The neo-standard thread- Standardising additional hull sizes.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yes, but what comes after that? The chain has to end at either "Cruiser" or "Race picture", since those are the only two absolutely required images, no matter what the mod.

Eg:
barge > large transport > colonyshiplarge > medium transport > dreadnaught > battleship > battlecruiser > cruiser.

[dogscoff]

Well, your barge chain makes sense to me, although I think maybe you should have baseships and monitors in there somewhere.

For mining ship, I would go mining ship > mining station > medium transport > small transport > destroyer > leight cruiser > cruiser.

mining station > mining ships > space station > cruiser.

[Suicide Junkie]

WooHoo!
The Neobuilder.exe is now ready to try out!

Feel free to comment on the alternate chains, found HERE.
Not shown are hulls from Scout to Heavy Dreadnaught. Those have a pattern alternate of try one step smaller, try one step bigger, try next smaller, etc.

Note: some of the constants I used are not obvious. Refer to the legend below.
??H = heavy Version of obvious hull
??G = unit group
T# = Transport (1= tiny, 2=small, etc)
C# = Carrier
TR# = troop
F# = fighter
FF = Fighter Group (conflicts with frigate)
BM = Worldship (conflicts with War Station)
CS = colony ship
MN = Mine
DR = Drone

[ 10 February 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[disabled]

I wonder what has become of this project. I'm very much interested in it for the UM2. I mean, the new racial techs and such plus having well over 500 different ship, bases, sats, and so on in 96 sizes for the 13 trees...

[Phoenix-D]

I'll be making TechMod compatable with this once I get Gold and start it up again. Right now I'm planning everything out.. Last time was I just threw things in as they occured

As to "what has become of this", I think at this point it's up to the mod authors.

Phoenix-D

[Andrés]

Maybe it's because it looks for default english se4 path name and can't find it, but it always seems to start in the root directory of my hard drive. No matter whare the builder is located. And I have to browse all the way to the races.

In most cases 1st choice for troopinfantry should be race_portrait/pop_portrait.

Your minimun requirements look too high.
I think you only need the portrait battlecruiser to choose in the add new race window. You'd need at least 1 mini to copy, but not necesarily the battlecruiser. Maybe if battlecruiser is not abailable the program should attempt to copy another pic there too.
BigExplosion and Shields are not indispensable either, there are a number of races that are considered complete and do not include custom shield or explosion, and by the way generic pics tend to match different shipsets better than ships here.

What about the idea of an easily editable .txt file defining ship sizes and copy chains.

This is probably beyond your programming capabilities, but maybe you can find some pre-made library to resample bitmaps (note the difference between resample and just resize). You could make it copy and resample race portrait to create pop pictures.

[Suicide Junkie]

I didn't do any sort of path initializing, so C:\ is the default.

I set the minimum requirements as they were because all of those images either:
A) cannot be created/copied from elsewhere (eg. bigexplosion)
or
B) Are required by SE4.

Re: infantry.
Oops. Copy/paste error. I got into a routine, and forgot about that .

quote:

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there are a number of races that are considered complete and do not include custom shield or explosion

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True. I can easily remove those from the requirements.
On the other hand, Battlecruiser is used along with the race portrait when choosing your shipset during race creation.

Minimum requirements are now:
- pop images
- battlecruiser images
- main.bmp

quote:

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What about the idea of an easily editable .txt file defining ship sizes and copy chains.

---

Not a problem, I'll include that in my next Version.
I just hardcoded the whole thing to get it done quickly, but I kept it in a nice format for using a text file for definitions.

quote:

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This is probably beyond your programming capabilities, but maybe you can find some pre-made library to resample bitmaps (note the difference between resample and just resize). You could make it copy and resample race portrait to create pop pictures.

---

You're right. I'm not going to build that Tinman. The axe already has enough bells and whistles
Resampling images would be way too easy for the shipset's original creator to do, and thus not worth my time to automate.