Matt,
If I had more background images from SVC I would have sent it out to more people. I am going to Email SVC about what background images that I need.

Frank,
Have Paul S. help you. The key is going to be unzipping the zip file. That is where all of the old definition files are.

Paul,
I will be happy to chat with you. Obviously, it will need to be after my day job. I will be playing my RA39 game tonight.

Josh,
You are right. It is a bit small. Change the Scale to be 1:2 and the Grid Size to be 64x32.

When it comes to the Disruptors put them on the wing.

The boxes will be a around the same size, but the image will be larger. So you should be able to place the boxes on the boom. Also, currently the boxes are only transparent for definition. (I will be changing this in the near future. I was just in a rush to push it out before I left). The boxes will be white on the inside. As it is I might be changing the way the Shield boxes are drawn but it is something that I can change in the future.

I will be happy to Email you my Klingon D7.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 01:33 pm: Edit

Yes please send a copy of the D7.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 03:13 pm: Edit

Ive sent in the basic F5 with B, K and 175 refits to Paul for review.

Im starting to get the hang of the SSD tool and hope more experience will speed up the process.

I would like to suggest one improvement to the SSD tool, that would be adding a show grid feature for alignment of the boxes.

Another thing that would be helpful is if the refitted boxes would magically go to where the base box of that type has been placed. Getting them to the same spot that the Base box is at is a slow process.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 03:17 pm: Edit

Josh,
The aligning of the refitted boxes to the base boxes is a feature I want to get done. Otherwise, the applying of refits will not work.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 03:35 pm: Edit

It would be a very helpful improvement, but with enough time and shift+arrowing it into place I was able to get it to line up pretty good.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 04:11 pm: Edit

I did my first draft of the D7. Didn't like it but wasn't meaning to save this one it was a reminder of how to do these things. I'll make a solid effort to get at least the basic D7 done tomorrow after I get in from work.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 04:26 pm: Edit

Paul Scott.
I just bought this compuetr back in Aug.
It has a AMD FX(tm)-4100 Quad-Core Processor.
Memory is 8 GB
System is 64 bit Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium.

Hope this helps and thanks for helping out !!

Cheers
Frank

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 04:39 pm: Edit

Windows 7 should be able to unzip the files.

Its built into the OS, right click the zipped file and move the mouse to an open area of the desktop. When you let off the right click a menu will come up one of the options on the menu is extract.

Extract will let you unzip all the files into a new folder.

Hope that helps Frank. Good luck.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 04:45 pm: Edit

If it doesnt work just forward me the zipped files and ill extract and have them back to you in about 5 minutes.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 04:54 pm: Edit

Here is a link to a program that will handle several different archive formats.

http://www.7-zip.org/

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Josh is correct. Zip is native to Windows 7. If you cannot open it, then there is something wrong.

Do you have skype or something similar? This should be automatic, so if something is wrong it is probably easier and faster to resolve over voice (or better yet, screen sharing).

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 06:52 pm: Edit

Frank,
What happens when you right-click on the zip file? What do you see?

Paul

P.S. I am will to bet that the issue is that Windows is making the zip file look like a directory in Windows Explorer.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 07:37 am: Edit

I got the unzip working guys !
Went about it the wrong way is all
Thanks.

I played around a bit with the selection thingy this morning.
I suspect I will have a few questions re that !


Thanks again !

Cheers
Frank

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 03:51 pm: Edit

Until we get the "real" artwork, can we just use the ship outlines from the SSDs? I can generate those pretty fast, starting from SVGs and converting to whatever you need (GIFs and JPGs, apparently).

I'm excited to get started.

Edit: Also, do fighters and shuttles work also? Or did we decide that the ships were "the problem", and they are all we're changing?

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 06:04 pm: Edit

There was never any talk of redoing the fighter SSD's, I think the ships have priority at this point.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Played around with the new SSD definition a bit more.
Couple of questions if I may?

a- I increased the size to 1:2 ratio and grid of 64x32, still seemed a bit small for the D5 to take all the boxes in.
Do we put some of the boxes on the outside of the ship ?

b- Noticed the arcs of disruptors and phasers are not indicated.
How can I adjust that ?

c- I am unable to move boxes around or align them. Have not figured that out yet.
Will need help there please.

d- Can we place boxes in the grey area of the image ?

I do have Team Speak so I can meet some one in SFBOL to talk me through this.

Thanks again for your help !!

Cheers
Frank

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Forgot to mention that I noticed the boxes seem to blend in with the image of the ship.

I tried to place boxes in open areas of the ship but that quickly ran out.

Suggestions ?

Cheers
Frank

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 02:32 pm: Edit

Ive finished with the 14 F5 and F5W SSD's I was assigned, they have been emailed to Paul for review.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 02:40 pm: Edit

In regards to your C and D questions Frank.

C. Set the SSD tool to selection mode. When in selection mode use Shift + the Arrow keys to move the boxes.

D. With my F5's there was no way to keep the boxes in the light area's of the background image, what I tried to do was keep the box lable in a light area and even then you run out of room fast.

Im using 1:2 for my frigates perhaps you want 1:1, if they dont fit im sure Paul can suggest a better setting for you to use.

Hope that helps.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 02:49 pm: Edit

I think the weapons arc's would be easy to put on later by adding them to the background image itself.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Friday, October 19, 2012 - 03:18 pm: Edit

From what I gather, these images were what Paul got from Steve. In theory, you could do some photo-manipulation on your own to [lighten|colorize] the image before you turn it into a .def file.

To address Josh's suggestion of adding the arcs to the image itself: I don't know the wisdom of doing that (the purist in me screams that it should be done in code, not image). But it does look like you can import your image, lay down a series of boxes, import an updated image (now that you know where the arcs line up with your boxes), and not mess anything up.

You can move a box around by going to "Tool->Selection Mode", clicking on the box (which should turn it red), and then use shift+arrow or alt+arrow to move the box around. alt+arrow moves the box by more per arrow-press.

The scale (1:1, 1:3, etc) appears to be a matter of "zoom level", and doesn't seem to affect the final proportions. however, the grid-size does seem to affect the proportions. The grid-size I saw as "default" was 96x48. Paul suggested going with 64x32 if the other was too big. This means other multiples of 2:1 should work well. Try 48x24 if everything else seems way to big.

On the flip side, we do need to come up with some sort of standard for these things. Such as:
- Certain minimum horizontal spacing between boxes
- Certain minimum vertical spacing between a box and the text-label of the box below.
- Certain grid-size for a certain size ship image
- Certain distance between the top edge of an image and the front of a chip (to give space for the title and #1 shield)
- Whether to apply certain refits (early-year refits, such as the ISC G-to-S refits or Plasma-to-PPD refits)
- Whether to apply a "without boom", "without saucer", or "without CoM" "refit" so we don't need a seperate rear-half def for each ship

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 06:37 am: Edit

SVC or Paul

Quick question.

When doing the D7 3rd gen def I came across a couple procedural problems and would appreciate some guidance before going further. I do have the basic D7 done and cloning it into different versions will be simple enough.

1. Should I include the various Notes Like the reference to the special firing arcs or that the ship has X# bays or anything else along those lines like if the Y175 refit includes more drones/add rounds..

2. This one is a bit more tricky. I made sure to put the weapons in the normal places. IE Bow phasers and Disr in each engine and the mostly the power systems are in there normal locations.

The tricky part is how should I handle things that are split between the Boom/Aft hull.

For example:

Normally the Boom has 1 Transporter and the remaining 4 are in the Aft hull. But the 3rd gen SSD def has 5 Transporters in a 1 box location. Should I simply split off 1 box to the Boom or should I leave all 5 in the artistically desirable spot. This also applies to a number of other systems. Functionally it doesn't make any real difference except for Boom/Saucer separation and the Boarding Party diagrams.

#3 Should all of us simply use the same Image for producing Romulan KR types or do we need different art work?

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 06:52 am: Edit

I should be able to knock out most of the D7/K7R variants (if desirable) tonight if I get the above questions answered. (There maybe some oddballs like the SFT D77 Bullet cruiser or others that wont get messed with at the moment.)

The biggest problem is simply getting all the boxes aligned for refits and for simply being presented nicely since I used to use a grid to help lay out the 2nd gen defs and cant do that with 3rd gen.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 08:22 am: Edit

Ken,
1. No. That information is available in the various references.
2. The boxes are not to be split between the boom and aft section. It was decided that given boom separation is so rarely used that there was no need to support it in the 3rd Gen SSD.
3. About using the D7 background image for the KRs. That had not been discussed. I will check with SVC on that.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 08:30 am: Edit

Frank,
a. Yes. It is ok to put some boxes outside the ship.
b. Yeah. I forgot to add the code to drawing the arcs. If you edit a box you will notice that the position for the arcs is there.
c. Josh has the basics. Also, checkout the "Edit" menu there are some Alignment option there if you select a number of boxes. To do that just go into Selection Mode and click and drag a selection rectangle and the boxes within the rectangle will be selected.
d. Yes.