Here ya go. My primary concern is that the SSDs be done in some format that ADB can edit later if the original designer isn't available and a fix needs to be made. It would also allow later module authors to clone SSDs for variants.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 11:33 am: Edit

What kind of files can ADB edit?

What software is ADB using to create SSDs?

What Version of the Software?

The software runs on what kind of computer and what operating system?

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 12:43 pm: Edit

Back in the day for a custom species campaign, I used Excel for my sheets, using bordered boxes and Shapes / Lines for the ship outlines.

Somehow I doubt that ADB would have that as a preference.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 01:47 pm: Edit

I would just as soon you use Freehand or Illustrator. That thing that replaced Illustrator is a nightmare I won't touch. While I use it on a Mac we might experiment with files to see if I can open whatever you create.

SFB uses MacPaint and DeskPaint which I would not wish on anyone. Besides if you do them as files I can open in Freehand then I can turn SFB sheets into FC sheets (or you can) in jiffy time.

As a practical matter the odds are good that whoever did an SSD would still be around and they are also good that we probably wouldn't need an update (before I retire) anyway and if we did I could just do it over from scratch. However, the guy who did the Omega playtest pack for FC disappeared and left us with a bunch of files we cannot do anything with except do them over, which I don't have time to do.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 02:11 pm: Edit

Deleted by author.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Shawn: Better to discuss the technicalities off line. I know what you have been doing (and approve) and think you could do bolder things.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, January 29, 2021 - 02:45 pm: Edit

Roger, Roger! Deleted by author.

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Saturday, January 30, 2021 - 05:22 am: Edit

Shawn, I use good old MS Paint and make the SSDs that I have made in .GIF format. I will say that I liked the versions of Paint used in Windows 98 and XP better than that found in the newer versions for the simple fact that you could make 2 pixel lines and shapes.
Overall, I find the process of making an SSD fairly easy once I have a rough idea of what I want it to look like. Alas, free time is a stranger to me

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Wednesday, March 03, 2021 - 05:10 am: Edit

SVC, are you guys able to modify .GIF format images? If so, then I will begin work on 2 units for the Koligahr: A tug and a base station.
The tug will/should be based off of the CA, and I will most likely include a warp engine refit for later years (Y185+) to bring it up to speed (pun only slightly intended).
The base station will most likely be an upgrade of their relocatable base, with added "bubbles for additional weapons and systems. As per OR1.B1, the Koligahr and Drex "excelled at base defense and had excellent base facilities". I promise not to go overboard, though, as realistically like any other base station they should not be able to withstand several cruisers attacking them by themselves even when fully equipped with attrition units.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 03, 2021 - 05:21 am: Edit

Tim, I have no idea how to modify a gif image. We need SSDs created in software we can use. A gif is the exported result, and the only way to modify it is by cutting out chunks, creating chunks in some other program, and pasting them in. I might as well toss gif SSDs and do them over in software I have, and if I'm going to do an SSD myself, it will be one I think we need, not one somebody else told me they want. The whole point of someone outside doing something is for them to do things we could do the way we would do them.

I do not mean to be mean, but sending us a gif of a new ship accomplishes the same thing as mailing us one drawn by hand on graph paper.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, March 03, 2021 - 12:42 pm: Edit

SVC: What is the native file format for your program? Are there any formats that you've successfully been able to import and edit?


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 03, 2021 - 12:56 pm: Edit

We can use Deskpaint and Freehand. (Deskpaint can open MacPaint but I doubt anyone has that.) I think Freehand can open a lot of illustrator files. We have considered getting some kind of inexpensive PC graphic program to give you guys more flexibility but haven't had time to look into it.

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Wednesday, March 03, 2021 - 05:05 pm: Edit

SVC, no worries. This seems to be a case Adobe proprietary formats with a healthy dose of Mac vs PC thrown into the mix.
When I get home from work in the morning, I will look to see what file formats can be imported by Illustrator and/or MacPaint to see if I can find something that would work as a go-between to send you SSDs that you are able to edit. If your computer guy/gal is able to post up what file formats you are able to import and edit, that will make my task a lot easier.

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 04:47 am: Edit

Ok, it would seem that Deskpaint can open .tiff file format images. Using GIMP, I should be able to convert a .gif into a .tiff without any major loss of clarity and/or features (converting image file formats tends to be wonky sometimes).
Would you like me to try an experiment to see if this will work?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 07:12 am: Edit

Don't do a whole SSD. Just about ten boxes with the labels (AUX, PH-1, PHOT, BTTY) should do for a test.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 12:20 pm: Edit

Personally, for Windows, I recommend Paint Shop Pro unless you need bleeding-edge tech for high-end graphics.


Garth L. Getgen

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 04:41 pm: Edit

SVC, I've sent you an e-mail with the .tif file.
Please let me know if this will work for you.
BTW, it turns out that MS Paint that comes with Windows will save as a .tif as well :/

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 04:58 pm: Edit

It doesn't really work any better than drawing it by hand on graph paper. We cannot edit it. I need to access the vector native, not the tif/jpg/pdf/gif picture of the native file. Sent this, all I could do is do it over in a program we can use.

My vocabulary fails me. I cannot seem to get across that graphic output files (pictures of the file) don't give me something I can edit, just something I can look at and copy. Freehand lets me grab the little boxes and drag them around and lets me enter the text blocks and retype the text. This doesn't do any of that, because its a picture of an editable file not an editable file.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 05:14 pm: Edit

AFAICT, what SVC needs is a vector format. GIF (and BMP, PNG, JPG, etc) are raster formats. TIFF is a container that can hold various things, and a given TIFF might be a raster bitmap or a vector file inside that container.

Paint Shop Pro is (like MSPaint, GIMP, Pinta, etc) a raster manipulator so it can't export a vector file. Powerpoint can export vector files, but I very much doubt that Freehamd can do anything useful with them.

An SVG file might work in Freehand. Otherwise I think it'll need an .AI (Adobe Illustrator) file. But I haven't used a Mac for decades, so I'm not sure.

You might manage with something like AutoCAD.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 05:44 pm: Edit

The key here is the difference between vector and raster graphics.

Raster graphics are what most people are familiar with (JPG/GIF/TIF) which uses pixels. It defines an array (say, 640 wide by 480 tall) and each of those resulting 307,200 cells (pixels) defines the contents individually and apart from all others. At the simplest black and white, that's a simple 0/1, more info for color (and how many colors the image has).

They are quick and simple for end us - they are basically a direct 1 to 1 "show this" instruction for a computer. The problem for editing is two fold: one is that a pixel is a pixel, and if you want to make the image or part of it larger, well, a pixel is a pixel and making the 640x480 image twice the size doesn't give you a sharper 1280x960 image with four times as many pixels, it just renders the pixels at four times the size, making it very chunk and, well, pixelated (see also why "zoom and enhance' is sci-fi).

For editing an SSD, it means anything that needs to be moved or edited has to have a selection of it drawn out each time, and that selection tool doesn't see or care what's under it. This is further compounded by the fact that in most formats your blank background isn't actually blank - it's white. So if you draw a selection box around a set of warp engine boxes to move the engine, the white space within the selection is moved with it and will occlude anything it overlaps in the new location. There's also the pixilation issue: you can't enlarge anything without it starting to look jagged and blocky, and even shrinking things gets messy.

Vector graphics are for more in-depth, enthusiast/professional graphic work. Rather than just filling in a grid with pixels, it defines things as paths - at the simplest, a line that starts at point A and ends at point B. The line itself can have graphic characteristics for color and more, be a curve, but the key here is that the line itself, however complex it may be, it a singular object in the program. It's not made up of pixels - the program is rendering it into pixels in real time so you can see it on your screen, and it can save the image in a raster format for general sharing/use as well in a vector format. It is manipulated a a unitary entity though.

This is powerful and important for a couple of very important reasons: one, is that they are infinitely scalable, as the definitions of all the paths are relative to each other and not in absolute units. If, say, a fighter graphic needs to be a bit larger on an SSD, select it it, resize it and it looks exactly as crisp and clean as it did before.

Secondly, since a path is a unitary thing, you don't have to draw around it to tell the program what you want to select and manipulate, you just click the path anywhere along it. And you can join multiple paths into a single, more complex path. In the case of a standard 15 box warp engine, you draw four vertical paths and six horizontal paths (using a snap to grid functionality to make them all even spaced), select them all, and turn them into one path - one single object as far as the program is concerned. And now you can just click on that engine and drag it around freely. The empty space in it is also transparent, so it won't occlude anything except with the actually lines itself (unless you decide to shade in the areas bounded by the paths, say with a dot pattern to show boxes added by a refit).

TL;DR: Vector graphics let's SVC play around with the actual elements of the SSD directly and cleanly, raster graphics is more a messily advanced form of cutting and pasting.

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 05:52 pm: Edit

Ok, knowing that vector vs. rastor helps a lot. One of the reasons that I was asking for that kind of information is due to my degree in software engineering (technical data helps me a LOT).
I will try something new when I get home.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 06:11 pm: Edit

Well, my degree is in road/bridge/airfield construction so raster/vector are words I have heard but only vaguely understand. I understand "something I can edit" really well.

If I had a degree in software engineering from 1975 it would be totally out of date anyway. I mean, I was taught Fortran as the latest/greatest thing, with a glimmer of something called "sea" or something like that. Fortunately, road and bridge and airfield construction isn't evolving faster than I could follow. Back when I actually used the degree, I mostly built pipelines, with roads and site prep as a secondary field. I did build a (small) bridge once. I had to keep reading airfield manuals for the four years after I got out of college because if the Army called I was scheduled to go to Stavanger and repair bomb craters in the runway.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 06:15 pm: Edit

My explanation wasn't really aimed at anyone in particular, just more of general "for however much benefit of whomever is reading along and might be wanting to submit their own SSDs someday," so apologies if I came across as talking down to anyone!

By Burt Quaid (Burt) on Thursday, March 04, 2021 - 07:05 pm: Edit

For someone who does not have or can afford AutoCAD would FreeCAD do the job?

burt

By Russ Simkins (Madcowak) on Friday, March 05, 2021 - 06:19 am: Edit

Freehand WAS a graphic editing product used by the pharoah Khofu to build his oddly shaped casino in Giza. Unfortunately, its native file format was proprietary and wasn't widely enough used to merit support by other software past the dark ages (the 90s). There were ways to import Freehand files into newer formats but scarcely anything that would save into that archaic format.
There are loads of software that work and save in various vector formats but I'm unaware of anything that will support saving into mummy/freehand native vector format unless you want to delve into the arcane world of coding libraries.
Time travel might be the easiest way at this point. Be sure to bring a pet cetacean when you time travel, 'cause that's just how it is done.