First of all, hi everybody, I'm new to the forums, so I hope I'll... enjoy my stay, lol! Let's get down to business, shall we?
Ever heard of [b]Freelancer[/b]? Well then, imagine a 2D version of it, packed with everything you might like; ring any bells? Ok, if not, associate these words into one concept: non-linearity, a huge world, full of explorable solar systems, the RPG elements couldn't have been better somewhere else, the world is at your hand, be what you want, from a space pirate that disrupts superluminal trade lanes within a solar system so as to lay his greedy hands on the precious cargo of a freight train, to a "profiteur" mercenary or honest (or maybe not so honest) merchant, who lives his life by trading dozens of various "en-gros" items. What will you do next? It's up to you. It's the universe of possibility!
Now that I've set up this brief but, I believe, very self-explanative description of my project, I would like to get straight to the point: I already benefit from the services of a very generous compatriot spriter, but the work laid on his shoulders is a little too great for us to finish in record time (his spriting and, afterwards, my programming). I think he uses Corel and Photoshop for his spriting (I don't know for sure, but, if you're interested, I'll get him talk to you, so you can discuss various concepts and issues), but you should really talk to him for further info. Basically, spriting about 35 or more ships would/will take him about 2.5 months, which isn't that much but quite frustrating at the same time, if you consider the amplitude of the project.
As a little side-note, most of the time, you'll be talking to my spriter, so you can work together on the sprites, that way you can finish working on one particular element faster.
[b]SO[/b], I need a spriter (if there's anyone out there willing to accept the challenge) than can take on this project while colaborating with the other one (lol, nice word mixing I accomplished here), which can [b][u]sprite[/u][/b] virtually every space object imaginable (or, at least, some that are included in this list), as follows: ships (ranging from light fighters, to medium, heavy, very heavy, cargo, dreadnought, battleship and so on (I'll show you some guideline examples)), space stations (bases, small orbital stations etc.), celestial bodies (asteroids, ice fields, planets, gas giants etc.), space backgrounds (this is rather optional, I mean, these are rather hard to accomplish, I guess) and so on, and so forth.
Any help would and will be appreciated, but please, post only if you're interested and you consider yourself in. I mean, I don't want middle-progress abandons.
Also, please note that, apart from a generous amount of text about you in the Credits section of the game, I can't offer any payment, as I'm rather poor (lol, so true lately) and my currency wouldn't possibly suit your needs. Just be glad I posted this small paragraf of info !
Data concerning sprite sizes and so on will be posted aswell. I'll be posting more info every now and then, so as to keep you updated. Thanks for the help!
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
Okay, so, as I promised, I'd be back soon posting (not so) detailed information about the actual spriting job. So here goes...
Mainly, here's an example of my spriter's work. How should I put this?... PLEASE keep in mind that this is just an example of a cargo ship (that my spriter, Buster, made), named Clydesdale. The colour needs to be changed to something orange-to-brown-to-gray, and maybe with a white pattern on top, the cockpit is not finished (it will be located on the very nose of the ship, in a somewhat spherical manner, the engine exhaust flame will be made in game accordingly with the current speed of the ship etc., and the whole thing is about 50% finished, so the final result's going to look good, at least for my tastes:
So you've seen the basic shape and size of a cargo ship. Let's say the approximate size of a cargo ship is around 300 by 300 pixels, with variety allowed.
I haven't got an example of a fighter ship yet, but the largest of them all should have a maximum size of around 200 by 200 pixels, so we can have a nice aspect/size/applicability ratio between the ship itself and the actual game engine.
Next are the various battleships, dreadnoughts, service ships, train ships and so on, and I expect a battleship to be very large, about 2000 by 400/600 pixels in size (and yes, that "600" is the width of it), so we can all have a big "WOW!" whenever we're getting close to one of these. Keep in mind that this is going to be a dockable (as in, you can dock with your fighter/freighter on it) and probably static object, so it'll be easy to create.
Here's a pack of the fighter and cargo ships that I want to include in-game. Note that these are 3D models in pictures, use them as guide-lines, so you can make out the basic shape of each ship, ok?
I'll include a picture of the battleships, dreadnoughts etc., but later on.
Solar Stations? Well, these should be big aswell, around 2500/3000 by 2500/3000 pixels in size. Note that it would be best these came in separate parts, as it's both easier for you to create them and easier for me to "assemble" in-game. And by parts, I mean you can actually have them "module-structured", like space stations really are in reality, I reckon you get my point.
Planets? Huge. 20.000 by 20.000 pixels in size, you name it! They can vary, from tiny asteroids, to medium moons, to enormous habitable planets and inhabitable gas giants. The planets are a crucial part of the game, so... good luck! (this goes for my current spriter aswell, lol)
That's about it for now, I hope you're satisfied .
One last thing, d'you have an MSN ID? Or maybe an Yahoo! Messenger ID?
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
Ok, I've just had a talk with my spriter, and we've decided to have a radical change in our plans: the size of the sprites!
Until now, we've thought of big sprites, like the one shown above; that cargo is about 300*300 pixels in dimensions, and it's pretty big. We've decided to make the cargos min. 100*100 and max. 150*150, and the fighters will be smaller too, varying from 60*60, up to 100*100 max.
This is actually a very good change, if we consider gameplay and other game aspects. This means battleships won't have to be that big and so on. I hope you guys can help now !
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
Actually, apart from the fact that this is a huge project, I don't know. To burst your bubbles, there's already a spriter working on the job, and he's not the type of guy that would say "gimme a game engine first and then I'll make the sprites", you know?
Enlighten me.
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
um, i won't bother reading the whole post, but i heard you mention a 2D version of Freelancer. There actually aldready is one like that called "Escape Velocity", a friend of mine has got it and it rox! I think you can download it for free somewhere, just google it. But i think it's only for macintosh (he uses a mac)so you could always make one yourself, like you said so we can enjoy it.
A lot of people mentioned Escape Velocity Nova, I downloaded it and looks nice. Eh, imagine the fact that my game'll have bigger sprites (read up for info), surely much bigger planets and so on (want to keep some decency in size ratios), the same movement engine and a lot more RPGiness and so on. So, yeah, I guess I can manage all that, plus a little bit of multiplayer ! (by the way, EV is not only for Mac )
As for my avatar, the ftp where I hosted it got deleted (the server admin had a fight with the provider etc.), and, about large amount of text, I guess smart people have to read it .
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
Lol, I guess, because of the fact that I recently downgraded the size of the ships and all, I've replanned the size of planet sprites, which will be about 1500*1500 or much less, it depends on how things evolve, battleships will be much smaller, around 600*200 in size...
A 20.000*20.000 image, in *.jpg format... I think that's smaller than one gigabyte... but, anyway, I was wanting to say, I'm not a pretentious fag, but I think you're a smartass one.
By the way, I think I'll downsize the big objects, even more, but I surely won't make them as small as the ones in EV, lol, those are liliputan-small, lol! But yeah, smaller's better sometimes !
Edited by the Author.
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
Regardless of what format it's in it's going to be taking up 1 gigabyte of ram at runtime, alone. Having lots of big images at runtime even if its 1500x1500 now is going to kill peoples computers, and the download size. You should make the game at a low resolution so you can have stuff that takes up the whole screen without being so resource intensive.
OH, and by the way, people, it seems I have found another spriter, which is actually from Romania aswell . If he turns out eager to help on the project, I'll be keeping you up-to-date with info and I'll be requesting some tech help, if necessary.
Thanks anyhow! The fact that my posts didn't go unnoticed (in both (good and bad) ways) means a lot to me.
In every moment, pretious life is drained from our souls. It's shame that, upon the point of acknowledging this, there's nothing much left of us anymore... (Saadi Golestam)
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(this goes for my current spriter aswell, lol)
Edited by the Author.
