow, with a help of some greebles took from broken ships, and custom-made pixel art. Incidentally, the "inside" part of room-less Swallow sits just next to Life Support system, so I decided to follow my own advice and created it the way, that it's looking like inside-ship part of said visible system parts. The result is quite satisfactory (Edit: Updated 28.07.2014) :
http://s10.postimg.org/tkihtwx89/swallow.png

While doing it, I've also noticed few micro-glitches in original Kestrel A greebles (some random dots in outside-of-floor area, made by mistake - surely no one would notice it in the game, anyway), and I've also added few structural reinforcements and other odds and ends, where I think they were lacking. Then, I took .append files created by RAd-82, and packed every available greebles (Kestrel A tweaked by me, unchanged Fed Cruiser and Stealth and new Kestrel C) and packed it into .ftl file, ready for installation:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/pabgbk3tn6ztklm/greebles.ftl

Happy flying with greebles, for me, they increase FTL experience quite a lot They're working fine for CE too, obviously. Sadly, no Slug Cruiser files here, as Trilobite haven't released his WIP file, and separating it from his in-game screenshot - while possible, as it is in native resolution and .png - would be too much time consuming.
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Now, considering that A, B and C variants are, in most cases, different versions of same ship (example: all Kestrels), I think that best approach for creating greebles, would be to take room layouts from all of them, overlap it in GIMP - leaving ONLY the part, that overlaps in all three variants - then, create greebles for whole ship, EXCEPT the part that is covered by floor in all three cases. This way, one greebles file could be used for all three variants, with only minor modifications needed.

There are few minor exceptions (Crystal'ish Rock C, for example), which would require completely different greebles - although, those are complete minority (is there any completely different ship variant, other than Rock C?...).

Cheers,
/Estel

// Edit

...aaaand, the file from last post got silently updated, with even more detailed version of Kestrel C greebles. This time, every "always will be there" system that is next to greebles got "rest" of stuff from system images displayed at greebles, not only Life Support. The latter got fixed to, now it show the rest of this big pressurized 02 canister, and I aligned everything else, better than last time (thanks to getting in-game screen, and placing it as overlay over greebles image that I was editing - IMO, it's best way to create and edit those greebles, as you see exactly what systems it is next to, so you can make ship insides look more coherent with in-room systems).

[LordTrilobite]

I'm sorry for disappearing like that. I've been busy with other projects and didn't really work on this much. Making a proper releasable .ftl file will take some more time. But I will upload the clean images for you guys here so you can use them ingame. I'm glad to see there's still some interest in the mod.

Anyway, here I have the greebles for the Engie cruiser type A, Fed cruiser type C and the Slug cruiser type A. feel free to add them to an .ftl file in the mean time. I was also working on the greebles for the Zoltan and Lanius ships, but I hadn't gotten around to finishing them. It might be a while until I will release more though.

Engi Cruiser type A


Fed Cruiser type C


Slug Cruiser type A

[Sleeper Service]

Good to know that you are still around. And thanks for sharing this pictures, I guess you are OK with other people continuing the mod then? Cause I think the full set would be most appreciated. I'd also like to ask permission to integrate these your images into Captains Edition at some point. You receive full credit of course. Is that ok with you?

[LordTrilobite]

Well, I'd rather finish the mod myself. but people are free to hack these into a .ftl so people can use them before I do an official release.

And when it's done, I think adding it to Captains Edition is a great idea. I also updated my crew portraits thread btw, since you added those to CE you might want to check the thread.

[Sleeper Service]

Yep, already downloaded that one. Will be integrated in the next release.

Well, I'm looking forward to see what you cook up for the rest of the ships. Keep up the great work.

[Estel]

Thanks for uploading more greebles, Trilobite! I'll modify them over time, integrating content coherent with what is in the system rooms next to them (the ones, that are persistent on ships, like weapons, shields, life support, etc). If you like some of them (or the idea of representing "rest" of installations from system rooms in greebles), feel free to expand upon it even more (BTW, have you seen latest Kestrel C version I have hacked around? Any opinions on it?).

Otherwise, well, we will have mainstream and system-greebles fork

Cheers,
/Estel

// Edit

I've just noticed, that I've uploaded The Swallow image from nebula, so all the things about integrating greebles with systems visible in room, were NOT visible in my screenshot. Doh! That is what you get for uploading at 5 AM, after night of editing. Anyway, here is the proper screenshot:
http://s1.postimg.org/upfzckiov/swallow.png

As I've mentioned, those edits are subtle, but IMO, adds much to the look and feel of ships. In the above case of Kestrel 3, it is incorporating elements from Life Support system, and adding backside of crew's terminal screens, where applicable. I've, also, added some structural reinforcement where they seemed appropriate (hull looked strange "empty" in some places).

[Estel]

LordTrilobite, if for further releases you could either use AE floor images as position reference, or write (under the posted picture, for example) by how many pixels your (absolutely great) floor images are offset as opposed to vanilla floor, it would help a lot in bringing them into game, properly. For circle cruiser, I had to re-position your image in the layer (allowing it's usage without appending floor position to ship's .xml file), while for Jelly, I had to determine offset experimentally (6 pixels on x axis, 24 pixels on y axis).

Which, haven't helped very much, as for some reasons, it wasn't as simple as changing floor position by 6 and 24 in .xml file - had to do it by trial and error, with correct value being true offset for x axis (6 pixels offset, just like calculated from image), and 1/3 of true offset for y axis (8 pixels, as opposed to 24 calculated from image - no idea, if it's rule here, or coincidence). Spent solid few hours of trial and error'ing, repacking, and testing in-game to properly bring those into .ftl file, but, anyway, here is the result, tested and confirmed as working with both vanilla and CE:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/pabgbk3tn6ztklm/greebles.ftl

As earlier, it have new Kestrel C, based on Trilobite's Kestrel A, heavily modified by me to represent guts of in-room system images sitting next to greebles. In addition, it contain fixed but otherwise unmodified version of Kestrel A, and all other released greebles totally unmodified (apart from fixing offsets - due to effort spent in positioning them, I haven't had much time for edits, yet). I'll gradually edit them to add system's guts for all ships, and fix other oddities here and there (jelly greebles, while awesome and very in-lore characterized, have some oddities, like strangely shaped gray walls in places that doesn't correspond with anything). I'll release them as updated .ftl, once all get tweaked.

Cheers,
/Estel

[RAD-82]

Just like last time, I'm doing a blind, untested upload. I deleted the old file that had three ships, and added the three new ones. This is just LordTrilobite's artwork, and has nothing to do with what Estel has been doing. I'm just offsetting the images and assigning them to their proper ships.

edit: Link removed. Since MediaFire is claiming 0 downloads, I won't update anymore and people can just use Estel's download which has additions that LordTrilobite didn't provide.

I chose version number 0.21 because of 6 completed ships divided by 28 total player ships.

@Estel
Determining offsets isn't as difficult as your post seems to make it out to be, as some of the greeble floor edges line up with parts of the hull. I've been placing a mark at (0,0) of the _floor image, then copy and position it on the _base image using the edges that line up with various hull features, and use the position of that mark to determine the floor's offset.

[Estel]

This is just LordTrilobite's artwork, and has nothing to do with what Estel has been doing. I'm just offsetting the images and assigning them to their proper ships.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/922d1 ... s-0.21.ftl

Thanks a lot for your upload, the more choice available, the better

@Estel
Determining offsets isn't as difficult as your post seems to make it out to be, as some of the greeble floor edges line up with parts of the hull. I've been placing a mark at (0,0) of the _floor image, then copy and position it on the _base image using the edges that line up with various hull features, and use the position of that mark to determine the floor's offset.

The point of my post is that Trilobite actually knows this off-set - cause, as I guess, he have to, somehow, test his creations in game - unless I'm mistaken of course. Then, it's kind of silly, that we have to re-do the same work, no matter how hard or easy ti is.

Anyway, my problem with positioning the slug one, was that value calculated by comparing offset to vanilla floor one, wasn't the right value to use in game. So, it boiled to moving it pixel/few pixels a shot, and testing in-game after each try. Next time I'll try your method with hull base image, maybe it's giving more consistent results... No idea if it's applicable to every ship, if we want to get ideal to-single-pixel accuracy. Need to check that in practice.

/Estel