Interior Image Repository and Design Schema

[5thHorseman]

While building ships for the original FTL, I collected an array of room images that I used for my rooms. As the list grew, I had trouble organizing them and finding the right one for the right room. I came up with a naming scheme that allowed me to quickly find the room I wanted or see if I didn't have one yet so I could open up my image editor and make it. All told, I made over 100 images and that was just scratching the surface.

Because of the difficulty in distributing glow images with the interiors, I never released these images into the wild. Well, no longer! Glows are now done in-game and so here are the images I made. Also, I will take any viable images from anyone else and in theory, we could have a massive repository of pre-made interior images for all room layouts.

First, the file: interior.zip

Next: The schema: In that file you'll find over 100 images with odd looking - at first - names. For example, room_weapons_2._c_w_s.png looks like this:


Each file is named so you could figure out what it contains. I'll break it down:
room_type_dimensions_layout.png

type: weapons. drones. whatever.
dimensions: 1 means a vertical 1x2 room (1 is a vertical line after all). 2 is a horizontal 2x1 room. 4 is a 2x2 room.
layout: The meat of the name. Starting on the left side of the upper wall and moving around the room clockwise, this string describes what's on each wall square like so:

• _ = The wall is bare. A door could go here and I suggest only having doors on these walls.
• c = Computer. Only one per room. It will always face that wall.
• w = Wall art. Technically unique per room type but a bit generic.
• s = System specific wall art. Missiles in the weapon room. O2 tank in the O2 room.

The difference between w and s is arguable but I had to name stuff something

Hopefully these will help someone else, and hopefully people could submit extra images as they make them. I'll update the zip whenever is necessary and may even get around to having some sort of indexing system to download them, though my time is limited.

I'm open to constructive critiques and am totally willing to change anything about the naming scheme. At this time it'd be easy. If we end up with thousands of images it'll be much harder to change at that time.

[Sleeper Service]

Wow neat, that is a useful resource. Russian Rockman just shared a lot of artillery room images from the open artillery mod with me, there also was some consideration on how these should all be named...

First of all: The system makes sense as it is and works all right I'd say. My feedback is based mostly on my personal taste here.

So personally, I'd favor a system that focuses more on clarity instead of short file names. IMO that would be more intuitively to use. No need to shorten things to an extend that more explanations are required. You used 1x2 to explain what a 1 in the room name stands for, but as you realized yourself 1x2 already explains it perfectly without ambiguity. It gets more complicated if you want to describe what each wall has on it. The description proceeding clockwise makes sense, but IMO the exact content could also just be spelled out directly in the filename, with specific naming for what is included. As you mentioned, the difference between w and s is arguable. One solution would be to to come up with fixed names for each individual art piece and stick to them consistently:

room_weapons_1x2_bare_computer_bare_artillery_bare_missiles

Alternatively with direction clarifications:

room_weapons_1x2_<up:bare,computer><right:bare><down:artillery,bare><left:missiles>

Or whatever. Am I overthinking this? Too cluttered this way? Might be... also not all OS might be alright with that stuff in filenames. I'd also like to point out that some OS give you the actual image as the icon for each individual image files while browsing the files. Well, at last Linux does. That makes chosing the right images way easier and the description beyond room sized becomes kind of arbitrary.

[5thHorseman]

Good thoughts, even if I don't agree with all of them. Verbosity is not bad in and of itself, but I think it should be avoided. The nice thing about the way I'm doing it, you can look at a vertical list of file names and instantly see the ones that have a hole where you want a door. I don't know if that's more useful than more clarity in the file names. To be truthful, when I need a file I ignore the names and just look at what will fit in the room. In that way, naming the files is more about not having duplicate layouts with different names.

So personally, I'd favor a system that focuses more on clarity instead of short file names. IMO that would be more intuitively to use. No need to shorten things to an extend that more explanations are required. You used 1x2 to explain what a 1 in the room name stands for, but as you realized yourself 1x2 already explains it perfectly without ambiguity.

Technically it's still ambiguous. 1 wide, 2 high, or 1 high, 2 wide? However I considered "12" "21" and "22" for the dimensions instead of 1 2 and 4. Probably makes more sense.

It gets more complicated if you want to describe what each wall has on it. The description proceeding clockwise makes sense, but IMO the exact content could also just be spelled out directly in the filename, with specific naming for what is included. As you mentioned, the difference between w and s is arguable. One solution would be to to come up with fixed names for each individual art piece and stick to them consistently:

room_weapons_1x2_bare_computer_bare_artillery_bare_missiles

I do kind of like that.

Alternatively with direction clarifications:

room_weapons_1x2_<up:bare,computer><right:bare><down:artillery,bare><left:missiles>

Or whatever. Am I overthinking this? Too cluttered this way? Might be... also not all OS might be alright with that stuff in filenames. I'd also like to point out that some OS give you the actual image as the icon for each individual image files while browsing the files. Well, at last Linux does. That makes chosing the right images way easier and the description beyond room sized becomes kind of arbitrary.

Yeah, Windows would puke if you tried to make that file And I see now we're of the same mind. Windows also is happy to offer icons of the images and I use those far more often than the names.

If anything, I use the names as a filter I want a 2x2 weapons room with the computer in the 3rd slot I can search for *weapons_4.??c*.png" and Windows will show me all the appropriate files. I don't know how easily you could do that with your methods.

[kartoFlane]

Technically it's still ambiguous. 1 wide, 2 high, or 1 high, 2 wide? However I considered "12" "21" and "22" for the dimensions instead of 1 2 and 4. Probably makes more sense.

Honestly, I have never met anyone who would say coordinates in Y,X order. It's always X,Y -- that's also the way it's done in every technical field, like maths or programming... Hell, even FTL's own files follow this rule -- so based on that, I'd say there's no ambiguity to speak of here It's also more universal, as it allows the naming convention to cover non-standard size rooms.

I'd also suggest a different way to denote empty space -- the underscore (_) is confusing when you also have glow image for the room, as is the case with cloaking:
image: room_cloaking_1x2._w__w_.png
glow: room_cloaking_1x2._w__w__glow.png
Maybe the hyphen? (-)

Also, I think it's unnecessary to distinguish between wall art and system-specific art... It doesn't really make a difference -- both mean that a door shouldn't be placed there.

I kinda like the single letters to denote elements of the room, but I'm not really sure how well it would work out in practice...

Either way, that's a really cool idea, and a very useful resource Here are some of mine
And as a bonus, a .psd file I use to create cloaking images

[5thHorseman]

Technically it's still ambiguous. 1 wide, 2 high, or 1 high, 2 wide? However I considered "12" "21" and "22" for the dimensions instead of 1 2 and 4. Probably makes more sense.

Honestly, I have never met anyone who would say coordinates in Y,X order. It's always X,Y -- that's also the way it's done in every technical field, like maths or programming... Hell, even FTL's own files follow this rule -- so based on that, I'd say there's no ambiguity to speak of here It's also more universal, as it allows the naming convention to cover non-standard size rooms.

I was being a bit (or a lot maybe) pedantic, sure. I have no personal desire to do nonstandard rooms but I'm not against making the format support it. One or two extra characters for that and for better clarity seems fine to me

I'd also suggest a different way to denote empty space -- the underscore (_) is confusing when you also have glow image for the room, as is the case with cloaking:
image: room_cloaking_1x2._w__w_.png
glow: room_cloaking_1x2._w__w__glow.png

Am I wrong then that glow images are done completely different now? I thought there wasn't one set per room image anymore and instead there was one set per station orientation.

Maybe the hyphen? (-)

I like. Looks like Unix file permissions and saves having to hold shift for the underscore.

Also, I think it's unnecessary to distinguish between wall art and system-specific art... It doesn't really make a difference -- both mean that a door shouldn't be placed there.

I agree for myself, but I can see someone wanting for artistic reasons to have two rooms that are identical except the wall art and system-specific art are swapped in location. Not allowing different letters for those means that you couldn't keep those two images in the same folder.

I kinda like the single letters to denote elements of the room, but I'm not really sure how well it would work out in practice...

I can tell you how it's worked for me in practice: Great. Granted I thought it up so it fits the way I think and I got to learn it as I created it but it's super useful to just have a single directory full of images I can open up in SL (now SL2) every time I'm skinning rooms.

Either way, that's a really cool idea, and a very useful resource Here are some of mine
And as a bonus, a .psd file I use to create cloaking images

Sweet and thanks! I've no use for the cloaking PSD but I'll look over your interior images and add those that I've not got to the archive. When I do, I'll add your name as a contributor!

[Voltion99]

This looks great! This will help a lot.

[ScubaSteve3465]

I was just looking for some nice custom interior images. Please keep updating and adding to this. Some new O2 and Drone room images would be nice though