Ships Parts for Everybody

[ccip]

Thanks for the insight Bullethead, very informative as always To be honest, I was just doing my best "artist's impression" of what I've seen coal smoke look like, and the smoke sprites as they are were made entirely in grayscale. Now I suppose I should try to experiment with those brown-green shades and see what happens.

I guess that's another caveat, too - the right look for smoke in the form of little pixels n is also partly just aesthetics. There's lots of different ways you'll see it done in paintings, for example. It's gotta look and feel right to you!

And I didn't realize oil was entirely smokeless - was this true of early oil burners as well? I usually see WWI era oil-fired ships depicted with at least some funnel smoke.




Also, if I can get to a WiFi spot with my files in the next couple of hours, big update incoming! I got a lot done over this weekend, so the number of accessories has something like doubled since the uploaded version, to nearly 1300 files in total.

[galagagalaxian]

In addition to pretty side views I've been experimenting lately with just how far I can push the overhead view with just 4 lines (more please in RtW 2 Fredrik, thanks in advance  ). Managed to make a pretty nifty overhead based on a typical German armored cruiser, so of course I had to make a matching side view:

[Bullethead]

Sept 19, 2016 18:18:51 GMT -6 ccip said:

And I didn't realize oil was entirely smokeless - was this true of early oil burners as well? I usually see WWI era oil-fired ships depicted with at least some funnel smoke.

Oil-burners smoke when they have incomplete combustion.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with transient changes in the state of the boilers.  However, the early ones could smoke when trying for maximum possible speed by the simple expedient of throwing more fuel into the burners than could be consumed by the available air.  This was probably a holdover from the then-current practice of coal-burners of throwing more coal on the fires.  Thus, you'd get things like this:



But the smoke wasn't nearly as dense as if it was being done by a coal-burner in a similar situation.

Oil-burners could also make vast quantities of smoke when desired.  These are oil-burning US Wickes-class DDs making a smokescreen by spraying excess oil on various hot bits in the engineering spaces and uptakes.



But mostly it was like as below, showing several oil-burning Brit DDs maneuvering at battle speed as coal-burning Invincible blows up.  The smoke seemingly coming from the DD in the middle is actually from a heavy coal-burner on the horizon.



And the early oil-fired BBs didn't smoke much if at all, either, even when maneuvering at battle speeds.

[ccip]

Alright, here we are, new version of all my stuff!

Download link: drive.google.com/open?id=0B77YKog18qtvV0dST2J1UlduS1E

You can just overwrite the old files - most of the old stuff is unchanged, but there are quite a number of new additions. 
This should work nicely with all schemes, except for Nuno dos Santos' Set 9, which is pretty unique and hopefully I'll find some time to incorporate it as well!


Here's a wonderfully ugly predread to start things off:



Just some quick notes on the changes:


1. Basic Brushes
Just a small touchup from original version - I've simply added a long horizontal bar for each of the colours, and replaced the yellow in misc colours with a brighter shade, which makes it easier to see against the sky.


2. Lines and rigging
The main folder retains all the old brushes plus a couple of long presets that you can drag between two masts, and then delete the loose end with a sky brush (quicker than stringing everything together yourself!)


There are, however, five new subfolders - here you'll find my new work, which includes:
-Mast shrouds, which are pretty much an anachronism by the 1900s but can be handy for your starter fleet - you can build ships like the RJW Rurik for example
-Pennants: 6 basic colours in 4 different shapes, plus the entire phonetic alphabet in horizontal and vertical pennants (yes, I'm apparently that crazy...)
-Triple lines and antennas: self-explanatory and fairly handy.
-Winches and cranes - meant to be attached to a mast, but can also stand on their own or against any vertical surface.
-Yard arms - just a quick pre-set to save you time trying to string together mast tops.

Some sanpictures of the new sets:







3. Platforms and Railings
New folder of all sorts of stuff - from crow's nests, to platforms that can go on masts or superstructure, to lattice supports, ladders, ramps, and gangwalks.


Some examples:



4. Searchlights and Optics
Several types of searchlights, some ready to be attached to masts, turned a bit to create a "fake 3D" look to them. The larger ones are a bit exaggerated, but with only a few pixels to work with, that was needed for any sort of detail. Also includes a set of a half-dozen rangefinders of all sizes.


Here's some of the searchlights included:



5. Small guns
No changes.

6. Smoke sprites
No changes


7. Torpedo nets
No changes


8. Turrets and Gun Barrels
What I did here was basically take all of the turrets currently in the game in various colours and remove the barrels. This should allow you to easily change turret types on your ships (by erasing the old one with a "sky brush" from basics), and choose your own barrel. Barrels are included in a variety of lengths at 2 and 1 pixels wide; 4 colour variations as well, including my own hand-drawn preset that I think looks more "3d-ish".


Here's an example. You can see some of the new (if intentionally obsolete) turret types I added at the bottom:



9. Vents and Deck Fittings
Since we only started with the one vent type (included as a mast), this should be a nice expansion. There are several types of vents here, in 4 colour variations, as well as a variety of bits and doodads that go on decks - capstans, spray guards, hatch covers, old-style lifeboat davits. As with the lights, the size of some objects had to be slightly exaggarated, at least for larger variations.


Here are some of the items included:



10. Wakes and Waves
No changes


11. Windows and Portholes
A variety of window types here, which nicely compliment and add variety to some of what Nuno dos Santos added. Most of them are drawn in a convenient two-tone pattern that makes them visible on virtually any kind of hull. They range from tiny, one-pixel portholes in a variety of spacing configuration, to spacious galleries and arch-style windows. 

Here is some of that set:



12. Background
no changes


And that's that! I hope you enjoy these new pieces for your pixel-ship Lego sets  

[ddg]

Good grief, that's impressive. Kudos ccip.

[ccip]

Cheers!

And thanks for the informative pics as ever Bullethead - I guess I was used to thinking of ships from the period as far smokier than they actually were (well, the oil burners, anyway). I'll have to give it some food for thought as far as what I could do for a subtle smoke effect.

And in honour of that, here's my crack at a mostly-clean-burning German BC:

[Bullethead]

Sept 19, 2016 23:48:36 GMT -6 ccip said:

Cheers!

And thanks for the informative pics as ever Bullethead - I guess I was used to thinking of ships from the period as far smokier than they actually were (well, the oil burners, anyway). I'll have to give it some food for thought as far as what I could do for a subtle smoke effect.

And in honour of that, here's my crack at a mostly-clean-burning German BC:

No problem.  Thank YOU for all the nifty new parts.  Now my sailors can climb the masts like God intended

Anyway, that's a nice-looking bit of smoke.  If you look closely at the photo of 5BS chugging through heavy seas above, the middle BB has just such a small wisp.

[thatzenoguy]

HO...LY...SHEET...

I really need to get all these parts!

[axe99]

Cheers CCIP, looking brilliant .

[ccip]

Thanks guys!



***

Birth of a ship:







It's a Russian starter AC (created by AI), with a look based on the general lines - but not actual configuration (as you can see from the number of stacks and turrets) - of the historical Bayan

I think I might start artificially cutting down the number of wires and lifeboats on the superstructure. They're quite accurate, but they seem to really get in the way of some of the cool details on parts of the ship that are actually interesting. From this design, I also learned that even the little shrunk-down lifeboat (which I think is one of galagagalaxian's accessories?) is still actually a bit on the large side for the scale used here, so maybe I can whip up some smaller ones for good measure.

[garrisonchisholm]

Good evening all- its a late hour for me to make sense of this (first post!), but as far as I can tell you all are playing a different game than I! On my ship "cards" I only have the top down views, and the spot where a profile would go is just a blank card. :?

I'll try to make heads and tails of all this tomorrow night, but for a game that I have immersed myself in with complete satisfaction for the last few weeks, to suddenly see it "beautiful" blows my mind. Good night!

[bcoopactual]

Sept 21, 2016 2:33:34 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

Good evening all- its a late hour for me to make sense of this (first post!), but as far as I can tell you all are playing a different game than I! On my ship "cards" I only have the top down views, and the spot where a profile would go is just a blank card. :?

I'll try to make heads and tails of all this tomorrow night, but for a game that I have immersed myself in with complete satisfaction for the last few weeks, to suddenly see it "beautiful" blows my mind. Good night!

Hello and welcome. Side views are not generated automatically. Once you have a ship built or under construction right click on it in the game's 'In service' or 'Under construction' pages. One of the options will be 'Change ship picture'. Mouse over it and then click on 'generate picture'. It will bring up the picture building window and then you can start filling it out.

Make sure you've updated your game version as well. The picture builder wasn't an original feature. If I recall, a forum member named garychildress created the original ship parts and then the developers built the picture creator around them and added it to the game around version 1.24 (exact number escapes me) or so.

[Bullethead]

Sept 21, 2016 2:33:34 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

Good evening all- its a late hour for me to make sense of this (first post!), but as far as I can tell you all are playing a different game than I! On my ship "cards" I only have the top down views, and the spot where a profile would go is just a blank card. :?

I'll try to make heads and tails of all this tomorrow night, but for a game that I have immersed myself in with complete satisfaction for the last few weeks, to suddenly see it "beautiful" blows my mind. Good night!

Well, look what the cat dragged in, an old friend from KSP.  Who, incidentally, introduced me to this game, but has kept his naval vice in the closet until now.  About time you showed up in here  Welcome aboard!

As bcoopactual says, first you have to update the digital download to the current version before any of this works.  Then you have to download the various paintjob and accessory packs, and then follow his directions for bringing up the ship picture system.

Hope to see you more often in here.

[garrisonchisholm]

Thank you for the warm welcome! You know if you went by your KSP name BN your allegiances might be called into question.

Well, I am going to go poke around in the game just now, and see if I can access these amazing profile pictures. Its got to be a challenge for the game to properly interpret top-down planforms into profiles. I just DL'd it 3 or 4 weeks ago, so I have to believe I have the most up-to-date version. Tally ho!

[Bullethead]

Sept 21, 2016 20:29:34 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

Well, I am going to go poke around in the game just now, and see if I can access these amazing profile pictures. Its got to be a challenge for the game to properly interpret top-down planforms into profiles. I just DL'd it 3 or 4 weeks ago, so I have to believe I have the most up-to-date version. Tally ho!

Actually, there have been several updates since you got the game, and the version you downloaded was obsolete even then.  The download version is something like 122, which does NOT have the ship profile thingy.  The current version, just released a few days ago, is 133 b4.  To update the game, you have to download the patch from this link:  nws-online.proboards.com/thread/335/rtw-rule-waves-information-downloads.  Note that updating requires you to re-enter your access code.

The main rub with the ship profile thing is that the ship in question actually has to exist.  IOW, you can't make a profile until the ship appears on the "in service" or "under contruction" tabs.  So the process is:

1. update the game to a version with the profile thingy
2. download all the parts in this thread
3. copy all the downloaded parts folders into the ShipParts folder of the game, overwriting as needed
4. open the game, design a ship, and build it
5. in the "under construction" tab, right-click on the ship, select "Change ship picture", then "generate picture".
   
6. set the general hull characteristics via the checkboxes, select the overall paintjob from the sets box, and hit the "Generate" button.
7. hit the "accessories" tab and start adding all the fancy parts you want