Programmer's Proposal

a little competition

Here's a little competition proposal; to create a minor program for ship graphics:

To all you Flash whores out there, make a program that will turn a simple drawing into a sprite and mask. Have the user draw an image, then have your program create 36 frames of the picture's rotation. You can stop at that 36 frame image and "give it" to the user, or you can take it further. Have separate ones for engine glows, weapon firing, weapon graphics. Create 'till your heart's content.

If you can manage to make the end result more than just an image, yay for you. Best "program" wins... glory.

I'll give you this very basic drawing application code to start with. If you want to add other colors, go for it:

function drawOn() {
this.lineStyle(1, 0x000000);
this.moveTo(this._xmouse, this._ymouse);
this.onMouseMove = addPoint;
}
function addPoint() {
this.lineTo(this._xmouse, this._ymouse);
}
function drawOff() {
delete this.onMouseMove;
}
this.onMouseDown = drawOn;
this.onMouseUp = drawOff;

Indentations don't appear, so you'll have to put them in in the appropriate places.

If this is a dumb idea then just let it die out into the back-pages of the forum.

The biggest problem you'll find with this is that sprites in EV aren't simply rotated versions of the same image; they're actually re-rendered for each viewing angle. If you do otherwise, you end up with weird lighting (since the lighting angle changes with each rotation of the ship) and you can't do different viewing angles (ships in EVN aren't viewed from straight down, but rather from an angle).

Engine glows also really need to be done on a per-model level.

So ultimately, the best way to do this would be to write an "Escape Velocity" module for some popular/free modelling program and then to make it available to plugin developers. Flash just isn't up to the task.

I understand that the angles of the ship would be impossible to mimic, but that really doesn't matter. The point is just to create something along the lines of that new Ambrosia game with the pen-and-ink-like ships.

Engine glows can be done however you choose to program them.

I simply think it could be a popular thing to mess around with.

This post has been edited by dr neverhood : 15 June 2006 - 07:11 PM

Maybe for Noir TC or a specific pen-and-paper TC but I don't really see the point in just messing around with something like that for fun. Just buy SketchFighter when it comes out.

Teacup TC also uses graphics without light sources, but those are best done largely by hand (for five frames, and then copied, spun and flipped to make a full grid).

Anyway, for the most part this wouldn't be useful for major plugs. However, it might be good to have something like this, so that anyone can make quick little Dr. Trowel-class ship sprites that actually show the ship's direction of travel. Also, if anyone remembers Hamster's Spin a Day topic, people seemed to have fun with it, so an automatic application to do the same thing could provide hours, or at least minutes, of entertainment.

Edwards

Yes, thank you Edwards. It's not intended for large scale plugs, just a little something to mess around with.

So do I have any takers? Perhaps I'll have to just do it myself.

Whoa, I totally just had this idea yesterday...

Hmm. I could try.

Also note, I already have pov-ray script to take a ship that fits in a unit sphere and translating/rotating it for the full 36 grid. It has to be rendered orthographically, but technically, it should be anyway. Vanishing points on ships should match.

Great minds think alike, Neb. So is that one contestant?

I think one if enough. People don't usually like going to a lot of trouble to make a program and then find out it was all for nothing because someone else made a better one.

Yes, good point. Maybe it could be like an exquisite corpse; NebuchadnezzaR could start designing it and another could download the file and add their features and contribution. Would that work at all?