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[_DivideByZero_]

Last time you saw me working on this guy:


Now I'm working on this little gunship thing:



For this game:



I'm trying to make this part:



In the front look angled like this:

_______
............\

Instead of curved. It IS supposed to have a port for a forward gun, though.

I personally think the back looks too flat, but making that appear higher might make the front look flat in comparison.

[Shook]

Oh snap, that's very nice! Not exactly an aerodynamic design, but who cares, there's no air in space.
Anyways, tips on making things look angled and flat: Don't use a gradient. I personally use a single color to represent a set angle, which can then get steeper or shallower, resulting in a more or less obvious border between the two. What i also do is highlighting the corners that bend away from the camera, so to say, and darkening the ones that bend towards it. In your case, it'd be highlighting, since the proposed corner is bending away from the viewer. And in terms of brightness, the brightest parts should be the ones being hit perpendicularly by the light, but you already seem to know that. So, example of what i mean, because i ramble so much:

This looks curved away from the viewer:


This looks angled away from the viewer:


This could potentially look like it was angled towards the viewer:


However, it's hard to show properly without a bit of perspective meddling.



And that's about it, as far as my limited knowledge goes (i don't shade with the light source coming from the camera, ever). Excellent eye for details you've got, by the way. c: (feels like i've said that before, but hey, it's true)
You could probably omit the corner highlight/darkening, it's just something i do habitually.

[_DivideByZero_]

Yes, I noticed that making the gradient less... gradual did make it seem flatter. Thanks for the help!

[timotheus]

Holy crap that is awesome. Reminds me of spaceships from Master of Orion 2.

Have any more information on the game it's for?

As an aside, do you do contract work?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

this reminds me of battleships forever

[Rexfelum]

Reminds me of spaceships from Master of Orion 2.

Heck, reminds me of spaceships from Master of Orion 1.  Blue flag, medium ship type.  Maybe red flag.  Only way more complicated.

--Rexfelum

[_DivideByZero_]

this reminds me of battleships forever

That's actually partial inspiration for what I'm planning. My next priority is having sections with individual vitals such as crew, power, armor, etc.

Holy crap that is awesome. Reminds me of spaceships from Master of Orion 2.

Have any more information on the game it's for?

Spaceship rpg, inspired by freelancer and DF. I plan to have a persistent world that changes as the game goes on, but it's my first project so this might take some time.

As an aside, do you do contract work?

Nope. I don't "work" yet.

[Neonivek]

Pretty good.

I'll be doing some of my first pixil art eventually... I've been sort of dreading it as I actually have to hit a certain quality level (For my point and click)

Now of the two I think the smaller ship is the better one.

[_DivideByZero_]

Now that I'm doing stuff at college... I actually have less time for games because those usually need a continuous bloc of time (at least, the games I play do). This means I'm getting a lot more work done on the game.

Hence, this:



I'm mainly working on a catalog system so I can have a variety of different effects (create_bullet, create_particle, etc) attached to different weapons, changing their stats, barrel positions, types of attacks, etc. While I don't have collision checking yet (I haven't added ship sections and per-object parenting yet, so I'll wait until then before getting into collisions and stuff. Then after that I can make everything moddable via text files to make developing content easier.

[miauw62]

Hehe, Shook, looks like angry laser space is getting competition

A little question on the game: can certain ship parts break off? Because that would be awesome, even if it only had the effect that the gun doesnt work anymore.

[_DivideByZero_]

That's exactly what I plan (BSF style sections). It's not really that hard to do, programming wise, and it allows for more playable ships (and customization options) since sections can be reused on different ships. I'm not sure if I'm going to go for a basic approach where you purchase ship types and can't swap out sections, or a limited one where you can swap side-pods and weapon racks, or maybe add some kind of shipbuilder in which you can put together a ship from sections you store in a garage (perhaps there can be a shipping time based on where you keep your parts that affects how long it will take before you can pick up your new ship from the shipyard. If you're a pirate who shoots down ships and brings them in to a pirate shipyard for parts, it wouldn't make sense for you to be able to covertly use those sections at a Centauri Royal Navy shipyard).

[Shook]

Hehe, Shook, looks like angry laser space is getting competition

Hardly, they're two different genres (this is more strategy-ish, right?), and this looks like it'll blow ALS away with no competition whatsoever. :U

So yeah, if that slightly covert compliment didn't register, looking mighty fine so far. Quite high density of stars in the background, though i realize that it's hard to keep deep space interesting. Lovin' the boolit effects as well, kudos on them. c:

[_DivideByZero_]

Hehe, Shook, looks like angry laser space is getting competition

Hardly, they're two different genres (this is more strategy-ish, right?), and this looks like it'll blow ALS away with no competition whatsoever. :U

So yeah, if that slightly covert compliment didn't register, looking mighty fine so far. Quite high density of stars in the background, though i realize that it's hard to keep deep space interesting. Lovin' the boolit effects as well, kudos on them. c:

The stars are just 3-4 layers of starfields with parallax effects. If they were all individually rendered, it would definitely be cool, but it would also be really, really laggy. ^^

When I work on worldgen though I might have nearby star systems show up as large stars in the background.

[SHAD0Wdump]

Excellent spritework. You definitely have me fascinated with this game you are working on...

[_DivideByZero_]

I got a little test demo ready--nothing but mechanics, but I need feedback on how the controls are and how maneuverable ships are, since most games don't use fully newtonian motion, especially RTS's. There are 200+ ships scattered around the place for testing purposes, so tell me if your FPS drops below 60.
There are no collisions yet, so if you shoot do it to look at the particle effects as the bullets don't actually do anything yet.
I've added engines to the ship so you can see how they thrust properly when you turn/strafe.

The game starts in "command mode" where you can select ships and move them (one of them is the "Player" ship, but is unmarked at the moment) and pressing Enter switches to direct control of the "Player" ship.

Other controls:

WASD-move in direct control
H-Toggles Weapon Arcs in direct control mode
Space-Toggles "Free Flight"
Z-Toggles SpaceBrakes™
Right Click-Shoot
Numbers-Switches weapon groups

Right Click-Give order to ship in command mode
Double Right Click-Gives selected ships "manual override" which causes them to not stop and stabilize their movement before going to the spot you clicked.
Shift-Queue multiple orders
Ctrl-Makes it so you don't deselect all other ships when left-clicking.

Download

EDIT: That, and I need to see if it works on other people's computers...