Using MOO2 ships for shipsets

prader · #1 October 8th, 2001, 11:46 PM

I had an idea to easily create plenty of shipsets. I have Moo2 which has plenty of ships and thought I would use some since I'm sure I'm not talented enough to create my own. I found a "ships" file in Moo2 but when I clicked on it I got the little window asking something like "what program do want to use to open this" which I take to mean I don't have the program to do it since it should be done automatically. Does anyone know which program I need or how I can do it in order to open up those ships?

Intruder13 · #2 October 9th, 2001, 12:47 AM

"Does anyone know which program I need or how I can do it in order to open up those ships?"

-Whats the file extension? (i.e. bmp, pcx, png...)

Fyron · #3 October 9th, 2001, 04:51 AM

The file extension is lbx. Most of the files for MOO2 are .lbx, including graphics and data files (such as racename, ships, raceopt and bldname), so I don't think that you could open these files. Also, the problem is that the ships in MOO2 are not at a 3d viewing angle. The are seen top-down.

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It's not whether you win or lose that counts: it's how much pain you inflict along the way.

henk brouwer · #4 October 9th, 2001, 07:58 AM

You could make screenshots of the ships by pressing the print screen button in the game, and pasting the pictures (ctr-v) into windows paint or another program..

Fyron · #5 October 10th, 2001, 04:05 AM

That would work, but the problem is that the ships would still be in the top-down view. So, you'd still have to re-draw them for the 3d view.

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It's not whether you win or lose that counts: it's how much pain you inflict along the way.

prader · #6 October 10th, 2001, 02:08 PM

Would not having 3d views be a serious problem or just an aesthetic one? I can deal with not seeing 3d views of the ships but it wouldn't do much good if the game crashes.

Thanks everyone for your responses so far. You've been very helpful.

geoschmo · #7 October 10th, 2001, 03:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by prader:
Would not having 3d views be a serious problem or just an aesthetic one? I can deal with not seeing 3d views of the ships but it wouldn't do much good if the game crashes.

Thanks everyone for your responses so far. You've been very helpful.

It's purely aesthetic. You could have a top down 36x36 bitmap for the mini images used in movement and combat, and the same top-down image blown up to a 128x128 bitmap and the game would not care. It would not give you errors unless the images were named incorrectly.

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #8 October 10th, 2001, 04:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

Quote:

Originally posted by prader:
Would not having 3d views be a serious problem or just an aesthetic one? I can deal with not seeing 3d views of the ships but it wouldn't do much good if the game crashes.

Thanks everyone for your responses so far. You've been very helpful.

It's purely aesthetic. You could have a top down 36x36 bitmap for the mini images used in movement and combat, and the same top-down image blown up to a 128x128 bitmap and the game would not care. It would not give you errors unless the images were named incorrectly.

Geoschmo

Actually, you could have a picture of Krusty the Clown for the large image and it wouldn't cause an error. One of the ways to dramatically reduce the disk space usage by the game would be to replace all the 'portrait' images with some sort of simple, abstract emblem. Or even a blank space. You'd just see the information without the fancy image.

geoschmo · #9 October 10th, 2001, 04:39 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
One of the ways to dramatically reduce the disk space usage by the game would be to replace all the 'portrait' images with some sort of simple, abstract emblem. Or even a blank space. You'd just see the information without the fancy image.

In fact we did something similer on the PBW server to conserve space, since it doesn't matter what the pictures look like on the server.

What I learned though is that bitmap files of the same dimensions have exactly the same file size regardless of what the image looks like. The only way to reduce the file size is to actually make them smaller, or changing them to black and white in the attributes. Instead of 128x128, make them a 1x1 bitmap. However, you have to be careful with this because some of the game images (not ship pics) have to be the same size or you get errors. However, you can still save space with them by making them black and white.

Geoschmo

prader · #10 October 10th, 2001, 05:11 PM

Speaking of errors, I have another question. I downloaded some of the races (klingon, Romulan, Borg, star wars, etc) and when I tried to run the game all I got was a big list of error Messages. I suspect the problem was tinkering with the filler tech for the Borg or replacing the "components" file for the Klingons over the default one but I'm not sure. How, exactly, do you make those races usable by the game? In laymans terms. I thought I did a pretty good job of following the instructions but evidently not... is there common knowledge that is assumed and that everyone else knows except me?

[This message has been edited by prader (edited 10 October 2001).]

[This message has been edited by prader (edited 10 October 2001).]