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Calling Chippoka: Borg Cube
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by Citizen Amaymon - 1/5/2005 5:12:23 PM
I couldn't wait and took a look at the Borg Cube you created. I think it's great work, especially since it's your first try (i wouldn't even know how to do this), but there are a few things that sprang to my eye:
I would change the "Borg-Cube" and "Traktor-Beam" text in the overviw-picture of the cube to something more general, or offer a second "general" cube. This would allow other users that wish to use the ship but do not have or want a StarTek-modded GalCiv to integrate the ship better in their games. For my personal taste the cube is slightly too bright, and compared to the other big guns in the game a dint too small.
I further noticed that cubes of the other races do not change colour, and when i traded a cube to a minor race, it had a dreadnought symbol in the fleet overview.
Please do not get me wrong, i think it great that someone does again create ships, and that good, i'm just stating what i personally would prefer. This is not meant to diminish your work work or to critcize something that i am not even capable of.
I'm just trying to give you some feedback, since i know how frustrating it can be not to get any.
         
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#1
by Citizen Chippoka - 1/6/2005 6:12:08 AM
Hmm, I'll need to investigate the race 35 graphic... there shouldn't be any Dreadnaughts popping in as Borg Cubes; the graphic file names where actually taken from the Excaliber MDL and swapped with the Borg Graphic; and changed as required for the new graphic. I'm surprised it was a Dreadnaught. It'll have to double-check that I didn't miss swapping out a file inside the MDL for race 35 (minor AI).
Yes, the color is still something I need to figure out. The MDL uses a *.PAL_ file and most programs just just *.PAL ...so I'm stuck when I can't import my original PAL file created in Paint Shop Pro. Plus I need to learn the mask concept better and what the procedure is for using it. I think it may need to be a seperate graphic included in the MDL.... I had thought it might need to be a new layer in an existing graphic. The colors do change according to existing PAL files or the original Excaliber MDL, but it is only slight, it was one of the problems I was still working on.
Size? Well, it uses evey bit of the 64X64 size limit, and is as large visually as the Excaliber or Colony ship. I too felt it "looks" too small and haven't figured out how to increase it's size visually beyond 64x64.
I still haven't figured out exactly how to use the off-set numbers to exactly center the graphic of a ship on the grid square in the game.
N.P. on feed-back. It's just nice someone found it interesting. As for changing the "Blue Print" figure? That's possible. We'll see.
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| Yes, the color is still something I need to figure out. The MDL uses a *.PAL_ file and most programs just just *.PAL ...so I'm stuck when I can't import my original PAL file created in Paint Shop Pro. |
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You need to use Dark Rain's Palette Editor and follow the instructions found at:
 Link
His program will allow importing .pal files and convert them to .pal_ files when selecting "New Palette"
PS: this site has tutorials and descriptions of all the tools
[Message Edited]
       
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#4
by Citizen Chippoka - 1/7/2005 5:13:36 PM
Thanks Moser... I was that's what I already have, and in tinking earlier this evening, I stumble onto a item in a menu to permit importing Paint Shop Pro pal files. Err, "user error" on my part in trying to get up to speed. I've spent a good deal of time at Dark Rain's site this past several weeks, but missed that tid-bit. I don't know where'd we be without the stuff Dark Rain has done to aid the mod creation process!
[Message Edited]
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#5
by Citizen Chippoka - 1/7/2005 5:20:54 PM
On the AI ships... I see what I did... I did not up-date thier small icons and blue-print pictures only because I thought it would be impossible for the player to ever see such things during the course of the game. I only up-dated the core pictures so that the correct ship would appear on the game board (so to speak). This saves some time in making new ship graphics MDLs. The fleet overview window means I need to make a change after all! But I still see no need to bother with AI "Blue Print" pictures (as I've come to call them). That graphic never is viewable by the player, is it?
[Message Edited]
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#6
by Citizen Chippoka - 1/8/2005 11:33:08 AM
I got the colors fixed... it seems I will need to make the AIs all have the correct graphic for thier respective small icon pictures and thier large "blue print" pictures... they do appear in the game at certain points (I never noticed such before, err not paying attention as close as I should have been).
I also got the Cube to sit in just the right spot on the game screen grid finally; i.e., I figured out the "off-set" numbers a bit better.
Size? I'm not sure I can make the Cube look larger than it is. It already files most of the 64x64 area provided. Any large than that, and then pieces of it will disappear when it rotates.
I think I will be able to provide an easier to understand set of instructions than those written by some others. But that is still a bit into the future.
[Message Edited]
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#7
by Citizen Chippoka - 1/9/2005 2:15:16 PM
Done! Well done as far I plan to go. I'll do the rest of my learning stream-lining on the next ship, a Babyalon 5 ship or Trans-Phazic Torpedo.
Here is the link:
Link
The AI are configured to have Borg Cubes and the over-lay cube graphic permits a color pick under it to show the color of the AI player which controls such cube. It took awhile to figure this out! Arg... I had a problem with PAL files not working well in GC if thier colors had been sorted earlier by in Paint Shop. I'm still not perfectly clear what when wrong, but I re-copied the Pal_ files to the MDL work folder and renamed them and called them from within the Sprite Utility. All went well that time, err, some 8 hours later!
The Cubes are distinctive now in color, but I decided to keep thier size reasonable. The game will accept larger graphics of the cubes, but I needed to let the Rotator Program chop the corners off the Cubes... they didn't look as good.
Next time I will try to use a master PAL_ file which will have all the colors I need! What a pain messing with those. BTW, if the Dark Rain is reading, it'd be nice if the Palette Program had a way to export PAL_ files to PAL files directly for Paint Shop's use. This would make it easier to keep using existing color schemes by the designers of GC/AP. Err, assuming Dark Rain wrote the utility program.
For the time being, I will keep the "blue print" graphic as it is with the Borg infomation on it. It's a Borg Cube, afterall.
After I finish my Trans-Phazic Torpedo graphic MDL, I'll see if I can't make the whole Borg Mod available as a package, since the mod interconnects a lot with other existing mods, like those for Nano-Technology.
To all modders: have fun with the new ship Borg Ship MDL. Use it or modify it anyway you wish.
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