From what i remember, it does not have to be a power of 2.
The game will automatically divide the image into an 8x8 grid.
So at the very least i would recommend a multiple of 8.
In case anyone askes “If it have to be square?”
No it does not have to be square but the game will stretch the image into a square shape which may distort your long barrel howitzer into a sawnoff cannon.
Which is, by definition, also a power of 2. 
I’ll put some non-power of 2 turrets together, test and report back on any irregularities. For science!
Doh! - what i meant was you could have a 800x800 image and the game would divide it into 64 squares of 100x100 pixals . . (nice whole numbers)
Dunno how round or whole the number will be, but since I’m planning to build the turret mapping file directly from the individual square turret sprites, it will wind up a perfect multiple of 8, which should work OK. As always, time (and testing) will tell.
In my further testing of the unexplained aspects of modding yet to be revealed on the forums I decided to look at the Order’s tractor beam systems.
[tractorbeams]
0 = 279,320,363,320,58,0
Above is the tractorbeam coding for the Order’s Redemption Frigate.
Below is the coding for the explanation.
[tractorbeams]
0 = X1,Y1,X2,Y2,W,A
X1 / X2 = The X-coordinates for the tractor beam based on a 512x512 grid.
Y1 / Y2 = The Y-coordinates for the tractor beam based on a 512x512 grid.
Visually, it creates two points for the tractor beam animation to appear and uses value “W” for the amount of pixels to show.
W = Width of the Beam. You’ll need to play around with this number to get it to fit your ship hull properly.
W = 100: Wide, fat beam.
A = Angle of the beam. Default is 0 because the beam for the Redemption frigate is flat at 0 degrees.
A = 58: It’s off isn’t it? I know.
Pretty simple to utilize them. I assume they can be used for fighters, which is what I want to do.
I will will try to better explain explosions soon. I’ve read the tutorials but I still don’t quite get it.
This will be helpful when I get to assembling the station hulls for the Order. Good work sir!
I was thinking about how to make this thread a bit more easy to navigate and I dawned on me that maybe we could set up a wikia page =OR= utilize the Wiki for Gratuitous Space Battles as a hangar for modding tutorials, storage unit for the downloading of mods (if allowed), and adding other things (like GTB links, pictures, vids) as we go along.
The beauty of wikis is that we all can contribute (adding AND deleting) and leave our finished works of art on display. The forums then, in turn, would be for general question, answer, and direction to parts of the wiki.
It would make organization way easier when, say a regular on the forums, stops posting and we can’t organize a thread (such as this one) as we do not have the power to do so. It would also remove the pressure off of the said regular of having to update all the time when the whole community has access to and can change or add information and/or data whenever they choose to.
For those interested, testing has shown that the game appears to handle non-standard turret sprite sizes just fine, as long as the turret mapping file is a square. (My test involved turrets that were 432 pixels square, with a mapping file 8 times that. Yes, there’s a reason for the monster size of the file. No, I’m not going to tell. Yet.)
Hey. I downloaded the demo of the game about a week ago and I am now planning to buy the game. I am quite amazed at the content of this little subsection. I was curious; how would you recommend creating a hull graphic to put into the game?
Its quite simple, search the folder with hulls pictures inside the game directory, open a graphical proccessor and start cutting, pasting, recolouring, modifying the graphics of vainilla hulls. At the beginning it may be a bit slow, but when you get the point, you will be making several hulls per day ^^
I tried downloading GIMP after seeing it mentioned on some thread or another,but my computer still doesn’t like the .dds files. What should I do?
Edited: I have a Windows computer.
If you have a Windows machine, I can vouch for Paint.net as a program that handles the .dds files pretty well. Some of the more GIMP-savvy folk around here may be able to help you if you want to stick with that program. (Never could get it to work worth a hoot myself.)
It sounds like you have a mac. PCs should be able to the .dds files, especially with gimp.
Thats funny, (Noticed your edit there) I would think that pcs would have an easier time.
Maybe there’s a .dds plugin you need to install or something?
Google do your magic!
If this isn’t the one (since I’m on a mac), if you go to PROJECT HOME and then look under FEATURED >> DOWNLOADS you’ll find what you’re looking for I thinks.
Macs use .png files (which are bigger, bit wise) so I didn’t need the plugin. Hope this fixes your issues.
After some testing, here is what I have determined on the speed and fuel variables.
fuel = the distance the projectile will travel. (This is irrespective of the projectile’s speed.)
Optimizing Weapons
This deals with what I call “effective fire interval” (EF), or the length of time the projectile exists (tying up the launcher) assuming it misses its target.
Missiles
For missiles, there are three variables involved: fuel, missilespeed, and trail_fade_time. The formula for missiles is:
EF = (fuel / missilespeed) + trail_fade_time
It turns out the launcher will actually wait for the missile trail to be gone before firing the next one. If you want the turret to fire as soon as possible after being scrambled, set your fire_interval to the value above.
Plasma
Plasma uses only two variables: fuel and speed. The formula for plasma is:
EF = (fuel X 10) / speed
Thus at speed = 10, your fuel will be the effective interval.
Also, a bit of testing on radiation payloads:
Background info:
From what I can tell, the total_damage and damage_duration variables don’t do anything on their own - they are just shown in the weapon stats block in the design screen. I.e., you have to follow Cliff’s formula using radiation_damage and radiation_decay (found at the link in Astro’s quote above) to approximate these values for them to be of any use. (At least, during my testing, total_damage and damage_duration failed to limit the rad damage being dealt.)
Hope folks find this stuff useful.
To start with, go about your normal shipwrighting and design the:
However, once you palce a ship in the FIGHTER class you need to have these extra bits.
Now, when you combine your Hull and Damage file to create the _sprite file. Keep the damage file with the others. It will prove usefull when you use the ship editor and want to place the damage on the ship. (you can do the same for hulks but you then have to rename the hulk texture to your fighter hulk map)
If you use your hulk file (instead of the hulk map) like you normaly would for a cruiser / frigate and leaving out the hulkUVstart/end it will NOT crash the game. However when the ship blows up, nothing will remain apart from some little peices of debris . . .
Also, im experimenting with pulseglows on fighters, and seems like works perfectly fine. However it might be a different story for old PCs…
OK, here’s another query. We know that for the shockwave expanding from an exploding frigate or cruiser that A) more power produced = more damage dealt; and b) larger ship = larger shockwave.
Has anyone figured out the actual relationship between these various values? Specifically, I’m wondering about the ship radius to shockwave radius relationship (since I think we all know that for a ship intended to suicide, the right amount of power is LOTS). I’ve got an idea for how to do some testing, but I hate to reinvent the wheel if anybody has already been down this path.
Hey all,
I’m a little late to the game - but thank the Goons at Something Awful for turning me on to it, because it’s great fun without getting too involved, or dull like most “quick fight” kind of games. Anyway, I’m playing around with some basic modding, aesthetics only (at least as long as I have a job that requires me to actually work), and was wondering if the hull code allows shaders to be applied. In other words, can I stick a “shader = …” line in the hull’s text file and add an effect/animation to the ship?
I can do a few things with the order pulseglow, and probably with the engine glow and structural tractors. But - for example - I’d like to have a ship that looks like it’s being run by one of Nicola Tesla’s gadgets, with lots of “lightning bolt” type animations. Like the alliance lightning gun effect. A shader would work, I think, and I could probably put it together with the NVidia tools, but without a shader, I can’t figure out how to animate it at all with the pulseglow, since the image it “glows” is static.
Thanks in advance!!
BTW - AcePalarum, that suicide ship would be one expensive bomb! 
Welcome to the forums War Rocket Ajax!
Expensive, yes, but also effective. I know both the Uni-T and Praetorian Industries mods have power plants for the express purpose of making ships go satisfyingly KABOOM. I can testify to the nastiness of the Uni-T brand - try the Point Blank survival mission included with the mod and you’ll see the end result.
And I’m guessing the extended silence means there hasn’t been any directed research at this point, so I suppose I’ll charge ahead with my attempted testing. As always, I will report what I find.