Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Experimenting (mercenaries?)

cliffski

It’s actually quite easy to overlay colored re-skins onto some of the models in GSB. I might have to do a tutorial and release some of the photoshop files required. I found just slinging a camoflage texture onto the Imperial Centurion cruiser looked quite cool: (click to enlarge)

It’s non trivial, because you need to re-composite all the damage texture stuff together, and it’s not done in game on the fly (sadly), so you need to save out new damage, hulk and sprite textures for any color variation.
Still… it points to future (sequel?) possibilities, as well as the potential for some cool mods. I envisage a fleet of breakway ‘seperatist’ ships that differ only in their coloring. or maybe a MK II coloring for each ship. As well as being kinda fun, I think it would be nice to have different texture options for ships so that you can tell apart 2 different configrued ships without staring at the turrets. I would ultimately love a ship texture customiser / chooser / painter thingy.

For now, I’m just stroking my stubble and thinking about the possibilities…

10 thoughts on Experimenting (mercenaries?)

  1. it’s a completely trivial point, but i would really enjoy being able to choose colour schemes and logos to stamp on my ships, make them feel more like mine

  2. I absolutely LOVE the idea of being able to personalize your own fleet, combine this with the challenge editor and you’ve got yourself the makings of a storyline!

  3. new textures would be great, or a pool of merc ships that can go in any faction? I mean realy the rabbit cruiser ? XD

  5. I think you might not like what I’m going to say but I actually spend more time reading your dev blog more than playing GSB anymore. It is a great game but after sometime, I moved on. But your blog on the other hand is excellent and gives insight into the day to day grind of an indie game developer. I make it a ritual now to check your blog daily for updates. Now and again, your tweaks on GSB does cause me to fire up the game again though.

  6. If you go through with this, be prepared for penises.

    Personally, the lack of aesthetic customisation doesn’t bother me in the least, but it seems a lot of people would like to see it introduced.

  7. maybe an option for multi-faction battles in GSB2 :) Might get a little muddy though to have a battle with more than 2 sides.

    I’ve been playing the flotilla demo some lately and I’m kind of liking the dynamic of turning your ships to deflect incoming fire/optimize your own firing rate (ala 1700’s era naval battles). The 3d of the game is a little cumbersome and makes me not like it though. Just makes me dream of what a feature like that would look like in GSB.

  8. Good idea Cliff. The camo Empire ROCKS.

    If there was ever a way to make a colour change in-game as part of you’re fleet design then that would be fantastic and would create a better visual feast and also enable people to identify ships better.

    Corperate/Unit logos if possible would be great.

    All of this would enable a great lending hand to any Campaign you design in the future. Maybe you could run a competition in the future giving a limitation of hulls/modules to design the best attacking type fleet (fast, close range, fighter support etc) and put that fleet design in the campaign, with the Admirals name as the competitions winner

    Damage_13

  9. Can I ask you a question? Do you write your entire gams in C++ or do you use some kind of scripting engine, like lua or something??

  10. I’d like to be able to capture ships, then have them appear under my command and wearing my colors.

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