Sailing Ships - Development Topic

[Mouse]

Hi

I've been reading the forums for a while as a guest and through boredom/procrastination/general curiosity have had a go at making some graphics for pre-1900 ships inspired by this thread.

This is in no way complete, and is my own attempt at understanding the ttd patch tutorials, but suggestions and feedback are appreciated, particularly on how to make the graphics look better (these are drawn with GIMP pixel by pixel) or any better ways to make them.

Mouse

Edit: V0.62 contains piece and bulk cargo graphics and new menu sprites. Available below or on bananas.

[Kogut]

The bigger ship looks great!

[SwissFan91]

The sails need some sort of shading or texture, they are just solid white at the moment. Good looking set though.

[andythenorth]

Example shading

shading.png (7.99 KiB) Viewed 62388 times

Light comes from the top right. SW edges will be darkest, NE edges brightest. There are normally 5-8 intermediate shades for other surfaces - depending on which colour range you're using

[planetmaker]

Nice ones, especially if you work a bit on the shading as andythenorth suggested.

Let me suggest to you to possibly start writing this set in NML instead of NFO; it'll make it much easier for you to come back to coding after a few days. Attached a crude example with the brigantine as posted by lead@inbox in http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=876871#p876871
The alignment in that attached file is appaling and obviously I messed up the palette. But it's for demonstration purposes only.

[Mouse]

Thanks for the feedback!

Will work on the shading - I have to admit I had been assuming the light came from bottom right... oops!

Let me suggest to you to possibly start writing this set in NML instead of NFO; it'll make it much easier for you to come back to coding after a few days. Attached a crude example with the brigantine as posted by lead@inbox in http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=876871#p876871
The alignment in that attached file is appaling and obviously I messed up the palette. But it's for demonstration purposes only.

Ok, I will give it a go. What does the example open/decode with?

Mouse

[planetmaker]

It's a usual source archive. Any archive programme should be able to unpack it. It doesn't contain a compiled grf, but the files I compiled a ship from in order to give you something to start with and expand from.

[Mouse]

Added sail textures, rigging and hatches. Hatches are supposed to be in 2nd cc but colour does not seem to work at the moment.

Mouse

[supermop]

Shaping up nicely!

A small CC flag on the mast could be a nice touch. Adding some more structure on deck also would help, currently there is nowhere to steer the boat from. Overall its looking promising!

Best,

[Kogut]

Way better! What about noise in other parts?

[Vemarkis]

Added sail textures, rigging and hatches. Hatches are supposed to be in 2nd cc but colour does not seem to work at the moment.

Mouse

To activate 2cc on a vehicle you need to activate the miscellaneous flag for it, see: http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php ... tion0Ships

[kamnet]

This is very awesome! Can't wait to get my hands on a mid-1800s game!

[Mouse]

To activate 2cc on a vehicle you need to activate the miscellaneous flag for it, see: http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php ... tion0Ships

I knew I missed some code somewhere. Cheers.

This is very awesome! Can't wait to get my hands on a mid-1800s game!

Thank you kindly

Still WIP - I need to learn how to code sounds, and am trying to work out how to make a flag flutter if I put it on the mast.

[Mouse]

Ok, so I've updated the graphics a little bit (flag added to the clipper's gaff boom, cabin added) and have been fighting my computer to make NML work (failed!) and returned to NFO.

Next step was to try and add sound, and I have hit a problem. If anyone can see why I am getting the default sound from the code below, please can you help me out? I broke each line down so you can see what I was attempting to do.

EDIT - Sound now added - I had to add action 3 to instigate callback and action switch. For interested parties, code is below.

Code: Select all

// Adding sound

   	42 * 3	11 01 00
   	43 ** E:\sprites\sounds\shipsbell.wav

//Applying sound effects

   	44 * 7	00 02 01 01 00 //Change 1 property of clipper (id 00)
		12 80 //callback enabled
		

   	45 * 14	02 02 03 		//Action 2 for ship, ID = 03
		81 10 00 FF 01 		//Check variable 10
			49 80 01 01 	//If value for effect 1 is 80, callback with sound 49
			00 00 		//Or return no value

  	46 * 17	02 02 04 			//Action 2 for ship ID = 04
		85 0C 00 FF FF 01 		//Check variable OC
			03 00 33 00 33 00 	//If ID = 3 callback
			01 00			//otherwise graphics
//the bit that was missing...
	47 * 7	03 02 01 00 00 03 00 //Activate Action 2 ID=3 to ShipID 00
	48 * 7 	03 02 01 00 00 04 00 //Activate action 2 ID 4 for Ship 00

In other news, work starting on Screw powered steamer with full rigged ship and brig planned

Mouse

P.S. Screenshots for updated paddle steamer added.

[Chrill]

There's a crazy difference between the before and after, and it shows a vast improvement. I'm liking that

[Eddi]

[just a random driveby]

Note: the further you deviate from an 8 pixel height, the more likely it is that you get noticeable glitches on bridges.

[ostlandr]

Oh yes! Thank you! I tend to play as far back as 1850, so this is going to be awesome. Going to go pour myself a grog and sing sea chanteys for awhile.

[ZxBiohazardZx]

for some reason im not really into the gfx yet:( i do like the idea, but for me its just a box with sails on it, the sails are improving, but instead of white i suggest using a very light yellow color, because no canvas in the world is ever bright white...

[DanMacK]

I'm watching this with interest myself. One thing that might be an option is to look more towards FISH for sizes. A steamer like the Great Eastern would be close to the largest ship in FISH for example. Good progress on shading and such though, and I look forward to seeing more.

[Mouse]

Hi

Thanks for the feedback!

A steamer like the Great Eastern would be close to the largest ship in FISH for example

I'm now using a scale of about 1 pixel/m for the reason that it seems to give a reasonable representation compared to the railway carriages, and any smaller (e.g. 2m/pixel) makes it hard to get the spars looking right - a 1m wide mast seems OK but a 2m one looks more obviously wrong! You are right, Great Eastern was much much bigger, and I have since updated that graphic to be more like this as I couldn't see a justification for having a 4000+ passenger ship in the game at 1850! If anyone knows the scale of the FISH ships I could have a go at resizing to fit.

On a similar note, I am now using a cargo scale of 10% actual based on the largest FISH ship carrying about 1000t compared to the capacity of some of the real life equivelents' 10000t It seemed silly giving the clipper a capacity of 1700t!

for me its just a box with sails on it, the sails are improving, but instead of white i suggest using a very light yellow color, because no canvas in the world is ever bright white...

Agreed - It's a learning process and you should see further improvements as time goes on. Thanks for the tip, I will try it out.

Note: the further you deviate from an 8 pixel height, the more likely it is that you get noticeable glitches on bridges.

That is a thinker - the relative height to length is very close to 1:1 for most tall ships and this makes keeping close to that size hard unless they are going to be really, really small. On the other hand, I sail 8m boats on rivers and still have to take the mast down to go under most normal road/rail bridges. It really isn't an option for a tall ship unless you use a lift up/swing bridge. I don't think this option is possible graphically. As it is, the boats planned for the set would be used harbour to harbour without going under any bridges (with the possible exceptions of Tower Bridge/London or Tyne Swing bridge/Newcastle upon Tyne). I realise it is not ideal!

I will probably put an updated file up sometime this week - some niggling code problems with SFX.