opinions please as i'm not sure

http://www.lostminds....php?page=races

On this page i have roughly the ship sizes that will be in game but i think they look a bit silly... the biggest being 300x300px. So what do you guys think the biggest ship size should be...

Also what about the smallest the F302 which is 30x30 and then all the other ships are scaled somewhere between. I'm not happy with the way the ships are sized i know they are only 2D at the moment but its something thats been bugging me for a little while now... most landable planets are around the 100x100px mark.

@lostpinky, on Nov 22 2007, 03:50 PM, said in Ships sizes:

http://www.lostminds....php?page=races

On this page i have roughly the ship sizes that will be in game but i think they look a bit silly... the biggest being 300x300px. So what do you guys think the biggest ship size should be...

Also what about the smallest the F302 which is 30x30 and then all the other ships are scaled somewhere between. I'm not happy with the way the ships are sized i know they are only 2D at the moment but its something thats been bugging me for a little while now... most landable planets are around the 100x100px mark.

**I don't see anything wrong with the sprite sizing. In fact, I'm all about really large and small ship sprite sizes; I think it looks really cool. Way back when I used to make planet sprites larger than the screen and I thought it was a neat effect. Not great for the processor, obviously, but it looks neat. For ships, if the models are good (and here they are) then I say show them off. Ship sprites are not meant to be realistic in scale, but tipping them off a little bit is perfectly cool. Fighters can't be too small because otherwise they look like little dots, so therefore the ships that are bigger have to be to sort of emphasis that. Obviously, as you mention, the planets can be a problem because they look smaller than some of the ships. But I'm guessing most players wouldn't have a problem with that, since in every game EV/O/N has ships like that.

_bomb

**

I haven't found extra-large ships to detract at all from the overall aesthetic of Nova. The scale is already so skewed that adding a 300x300 ship or two won't hurt it any further. I mean, a Fed Destroyer is already larger than some small planets. I just prefer to think of it as the planets are underlaid a long ways so just appear smaller.

Tel'tak needs to be reduced in size to a little larger than the Death Glider or F-302.

You may already know this, but as long as we're on the subject, if you make a planet larger than 200x200 (I think that's the size), the planet hail image extends out past the image box in two directions and gets cut off in the other two. It's not that huge of a deal if it doesn't happen that often, but something to keep in mind.

Didn't stop me, mind you.

Course, you can always make the dialog bigger

I couldn't get the planet comm dialog larger than 500x500 (If I recall) without running into the status bar on the right in windowed mode.

As for ship sizes, the more range the bettter. Smaller fighters and larger carriers than found in Nova seem more realistic to my mind.

--BP

@guy, on Nov 24 2007, 09:57 AM, said in Ships sizes:

Course, you can always make the dialog bigger

True, but would that cause problems for existing spöbs? Actually, now that I think about it, probably not.

Yeah, they'll be fine.

Hey Blue Planet, how's that plug coming along?

@guy, on Nov 24 2007, 11:26 PM, said in Ships sizes:

Hey Blue Planet, how's that plug coming along?

A little birdie told me something about development resuming for the holidays...

-BP

Thanks guys for the opinions... i had been playing with sizes for a while and was fairly happy with what i got now.

I did happen to notice that one of the ships was called "Apophis" Which just happens to be the name of my entire TC. Bit of a coincidence that.

Funny old thing life. :rolleyes:

other than that, Nice sprites Pinky. Keep up the good point.

(PS. Errrm, Does humanity only get 4 types of ship? that seems kinda sparse... Never mind. It's your plug.)

You ever watch Stargate? Apophis was the name of a Goa'uld System Lord who was eventually killed by the team SG-1. His flagship was essentially an uber-Ha'tak class mothership.

While I have not done much with it, I have toyed with the idea of giving the humans a few more ships. Maybe some small cargo craft/troop transports or another battlecruiser. Depends on the amount of support we can get for the project.

@scienceguy8, on Nov 26 2007, 12:35 AM, said in Ships sizes:

You ever watch Stargate? Apophis was the name of a Goa'uld System Lord who was eventually killed by the team SG-1. His flagship was essentially an uber-Ha'tak class mothership.

While I have not done much with it, I have toyed with the idea of giving the humans a few more ships. Maybe some small cargo craft/troop transports or another battlecruiser. Depends on the amount of support we can get for the project.

I have watched Stargate, but not enough to actually know anything about it.

like the idea about the ships.

anyway, keep up the good work.

Another battlecruiser would be nice, since the 303 and 304 are more of a destroyer/missile frigate than an actual battleship. I'd like to see the Tau'ri get a ship that packs a real punch...

I am a serious sucker for scale. So the more to scale stuff is the more I enjoy it. However I think that I am in a minority cause I remember the last time a topic like this came up there were only a few who agreed with me. So you should just do what you feel comfortable with and the rest of us will probably enjoy the game either way.

I should mention that I just made a 400x400 spacestation shän/rleD, and stumbled upon a somewhat-irritating problem with NovaTools' shän editor that you may want to keep in mind if you are using that program for shäns. Images larger than around 300x300 are too large for the display box, which makes the gun/turret/missile/beam points more difficult to pinpoint if any of the exits are at the extremes of the ship, since you can't see them. But if you're not using that, or if you don't care, or if any other XYZ reason, it looks really nice to have a few ginormous ships floating around. That's one of the reasons rEV kicks so much ass.

Terek has a version with a larger shan editor at 310x310 (the original is 200x200). Makes those large sprites much easier to work with - though it doesn't actually fit a 400x400 sprite it's sufficient to place exit points on one

A little bit about ship sizes that seems not to come up often: I went with a more 'realistic' scale with my pet TC, ranging from some 15*15 to some that were in excess of 500 * 300 pixels. I also thought it likely that planets would send their most impressive ships when the player attempted to dominate them; IE their largest available ships. I made the mistake of having each planet launch all of their defensive ships at once. They all pop up, true: but that is all that happens. Nothing ever moves in that system again and it necessitates quitting the game to get out of it. I don't know if anyone else has run into this but it is definitely something to keep in mind when thinking about an overall ship scale theme for your TC. YMMV...

Heh, that's pretty awesome.

That's a nice tip Guy. I ended up making the 400x400 ship (it''s actually a space station) only have a 1-frame shän, and used Graphic Converter to get the precise co-ordinates for each exit point, but that'll certainly be handy later on.

This topic makes me wonder about the graphics for rEV; how on Earth do you do exit points for 600x600 ships rendered at 45°?