Alright, so as of now, I have one race out of two approximately 70% done. That is the ever-reliable Starfleet, and you can expect one fighter, five frigates, three cruisers, and one dreadnought (balanced for the Classic DN mod), as well as six new modules. All that’s left to do is the visual finishing touches - hulks, damage textures, debris, escape pods. And hopefully I can improve on what I already have at the moment.
I don’t like posting this, as incomplete as it is - but I think I’ve kept anyone who was ever interested in this mod waiting far, far too long.
Current Content List
. Ships
Einstein Class Frigate (USS Kelvin Type)
Armstrong Class Frigate (Three-nacelle Type, seen in fleet shots of the JJ films)
Armstrong Class Frigate Excelsior Refit (Three nacelle type refit, seen in Into Darkness background shot)
Newton Class Frigate (Two-nacelle, two engineering hull type, seen in fleet shots of JJ films)
Mayflower Class Heavy Frigate (Similar to Miranda Class/USS Reliant type from TWOK, seen in fleet shots of JJ films)
Apollo Class Light Cruiser (Based off TOS Apollo/Saladin Class, kitbashed)
Constitution Class Cruiser
Federation Class Heavy Cruiser (Three-nacelled type based off TOS Star Empire/Federation Class, kitbashed)
Dreadnought/Vengeance Type
Wraith Fighter (From the Star Trek: Shattered Universe game)
The answer you seek to half a shuttle craft can be found here.
The GSB Modding 101 thread is a brain dump of the modders in this forum, it is well worth the read as it will help you avoid some of the hidden traps that are scattered when modding GSB. Like half a fighter
There is another thread which may be of interest. Ask a modder. This seems to have become a focus point for the forum members to post various questions and answers in regards to modding.
Other than that, Good luck and I look forward to your progress with this mod.
From the GSB Modding 101 Thread . .
(Note the part about _sprite.dds - it should help with the shuttle craft)
Fighter Sprites:
These ships are put together a little differently then the other two types of ships. I have highlighted the differences below.
In the configuration file there are two main differences when turing your sprite into a playable ship:
Damage & Hulk.
Looking at the Federation Falcon you have the following lines
[config]
classname = fighter
name = Federation Falcon Fighter
guiname = Federation Falcon Fighter Hull
sprite = Federation Falcon Fighter.dds
damagetexture = Federation Falcon Fighter_damaged.dds
hulktexture = federation_hulks.dds
hulkUVstart = 0
hulkUVend = 3
width = 11
height = 11
powerproduced = 3
cost = 44
racename = federation
…
…
…
::Modders Note::
To avoid a ship that looks like it is being affected by gravity (stretched) keep the width and height the same
Damage:
You will notice that the damagetexture file has an _damaged at the end of it like frigates and cruiser. However when we navigate to where the hull file is kept you will only see these two files:
(found in\Gratuitous Space Battles\data\bitmaps\ships\federation\Federation Falcon Fighter)
Federation Falcon Fighter.dds
Federation Falcon Fighter_sprite.dds
The _sprite.dds file provides the damaged look for the ship. It is a combination of the Hull sprite and the Damage sprite placed side by side in the same image.
NOTE: It is important to have the name of the Hull file and the _sprite file the same. So when your entering in the damage texture copy/paste your file name in and replace _sprite with _damaged and you can avoid that annoying “white square” error.
::Modders Note::
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)
Hulk
With Cruisers and Frigates, you have a unique hulk file thich the game will generate leaving various peices of the wreckage to twist and turn independantly. With fighters the hulk is one complete image however you can have multiple hulk images to be randomly choosen by the game. The random selection of fighter hulks is controled with the following code:
hulktexture = federation_hulks.dds <-Which file has the hulks
hulkUVstart = 0 <-Where the hulks start
hulkUVend = 3 <-Where the hulks end
This tells the game that when the fighter goes kaboom, choose a image between the start and end numbers and display that image as the chared remains on screen. (In this case when they die the game will randomly select from the locations 0,1,2 or 3 in the federation_hulks.dds file)
So you desire, you can have several hulk images for a single fighter if you desire. AFAIK - this image is static, there is no way to make it twist and turn like frigates and cruisers.) If you want (and you have the time) each fighter have its own fighter hulk maps so you can have multiple ways (max of 16) for each fighter to meet its demise.
So lets have a look at the federation_hulks.dds:
(found in\Gratuitous Space Battles\data\bitmaps\ships\federation)
We can see the hulks are arranged in a 4x4 grid (yes the last row is blank)
So if we number them it would go like this
0 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 . .
. . . .
Disclaimer - as far as i am aware the game will split the hulk file into a 4x4 grid (total of 16)- so if you have 5 fighters and want to have 4 hulks for each, (total of 20 hulks) you will need to make a second hulk file.
::Modders Note::
The naming of sprites, textures and hulks is case sensitive. Be careful when entering them into the config file. One way to avoid miskates is to use copy paste.
Just like to say, many thanks to DarkStar, who showed me how to fix problems with the fighters. I now have a fighter up and running, and it may be up soon
Just to do my Trekkie:
The original weapons of Starfleet is Phasor Array, who fire beam of phased plasma.
An other kind of weapons, used more by the Klingons, are Phasor Cannons, who fire “bolt” of phased plasma
In the new film, they have Phasor Arrays and Cannons on the USS Kelvin (The ship in the beginning)
It seem there is only Cannons on the USS Enterprise (That’s technically an error because the Enterprise never had that kind of weapons in the series, or maybe an other time modification?).
Basically the new movies have changed things around a bit. I do have Arrays on the Kelvin, Prototype Constitution and Armstrong, but I think that all the ships from the same style as the 2009 Enterprise have the same weapons. Klingons do use more cannon-like weapons as well, but they’re called Disruptors.
Are you planning to include any other of the Star Trek races? It would be awesome to have the Klingons or the Borg. Anyways looks awesome can’t wait to give it a try!
Technology wise, Klingon and Romulan combat systems are very similar. I guess in the new movies Romulans use more missiles than disruptors, and in TOS the Romulans favored high energy plasma weapons over disruptors and torpedos. Still I’ve always wanted my own fleet of Borg geometric shapes.
For all of you calling for another new race, I have a present for you -
Klingons!
Anti-clockwise from top left;
D8 Light Cruiser
D7 Heavy Cruiser
D4-7 Frigate
D4 Bird of Prey
I’ve also created disruptors for these ships, and yes, it is true that both Romulan and Klingon ships use similar weaponry - Romulans do use Plasma torpedoes as opposed to Photon though - (and Nero’s Romulan ship was from the future, and enhanced with Borg tech - so the missles aren’t strictly 23rd century Romulan As for diversity in terms of stats, I just don’t have the knowlege and time to balance every single one of the ships and every single weapon. In comparison to stock ships, my ST ships WILL currently stomp against them, but that’s because ST battles are somewhat faster in comparison to GSB’s more naval feel - and although I haven’t tested them yet, the Feds and Klingons should be somewhat evenly matched. I may release a beta or early build if someone is willing to balance the weapons or otherwise.
I also intend to do a graphical overhaul some time in the future - the image that I ripped the Starfleet ship sprites from is pretty low res - and I know where the high res originals are - just so the ships look decent in comparison to the stock ones. As for the Bird of Prey - I took a photo of the newly released Hot Wheels model, removed the watermark, sliced it in half and mirrored the remainder for symmetricality, and finally did colour adjustments, painting over most of the hull with a greyish-green - the original model had garish khaki camo or something. The Vengeance source image I used was a low res grab of its respective model, so I’ll just need to repeat the process. Gonna be a pretty annoying process though.
Hello, USSCrazybat. Not a single one of us expects true and total perfection (it’s just not possible, period). Honestly, we don’t. Especially from someone’s first modding project (ALL of us were noobs once). However, we do expect a mod’s creator to make a sincere and constructive effort to do his very best at avoiding deliberately leaving his mod in a state of imma roflstomp u lol where the official game races are concerned.
And yes, that means in order to balance well, you also have to be well-versed with the less-obvious aspects of the game. There’s no way around it – not only because of the nature of that process itself, but also because the very few experienced veterans who still spend any time here are also usually shoulders-deep in their own long-term mod construction. It is both frustrating and unfortunate that there are so few of us left here on the Gratuitous Modding forum, but c’est la vie. GSB2 is still a long way off, so general interest (even on the part of many former modding veterans) in actively modding the original is low.
Now, if you are making a deliberate design choice to have, as you described it, a degree of faster and less-naval-paced battles, that’s one thing. But [size=115]if[/size] that’s the tactical result because you may be unwilling to make more than a superficial balance of your creation against the official game, that’s another thing entirely.
Be careful about treading down that path, though. Other peoples’ time has value, too. Since, as the mod’s creator, you have just essentially told the forum community “this mod’s graphics are going to be very cool, but the actual functionality is not really worth my own time to learn how to make it more playable [size=85](even if not perfectly playable)[/size] against the vanilla races,” you should be prepared for a potential feeling from us of “then it’s likely not worth our time to balance it for you, either”. Over the years, numerous people have blandly & selfishly expected us to do all of the heavy lifting for them; all of them have been mistaken. There’s a distinction between “please assist me in learning” vs. “please do it for me”.
Some things just cannot be detoured around, or delegated to others, and still be expected to yield up an enjoyable product. You also have to invest your own time, care, and attention to detail. We can try to point you in the right direction, and aid you in resolving certain dilemmas, but most of the heavy lifting re: balance is likely going to be yours. You might need to reconsider some of your intentions for your mod – it has the potential to be quite good, even though there is a minefield of suboptimal paths waiting to ensnare anyone who mixes too many eras/tech levels/races from the different sources of Star Trek canon. It beats playing SFB (and its related rules-lawyering), that’s for sure.
I am still unsure that I have interpreted your present situation correctly. If I have misunderstood you at any point, I apologize. I wish you the very best of luck in your endeavour.
Not a single one of us expects true and total perfection (it’s just not possible, period). Honestly, we don’t. Especially from someone’s first modding project (ALL of us were noobs once). 
