New model skin thing discussion

[Irrational]

Try doing the skull & crossbones in white. I bet it’ll look much better.

[darkstar076]

Another version of the Pirate Fleet skin . . although some insignia look better than others

[darkstar076]

A rusty attempt . . umm, an attempt at a rusty look
In theory its the top ships that should appear rusty

[darkstar076]

Another atempt at the pirate skin
Black and white with a smaller decal

[alimarin]

If only I knew how to do this stuff, man I could make things look so awesome.

[darkstar076]

Hey Alimarin

Yeah, i know that what i have done doesn’t look awesome . . its my third attempt after all
So if you (or anyone else) have any ideas on how i can make it better, Please - let me know !

I would like to improve to a point where I can create a Pirate / Merc mod

[alimarin]

Instead of making it just rusted, make it look more torn apart, or everything is jury rigged back together.

[darkstar076]

Eich Scavenger mod has cornered the market on the torn apart look . . and it looks really sweet
So might try the patched back together look for the pirates - where the hull plates are different colour.

[Shadowclaimer]

Remove paint, make it look grey, add some rust and broken bits, throw on the decal, success.

[darkstar076]

I was hoping that someone could help me improve the Black version as well, or something that says - “BOSS FIGHT”
Anyways, i have enough to work on at the moment . . once the utility restores power

[Geressen]

any news on this? i’d love to see it implemented as an option similiar to the change name on the deploy screen.

probably a lot of work though, I salute all the people who are experimenting whit skins and if it becomes a mod or an actual feature I will sell my soul to you, once I get it back from that other guy I sold it to that is.

[darkstar076]

I don’t know if this is scheduled to be a feature in GSB
But yeah, its a lot of work. I am currently editing the graphics for some turrets and that takes a long time

[zer0sum]

@cliffski

Ok, here is the above featured ship for modders to experiment with:

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/downloads/Imperial%20Centurion%20Cruiser_source.zip

This contains 3 zipped up photoshop psd files.

The normal one
The damaged one
The hulk one.

With lots of different layers. I’ve included the camoflage layer to show you how I’ve done it, but basically I use a soft light blend on top of the hull to get that effect.
I also included as an extra alpha channel, the selection areas for the damage ‘bleed-through’. If you add a new texture, what you need to do is then select that group of areas (ctrl + click on the layer thumbnail) and then delete that from the new added layer, which will allow the flaming damge stuff to bleed through your new texture (it’s already done for the hull layer).

For a ship to work and look right you need to do this to all 3 images, and save out as dds files. I suggest cloning the ships hull text file with a new name and making sure you change the names of all three sprites, and rename the ship hull itself too. Then you can just launch the game and see it in there.
If anyone bothers to do all this, post some screenshots It would be l33t to see a bunch of different skins.

This image and the photoshop files are copyright 2010 Positech Games. Do not use them in any other stuff…

Cliff, how do you handle showing damage to your ships in your code? When a ship is damaged, do you change the alpha on some section of an image and then the damaged layer beneath shows through? Or do you actually draw a sprite at some predefined position on the ship on top of the regular texture?

Or something else?

[cliffski]

The damage sprite is literally drawn on top of the ship in the relevant place. The text files for hulls determine where the source and destination of that damaged texture is for each damage blast on a ship. (in UV or 0-1.0 values).