Help is needed.

[Schimera]

I’ve really enjoyed this game and since getting it have spent many a hour adding ships other people have made.
This is all very fun but id like to make my own now, this is where i’ve gotten stuck.
i understand editing text files easy enough and that 3 .dds images are required (hulk, damage, hull)
and this is where i’m stumped. can i use the -editor clifski has put into the game? to sort out the effects/hard points?
have i missed anything out?
much appreciated.

[darkstar076]

Yeah you got it. While cliff says the editor is buggy I have used it to great effect for my custom ships.
It took me awhile to get use to it, but once you have the hang of it, its easy to use.

So long as you place your dds and text files in the right location, you can access the hulls throught the editor

[Schimera]

ok, so i’ve had a bash.
resulting in a massive failure.
i’m pretty sure what i did wrong was with the image files themselves (no images displayed at all/massive white box)
any idea how you do it correctly with paint.net?

[Schimera]

Trust tried creating a image with Photoshop+DDS extension using this guide:

Re: Making your own hulls for GSB - the easy way.

by Throumbas on Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:23 pm
To get a new hull ingame i used Photoshop and the nvidia DDS plugin.
First get a top-down image of a ship you want, star trek stuff for me. It needs to be 512x512, besides the ship, the background should be one colour, black for example. After you have the image ready, you need to make a selection to the ship, not including the background. An easy way to do this is to use the magic wand to select the whole of the background, and then do Select>Inverse to select the ship instead. Now go to the bottom right of the photoshop tools, where the layers are. Click on the Channels tab. You should have red, green and blue. We need to create an alpha channel. Right click on one channel, blue for example, and select duplicate. Change the name of the new channel to Alpha 1. For this channel to work, we need to make the outline of the ship completely white, so thats what GSB will show, and not the black background. With the ship still selected, and the background black, go to image>adjustments>brightness/contrast. Set them both to 100. Now the alpha channel should be a black image with the white outline of the ship. Now that you have the image ready, lets create a new directory in Gratuitous Space Battles Beta\data\bitmaps\ships\federation called New Ship, in there we need three versions of the image. Go back to photoshop and save the file as DDS. Make sure you have DXT3 with explicit alpha selected, and Generate Mip Maps should be checked as well, save as New Ship.dds. Go to the directory and copy it 2 times, renaming it to New Ship_damaged.dds and New Ship_hulk.dds, those should be damaged versions of the ship but thats another tutorial.
We`re done with images now. Go to Gratuitous Space Battles Beta\data\hulls\federation, and copy paste for example the federation buffalo cruiser, rename the text file to New Ship.txt, open it with notepad. In the [config] section you should see the text defining the dds files and names of the hull, its pretty self explanatory what you need to change here. Other info about the stuff in this files is found on these forums. Also, the coordinates used here is based on a 256x256 file, so you can copy your new ship.dss and make it 256x256 just for quick reference in case you need to change things in the text file. That should be it. Go to the design screen and check it out.

However it won’t let me save in .D3D/.DDS format due to too many channels?

[xeranes]

Ahh… that plugin… I never really figured out how to work it. -_-

I use Gimp to do my ship editing, it handles gamma channels like a charm! It does also need a plugin, but it is way simpler to use!

[Schimera]

@xeranes

Ahh… that plugin… I never really figured out how to work it. -_-

I use Gimp to do my ship editing, it handles gamma channels like a charm! It does also need a plugin, but it is way simpler to use!

Ok. just getting it now.
how would you recomend i do it? same as in the photoshop tutorial?

[Schimera]

Woooo!!! I’m getting somewhere now lol.
Gimp works great thanks mate
currently stuck here though:
i think i may have slipped up on the .DDS

and here is the .DDS file:
mediafire.com/file/01cblqvgj … rmandy.dds

Any idea which way i went wrong?

[N3MES1S]

I also recommend gimp instead of photoshop, more easy to use and same functionallity. (And free xD). Schimeria, the only thing u need to know about dds is the type (DXT5, DXT3, etc) and if it has mipmaps (i didnt try anything yet but i think the dds of this game doesnt have a lot of mipmaps). Once u know that, u can modify the texture in gimp, and save it with the DXT5 / mipmaps activated option if needed (or change the options u want). I recommend u to use WTV (Windows texture viewer) to knowing the charasteristics of a texture file. U need a gimp plugin that allows u to open DDS files, is easy to find it, just google it.

Schimeria, about your last images, it seems that u have the wrong alpha color applied on the ships. Thats the reason u see that square. U need to make transparent color the background. There is a tool on gimp that makes that, (the eraser if i remember), u need to select the whole ship, then invert selection and then convert selection to alpha (or something like that). Cuz as far as i saw in this forums, all the image must be transparent except for the ship itself. Or maybe u just didnt save the dds with mipmaps activated (if the image has mipmaps). But im not pretty sure, cuz i didnt start modding yet (i just telling u this cuz i modded for SFIV and armored princcess and i am figouring it out lol)

P.D.: I just saw your dds file, and i think im right. U need to convert the black background color to transparent. BTW, i didnt notice the ship design is the normandy of mass effect !!! lol. Nice idea though. U should do a whole mod of mass effect, including the citadel and the reapers ships lol.

[Schimera]

Thanks dude.
Going to have a play with it now then.
Yeah, tis the normandy.
was going to wait till its perfect before sharing but i got stumped lol.

[Schimera]

Got it working just swell now.
Only having a trouble setting up the smoke/sparks/exhaust/damage areas etc.
The in-game hull editor is failing for some reason, got any explanation of how to do i via text?