Ship Images

[Robert Nutter]

Heya; Ive just put an image LINK on the ships page at the opening of the line. Is this the best way I could do things or would it be better to put a scaled down image into the Actual Descriptions? Ive done both so you can see what I mean; Its the Ketch in Class 5. I know we were going to wait until people had taken screenshots but I just thought Id upload a few of my own which I already have

Cheers, Skye

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Personally I prefer images with the ship description. Saves some more clicking.
We're done with the flags now, so we could get started on making screenshots of all the ships.
We'd have to figure out how to get them used in the game, but that should be doable.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm wondering if we couldn't somehow recode the interfaces to be able to read from RESOURCE\Textures\INTERFACES\Ships\[ship_type].tga.tx
Just give every ship it's own texture file and it's much easier.

And I'd just go ahead and keep the images with their backgrounds;
it's just too much trouble to remove the background from 200+ screenshots!

 

[Doober]

I agree that it would be much easier. I can do the texturing work, but someone else would need to do the coding work. I am clueless about that stuff. They would need the sailing icon to shrink the large shipyard icon and still have it look good. The way info is pulled to the icons differ pretty drastically. The sailing icon is just a simple icon that is only altered by changing the texture. The shipyard icon is actually multiple layers of transparent icons overlaying each other. The base icon is the blue sea. It is then overlayed by the ship picture, or if no picture is assigned, the semiclear blue "ghost" ship is displayed. Over top that layer another layer demonstrating the class number is displayed. This layer is pulled directly from ships_init.c, by changing the class number in that file, it changes that number. Another layer then pulls the name of the ship from common.ini. Having said that, I don't know how any of that works from a coding perspective and where the coding is for it, I will leave that for someone who is smarter than I am. I suppose if we could take all the screenshots, we could custom each texture with a class number and have it pull directly to shipyard, and then have code that would shrink the texture and use it for the sailing icon.

Also, out of curiosity, how did you fix the bugs that were generated? I didn't understand why they were being generated since I didn't think I was using that code anymore. Like I said, I am really bad at the whole coding thing, but I am trying to learn.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If we can get screenshots made of all ships in the game, we would surely be able to figure out
how to put them to use in the interfaces. I'm not sure how the code for that works myself, but we could find out.

 

[Captain Maggee]

Experiment :

If it works great

If it sort of works you know your on the right track

And if it doesn't work at all try something else :

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If it doesn't work at all, we'll MAKE it work. In this case, I'm certain it can be done.

 

[Doober]

In order to take photos of each ship, I think it would be best if they were taken in consistent weather with a plain, calm sea background and the wind blowing from the same direction so the sails are filled in the same direction. The pic should be taken about 45 degrees off the bow. Does anyone know the best way to get consistent surroundings and weather? Otherwise I think it is going to look kind of funny. Also, we would want to turn off as much of the stuff on screen such as the compass, the list of ship sightings and wind direction, etc. Does anyone know of a way to do all this? I tried to start taking photos, but it took forever to get similar sea conditions.

 

[Captain Maggee]

For the screen hit F9

As for the sea I know you can set weather (such as heavy fog and storms) but not sure if that takes wind direction so you would have to turn your ship to get it facing the direction of the wind everytime.

Not sure if a perfect weather case is made for weather though

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The following two lines should help to keep the weather clear and the wind blowing from the same direction:

SetNextWeather("Blue Sky");
SetNextWind("WNW",30);

You can use the console to execute those lines.

This code that is already in PROGRAM\console.c would also help:

	if(!Checkattribute(pchar,"cheatship")) Pchar.cheatship = 0;
int con = sti(Pchar.cheatship);
if(con<SHIP_TYPES_QUANTITY)
{
GiveShip2Character(pchar,ShipsTypes[con].id,"Test Ship",-1,ENGLAND,true,true);
Pchar.cheatship = con +1;
}

With each execution of the console, you'll get the next ship from ships_init.c;
that way you can easily get all ships available in the game.
It does require reloading to worldmap and back for the ship model to actually update, so time does progress.

Personally I would've been inclined to make each screenshot a bit artistic with nice weather and background and flags sometimes,
but indeed that might not be quite practical for comparison purposes by the player.

 

[Doober]

Thanks to both of you, I will give that a shot.

The problem with varying the weather and scenes is when it is shrunk down to the size of the icons, having islands or other ships in the background makes it hard to see the ship very well and with other weather, particularly raining or overcast, it takes away from the vibrancy of the colors on the ship, so you can't really see the paint job very well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Absolutely true. It might look nice, but it's not practical. So your idea is definitly best.

 

[Captain Maggee]

I say all cursed ships should be in stormy weather though

 

[Adlain]

	if(!Checkattribute(pchar,"cheatship")) Pchar.cheatship = 0;
int con = sti(Pchar.cheatship);
if(con<SHIP_TYPES_QUANTITY)
{
GiveShip2Character(pchar,ShipsTypes[con].id,"Test Ship",-1,ENGLAND,true,true);
Pchar.cheatship = con +1;
}

I Assume that this peice of code make the ship fly the english colours, i was wondering if it was posable if the Dutch vessels their own flag, French theirs etc. with the emblem on the sails to really show what variant you are buying/ attacking

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The "ENGLAND" part of that code is only for the "national build" and has no relation to what you'll see on-screen.
I do agree that when a ship is clearly a Dutch type, the screenshot should be taken with a Dutch flag hoisted, etc.
That'd have to be done manually through the Relations interface.

I really hate national emblems on sails and don't think that's historically accurate at all,
so I'd prefer screenshots with the correct flag shown but with weathered sails on all ships
(current Build default settings).

I say all cursed ships should be in stormy weather though

 

[Doober]

I like MacGee's idea of putting the cursed ships in storm weather. I was planning on putting all ships using the personal flag rather than show any national favoritism in that regard. I'm not sure how much it will matter since the screenshot will be shrunk to such an extent that I don't think anyone will be able to see it anyway. I will be using the weathered sails, I hate seeing emblems on the sails.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There's a different personal flag based on the storyline you're playing.
Anyway, I reckon a national flag would be good for clear national ships.
So a British flag on those black-and-yellow navy ships and a Dutch one on the green-stern ships.

Here's a shipslist I had made in the past, complete with screenshots:
http://www.pietersmods.s31clan.com/ships.htm
I tried to put more-or-less nationally correct flags on the ships there.

Of course it's outdated and it doesn't use the Different Flags mod (so all pictures are YUCK).
And I had cropped all images in such a way that you can't use it for the interface work.
But anyway, you could use it as an example.

Weathered sails on ships that DONT have unique sails

True; ships that have unique sails defined can use those as far as I'm concerned.
But those ships automatically get those as override of the weathered sails anyway.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Personally I prefer images with the ship description. Saves some more clicking.
We're done with the flags now, so we could get started on making screenshots of all the ships.
We'd have to figure out how to get them used in the game, but that should be doable.

My thoughts too OK then Ill get rid of the Images Panel; thatll give more space for the ship's price & HP as I was startin to cram them in a bit and insert all images with the descr. Pardon my ignorance but is there a way at the moment I can get the flags of the ftp or something which is (reasonably) bug-free, or will it be a case of waiting for the full download?

Thanks

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Build 14 Alpha 9.5 Patch 4 has the Different Flags mod included and that should work pretty stably.

For making screenshots of all ships, you might want to coordinate with Doober.
As per his Historical Ships mod thread, he'll probably be working on this too.
If you split the work, it won't be such a huge project for you.

 

[Doober]

I don't think I am using the console.c right. I put in the code for the clear sky as well as to put the leadership and sailing at level 10, and it didn't have any effect. I started a new game, but the weather was still random. Is there something else I have to do in order to get it to work?

EDIT: The weather seems to be working, but the leadership and sailing levels are still a no go.