Here is that much hinted at new feature…
O.o
So AWESOME!
Just a tiny little question: What is the modability of this feature?
it should be pretty much total 
Although I haven’t yet coded a system to automatically share modded content through a challenge, its something I’d like to do.
BTW if you like this, it would be great for people to tweet about it, facebook it, or post it to your social network of choice
nice!
a few things
1, is the grid pattern the only color scheme available? What about stripes etc?
2, the limited space seems to encourage square ships, can we be allowed more room so longer, skinnier ships are possible?
3, is there a way to align parts to a grid? Not sure if that’s already the case from watching the video
4, can added components be hit? Do they affect gameplay in any way?
thanks
also the arc on the design part did not always overly itself over the modules making it hard to see
i also have a bunch more questions that i’ll save for a later date sens this is undoubtedly an early preview
also will a standalone version of this, for modders, be released? (i guess that sorta goes into the wait for it to be developed more category)
Wow. That is really, really slick. Awesome!
(I also like the parting shot on the video - “The possibilities are endless.”)
Yup there is a grid option, I just wasn’t using it.
Yes added components can be hit by enemy fire. I could write a small novel about how involved it was to code that :). The position of the components has no gameplay effect though, its entirely aesthetic.
I really love this, though I’m envisioning mods (not official ones of course) that only compose of custom ship parts and weapons and require you to build everything yourself.
That aside, I’m looking forward to the possibilities.
Is there a way to control the pulse frequency of the navigational light? Can the hull light be made to flash (or if the rotation slider controls the pulse frequency of lights, can the hull light be made to revolve)?
Also, the mirror axis on the ship you showed appeared to be slightly off center. Does the game choose the centerline of the base sprite for the mirror axis?
I haven’t started work on customizing stuff like light flash speed yet.
When mirroring, it always mirrors around the ships center point.
Can I still make a fleet of a 6-10 ships under 5 minutes and get them to battle?
Berny
GSB takes place in the time I consume Coffee and Shredded Wheat
Berny, your post is not real explicit whether your 5 minutes is meant to include or exclude use of the new Ship Customizer, but I’ll do my best regardless.
So:
The Customizer is purely an aesthetic and artistic enhancement to the game; it is not mandatory. If, for personal reasons of your own, you don’t feel like lavishing time upon it, you won’t have to. Nothing that’s functional combat-wise will be lost from your gameplay if yo don’t want to use the Ship Customizer.
If you don’t plan to use more than a small taste (or none at all?) of the Customizer and have little to no interest in finessing your designs, combat orders or formations, then that’s likely true.
For everyone else who doesn’t insist on playing the game in the middle of a meal, then that might not be the case. 
It’s “Gratuitous Space Battles 2,” not “Gratuitous Speed Battles 2”.
I doubt that the majority of players of GSB1 or its sequel are wanting to get their design, deployment and battle done in such miniscule slices of time as you are. It sounds as if you might not primarily be a “stop and smell the roses” kind of player who would spend a lot of time enjoying the Ship Customizer. Fortunately, it’s 100% optional – your gameplay is still your gameplay.
That being said, I look forward to making occasional use of this new feature.
However, I must also admit that I also have no intention of spending a lot of time with it.
========================================================
This part is for everybody to read.
A big chunk of my own strategic dev focus is insuring that the GSB1 “Hull Editor” is put back into service for GSB2’s modders to enjoy making new faction fleets for GSB2’s players to enjoy pitting against the official races, as well as against other new faction fleets. That goes hand-in-glove with reminding Cliff about fulfilling his pledge to provide greatly increased modding support for GSB2’s modders, compared with the often awkward state of GSB1 modding.
Please remember that modders [size=80](myself included)[/size] provide all of the exciting future content which players flock to once they’ve inevitably grown bored with the taste of vanilla content. Cliff has to help US in order to help YOU. 
But the Ship Customizer’s very far from actual, honest-to-God modding; there’s NO WAY that the amusing, optional, “not connected to actual gameplay” things the Customizer allows you to do can ever be considered for a single moment as ANY “substitute” for mechanically altering module slots, turret slots, and firing arcs of a hull. GSB1’s Hull Editor is enormously more useful than the Customizer. The former easily facilitates new, abundant, unofficial faction content for every player reading my post – the latter can never provide that. I expect the Hull Editor to be ported to GSB2 at the earliest possible moment after the game’s pre-release beta goes public.
“And why should anyone be concerned about this?”, people will ask themselves.
It’s simple to understand:
-
No GSB1 Hull Editor and no expanded modding help means NO modder-created races of ANY kind in GSB2.
-
No modder-created races means a very damaging lack of GSB2 gameplay diversity for its customers.
-
Less gameplay diversity as compared to GSB1 means much less customer interest in GSB2 (let alone goodwill).
-
Fewer customers means less profit for Positech Games.
Still un-convinced that the existence of this fancy new Ship Customizer
is ultimately unhelpful in the game, and may very well be a real threat
to GSB2’s long life & Positech’s financial success?
I’ll phrase this as clearly & constructively as possible:
A feature which yields actual gameplay/mechanical changes to ships (slot count, firing arc width/orientation) is vastly more important to the long-term health of GSB2 than a feature which yields only inconsequential cosmetic changes that exert zero tactical effect upon gameplay, as well as yielding zero new meaningful in-game strategic choices for the human player.
People will not buy this game just because they can now change the paint scheme of their hulls.
At least, not enough people to make any significant positive financial difference to Positech Games.
The majority of people will buy this game in order to exert their will upon the outcome of the battles, making meaningful choices that directly impact WHO won and HOW they won.
[size=125]THAT[/size] is what brought us into GSB1, and it’s the #1 reason why new players will take a close look at GSB2. When compared to what brought us into GSB1, being able to re-skin your ship is a low order of priority. No, it’s not useless, but it’s also very far from being mission-critical.
Potential buyers who expect game substance to dominate over game “surface” make up the majority of potential buyers. Quite reasonably, too; everyone wants value for their money. They’re definitely going to care MUCH MORE about the totality of things that might possibly be poorly-designed, under-developed, under-playtested, under-corrected, and left as explosive mines for the players to trip over after they bought their copy of GSB2, were it not for so many dev resources (i.e., precious non-recoverable TIME) that were put instead into making the Ship Customizer a reality. 
If customers are being offered the new Ship Customizer, then they had also better be offered MUCH tighter/polished, better-balanced, more fully-featured gameplay as well. Understandably, they will want to know what sort of “major new gameplay elements” GSB2 has that GSB1 lacks. This is a sequel to a very popular original; there are going to be skeptical and cautious eyes all over it once it’s available for purchase. It had better be able to hold up under such justified scrutiny.
If the ONLY big new thing we have to offer them is the Ship Customizer, customers are going to be mighty unhappy.
And if the only big new thing we have to offer is the above, PLUS inadequate balance, cookie-cutter races with almost no tactical variety between them, and obstacles to modding instead of increased ease of modding, there’s going to be customer anger at first, then a great many dollars spent everyplace other than on GSB2.
Go ahead and prove me wrong.
Pro tip: no one can.
Despite my grim description of what might go wrong with GSB2 because of the Ship Customizer ( I honestly do regard it as a well-intended, but misguided, priority for the sequel ), I also truly hope that my worries do not come true. But if they do…I should not be the only person here who sees the problem coming.
Yet I feel that I am. 
I don’t really expect anyone else in our community to touch
this subject that I’ve raised, but I had to speak my mind.
If I sound much too bleak please forgive me, my fellow players and game developer.
meh… I’m still concerned about the squared-ness of the ships…
hopefully long skinny ships would be possible 
Well the square is annoyingly a bit of an engine limit, BUT, a lot of the hulls are long skinny things initially, and there is no requirement for you to pad out the whole screen in terms of bolt-on bits, so yeah, I would expect to see a few long skinny ships
I don’t know if it’s easy to do, but, can you implement a zoom system for the customisation?
Heh, it would be an absolute NIGHTMARE, but I find myself wanting it badly when I’m building ships, so you never know, but it is low down on my huge terrifying todo list…
can we see the todo list???
I’ll make a new post
thanks
now i can pretend that i understand how the development works
and respect you more for doing mostly by yourself
Took me a while to return to the forums (its been one busy as heck summer!) and I just saw the customization video. Without any improvements, I can see spending a huge amount of time just creating fleets of ships with all sorts of pithy details that only I will care about. The way it seems to work now is kind of bordering on magic, so don’t tell me it’s all math and ruin it.
QUESTION!
Can we create and import our own ship components, since they are only aesthetic in nature? If so, are there any specifics we need to know for all of the light effects to work on them correctly (height maps, alphas, metal vs. glowy bits, etc.)?
Looks fantastic!