Bit of Gfx tweaking like Splash Screens?

Gustav · Post by **Gustav** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:41 pm

Hi.
I'm a Graphic designer from South Africa. Studied design for 4 years worked at a quite a few studios and currently doing a lot of Blender work (too much) for a studio named Colorspoon.

I only downloaded Vegastrike about a week ago so I'm tredding a bit on unfamiliar territory (I'm a lousy speller so be kind). It's incredible what you've done with this open source project. I love it.

Now, instead of just sitting on my arse waiting for the next great release I thought I'd try to contribute. But (and I hope I'm posting at the right place here) I'd like to suggest where I could (and would love) to give my time... splashscreens, backgrounds (as was suggested in a previous post) and maybe some 3D thumbnail renderings of products and weapons (as shown in trading menus). Just some tweaking and improving to give a more uniform and 'professional' feel to the game (It's all in the details).

Also, working a bit on the interaction screens. Giving them a bit more depth and sophistication (but of course, keeping with the 'look and feel' of the project as it now stands. But just the grafix. I'm no programmer!

If you need me somewhere else... no problem. Texturing, modeling even font designs or alien conceptuals (but I think I'm still too young in the game to really know this universe for that). I've tried to check out the posts for what everyone is currently working on, so I hope my suggestions are needed.

Just let me know. I've got a Lot of free time at the moment.

Post by **safemode** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:01 pm

any work in the art side of vegastrike is much needed work. Basically you can pick anything you want to do and assuming it is up to par or beyond, it'll be sure to get in. Soon we will need as much texture work as possible, but even then, any work related to updating the graphics is very welcome.

splash screens, thumbnails, hud images and space backgrounds and base backgrounds are probably the easiest in ascending order. Then you get to the effects (explosions and such, blinking lights and what not, Fixers), base insides, menus, cockpits, planet textures, ship textures, base textures.

that's my guestimate of ascending order of complexity.

Gustav · Post by **Gustav** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:31 pm

So I made some easy pickings,... I think I was'n too sure what's going on but looking at your list I might as well throw myself in the deep end as well. Base Inside designs... could keep mee busy for a while as I noted that some bases has multiple renderings of diffrent areas of a base...

Explosions...?!! SFX? Wait, is'nt that physics - like part of particles and fluids inside the engine? Coding, I mean?

I'll post a few examples and then wait for comments. Also, it's propably a good idea to work on larger image sizes for future project enhancements (better hardware etc.)... right?

Thanks for your reply.

Post by **loki1950** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:44 pm

Welcome Gustav the explosions and such are just simple animations controlled by Python all in the animations folder as with most of the data side images and textures they are DTX compressed so the GIMP plug-in is required to open them.And if you have more questions just post

Enjoy the Choice

Post by **safemode** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:00 pm

Check out the masters repository in SVN. it contains the source images we use for all the artwork in /data.

you'd have to check the wiki for the artwork guidelines that pyramid setup. Keep the source image as lossless as practical, or provide a script that would generate the source image to the dds file.

You dont have to worry about creating dds files at the moment. But eventually it would be a good idea.

Post by **pyramid** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 3:47 pm

Hi. I recommend the Contributor's guide to start you going.
Any questions, please ask.

Post by **Fendorin** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 1:49 am

Nice to see another contributor welcome!!!!

For your question :
i think we need many background, especially for a planet screen/backround
i tried to do that but i have less skill in rendering than you i think

for first contribution you could begin directly by a new "molten background" is a real first exercice and when you see it ingame i m sure your motivations will be better

Otherwise we need a molten (i thought molten is land between lava and hard earth no?) why not create two picture one like panorama and another for the mission computer installation ?

i think a square picture is better ( maybe 1280/1280 pix)
with a basic landing pad+ some object+a crane ( why not)
Could you imagine make a same ambience than an "abandonned gas station near a old country-side way" but in space!!!!!
and a nice rendering with raytracing (or complex thing like that) it will be perfect....

Post by **pyramid** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 8:21 am

Fendorin wrote:i think a square picture is better ( maybe 1280/1280 pix)

Square is not just better - it's a requirement. And 1280x resolution will not do for the game. The pics must be POT, i.e. 1024x or 2048x. I'd prefer to have higher res masters and scale them down for inclusion in the game. In this way we will be prepared for the technological advancement without the need to recreate all images. So when you mean masters, they can be any square resolution, but not the ones in data.

All graphics requirements are linked in the above contributor's guide page.

Gustav · Post by **Gustav** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:21 am

Hi
Propably seems I'm taking my sweet time with a few splash screens and renders. But there are a few technicalities keeping me back. Nothing a few forum posts and tutorials did'nt fix. But it is going a bit slow... I'm also not doing too many posts because I find most info on what I need on the forums and through the guidelines themselves. Lot of research...

Anyway, hope to hand you something after the weekend.

Just a few questions.

1) Why is the format for ingame splashcreens etc. square. Has it something to do with the game engine (?) or what...?

2) I keep hearing about DDS file compression and some people complaining that it ruins their good digital artwork. In Artwork submission guidelines for 0.5+ someone mentioned using jpg's (or implimenting it). Is this lossy compression a Biggy or am I understanding this all wrong.

3) To get a coherent and organized visual workflow there propably is some sort of guideline or to get the right 'look and feel'... kind of a inspiration guideline. Let's say, VegaStrike's atmosphere or artistic approach is heavily influenced by x and x artists. Or is this whole project more a free approach.

In just a few words. Will all my hard work be usably or will I be judged against a certain theme or visual apporach?

Thanks

Post by **ace123** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:12 am

Images that are oddly shaped is a standard for all graphics cards. It has to do with the way it resizes images using mipmaps, and also probably for memory efficiency.

Basically, they must have each dimension be a power of two (256,512,1024,2048). Most of the splash screens are then 1024x1024 because that's a good compromise.

DDS is the format textures are stored in when transferred to the graphics card (if it used raw data it would take up hundreds of MB of graphics ram).

Basically, the reason all the images are directly in DDS is because it drastically improves loading times. Indeed, it was doing it before in the game engine, but it had to convert the images each and every time.

If you go here, you can find the originals:
http://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/s ... k/masters/

So don't bother with formatting. And please save the images in PNG (which is Lossless compression--that is, no data gets lost when you switch formats). Vega Strike will not compress PNG images so they should look perfectly fine.

If you want to see your splash screens in-game, you should make your image in a standard rectangular 4:3 or 16:9 format.
Then, if you want, stretch the image to 1024x1024. This will make proportions wrong but the game will scale it back. This may not be necessary on your graphics card (you can probably test without doing this), but some people will just get a blank image if it's not the proper dimensions.

IMO, Don't worry about look and feel. There is no such requirement, although it doesn't hurt to try and stick to the same overall "feel" to images...
Your splash screens will almost certainly be accepted into the repository, and if you are interested and have done some good work it is possible to make you a Subversion account so you can commit directly to the repository.

Gustav · Post by **Gustav** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:55 am

Thanks for the reply... this clarifies a lot of things. Well, it was'nt really big issues but this reply just helped me know exactly where my workflow stands in relation to the project.

Just for interest sake... is it possible to put kind of animations in base image files. Uh, what I mean is: Say for instance I am looking around with my mouse for a exit to the bar. Maybe a door will slide open or a area will highlight...? Possible, not possible? It would just help with navigation.

My brother had scrolled around for I don't remember how long to get back where he was (just started, went to the trade screen and got lost). I laughed at him and thought it was quite funny but then realised, thats actually a gameplay problem.

Well, just a question/suggestion... thanks again!

bgaskey · Post by **bgaskey** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Actually, right-clicking in the base interface jumps the mouse between clickables, but while animations would be nice, I don't think they're supported atm.

Post by **ace123** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:09 am

It is possible to do, however the way to handle such animations is a bit quirky.

Basically, bases now have something called an "Event mask", which will affect which mouse-related things apply to the link.

So you can make it respond to "enter","leave" as well as "click".

To make an animation, you would make a ".ani" file... one of the flags is "forceNoLoop" which should make it stop on the last frame.

Code: Select all

scripttorun='''#
import Base
room = '''+startroom+'''
evdata = Base.GetEventData()
if evdata["type"]=="enter": # Mouse is over link.
    Base.RemoveObj("door_anim")
    Base.Texture(room, "door_anim", "somefile_open.ani", 0.123, -0.445)
elif eventdata["type"]=="leave": # Mouse has left link.
    Base.RemoveObj("door_anim")
    Base.Texture(room, "door_anim", "somefile_close.ani", 0.123, -0.445)
elif eventdata["type"]=="click":
    Base.RemoveObj("door_anim")
'''
Base.LinkPython(startroom, 'some_id', scripttorun, 0.1,-0.5,0.1,0.1, "Leave Room", destinationroom)
Base.SetLinkEventMask(startroom, 'some_id', 'elc')

So it does complicate things to do that, but it is still possible to do with all the kludges that have been worked into the Base system.

It looks like right clicking also works with the enter/leave animations., since it physically warps the pointer to the position of the link you want to click on.