Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

[kartoFlane]

also what is the easiest ways to make the cloaking image?

I have this psd file that I use to make cloaking images. Just plug the ship outline onto the main layer and voila.

[stylesrj]

How do I make an Ion Intruder Drone that only uses 1 power without giving it to all Ion Intruders? I tried copying the Ion Intruder from the dlcblueprints.xml file and changing the power cost from 3 to 1 but it comes out as a regular Boarding Drone in-game.

[NarnKar]

@Raven @kartoFlane

Actually, the psd doesn't work for me. I don't have photoshop, and GIMP imports the psd as a black lineart layer and a solid black layer. That's a shame.

GIMP is my program of choice for image editing. Free and powerful enough to get what I need done. I'll be telling you what I know with GIMP.

Here are some shield tutorials. I like Kiloace's. Pick which one suits your needs best.

For cloaking images, I do this procedure. I'm going to demonstrate on the banana thing I uploaded in the ship preview thread.

First, I go Filters>Edge-Detect>Edge, which brings up this window.


You'll want to set it to Laplace algorithm, amount: 1, and "black". Which should give you something like this:


After that, go to Colors>Invert (not Value invert). This turns it from black with white edges to white with black edges.


Then go to Colors>Brightness-Contrast, and change the Brightness to 127. This is to reduce the "harshness" of the lines, so that the black edges become grey and thus more easily colorized.


Which should give something like this:


Then go to Colors>Colorize. Personally, the default of Hue 180, Saturation 50, and Lightness 0 works just fine for me, but your image editing software may vary. Mess around. You should eventually have something white with blueish outlines.



Next, delete all the pure white parts. This is done with Color Select on the Toolbox.




And that should give a complete cloaking image. It won't have fancy glows like handmade images, and it may not get all the edges, but it's still pretty good for about ~30 seconds worth of clicking.


And here it is on a space background.


For gibs, I usually just use freeform selection to cut parts of my hull image off, then paste in gibs from vanilla FTL. For the Lux Tempestas, I went a little more freeform and just did it myself.

I don't like glows so I don't do red glows. :L

[stylesrj]

For cloaking images, I do this procedure. I'm going to demonstrate on the banana thing I uploaded in the ship preview thread.

I've been wondering how to make cloak images for my Christmas Flagship. This is just brilliant, thanks!

[karadoc]

I've been thinking about changing a couple of things to make missiles more viable...

One idea that I'd like to try out is to make missile weapons not lose charge when they are powered down. i.e., if the missile weapon has had power for long enough to be ready to fire, then you can take reactor power away from the weapon to use on some other subsystem and still have the missile stay ready to fire.

I was just wondering of that's something that can be modded into the game. I'm happy to work out how to do it; but I'd like some kind of indication that it's possible before I sink a whole lot of time learning about how modding works in FTL.

[stylesrj]

I was just wondering of that's something that can be modded into the game. I'm happy to work out how to do it; but I'd like some kind of indication that it's possible before I sink a whole lot of time learning about how modding works in FTL.

Nope, unfortunately it's hardcoded.

[karadoc]

I was just wondering of that's something that can be modded into the game. I'm happy to work out how to do it; but I'd like some kind of indication that it's possible before I sink a whole lot of time learning about how modding works in FTL.

Nope, unfortunately it's hardcoded.

That's not surprising, but slightly disappointing. I thought it was a decent idea.

Thanks for the super-fast reply.

[R4V3-0N]

Hmmm, well. What you posted here was nice... But the effect you did is quite the same as simply doing colour select = black (the lines) then cut, paste on new layer, and colour the lines grey (or well, in the 'simple' cloaking image, blue).

It looks like an interesting tactic though

[NarnKar]

Black color select does not work so well on black ships.

[R4V3-0N]

Black color select does not work so well on black ships.

Lower the threshold a bit