Jon's Stuff, ExplosionsV20Light and some colour changing.

[Arcatus]

Mediafire works for me. It is really easy to use
(though if someone has a better suggestion feel free to share)

[Jon Micheelsen]

Thanks Arcatus!

Explosions V1, I've changed the first post, so look to the top! Comments and suggestions are welcome. Personally after a bit of quick testing, I think they could use a bit more red and some of them are a bit weak on the golden glow.

[tjhkkr]

Like I said, this is a surprising add on... I really like it.
Thank you!

[Igard]

Very nice work indeed!

Haven't tried in-game yet, but my image preview turned up some green artifacts in the corners of some of the png's.

Just checked in GIMP and they are there, but very small. Only a few pixels.

Looks great though, can't wait to try it out![&o]

[Jon Micheelsen]

Thanks Igard, I thought I got them all[8|] They are leftovers. I made a (4x512)x(5x512) picture, gridded it 512 and modified all frames at once. This way I can quickly add fading flash and glow to a lot of frames in one pre-made layer. I just realized this approach last night, instead of 20 seperate picrues, which speeds up the whole process immensely. When I cut them out to individual pictures in the end, I have to use the markers in two diagonal corners or the paste function in psp will crop the transparent part off giving me highly deformed frames. I might have missed removing a few! I think they will rarely be visible, as the frames are scaled down a lot most of the time. I'll make sure to remove them in the next version.

Green dots issue fixed!

[Speedy2511]

Hi! Awesome explosions on the pics.

But i have a problem:
When i use your mod, and i load a save game my mouse cursor is hanging in the upper left corner of the display. It happend directly after the loading. No matter what savegame. I removed your mod (backed up the old explosion folder) everthing worked fine, so it is not the savegame.

Maybe any idea?

Greetings from Germany
Nico

[Jon Micheelsen]

@Speedy2511: Wow, that is one odd error! I haven't had anything like that happen ever, and I've been switching tests back and forth all the time, even sometimes accidentally screwing up a file name or file format, which only made the game skip frames! Hmmm.... How did you install them? I've had the game misbehave, though not like what you report, when placing wrong things in the custom folder - where this mod should not go!! The way to install them is to replace the originals - make a back-up in case you don't like them[;)] The originals are located in Distant Worlds/images/effects/explosions/

[Speedy2511]

Hi.

This is exactly what i have done.

Mhhh, maybe it's because my game had started a few patches ago. I will try it with a new one tomorrow evening, just for testing.

Greetings from Germany
Nico

[Jon Micheelsen]

@Speedy2511;I just did some testing, and was completely unable to reproduce your bug. I have had no issues in any of the DW:L versions. I don't know about non Legends - you do run Legends?

On another issue, I did notice jumpy frames, that have miss aligned. I will avoid this in the future, by changing some of my steps. Further though I will correct I will only do so on explosions that I will not later replace as I add more new ones, so this will only be partially fixed in versions to come, until all done...

[Igard]

Very logical approach, Jon. I look forward to seeing this evolve. Again, great work! [:)]

[Jon Micheelsen]

New version is up!

@Thanks Igard. Impressive Vor'cha you got there. I sculpt miniatures sometimes. Here's a few links[:'(]
Rot Demon 1:12 Human Foot Chaos Obliterator

[Igard]

Wow! Those are cool!

Check out scale model addict where I post. They've got a figures and wargaming sub-forum.[:)]

[Jon Micheelsen]

I've made a shipset, look at my first post on page one for details, pictures and dl link.

[the1sean]

Hey I must say that I really like the improved colors on the example ships, they really "pop"! Any chance you are going to do a comprehensive revamp???

[Jon Micheelsen]

Wow, haven't been around here lately! A long dead period in work finally took its toll on me and after much strenuous consideration opted me to apply at the Copenhagen Royal Art Academy's School of Design under Production Design. It'a a tough call as I've never been much of a school person, and have been capable to live off being a self educating freelance artisan so far. So, it's a pretty fundamental change, provided I pass the test soon to come. But hey, a BA sure wouldn't hurt [:D]

@the1sean: I got all but one or two shipsets done actually, but as I kept evolving different ways to enhance the glow, there's some sets I'd really like to redo.

Also I still need to add a few explosions [:'(]

A second WOW - that new patch feature of race designed ships sure sounds awesome! Besides the obvious possibility to make stylistically distinct and more capable AI ships design wise, I reckon one could add xx family of more ship graphic variations and have the races use them beyond the specific class sets, to make later designs show in more ways than mere size. It could be really cool, to make more and more advanced looking ship variations with increasing rate of glow to show that more power was under the hood!

[Igard]

Welcome back Jon. Sounds like a tough month you've had. Good luck with your application, mate. [;)]

On the subject of the custom designs being used for additional shipsets. It's crossed my mind. Have you checked out my TRSE Star Trek mod? It's only for Return of the Shakturi at the moment, but it has an additional familyxx shipset. I haven't got round to testing it yet, but it would be cool to have early tech levels use the more primitive shipset, then mid-way, say level 3 or 4, move onto the new shipset with the more updated ships from later in the Star Trek TNG timeline.

Like I say, still need to test it, but I think it should work.

[Jon Micheelsen]

I see no reason game mechanics wise that it should not be possible. Also smaller resolutions could be used on earlier designs to make it more memory friendly. Only late game huge designs would require large resolution images. With the white ships I made, early on the detail where complete overkill. Heck even late game a capital ship would still not be stretching my relatively low resolution frigate image.

[Jon Micheelsen]

I wonder if the developers could give us a chart explaining the engines stretching in regard to resolution of image file and hull size. Without that it would be a very very trial and error balance - especially if it's not a linear progression. I remember reading about the troubles getting a good Borg Cube, so I guess there are more factors at play than just image resolution and hull size. Anyone got some experience in this regard!?

[Baleur]

Amazing explosions are amazing :')

[Igard]

ORIGINAL: Jon Micheelsen

I wonder if the developers could give us a chart explaining the engines stretching in regard to resolution of image file and hull size. Without that it would be a very very trial and error balance - especially if it's not a linear progression. I remember reading about the troubles getting a good Borg Cube, so I guess there are more factors at play than just image resolution and hull size. Anyone got some experience in this regard!?

I don't understand the inner workings, but we've been told to keep to the 300x300 resolution. The game resizes all images when it renders them, so changing the sizes apparently gives the game more work to do. Does that make sense?

Anyway, the reason for the Borg cube being so small, is that the image is almost completely made up of opaque pixels.

What the engine does is it resizes ships based on their opaque:transparent pixel ratio. So ships with lots of area (like a Borg cube) are sized smaller, and ships without much to them (like a klingon D7 with its long thin neck) are sized larger.

I'm getting a bit fed up with this method. I believe it would be better to allow the modder to choose what size each ship will appear as via the races text files. It could be linked directly with the "ShipSizeFactorMilitary ;" settings.