by Senator CariElf - 4/8/2003 5:08:35 PM
Here's a link to a tool to help you make your own ship models. There's docs and sample files included in the zip file. You will need a paint program like Photoshop that can save files as windows bitmaps and as 32 bit targa files. This program is rather rough, but it gets the job done. If you have problems, please post them on this forum instead of the main one.
http://storage.stardock.com/files/gc_ship_encoder_040803.zip
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Than you CarElf. Until i feel i have an exceptional grasp of the game I will be limiting my MODS to visual and sound. Which is easily done for ones self with all the media on the average gamers PC. But I will be trying to generate non-copywrite argueable mods, and that takes a bit more effort. I look forward to my own hand built images conquering the galaxy! Along with some meater sound effects. If I can find the time and mental health to carry through I will try to generate some new WAVs.
 
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#3
by Ambassador JavaScout - 4/8/2003 8:27:25 PM
If you need to shut down the application just press Alt&F4
 
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#4
by Senator CariElf - 4/9/2003 11:57:36 AM
Oh yeah, I never did get the close button in. I run in 1280x1024, so I always have the little x at the top of the window to close it.
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Very cool. Thanks!
Mike "Archangel" McCart
Community Relations Manager
Ensemble Studios (Microsoft)
 Link
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So far all I have had time to try is the ship rotator. But it work quite well. Although I will want the ability to use at least 16 bit color images, so will look forward to an automator able to do that. As high as will work in the game. As I have a whole theme of MODed ships in mind and quality color will be essential to pulling them off. If I have to go the tedious route I will but it would take me a LOT longer to get a MOD done. As to the thematic material; that is classified "Top Secret."
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#7
by Senator CariElf - 4/10/2003 9:26:19 AM
Hmmm, I wonder if my linear algebra textbook has algorithms for rotating an image?
I'd like to build it in to the ship encoder, but I need to find an algorithm.
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#8
by Citizen FDHjr - 4/10/2003 12:50:00 PM
Any possibility of getting the MAX script that was mentioned in the Doc. file posted? Pretty please? 
 
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#9
by Citizen turgotZ - 4/10/2003 1:47:43 PM
yes the Max script would be great. in the mean time created a photoshop script to complete those files.
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Would it be possible to post al the current ships here so we could modify them?
Or perhaps a way for us to extract the images from the MDL files.
I for one would do a fast MOD that simply colorizes them in relation to their race, if possible. Some of us have poor vision and this would be helpful. I might also make some of the ships a bit larger.
This all being seperate from my Secret MOD.
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#12
by Veteran Branko - 4/10/2003 5:30:14 PM
but before you start writing one yourself check out some websites. There are a lot of algorithms out there you can use directly for this.
 
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#13
by Citizen Horatio - 4/10/2003 5:34:42 PM
hmmm...don't work with graphics much, do ya carielf? 
x' = xcos@ + ysin@
y' = -xsin@ + ycos@
you'd probably have to run some linear interpolation on the result to make it look nice.
cheers
h
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The Ship rotater was written by a friend of mine, I have been bothering him for the source code but I don't think he has it anymore.
     
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From personal experience, rotating a small and/or high-contrast image by arbitrary angles (aside from 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees ) can end up with some pretty ugly results unless you apply a little oversampling 
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#17
by Veteran Branko - 4/11/2003 11:03:11 AM
just a matter of using a good linear interpolation so that you don't truncate anything.
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#18
by Senator CariElf - 4/11/2003 4:11:03 PM
No, I don't code graphics much. I had to do a histogram once for a school assignment and that was it. All the graphics code used in our games was written by someone else.
I don't know how viable extracting the image from the mdl files would be. Certainly, it wouldn't be a quick thing for me to implement.
I'll ask Alex if he can give me the max script to put up.
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#20
by Citizen Kryalis - 4/17/2003 11:00:30 AM
This tool doesn't seem very user friendly. Is there a spec for the .mdl format (it's not the quake .mdl is it?). That way I could build a tool to do the rotating and compiling all in one.
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#21
by Senator CariElf - 4/17/2003 1:31:16 PM
No, it's not the quake mdl. I don't really have specs for the format. When I made this program, I only had a limited amount of time to do it, so I basically just hijacked the code for the program that we use to encode ships and stuff and just automated a lot of the steps that we have to take.
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#22
by Citizen Kryalis - 4/17/2003 2:50:13 PM
Sorry I wasn't trying to be rude, having been a programmer for a fair while I completly appreciate the fact that dev tools don't need to be user friendly 
I've got a 'cunning plan' for building the image strips without having to resort to photoshop etc. and it would just have been nice not to have them go through another program to get to the final result.
If the encoding code isn't uber top secret could we have that and work backwards?
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#23
by Diplomat fleabitfox - 4/18/2003 10:41:33 AM
Is there any chance someone can snag some of the bajillion ship models available for Space Empires IV, and convert them for use in GalCiv? I have approximately 0% graphics skills (give or take .0001%), so I am relying on you clever people do to this!
There was a guy on the regular forums awhile back that had a ton of SEIV ship models he was asking to convert awhile back. If there was a fairly simple procedure to convert these things, I would give it a try myself! I don't suppose there is a very simple method.. is there.
Please post updated ship sets here! 
fleabitfox
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#24
by Senator CariElf - 4/25/2003 6:03:59 PM
We probably won't be able to make the source code available to you because we're actually licensing the code from one of our former developers.
Were you planning on rotating the image in memory?
--Cari
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