Subset Games Forum

Hey all!

Can anyone point me towards how to mod drone textures?

Thanks!:D

That's kind of a big question. You can edit them with an image manipulation program, like gimp. I think they all have the same size (64x64?). You can extract some of the drone images from the original game as a starting point and examples for what you are aiming at. You can also download some drone mods to see how they integrate the drones.

If you check existing drone files then you will see that drones are made of four basic sprites:
_base - that's how the drone looks when it is inactive
_on - that's how the drone looks when it is active and moving
_charged - that's how the drone looks shortly before it will fire
_engine - that's the engine fire that is emitted when the drone moves

Generally, drone sprites are relatively easy to make and edit, as combat drones just use this four different sprites and don't even need animation sheets in animations.append.xml (as opposed to weapons, which need lots of frames and have to integrated via animation sheets). Defence drones need three gun sprites as well, but their _base and _on sprite is just two times the same copied thing.

As you can see in existing drones, _on and _charged are just copies of the _base image, with minor modifications like glow and charge-lights on. So after you finished your _base you are already almost done.

It is worth to mention than the engine fire is always rotate around the centre of the drone. Drones with irregular shapes (everything that's not round) will have some problems with their engine animation. You can get around that with simply giving them a blank _engine or make some semitransparent workaround.

Awesome, thanks so much, that clears up a lot:)

One thing, that i add to the excelent tutorial of Sleeper, for designing the drone graphics, i recommend you to use a program directed to smaller graphics, since using gimp or photoshop for a 64x64 graphic size can be a pain in the ass.
For example, iconworkshop is a program that is perfect for working with 64x64 images and sizes related. Its easier and once u have all the basic design done using only black lines over a transparent background (or something like that) then u can go to gimp or photoshop and retouch it (paint, glows, etc).