Anyone want to test the Drengin Ships being Red Mod?

Well here's my one and only *BUMP*

So far I have only 2 volunteers to test the new ships. Anybody willing to try them out email me here:
[email protected]

It's super simple and will not affect your current or saved games in any way (...I hope )

Thanks so much for any who can help!

I have had no troubles with the red ships so far.
They seem to work perfectly.

I just haven't seen a Drengin contructor is all. heh

doug

I hope to have this out of beta soon... I appoligize for any delays, but I want to make sure all of the ships appear in the game correctly.

I already have 2 potential bugs I have found that I need to solve somehow...

also:

So as not to hijack russelmz's thread Duglis posted this:


Thanks for the accolades Duglis

One thing I have learned from watching these boards and reading Brad's replies on them, is that just because *I* think something is the best for the game doesn't necessarily make it true... if enough people offer feedback on the color to change it to a darker red, then I will likely buckle down and do it (though it really is a LOT of work to do). The when and how of doing it are up in the air though

In the mean time I will be providing the "raw" files (.tga and photoshop) so that any aspiring GalCiver can take what I've done and modify or expand upon it... (all in the shamelessly lazy hiope that someone will pull it off better than me LOL )

Also the ship project was a rewarding effort and I'm sure I'll do other ship sets and ideas in the future. (Not to mention other good stuff ;))

sending you an email soon. let me try those suckers out.

a couple questions: how many ships are there?

how hard is it to make the background transparent? i don't think i have a fancy enough graphics program to do alpha transparency or whatever it said in the readme for the ship graphics builder docs.

if there is an error, can i repalce the ships images from my cd?

Got it and they are on the way to ya!



A whole set (think it's 23 or so... have to look)



In Photoshop it's very easy - you just add a blank (transparent) layer and make sure it's on the bottom... think it works the same way in Paint Shop Pro. In other applications I'm not sure...



Even easier - you just delete the files that I send you.

I worked out a method where my files will not overwrite any of the original ones... of course whether said method works as expected is another matter entirely LOL

Thanks!


[Message Edited]

cool. i have seen quite a few red ships out there.

i was on a tiny map with the drengin set to pure good and everyone else set to pure evil. the ships look good. have not seen all of them yet. no sign of the constructors.

did see transports, frigates, battleships, freighters, and did not notice any weird icon problems.

hopefully i will be able to play a game where i can see an excaliber one day...

One question, I noted that I didn't have to remove any files, just paste yours in. How did you get it to 'override' the existing Drengin ships?

Just curious.

~SDC~

I'd like to know that, too - how did you pull that stunt?

And - I'd like to test those red ships!

How's this coming along Thrull?
I would go for a blood red to a bid darker than blood
red color..but that's just me

Hehe I have a lot of tricks in my bag

People didn't believe me in my thread about GalCIv the "most" modifiable game er (sic) when I said I have modded scores if not hundreds of games... sadly many of my mods never see the light of day :notsure:

The scheme I used was something I disscussed with Cari - I think we coined (or she did anyway) ship overwriting. I intended to release notes about this to the modders so it could be applied elsewhere.

Basically the game engine appears to load graphics sequentially (or at least ship graphics) from top to bottom - hence the naming format of 0Shipxx.mdl

However I found in some instances having multiple copies of a ship causes glitches - like no ship sprite. Seeing as no red constructers have been seen I'm leaning towards this is what is happening with them.

Further testing revealed that if I saturated the ship graphics with a "before" and "after" image (0Shipxx.mdl & Z0Shipxx.mdl) some of these problems could be avoided... almost as if the game favors some ship images be loaded before the defaults and some after.

When I playtested as the Drengin I found I could see all of "my" ships fine, but in normal play this is not the case. Currently there are 2 bugs that I know of:

1) The Colony ship shows the smaller orbital sprite on the ship info panel.
and
2) No Constructor sprites - they are invisible (not confirmed yet)

The problem ships that I know of from testing are:

Colony Ships - usually have switched around orbital and info icons
Constructors - can have missing sprite
Battle Axes - can have missing sprite and icons
Dreadnoughts - usually have NO orbital or info icons
Excalibers - can have missing sprite

Dunno if we will EVER see Excalibers in a Drengin game though

If someone could mod thier game and drop the requirements and costs of Battle Axes, Dreadnoughts, and Excalibers and play on a galaxy of just Human vs. Drengin this would help me a lot in finding out if those ships display correctly... I'll do this myselfjust as soon as I have some spare time (working 50+ hour weeks at work is killing me! )

Glad you guys like them! Keep me posted!
Thanks!!!

Found constructor. Here is a picture of it in-game:
http://www.maccommandos.com/images/Constructor.jpg

YES! Thanks hut101!

Now can anyone verify Dreads, Axes, and Excalibers?

Found battle axe. Here is a picture of it in-game:
http://www.maccommandos.com/images/battleaxe.jpg

Awesome work hut101! You confirming those makes me feel a LOT better about the ships. Thanks for your hard work on that!

I'll be actually beta testing them myself this weekend as well and depending on what you fellas tell me, I'll offer up the download Monday (both on my site and submit it here in the library)

Thanks guys!!!

I took your advice and made my survey ship with sensor range of 60 so I could see the entire map at once. That was on a small map. The only problem is the Drengin either take over the map early or loose early, so I can't find their dreads, or excaliburs.

Superb....Thank You, Thrull

This is just what I was looking for in the Forums.
I'll look for your Monday posting.

I've got the Dreadnought model:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/dreadnought.jpg

and the Excalibur model:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/excalibur.jpg

I cheated. I set the Survey Ship to use the above models (and 500 range sensors) and then started a new game. I also confirmed the Constructor, just to be sure. If there are any more, it would be real fast to confirm them.

The ships look beautiful, Thrull. Thank you very much! Now I'm going to reset everything and play a game with blood red Drengin ships, at last.

~SDC~

Thanks Hawaii!!!

I too *cheated* by setting the Dread & Excaliber ships to no tech requirement and cost of 1. This seemed to work fine and the Drengin were stockpiling them quite nicely.

Interestingly enough Cari's followers (the Carinoids) went ape over them and had a nearly full orbital area of Dreadnoughts and then went to war with the Drengs. Guess they didn't take kindly to Drengin extortion hehehe LOL

As promised the recolored ships are now available to all here:
http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/gc/viewtopic.php?t=196

Thanks for everyone's help in beta testing them!
LOL