Lifts

[synapse1]

Hi I wanted to work on a mod that uses a side-on view of a ship, so that up and down would represent various decks rather than a top-down view.

My question is it possible to make lifts that crew can use from 1 level to another? Alternatively maybe there's a way I can mod teleporters that do the same job? It would be good to teleport crew from one deck to another.

How complicated would it be to change the crew sprites to stood up ones? Is it easy to replace these sprites?

[5thHorseman]

Replacing the sprites is easy. The rest is pretty much out of the question except by changing the visuals. If you make your ships in a certain way, you can get ladders and stuff where you need them but they won't actually have any function except to visually imply where ladders would be.

One big problem is that enemy ships face a different direction than yours, and you can't have different sprites for different ships.

[Russian Rockman]

This could certainly be done and is already being done with the steampunk Lighter Than Air mod which will use ladders. However it would require the following:

• A complete redo of the sprites for all species to be side view. Lifts could simply be included in the walking up or down animation and could appear from the floor and disappear into the ceiling.
• A complete redo of all ships (both player and enemy) and there are A LOT of ships
• A complete redesign of all ship layouts. They would no longer be able to use 2x2 or 1x2 rooms as otherwise crew would look like they are floating when standing in those rooms. All rooms would have to be 2x1, 3x1, or 4x1 etc...
• BONUS: Something cool about this though is that there are 4 different animations for standing up, down, left, or right. Since crew will no longer be using the up or down terminal animations it is possible to make unique animations of crew doing different things. A pilot for example could sit down in the pilots chair, an engineer could turn valves on the engine, the weapons man could actually be seen aiming weapons. This would be accomplished by making the pilot room always have it's "terminal" facing "up", the engine room have it's "terminal" facing "down", and the weapons room always have it's facing "right", you get the point...

So basically the short answer is yes it is possible, the long answer is it would be cool but it would require A LOT of time and effort. Maybe if you had a few people working on different parts of the mod it would be possible. I know Gencool is really good with sprites and could probably bust out some awesome side view sprites of the vanilla species.

Unfortunately the Teleporter thing is not possible. However... You could probably use the Teleporter animation somehow to make it look like crew are teleporting from one level up to another in the walking up or down animation. Only problem I really see with that is it doesn't make sense then when your Teleporter is damaged and I'd like to be able to see my crew all the time.