Making your own hulls for GSB - the easy way.

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Modding
21

Okay LuckyLuke I seem to have fixed in on my game. Basically you do the regular 512x512 bitmap the same way as for the other ships, and throw that .dds file into the folder for the fighter. Then you make a second image that is just two of the first ones shrunk down to 64x64, and placed next to each other. So you will have a 128 wide by 64 tall image that has two images of your ship side by side in it. Save this .dds file as ShipName_sprite.dds, and then copy it into the ship folder. After that you create the hull text file. It should look like this one…

[config]
classname = fighter 
name = F-302
guiname = F-302 Hull
sprite = F-302.dds
damagetexture = F-302_damaged.dds
hulktexture = 
width = 14
height = 14
powerproduced = 4
cost = 50
racename = federation

[bonuses]
0 = SPEEDBOOST,0.1

[runninglights]

[contrails]
0 = 128,180,40,500,1.5,4

[targets]
0 = 42.00,126.50,1,1,19.00,90.00,65.00,163.00,SHIP_EMMITER_SMALL,
1 = 199.00,136.00,0,0,
2 = 139.50,63.50,1,1,115.00,22.00,164.00,105.00,SHIP_EMMITER_SMALL,
3 = 202,103,1,1,166,89,241,148,SHIP_EMMITER_SMALL,

[slots]
0 = 88.00,100.00,TURRET,
1 = 168.00,100.00,TURRET,
2 = 128.00,130.00,STANDARD,
3 = 128.00,165.00,STANDARD,

[explosions]
0 = 0,128,128,EXP_STARTBREAKUP
1 = 0,128,128,EXP_FIGHTER_DESTROYED_LOD
2 = 0,128,128,EXP_FIGHTER_DESTROYED
3 = 0,128,128,EXP_BLASTGLARE

You change the names to everything like normal, but you leave the hulktexture one empty and remove the other two hulk entries below it.

22

After some problems and tinkering I managed to get this ingame :smiley: Still need to fix turret positions.

Battlecruiser Daedalus from Stargate Atlantis.

Finished now. Gave the hull a large speed boost but removed some module slots to compensate (battlecruiser, not a battleship. Sacrifices armor/weapons for speed). It uses custom weapons (railguns) which are effective against armor but useless against shields, and plasma beams which kick ass against both shields and armor but take time to reload and aren’t very accurate. Also custom shields which have very high strength but very low recharge rate and resistance. Basically multiphasic shields on steroids. (Taken from the series, where they use Asgard shields which take long to recharge but are very durable. Fit well in GSB)

23

Nice it looks like you use the same model as I did. Mallacore does awesome work. I’ve managed to get a number of his ships in the game even the Excalibur Class ships (Battleships). Here’s a few screenshots.

Okay so the small ships are the Tempest class which I have set as Frigates in the game. Then there is the Daedalus and Ares Class ships that are set up to be cruisers. Then there is the Excalibur Class which is a battleship. As you can see the Excalibur is a rather large ship, and has the module spots to match its size with 17 standard and 18 hardpoints. It produces 80 power, has a 30% integrity boost, 30% shield boost, 10% speed boost, and a 10% power boost. Oh and did I mention its initial cost starts at 3000, and its easy to get it above 8000 once its finally fully loaded. The Excaliburs are meant to be the backbone of the fleet, but without any support from the other Daedalus, Ares, or Tempest class ships they can be taken down by two or three cruisers working together which is about how much the Excalibur costs to begin with. Mine fully loaded has about 4000hp, 15 armor, 1000 shields, a speed of 0.08 thanks to two supercharged cruiser engines, and a cost of 8325.

Here you can see the F-302 and F-322 fighters. There isn’t really any difference between the two beyond looks right now. In the future though I may change it up a little bit.

I also created a custom railgun module, Asgard beam, Fighter missile, and a Nuke. The railguns are pretty much useless against Cruiser shields, but once the shields go down they just work away at the enemy until they explode. The railguns are also effective weapons against fighters just like in the show. The Asgard beam is pretty much the same as yours. The fighter missile is just a short range, high maneuverability, anti-fighter or anti-ship weapon. It does a little less damage than a torpedo, but has a longer firing interval. The Nuke is sort of broken. It does a massive amount of damage, but has no decoys and is therefore easy to shoot down. The problem is when they’re spammed they’re unstoppable. I’ll have to work on that possibly by making them prohibitively expensive and heavy so that only the battleships will carry them.

24

It’s funny how similar our thinking is. I have exactly the same problem with my Daedalus nukes.

I’ve added custom sounds to my railguns and beams, they sound more distinguishable now. Planning to release your mod? It seems to be quite large.

25

I may once I’ve gotten it a little more balanced, and once I’ve got permission from the people who’s renders I used to make the ships. I don’t mind using their stuff for myself, but before I distribute it to other people I want to have their permission to do so.

26

Gratuitous space battles… or gratuitous naval battles?

I suddenly realized, if you can mod spaceships, then why not naval ships? Therefore I added the (wip) battleship Yamato :smiley: I think I’ll start working on a WW2 mod.

People could even mod in tanks and turn this game into gratuitous land battles. I’m starting to realize just how moddable this game actually is.

27

:open_mouth: Wow!!! That’s awesome! :smiley:

You could even mix two types of vehicles there to work together. Air units and land units or air units and water units. Mixing land units and land units wouldn’t work because the game doesn’t limit vehicle movement in any way so tanks driving on top of water doesn’t look quite correct. :stuck_out_tongue:

Though… IF the water was frozen… and the ships would leave a trail of broken ice which would then blend back to solid ice background. I think this could be achieved with the thrust sprite and adding fading alpha channel on top of it. :smiley:

But that really looks awesome.

This game actually has potential to be turned into almost anything which has same kind of battles as GSB has right now.

28

If the trail effect of missiles was changed, they could act as torpedoes skimming underwater. But I suck at making effects.

Tried a small battle between a Hood and a Yamato, seems to work well. Got some balancing to do and hair-ripping from making turret sprites (why can’t it be easier).

29

I considered doing something like that for a while, but decided to finish up my Stargate stuff first. A WWII mod would be quite doable. Think about it you could even have infantry squads using the fighter stuff for it, or you could have structures like bunkers, machine gun pits, walls, non-mobile artillery, etc. This could prove to be an interesting idea. I’ll have to throw some stuff together, and see how it works.

edit

I just thought of something. If structures were added to the game you could put them in as frigates, have infantry as fighters, and have all vehicles as cruisers. That would allow you to make it so that walls couldn’t magically start moving and stuff like that.

30

Hmm. Using fighters as infantry might be a bit tricky though, they’d go swarm around enemies and such. Maybe just use a frigate with less strength.

Added fletcher destroyer. Damage spots are really hard to add/change. I’m not sure how the coords work.

i37.tinypic.com/2148fmx.png

I really need to find a flat sea for the background, but I can’t seem to find one. Basically from top down. Happen to know any good pictures?

31

Here’s one I found…

32

That is quite excellent, thanks man.

33

Pick one: images.google.fi/images?hl=fi&cl … q=&start=0

The magic word is texture. :wink:

34

they should make a custom ship thread where people could just share there ships they made , i cant for the life of me figure this out but im a complete idiot when it comes to photoshop barly use it :frowning:

35

yeah, can someone just post a link to the site they found their custom sprites? i can’t seem to find any… EDIT: Nevermind, i seemed to have found some…

36

One of the things I’m trying to do is split up the current ships into various components (wings, nacelles, basic hulls, connectors, etc) in photoshop so that people can assemble them however they like (either in PS or some other program) and then import them into GSB. Its going to be quite a project from the looks of things though, so no idea when I’ll be able to finish it especially since I have uni assignments and things like that :frowning:

Either way, once I have one race done I’ll see if I can’t put a full pack of its images up someplace.

37

I got my new frigates using this method also, unfortunately i can’t post a screenshot because this site doesn’t allow .bmp pics. :frowning: EDIT: Made a SPACE STATION, too. both of them are from realspace 3.

38

which you didn’t post a link to either…?

39

they were files imported from another game

40

It took a while but I finally got these babies into the game