Topic: SFC3 Library ARC display poll

[Red_Green]

Ever notice when you view ships in the Shipyard you can't tell the arc angles until after you buy the ship. I found a way to show the arc angles before you buy. What I did is I put them along the ship border in yellow for primary and red for heavies. The pics below show an example. The 1st pic is a view of the ship in the shipyard before purchase. See the yeelow and res arcs showing the direction and degrees.

The second pic shows the ship after purchase in the refit screen for primary wepons. Here is where it might get confusing. Note the blu arcs are the actual arcs that can be refitted. The yellow/ red arcs are redundent in this screen. They only have use before the ship is purchased. Which do you prefer?

[Red_Green]

Another example using a DN.

[Centurus]

I think it's a good idea.  It might take some time for some people to get used to it, but hell, it's a great idea.

[Red_Green]

Yea I am worried that people well see it and go wtf. But with different verions of ships and such its helpful to know what the arcs are  before you buy. Especially on a server where you bid. I also will put the maximum weapon mass for the ship somewhere. Perhaps in the VL bitmap or else in the text. The maximum number of arcs any ships use in the mod is 13. I think this example is maxed out. All sjips also come with a weapon on each arc. Now it is kinda difficult to tell which arc goes to which weapon. But whats more important is to know the max weapon mass available and how wide/narrow the arcs are and if its front or rear loaded, or balanced out.  I am half done with the Feds already.

[Red_Green]

Ok I hope this doesn't confuse the issue more as I see someone is not sure of what the question was. I drew lines to show which arc goes to which weapon.(These lines are just to help see what I am doing-they won't be in the mod hehe  ) The Primaries are usually as close to possible to there arc. The heavy arcs are most often at the front or rear. Easy to see that there are 4 red arcs that correspond to the 4 quantums shown. Likely people will catch on to it    If nothing else people can see at a glance that it has 4 heavies.

If I was a programmer, I would make them be able to toggle on and off

[Red_Green]

Well the vote is 5 to 1 for adding em in.( I have this same poll at another forum) Anyways I got the Feds done.
I actually wish I could get the type of weapons to not display. For purchasing a ship the arcs degrees, facings and type are more important than which weapons it has, cause you can always refit weapons but you are stuck with the arcs. I am swtching colors for the primaries for each race slot, but heavies will always be red. That way I can matxh the color schemes to the ships of the races.

[Red_Green]

I have 5 different color schemes now for the 5 main playable races in the mod. The Heaves will ALWAYS be red to avoid confusion.

The Hydrans are my favorite, matching there ship colors

[FoaS_XC]

How did you do this?

[Red_Green]

How did you do this?

Its a trade secret.     hehe  No its fairly easy but takes about 8-10 minutes per ship. But hey I watch TV and mod at the same time.

The arcs I use come from the arc chart. I' ll post it here if you need it. I jsut recolored them obviously. There already the correct size.
Then I cut out the ones I need seperately. Getting a little extra black boder around them. I then select the extra black edges, then do an invert select. That way I have just the arc selected and nothing more.

Then its best to make 3 screens of the ship in the VL. One as it looks before you but showing all the hardpoints for weapons, hull, power ect. This will help show you where not to plcae the arcs. Then I go inot the refit screen and take a screenie of the primary acr directions and 1 of the heavies. Then I go back to PSP where my arcs are all lined up as seperate images up top. Important to be organized to save time.

So now I open those 3 screens. Usually I cut the arcs out of 2 of the screens and past them into the 3rd screenie so I then just have 1 pic to look at. This saves clutter and some time. Then I can see what arcs I need and where to place them. Its just a matter of pasting them into the VL.bmp for the ship from there.  Usually the arcs on 1 side are the same as the other so to save time I can use flip and mirror for placing the arcs on the second side. If you have 200 ships I wouldn't start this unless you have a couple weeks to fill. Like I said 8-10 minutes a ship. DN's take 10 and FF's can go about half that.

[Red_Green]

Polls are closed. Final tally between the 2 forums I polled was 8 for and 2 against. These will be used in version 2 of the KIngdoms mod. Thanks for the feedback everyone. After all its the communities mod with a lot of work down by community members here.

I am keeping the number of ships down compared to some of the bigger mods. For one, I don't have a mod team like they do, so I am the one adding them all in, doing damage maps for those that need them, resizing light maps and converted light maps to 8 bit to run smoother on a server. In many cases re hard- pointing for SFC3, scaling  and a host of odds and ends.I also include ships I made myself.

 Another reason for fewer ships (66 total) is this mod has a lot of eye candy stuff to polish it off. Like in my sig those are smaller versions of what the Beauty shots look like. All taken in game and photo edited to smooth out jagged edges on the ship borders. All this little stuff takes additional time. My goal is to make a mod that doesn't look like a mod, biut insted looks like the game shipped that way.

It looks like the finak tally for ships will be 19 Feds, 18 Lyrans/Roms 16 Pirates and 14 Hydrans.