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

[dalolorn]

That's just awesome!!! Gotta check how that looks like in game. I always wanted to make a 3-slot teleporter. Nice find!! : )

And a medporter at that.

[Russian Rockman]

I'm pretty sure the medporter was already possible before AS. You could always have / systems in the same room, but doesn't this really screw up the way the icons look? One system icon on top of the other?

[RAD-82]

I was working with artillery today, trying to see if I could make a projectile that wouldn't be shot by a Defense II drone. I'm making an ASB clone for my heavy assault cruisers. It just doesn't seem right that a simple, little Defense II gets to stop such a powerful shot. Unfortunately, the new <drone_targetable> tag only seems to apply to Defense I drones, as far as I can tell.

Next thing I tried was to change it from a LASER to a BURST weapon. Instead of firing one 3-damage shot, I tried stacking three 1-damage shots, so that if something got shot, there would be more to get through still for some damage. New problem that I learned is that a BURST artillery shot doesn't use one room for multiple projectiles, so that ruined my plan, because I didn't want to spread the damage around.

Then for no apparent reason, I tried giving the BURST shot some fake projectiles. It appears that Defense II drones will shoot at these harmless projectiles. These fake projectiles don't even use the <explosion> tag for their destruction, and they collide with shields, unlike the real one that pierces. I ran out of time and haven't tested anything else, but it looks like I'm going to be sending in some invisible, fake projectiles in the hope of distracting Defense II drones from firing at the real shot.

[Russian Rockman]

OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!

I just accidentally discovered that room images do not automatically get readjusted to the size of the room they are in anymore!!!!!!

What does this mean exactly??? Well that means that ship modders can actually have a lot more details on the interior of their ships now.

Say you want to make a crew quarters/dormitory in an empty room. Well now you can, without having a system in that room.

Let me show you what I mean...
Here is a proof of concept I recently made. This image uses the following redone "room_oxygen" image.


Before AE this image would be shrunken down to fit the 35x70 pixel room where the oxygen is on the Kestrel, but now by making the image bigger we can add some details like this... Notice the back of the Kestrel?

The artillery was just something else I was playing around with, that's not part of the room_oxygen image.

So yeah. Now you can have details even in entirely empty rooms.

Some other Miscellaneous things worth pointing out.

• The image will be "anchored" to the upper-left hand corner of the room it is located in still, so if you over expand the size of the image, it will expand toward the bottom and right. (Thus, why I chose to use oxygen.)
• If you want to use this method to add details to a custom ship you will most likely want to attach the room to a starting system, and a system that will not be replaced, so you have the details always. (although it is possible to do this with any system)
• Yes, images can "overlap", but I'm not entirely sure in what order. I'll hypothesize that the order is based on how the systems are listed in the .xml blueprints file. So this means that you can have one image replace another image entirely, when you buy a new system for example, (you could actually include the tiles instead of transparency to overlap the whole room) or you could have an image "add" details to the room (by keeping transparency and making sure none of the other parts will actually overlap in a weird way.
  (Examples: You could start out with a crew dormitory and then replace it with a hacking system image, "sorry guys we need this room, guess you're sleeping on the floor." )
• This would have all been great before AE, but AE actually complicates things a bit, since now you need each of the 14 different systems (not including artillery) to be assigned to a different room whether or not you'll be able to obtain them all. So there aren't really many "empty" rooms where you can do this anymore, tus why it is probably more useful for "custom" ships. HOWEVER, I would love to see someone add some tiny details to the player ships so that we don't have any empty rooms ever (remember that other system images can overlap previous ones)
• And I'm probably forgetting something, but that's all I've got for now. For anyone interested room tiles are 35x35 pixels and walls extend 2 pixels into the boarders of a room.

I took some inspiration from this image in my testing. Check it out it's kind of cool.
http://ftlonline.webs.com/Game/Ship_Map_Full.png

[Sleeper Service]

I just accidentally discovered that room images do not automatically get readjusted to the size of the room they are in anymore!!!!!!

What does this mean exactly??? Well that means that ship modders can actually have a lot more details on the interior of their ships now.

Say you want to make a crew quarters/dormitory in an empty room. Well now you can, without having a system in that room.

Wow I can't wait to see all the cool stuff that ship modders will do with that. Great catch!

[R4V3-0N]

nice, now that huge engi flagship I made can feel less empty and awkward.

[Russian Rockman]

Wow I can't wait to see all the cool stuff that ship modders will do with that. Great catch!

Yeah you can now even create actual custom floors, to replace the generic tiles, for an entire ship.

Also, there is a %95 chance this won't work, but have you tried making a 0x1 or 0x2 room for encased systems. I know 0x0 doesn't work anymore, but you never know.

[kartoFlane]

I'm pretty sure the medporter was already possible before AS. You could always have / systems in the same room, but doesn't this really screw up the way the icons look? One system icon on top of the other?

Gah, guess that's yet another thing I didn't pay close attention to back before AE... Regarding the icons, yeah, they get layered one over another, depending on the order in which they're listed in the ship's blueprint.

(interiors not getting resized)

I found that too, a little earlier, but I guess I didn't give it enough of an enthusiatic or thorough exposure :(

Also, there is a %95 chance this won't work, but have you tried making a 0x1 or 0x2 room for encased systems. I know 0x0 doesn't work anymore, but you never know. :roll:

Sorry to disappoint, neither of those work. Encased systems are officialy gone now, and FTL devs don't seem to care :/

[Russian Rockman]

(interiors not getting resized)

I found that too, a little earlier, but I guess I didn't give it enough of an enthusiatic or thorough exposure

Sorry, yeah that was a t the bottom of the page, no one ever reads the bottom of the page And I had pictures everyone likes pictures...

Also, there is a %95 chance this won't work, but have you tried making a 0x1 or 0x2 room for encased systems. I know 0x0 doesn't work anymore, but you never know.

Sorry to disappoint, neither of those work. Encased systems are officialy gone now, and FTL devs don't seem to care :/

Oh well. Didn't think that would work anyway. There are other ways to make ships and stations annoying now without encased system. Like I still think a Zoltan station with a Shield drone would be a pain to fight in CE. More so than when it had n encased shield system.


Also, while I'm here i might as well plug dmi3's Open Artillery mod that makes artillery buyable for every player ship, but goes one step further and makes each ship have a "unique" artillery. I just spent a lot of time helping out on this mod, so please come check it out.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=23847

I actually think that if more enemy ships had artillery it could really shake combat up nicely. Everyone always targets the weapons first, in most circumstances, so that they don't take damage, but if an enemy had artillery too it would be a lot more difficult to avoid all damage so you may want to use different tactics. Something to really consider for the Captain's Edition. It could be great for those big Rebel Capital Ship monsters.

[5thHorseman]

I just accidentally discovered that room images do not automatically get readjusted to the size of the room they are in anymore!!!!!!

This is one of the coolest things I've heard (read, whatever) about the game since the announcement of AE