[WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

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a Sir
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby a Sir » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:07 pm

Russian Rockman wrote:Just wanted to say that I like what you are doing!!! So keep it up. I actually never thought about it, but FTL could work really well as a steampunk world.

I'm not sure I could help too much but one thing I thought I would share is that you can change pretty much every aspect of the UI (though it may take some work) , and more things are changeable on the boss then you might think. I know and can tell you how/what you need to change for pretty much anything, but I am not sure I can actually help out much myself, too busy :( .

Thanks! The fact that we can change everything in the UI is a very good thing for the mod.

Russian Rockman wrote:The backgrounds should be easy to change, you just need to find some sky images like faster than sound does. You can even change the "beacon map" images (which are now strangely found in the iPad folder) and what is interesting is those could be the only "top down" map images of the new "world" you are creating here. For the UI, making it wood textured or metal textured would look really cool in contrast with the sky background.


For the backgrounds, a normal sky image doesn't look really fitting with the pixel art of the game. I figured out a way to make it look nice by applying an oilify filter on the pictures (that are royalty-free)
(click for bigger)
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I agree completely with all your other suggestions. The beacon images wouldn't really make sense to be side view :P

Russian Rockman wrote:Anyway, this will take you a long time, but if you can commit to it and keep making those awesome ships you are making, you WILL be able to achieve what you are hoping to achieve in the long run so keep at it if you can!
By the way, love the bee ship. You can totally extend that into a wasp ship, mosquito ship, etc...


Thank you! And that is exactly what I'm going to do! It fits with the whole mantis-bug theme.



EDIT: Wow! Gencool, your sprites are amazing! That could definitely be in the mod!
EDIT2: Some formatting error
EDIT3: Some formatting error caused by the second edit...
Last edited by a Sir on Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Gencool
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby Gencool » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:13 pm

heh, I realised after I posted that I may have been overstepping the mark since it's your mod.
I just got a tad excited at the idea :?

Also, I'd love to have a go at spriting if you needed some help? though I still have CrewD to do first.


Edit

I slammed the sprites into the sheet to test it in game.
Two horrible realisations;

1) the 'stand still' animation is the first frame of 'walk down'. This means your crew would constantly be half-climbing when idle, unless you worked around it well.
I even tried re-aranging the sheet so that the 'walk right' animation is in the top left, in the futile hope that it used the first frame of the sheet, rather than the walkcycle, but no dice.
(This bug is now the bane of my spriting life)

2) the pathfinding allows Diagonals. This means 2x2 rooms would end up with some very weird animations. All 'ladders' would need to be placed exclusively in 1x2(or more) high rooms, if you're going for ladders at all.
I mean, that's not a /massive/ loss, since it actually fits in with how the ships would probably be constructed. Does mean that 4 person rooms would be excludively 4x1, though.


...Still...

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...I think it could work.
Last edited by Gencool on Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff
a Sir
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby a Sir » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:45 pm

Gencool wrote:heh, I realised after I posted that I may have been overstepping the mark since it's your mod.
I just got a tad excited at the idea :?

Also, I'd love to have a go at spriting if you needed some help? though I still have CrewD to do first.

I don't mind at all! It would be really nice if you could help out with the spriting. The Crew diversity mod looks great by the way.
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Gencool
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby Gencool » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:47 pm

Thankyou very much!
See the edit above though for some bugs I noticed ^^

(Also it's half past midnight here so bedtime)
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff
a Sir
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby a Sir » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:03 am

Gencool wrote:Edit

I slammed the sprites into the sheet to test it in game.
Two horrible realisations;


Uh oh..
Gencool wrote:1) the 'stand still' animation is the first frame of 'walk down'. This means your crew would constantly be half-climbing when idle, unless you worked around it well.
I even tried re-aranging the sheet so that the 'walk right' animation is in the top left, in the futile hope that it used the first frame of the sheet, rather than the walkcycle, but no dice.
(This bug is now the bane of my spriting life)

Perhaps the crew could all use jetpacks?
Actually, maybe the ladders could all be perpendicular to our view, like they are glued to the west/east side of the ship...
Wait... maybe when going down, they just kinda fall down with no animation? :/

Gencool wrote:2) the pathfinding allows Diagonals. This means 2x2 rooms would end up with some very weird animations. All 'ladders' would need to be placed exclusively in 1x2(or more) high rooms, if you're going for ladders at all.
I mean, that's not a /massive/ loss, since it actually fits in with how the ships would probably be constructed. Does mean that 4 person rooms would be excludively 4x1, though.


The rooms could be easily arranged like that I guess. It seems reasonable enough...

Gencool wrote:...Still...

Image

...I think it could work.


That actually looks pretty nice in game. Your sprite-making skills are quite impressive! I'd love to see more of sprites like this!

Gencool wrote:Thankyou very much!
See the edit above though for some bugs I noticed ^^

(Also it's half past midnight here so bedtime)


I noticed your bugs... They are nicely drawn :P

And don't let the bed bugs bite!
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Russian Rockman
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby Russian Rockman » Wed Apr 23, 2014 1:06 am

Wow Gencool, those sprites are pretty awesome. I can totally see this whole "side view" thing working now. I think that simply giving all crew subtle jet packs would be a better idea then even the ladder thing because crew walk sideways in 2x2 rooms. And because I just found out my method of interior design has some limitations involving sensors. :(

I also think it is cool for the teleporter boarding. If you don't want your crew to actually "teleport" you could call the teleporter "launch pad", or something, instead and the animation could just be the crew taking off and then fading out/in.

Also, those background images look just like I imagined they should. Awesome job.

For the crew walking on the ground you could add 2 floors to the room images, but it may actually be better to just design each ship with only 1x2/1x3/1x4 rooms, that could actually be interesting. Especially since you are going to probably change the way no Oxygen is displayed anyway. I like the Idea of it being considered pressurization.

And I'm interested in seeing how rooms and consoles end up turning out. With arbitrary gears and levers sticking out everywhere. :D

Also, some other interesting ideas. You could actually re-do the entire tutorial to introduce people to this mod. "I think". And gibs could look really interesting as you could just have a limited amount of gibs, all falling downwards while the sheet of your deflated ballon hovers.
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby R4V3-0N » Wed Apr 23, 2014 1:45 am

You need any help doing the factions?

I got a few sweet ideas... And also weapons.
I can see some nice weapons coming in, I think taking a look at storm wind will be a good idea for weapons as due to how that game is kind of a defense game... well.

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http://www.herointeractive.com/blog/wp- ... inds01.jpg
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http://www.herointeractive.com/blog/wp- ... pons02.jpg
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http://www.herointeractive.com/blog/wp- ... pons01.jpg

Few design images of it. None of the heavily steam punk-ish ideas, more later and onto diesel punk, but still workable.
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a Sir
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby a Sir » Wed Apr 23, 2014 2:13 am

Russian Rockman wrote:I think that simply giving all crew subtle jet packs would be a better idea then even the ladder thing because crew walk sideways in 2x2 rooms. And because I just found out my method of interior design has some limitations involving sensors. :(

I also think it is cool for the teleporter boarding. If you don't want your crew to actually "teleport" you could call the teleporter "launch pad", or something, instead and the animation could just be the crew taking off and then fading out/in.

That makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that jet-packs aren't exactly considered pure steampunk... We can always extend the definition a bit.
Russian Rockman wrote:Also, those background images look just like I imagined they should. Awesome job.


Thank you :)

Russian Rockman wrote:
Also, some other interesting ideas. You could actually re-do the entire tutorial to introduce people to this mod. "I think".


The tutorial is a great idea! I'll make sure to make it if I have time.

R4V3-0N wrote:You need any help doing the factions?

I got a few sweet ideas... And also weapons.
I can see some nice weapons coming in, I think taking a look at storm wind will be a good idea for weapons as due to how that game is kind of a defense game... well.

Few design images of it. None of the heavily steam punk-ish ideas, more later and onto diesel punk, but still workable.


I would love help with the factions and the steampunk world in general if you don't mind... I suck at worldbuilding...

I loved stormwinds! Such a fun little game! The game has some awesome art direction too. The cannons and auto-turret-ish things could easily be in the game, replacing lasers and drones. Maybe some clever art could make bombs look like the lightning gun. These weapon ideas are incredible!
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby R4V3-0N » Wed Apr 23, 2014 2:41 am

yes. I have a few idea for drones, but we can't make them face 'up' if you will. well maybe besides defense drones, but either way.

I would love to help you but I am helping with one mod, trying to do my own. etc.
Both overhauls and such.... but I wouldn't mind pinching in time to time.
I think I would be best to make drones.

Quick question, are you planning to keep shields in game? if not we need to rework the concept of weapons in ftl by a lot.

I think upping the rarity of beam weapons would be in order. Beam being stuff like fire beam, focused sun light, etc.

replacing the concept of lasers with ballistics.
Missiles seem okay, just a bit more rare but not as rare as the other stuff.

I think ballistics should be the main weapon most groups will use. While being deserve such as a series of ballistics that can do extra damage to system, double hull damaging, shield pierce (1 bubble), incendiary (can cause fire), etc etc etc. Heavy (cannon) ballistics, fast breaching sniper. etc.

Just some ideas and concepts, I got quite a lot of ideas so if you do not like this one or want it altered I can patch up another right up for you.

I am on break for 2 weeks atm, I am board so I will most likely make a drone for you today.
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Re: [WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

Postby Russian Rockman » Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:00 am

The bug faction should probably just have wings though. That way not everyone has to have jet packs. Also the jet packs that Gencool made could easily be just jet burst/bursts of steam, not combustible jet packs. They only activate for a second at a time.

Also, a couple questions on how you propose to handle certain things:
  • Will you keep mind control, hacking, sensors, and the backup battery?
  • As far as enemy ships go I realized that if you are doing a side view, then you don't have much room for them because the targeting window can only be expanded a few pixels.
  • The enemy hull indicator will look weird past 22 pixels so if you want to make them stronger then that you may just want to give them beefed up versions of the Rock Armor augment.
  • Flying drones, I would like to keep them, but will you be able to make them fit the side view style.

And some ideas:
  • Shields may actually work as a sort of magnetic reflection field.
  • Since the mod will focus more on hull and dealing with breaches you may want to be able to upgrade "pressure control" past level 3. If you removed doors that would make this even more necessary and kind of an interesting concept since you couldn't really balance out oxygen anymore between rooms. And on a side note I can see a Lanius automaton being interesting.
  • The lack of shields will actually make it much easier to damage systems, which wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily if they weren't so hard to repair. Also crew will be much more vulnerable too. So as far as weapons go you may want to focus on weapons that do simple hull damage, cause breaches, cause fires, and then only certain classes of weapons that can actually damage systems and damage crew.
  • And also, I thought I would let you know that I know a way how you could redo the entire upgrade screen so that it has your own descriptions of the upgrades for each system. No hardcoded explanations of what each upgrade does. It also wouldn't be as weird if you want to upgrade certain systems past 8 power. So when you get to that point.... Let me know.

Also, so much steampunk airship stuff on deviantart.
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/197230014?offset=10
Obviously you can't use any of it directly without permission, but for inspiration I suggest you take a look.