New to Modding: Tips on Custom Ships/Weapons/Etc?

[Kiloace]

Hey guys, I've been into FTL modding for about 2 days. So far I haven't tried out anything too fancy, but I can see myself really wanting to create custom ships, weapons and things in the future! I've seen some custom ship-editing programs on this forum, but its all talk, and I know I'm very visual about learning.

I've been looking on Youtube, but I haven't really found any videos that show a step-by-step walkthrough of designing ships and weapons and stuff. I really have no idea what I'm doing, but I'd definitely love to learn how, so if you have any tips or strategies, let me know!

Also, programs! I imagine I'll need some kind of art program to make skins and stuff. I hear a lot of people that say photoshop works well, but it costs money doesn't it? I have paint, but if there's something out there that's free...


So yeah. New guy, wants to make custom content, doesn't know how, help...? Thanks!

[5thHorseman]

You know what?

I think I'll make a video about SuperLuminal. Your First Ship Mod.

But the best way to learn is to do it. Load up superluminal. Open your favorite modded ship and move the medbay to a different room.

Start slow. My first ship took weeks and dozens of revisions. Now I can make a ship in a few hours (after days of thinking about it, of course. The creative part can't be rushed).

[Kiloace]

Cool! Thanks man! I'll be sure to get it and start playing around with it!

[speedoflight]

About programs, i always recommend sketchup for making the ship hulls (once you learn how to use the basics of sketchup + some interesting filters you waste less time that trying to make a ship in photoshop or watever and u can get really good results, far better than using a 2d graphic editor) and for weapons, i always recommend a pixel-art editor, like icon workshop (weapon graphics are really small, so its better to use a program of this kind, it will be crazy using photoshop to design tiny graphics of 64x64 max resolution...). You can design the weapons on sketchup as well to be sure they match the exact texture / style of the ship (u know, u can make the weapons at the same time u make the ship...), but weapons are trickier since u will still need to make the entire sprite sheet (u will need to grab a top view screenshot of the weapon and follow from there..).

Now, of course these programs are useless if u lack of imagination, since it doesnt matter how easy are them to learn, if u don have a clue of wat weapon design (shape, style, etc), they are useless lol.