Okay, I have several things I use to play around with when I used to mod alot, we can get some things posted here. This is basicly a 3D looking ship, in 2D. This is what most old games were, but you thought there 3D. Well, it's simply not what it seems. Starcraft, Warcraft, Red Alert (Old one) didn't really have a 3D engine. It's technically 2D images, but created to feel like it is 3D. Now I'm not going to get on explaining how that works, but I will explain how to do them. Ships like this can be added:
Generally any type of rotating 3D object can be added to look and feel like the game is 3D. Now I will do this cheaply and quickly. Here we go.
NOTE: DO NOT SAVE THE IMAGES HERE, THERE ARE ALL JPG FOR SAVING SPACE. IN GAME WILL USE BMP===
1. Extract Image from a game, or search online. I am using Starcraft as an example, the Terran Wraith. It has 32 frames. If you extract it from the game, normally you get each frame as a BMP, but you can find GIFs of each animation, I will do it the more difficult way, by finding a rotating ship of the wraith online. Normally all you need to do is search for "Sprites" of a certain game and you can grab them.
For extracting them out of the game, a game like starcraft uses GRP files that you can grab files out of, much like 'unzipping', its very very simple. Just search for GRP extractors or something similar to grab the program that can extract animations.
This is the image I found, and will be using:
2. Skip this if you have extracted the image right from the game. Now that you have the GIF that you found on the net, you'll need to disect it into BMP files, much like a extractor would do. You can search for GIF to BMP converters, I used ImageConverter Plus here, it isn't free, but it still did the trick pretty well. You'll get frames like this, for example:
3. Open up one of the BMP files, doesn't matter what one just yet. Figure out what it's HEIGHT and WIDTH are... If you want to resize, you'll need to resize ALL the images, I recommend using Photoshop for this part. Most SF ships have 36 frames, this one only has 32, but it should be okay.
NOTE: Reduced frames means a faster rotation in game, and less of a ARC of firing (meaning harder to aim precise), it could be a issue, but 32 frames is just enough, and won't cause an issue...DOUBLE NOTE: If it looks like your missing frames, you can a always rotate the image horizontally or vertically to make it the other frames if missing some. This one has 31 frames I found out, I had to use one frame, and horizontally flip it to create the missing frame. Not a big deal. If the frames found equal a odd number, then you're probably missing one or two. But like I said, a ship facing up can be used a ship facing down, left to right, etc. Just make sure to grab the exact opposite ship image. Can't just use any ship image! You will want to use the the biggest dimension of the image, weither it be the height or width. Now, you will have to adjust every ship image to be the same size as the biggest dimension, and make sure the image is still centered. This ship image is 52x44, and will have to be 52x52, else it will not work properly..
TO
NOTE: If you do not center the ship, when it is rotating in game, it will look jumpy. For this ship I will need to center it height wise, since I am making the height a tad bigger. Photoshop (CS2/CS3, maybe other versions) is GREAT for this, like I said, it has a Canvas Size, which allows you to size the image, and allow the image itself to stay centered, without moving the image one bit. Therefor, you do not need to worry about centering the images manually. This is pretty time consuming, but it will be worth it in the end. Canvas Size does not distort the image, just adds pixels.
4. Here comes the simple math. This image is now 52x52 pixels per frame Since there are 32 frames, I will have to do 52*32 to get the needed size of the actual image height needed for SF. 1664pixels would be what I exactly need. So now, you create a blank image that is 52 width by 1664 height, in pixels. Simple right? You'll be left with a blank image, like so. Save this image as sf-g-wr.bmp.. Here comes a dull image... But this is the size it would be...
NOTE: I highly recommend using a different color for this new image then the current ship background color, I will explain why next step. ALSO MAKE SURE YOU USE A RESOLUTION OF 72.. Normally this is default, but you never know.
5. You can take a look in the BMP folder in SF to check out the ships already in game to see how ships actually work, though top down, there not much different, except the whole ship process is very easy compared to these. SF ships only require one actual frame rotated, 3D ships require every frame to be different. You do not start with the ship image that is facing upwards, you will start with the ship image that is aimed one to the right, like this:
You will then go to the next BMP in the list, and make a full rotation of the ship, until you have used all the images, what do I mean? Like this:
... Simple, but time consuming.
NOTE: Make sure the images to not overlap, I would use a different color background DURING copy and pasting, just to make sure you are not overlapping. Not only cannot the ship overlap, but the whole IMAGE. This is the reason why I am using a blue here for a background, just so I can see how each ship is pasted.6. Touchup time, now that you have your ship layout, you will need to either change the background BLACK, or learn how to use ship transparentcys in the sf_bmp_ships folder. We will go with the standard BLACK background. You can also touchup other colors and holes in the ship, most likely there may be a couple horrid ones. Replace color in Photoshop is very handy for this. I also recommend setting the HUE/SATURATION lightness +2 to +5.. do this before changing the background to black, else you will have to change the background to black a second time. The object of setting the hue/saturation a bit higher is for the ship, not the background. Reason? If you have any dark/black spots on the ship that are totally black, they will be rendered as SEE THROUGH, much like GIF animations do. But again, you must make sure the background is totally black, else you will see a nice black square around your ship in game. Here is my result!
You can create one per race color if you really want. We are just going to do a red Drengin version for all races.
7. Now for extras, like a wireframe style image. I used the first BMP image from our original ship, using Photoshop, used GLOWING EDGES, and went from there. I could of however done it nicer and took a bit more time to remove all the useless lines, but for 2 minutes of work, I'm not complaining.. This image would be named sf-g-wr-s.bmp:
You can also create some 3D image for the image that is displayed when you select the ship in game, but not needed. It will use one of the ship images if there is none. Not a big deal for now. But you can grab still 3D images from almost anything now.
8.
IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE YOU SAVE ALL IMAGES AS 256 COLORS. ANYTHING HIGHER WILL NOT WORK PROPRELY. It is better to change this now, since a program like photoshop will do its best to keep the colors you wanted.
9. Data editing... Make sure to backup your DAT folder before going further, I will be just throwing it in your main dat files for easier thinking. First, open up sf_bmp_ships.sec, and add this line below Marauder:
ship [race] Wraith[nr] sf-g-wr 32 52 spin 0 100...32 being the ship rotations, and 52 being the size of the ship. sf-g-wr being the BMP image... Save.
9b. Open sf_design_ships.sec, add this below the Marauder:
[race] Wraith 0 0 .20 Wraith[mr] 2 sexplode [nr]012 [nr] 3000 12 ([mr]1005,[mr]5004,[mr]2003,[mr]3003,[mr]7003,[mr]9203,[mr]9101,[mr]9301*18*0*18,[mr]4018,[mr]4501*0*0*0*-12*12,[mr]4003*4*0*0*-9*9,[mr]4003*-4*0*0*-9*9)
...(Yeah, I just copied whats in the Marauder, bite me.)
10.
RESULTS: A pretty good looking ship. Note, its' a bit pixellated due to my saving error, but not a big deal, was in a rush to do this. The bottom 'target' green wireframe ship doesn't look bad at all either. Here are a couple samples.. Note: This does not look proper with 2D top down ships. This was a pretty crappy ship to use too, A very good ship to use would of been the starcraft battlecruiser to see the huge details of 3D type ships.
There not the prettiest since I messed up the colors a bit, but you get my drift. A really good one to try it on would be this ship:
Done it before in the past and it does look very nice in game.
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If you spend some time with this, you can really make some good looking 3D ships. Would be neat to create a '3d' version of SF, don't you think?
