AE R&D - What is new? What can we do now?

[Russian Rockman]

SHUT ABOUT ABOUT THE ARTILLERY ALREADY ROCKMAN!!!!!

I just have another question... And it jus happens to revolve around the artillery... My question is, how does the "limit=" / "loss=" work on artillery now? Does it affect all artillery or must it be told to affect only a certain artillery?

[Sleeper Service]

I'd assume it will affect any artillery systems the ship has, like before.

[Gencool]

@Tweevel -
Really sorry, I didn't see this post until after I'd posted my crew diversity concept.
Thought I'd managed to find something cool myself

As for layers; it seems you can have loads on player characters, but the npcs are limited to the 'natural' number.
So my humans' layers go-

Skin
Hair
Clothes
Armour
Accessories

But the npcs only load the first two.

The result is all npc humans have white clothes, and no additional assets.

The same thing seems true of rocks and mantis who get one layer. I havn't gotten round to testing engies.



Personally, I think it's cool, and have worked my mod around it. I'd prefer to be able to load colour schemes by affiliation (rebels in matching white? Ace. Pirates...? A little weird)

[Sleeper Service]

Played around a little with selection boarders. Definitely could produce an even beefier Rockmen:



Problem here is that you can not adjust the _color sheet for one layer specifically. So this Rock will have none of this usual green/red status outlines. A thinner Rock would have thicker outlines, cause the game always uses the same _color sheet.

[Gencool]

You can stick a faint white outer glow on the selection border? It'd be visible behind the larger elements without making a solid green blob on the smaller guys...

The other issue is that you can't have alternate colours on the rocks if you want alternate sizes...

[Sleeper Service]

Well it comes as a layer, so the new layer could have colors as well.

The faint glow is possible, but it would still be visible on the smaller guys and the big guys outlines would still be incoherent with the rest of the regular outlines. Another possibility would be to remove the _colour for all crew, but they are at least necessary to tell friend from foe and I guess one also needs them to tell which crew is currently selected.

[Gencool]

I mean, you can colour them, but you'd need to make the entire sheet, rather than isolated sections (which is what I was doing with CrewD) as they'll get mis-matched.
edit: Actually, I just realized that there's a work around for this. However again it means that the NPCs would only get one 'body type' for rockmen....


Thought, though; when I get home, i'l have a look at alternatives to the 'outline'. I'm thinking a circle base ala AoE.

Got lots of sprite work to get on with =D

[Gencool]

(((Accidental Double Post, please delete)))

[Vhati]

As for layers; it seems you can have loads on player characters, but the npcs are limited to the 'natural' number.

That seems worth reporting as a bug.

Does that mean the game'll crash if you reduce humans' layers - from two to one - when an NPC's sprite tries to follow a hardcoded index to the non-existent second layer?

[Gencool]

No, it has the same effect as when you didn't put glows in system rooms pre-AE; just a dark grey square over the top of the crew member.

Plus, like I said in my thread; At the moment I kind of like it in a 'not-a-bug-it's-a-feature' sorta way.
I'd prefer they added alternate sets for factions. I'd love to have different item sets for pirates/feds/rebels etc...