Its not JUST the D7 I meant to ask for all the Klingon hulls that the Romulans got a hold of.

By leaving out the notes you just sped up the creation of defs by a significant factor

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 10:53 am: Edit

Paul did you edit the second generation SSD def's you sent out.

I was trying to do the Klingon FWC and ran into a little problem. It places the summary boxes for the base ship fine but the RX ph 2 refit causes some problems.

The tool tries to give you 3 x 1 box phaser 1's to replace the 1 x 3 box ph 2. How do we go about fixing that?

Like Kludge was saying we could move onto the Romulan ships with Klingon hulls, do you want us to move on to those ships while you wait for more background image art from ADB.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 12:42 pm: Edit

Is there any intent for a "peer-review" of these SSDs? I know that takes more time in the process, but it should ensure accuracy: not everyone would have access to everything done to a certain hull, for example. Cases in point would be the R1.R1 refit found in module K and the R1.R2 refit from module R1. And would help with consistancy.

My own (strong) opinions aside, I know that SVC is breathing hard about getting these done as soon as possible. So there is that to balance "doing it right" against.

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 01:33 pm: Edit

Hey all. Slow down a bit. I just had a chat with Paul F and some things are going to come out (possibly over the weekend) that will make the defs easier to do and more consistent.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 03:55 pm: Edit

I wonder if it would look better with a narrower box size, the boxes reallly only need to hold at most 2 or 3 numbers. Few ships have 100 of the same system, I can think of only one actually.

For placing phasers on the boom's and other fine detail work a smaller box could make a huge difference.

I also suggest shortening the lable's more. On my F5's there was never room for Aux Con or Security, but AUX and SCTY would have fit.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 08:21 pm: Edit

Josh,
Looks the FWC had bug in the def. The K-refit changed Phasers into MISC type boxes. I will send you a fixed FWC.def file.

I will look into shortening Aux Con and Security.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Saturday, October 20, 2012 - 11:48 pm: Edit

Grrr I am very annoyed with myself. I worked a good length of time getting that D7 done and somehow it didn't save properly when I went to look in my work folder it was missing and the search of the computer didn't find it either. Now I have to redo the silly thing.

I may wait until the next tool revision so things can be consistent before I do a lot of work. I WILL redo the D7 to see if I can figure out what went wrong. Maybe I just THOUGHT I saved it wouldn't be the first time something like that happened and wont be the last.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 10:00 pm: Edit

I just did my 1st 3rd Gen SSD definition !

I dare say it looks pretty good if I may be so bold !!



One thing re the alignment tool, it sure is slow !!
Make an error in placement of the box and you are in for along trip to get it to the correct spot !



Sent in my D5 to Paul for quality control.
Will wait to see if there are improvements.

The phaser & disruptor boxes still do not indicate the arcs of the phasers or disruptors.
Is there a way I can include the arc to the indivdual box ?

Thanks all for your help !!

Cheers
Frank

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 10:07 pm: Edit

Paul,
I can see the Edit Box option and it does indicate the arcs of the phaser and disruptors.

How do I actually get the arc definition actually in the box itself ?

As I look at my D5, I see 2 ph 1's, 2 ph 2's and 4 ph 3's and 4 disruptors but not one has an arc indicated.

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 11:02 pm: Edit

Use Alt + arrows to move the boxes 16 spaces per keystroke.

Also selecting multiple boxes that need aligned and using CTRL + the arrows will speed alignment of a row of boxes.

I dont know how to get it to actually draw the weapons arcs yet.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - 05:19 pm: Edit

Frank,
I need to work on the drawing of the arcs. The positions possible are left, right, bottom or top.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Saturday, October 27, 2012 - 06:28 am: Edit

So where are we at with this project?

Are we still waiting for background art from ADB?

I have done all the Klingon F5's the only ships I was assigned. I have started on the FWC and other F5W varients, but was really hoping for some feedback on them and the chance to revise them if its needed.

I could do the Romulan K5R and war frigates using the same F5 background image, should I start work on these before I get feedback on my first 14 SSD's?

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Saturday, October 27, 2012 - 11:17 am: Edit

How can we use these new definitions locally, to make sure we did everything right in the "real" environment?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, October 27, 2012 - 11:42 pm: Edit

Josh,
I am working on the bugs with the variant application tool. That is a tool that takes a variant old ship definition and applies it to the base ship. This should help the base and the variant's be more consistent.

And the using the Klingon background images for the KRs. Sorry, I still have not Emailed SVC about that.

Matt,
Currently the new SSDs can be loaded. Just don't expect them to be usable. The Weapon Status and the Expendables will be wrong. I have not had a chance to look into fixing that. Sorry, my real life has been too busy with other things to get to that portion.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 06:15 am: Edit

I did the D7 and moved onto the D7A before deciding that the current method was to cumbersome If Paul gets the variant tool working maybe things can be done. But I got tired of having to basically rebuild the base ship to do even a minor variant.

The G2 defs were much easier to variant out IMO. All I had to do was reload the image and make X changes from whatever def I had used for the base ship.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 08:02 am: Edit

Hopefully, I will be able to get out the variant tool by tomorrow. I resolved most of the issues. But I need to solve:

1) Match of boxes on a new refit that were in the Base SSD. (i.e. not the variant SSD).

2) Add a refit match window that will pop up. I thought I could do automatic matching but that is not working. So I will need to have people match the refits. I was testing the D7->D7V and it could not match the UIM or K REFIT. That is because the Year for the UIM refit is different between the D7 and D7V and the K REFIT did not match because one it is "K-REFIT" and the other is "K REFIT".

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 05:54 pm: Edit

IMO, we should take this reboot chance as a chance to standardize. Before we get moving too far along, I think it would be valuable for someone with a lot of time on their hands (not me ;) ) to write up a style guide.

This includes things like shield and systems placement as well as naming conventions.

I know there is some urgency to get started, but I think if someone just took this by the horns and if we did not argue about the result (that is, I think being standard is more important than being "best") we could have a style guide this week. Maybe one guide per empire and preferably all Empire guides following the conventions of the first where relevant.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 09:05 pm: Edit

Paul,
I think we all can agree with some basics:

1) Place the Warp and Impulse boxes on top of the those systems,
2) Place Phasers as close to the original SSD position as possible.
3) Place the shield boxes around the shield relative position.
4) Place the bridge near the front of the ship.
5) Place the Aux Con near the rear of the ship.
6) Place Forward Hull near the front of the ship.
7) Place Aft Hull near the rear of the ship.

When it comes to other boxes, my suggestion is:

1) Place the Sensor/Scanner/Dam Con/Excess Damage on the upper left. Placed in that order down the left side.
2) Place the DER/UIM on the left side of the ship. (Near the ship)
3) Place the HET/BD on the right side of the ship. (Near the ship)

By Paul Scott (The_Rock) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 09:50 pm: Edit

This is what I meant.

http://tinyurl.com/9da62hk

You'd have a sample (the link is to the D6 I made) and then some text, hopefully no more than a paragraph or two, that if the people doing the work kept to it, would make everything mostly consistent.

If we could get someone to do that for each Empire, we would end up with a full set of 3rd Gen SSDs that all had the same look and feel.

Mine does not work, because, at a minimum, the trans and tractor need to be moved because that is around where the phasers will go on the D7. there may be other issues as well. But, if someone took the time to think through the Klingon ships they could give us a model that would work and keep an Empire consistent.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Sunday, October 28, 2012 - 11:09 pm: Edit

(Forgive me, but I'm detail-oriented and I've been operating in the head of CSS for years)

I had made an attempt to ask for something similar, above. Though I was looking at the small stuff: "Such and such spacing this-way and that-way on these elements".

I think Paul S. is looking for something broader. Mostly in the form of "Center the nacelle disruptors into the main hull: Put them in this general area. Don't cover up the phaser bumps: offset the waist phasers onto the wing. The raised shuttle bay is too small: put the APR and Impulse there, but put the shuttles and drones off to the side of it."

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Thursday, November 08, 2012 - 02:39 pm: Edit

How are we doing over there Paul ?


Cheers
Frank

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Friday, November 09, 2012 - 05:39 am: Edit

Pretty good. I am definitely going to be releasing an updated client this Sunday. I had a chance to look over some of Josh's definitions and they look pretty good. I need to Email him back about a few of them.

By Francois Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, November 09, 2012 - 07:31 am: Edit

How was my D5 SSD ?

Was everything in its proper place or close enough ?

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, November 10, 2012 - 07:22 am: Edit

I will check them tomorrow. Sorry, a bit busy. Today, I am gone to help my brothers with fixing/cleaning up around my mothers house.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Sunday, November 11, 2012 - 05:04 am: Edit

Sent an email to Paul...never answered.

So, I'll repost here.

Instructions you gave are not at all what I see on the menus. Clicking on the boxes doesn't do anything. Any ideas?