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Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds

 
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Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 3:55:36 AM   
SeanD


Posts: 1574
Joined: 3/2/2006
Status: offline 		Get a sneak peek at the huge amount of modification and customization available in Distant Worlds

Matrix Games and Code Force (www.codeforce.co.nz) are proud to release a preview of the customization guide for the hotly awaited 4X real time space strategy game, Distant Worlds! The several page PDF document is available for download from the Distant Worlds downloads page.

Distant Worlds is a vast, real-time, 4X space strategy game. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game.

Vast galaxies are made to order: up to 1400 star systems, with up to 50,000 planets, moons and asteroids. Galaxies are so deep, fun and immersive that you won’t want to finish the game... Build, expand and improve your empire endlessly. The galaxy is packed with life and activity. Encounter other empires, independent alien colonies, traders, pirates and space monsters. Explore star systems, asteroid fields, gas clouds, supernovae, galactic storms and black holes. Discover evidence of civilizations long since past, uncovering secrets about the galaxy's troubled history...

Best of all, you can play the game your way: enjoy a quick, intense game in a crowded galaxy or take your time in an epic game spread across a vast galaxy!

Get more information on Distant Worlds from its official product page and be sure to check out the new preview of the customization guide!

_____________________________

Sean Drummy

Marketing and Press Relations Manager
Post #: 1
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 3:58:37 AM   
lordxorn


Posts: 768
Joined: 12/6/2009
Status: offline 		SWEET!! Can't wait for first week of March.

(in reply to SeanD)
Post #: 2
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 11:11:43 AM   
Xmudder

 

Posts: 119
Joined: 2/15/2010
Status: offline 		Does a 100 in ship maintenance mean all ships are maintenance free, half as much, or twice as much?

Can you customize your own race in game?

I like the super goodies your race can have access too.

Also like that caution and aggression are two seperate values.

I look forward to the release.

(in reply to lordxorn)
Post #: 3
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 11:15:35 AM   
Epsilon

 

Posts: 81
Joined: 11/20/2009
Status: offline 		Very nice guide! - the possibilities seems almost endless :)

(in reply to Xmudder)
Post #: 4
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 1:40:41 PM   
Sarissofoi


Posts: 329
Joined: 2/1/2010
Status: offline 		Look great.I must say that I am impresed by this.
Hopes for the best.

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Post #: 5
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 6:23:32 PM   
drillerman


Posts: 455
Joined: 2/11/2010
From: Blighty
Status: offline 		Was reading this today and I have a question.

I see the ship images have to be square and no more that 200x200 pixels. Obviously the ships themselves will be all sorts of shapes within this 200x200 pixel square. What colour would the transparancy part of the image have to be.

(in reply to Sarissofoi)
Post #: 6
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 8:19:57 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Xmudder
Does a 100 in ship maintenance mean all ships are maintenance free, half as much, or twice as much?

When Ship Maintenance Savings are 0 you have no savings over the normal maintenance costs. When it is 100 you then save all the maintenance costs, i.e. you pay NO ship maintenance.

quote:


Can you customize your own race in game?

Yes, all races are customizable and playable - you can choose whichever race you want to play.

(in reply to Xmudder)
Post #: 7
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 8:26:48 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: drillerman
I see the ship images have to be square and no more that 200x200 pixels. Obviously the ships themselves will be all sorts of shapes within this 200x200 pixel square. What colour would the transparancy part of the image have to be.

The transparent part is transparent

With PNG image files you can have full transparency, i.e. alpha channel level is zero.

If you don't have a paint program that supports transparent PNG files, take a look at Paint.Net. It's free and fully featured.

(in reply to drillerman)
Post #: 8
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 8:27:49 PM   
ASHBERY76


Posts: 2136
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: England
Status: offline 		This game could use the graphics mods already used for SpaceEmpiresIV.I think Babylon5 and StarTrek would be awesome in this engine with the scale.

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(in reply to elliotg)
Post #: 9
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 8:42:59 PM   
drillerman


Posts: 455
Joined: 2/11/2010
From: Blighty
Status: offline 		Thanks for the reply. I have been mucking around with some spaceship pictures from Gratuitous Space battles. They are .dds files which I read in IRFANVIEW. I then resizes them to 200x200 pixels and saved them as .PNG files. When I looked at them in Paint shop pro they had a black background. Is this correct or should they have NO background?

BTW, Elliotg, while we are on this thread and no one is listening quickly tell me when the game will be released. Feb or March, come on tell me, go on, promise I won't tell anyone else!!!!!

(in reply to ASHBERY76)
Post #: 10
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 9:06:22 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: drillerman
Thanks for the reply. I have been mucking around with some spaceship pictures from Gratuitous Space battles. They are .dds files which I read in IRFANVIEW. I then resizes them to 200x200 pixels and saved them as .PNG files. When I looked at them in Paint shop pro they had a black background. Is this correct or should they have NO background?

I don't know the details of all of those programs, but PNG files have a 32-bit image depth, 8 bits each for red, green, blue and alpha components. The paint program needs to set the alpha component to zero to have full transparency. Paint.Net (and Photoshop, etc) will display this properly, with the transparent background overlaid on top of a checkered background.

In your case it sounds like one of the steps in the process didn't capture the transparency properly. Sometimes you need to specifically set the background to transparent when saving PNG files. Maybe IRFANVIEW has some settings for this?

quote:


BTW, Elliotg, while we are on this thread and no one is listening quickly tell me when the game will be released. Feb or March, come on tell me, go on, promise I won't tell anyone else!!!!!

"Soon"

(in reply to drillerman)
Post #: 11
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 9:14:52 PM   
drillerman


Posts: 455
Joined: 2/11/2010
From: Blighty
Status: offline 		I just d/l and installed Paint.net. WOW what a great app. It does everything. reads .dds files and saves them as transparent PNG files. good stuff!

Ok, smarty pants, Less of the soon and more of the "oh yeah, no problem, it's out this Friday".


(in reply to elliotg)
Post #: 12
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 9:48:22 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: drillerman
I just d/l and installed Paint.net. WOW what a great app. It does everything. reads .dds files and saves them as transparent PNG files. good stuff!

That's cool, didn't realize it could do that.

(in reply to drillerman)
Post #: 13
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 10:00:06 PM   
Joram

 

Posts: 3198
Joined: 7/15/2005
Status: offline 		I see there's a 20 race limit which is fine but is the race family also limited?  What if I wanted to create an avian species or mechanical species or anything else?  Is that possible?

(in reply to elliotg)
Post #: 14
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/24/2010 11:20:05 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram
I see there's a 20 race limit which is fine but is the race family also limited?  What if I wanted to create an avian species or mechanical species or anything else?  Is that possible?

You cannot currently create new race families. But, in theory the game could handle this change.

After release there will probably be lots of different things that players want to mod that are not currently exposed as moddable. Once there's some comprehensive feedback on what everyone wants to mod - a big list no doubt - we'll go through and evaluate the settings that can be exposed in a text file or the like. Most things are probably doable, but we'll have to see on some of the more involved things.

(in reply to Joram)
Post #: 15
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/25/2010 1:09:36 AM   
shinobu


Posts: 214
Joined: 12/12/2009
Status: offline 		Right here is an example of why I have so many hopes for this game. It's not as much what's in the Customization Guide that impresses me so much, it's that there IS a Customization Guide. You look at the Guide being released before the game, the excellent preview videos, and so on, and it's very evident that the Code Force people have their act together. Go team go!

< Message edited by shinobu -- 2/25/2010 1:10:17 AM >

(in reply to elliotg)
Post #: 16
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/25/2010 12:01:07 PM   
eltharion


Posts: 43
Joined: 2/20/2010
From: 1701-A Deck 5-Room 0195
Status: offline 		As...
quote:

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

This game could use the graphics mods already used for SpaceEmpiresIV.I think Babylon5 and StarTrek would be awesome in this engine with the scale.


I think... in no time we can use a huge mass of ships,races.
Maybe most of the current png files are too small... to be "neat" in game...
but with little effert with 3DS MAX & c.o. (using the p.d. mesh) we can have as many
MOD as "the stars"

(in reply to ASHBERY76)
Post #: 17
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/25/2010 7:47:28 PM   
drillerman


Posts: 455
Joined: 2/11/2010
From: Blighty
Status: offline 		Any know where we can find 2D top down spaceships. I have been resizing the Gratuitous Space battles ships and they look really very good.

(in reply to eltharion)
Post #: 18
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/25/2010 7:54:21 PM   
ASHBERY76


Posts: 2136
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: eltharion

As...
quote:

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

This game could use the graphics mods already used for SpaceEmpiresIV.I think Babylon5 and StarTrek would be awesome in this engine with the scale.


I think... in no time we can use a huge mass of ships,races.
Maybe most of the current png files are too small... to be "neat" in game...
but with little effert with 3DS MAX & c.o. (using the p.d. mesh) we can have as many
MOD as "the stars"


I have never seen a Farscape mod.

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(in reply to eltharion)
Post #: 19
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/26/2010 8:05:26 AM   
Okim


Posts: 209
Joined: 1/29/2010
From: Russian Federation
Status: offline 		What about weapon nodes? Are they also dots of some pure color? On one of the videos i noticed that a ship fired its weapons from two specific points on ship image.

Is there any kind of 'ship type-image size' connection? I noticed that you can pick any picture for any class of a ship. Will an image that was designed to represent a destroyer scale up on larger ship classes?

(in reply to ASHBERY76)
Post #: 20
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 2/26/2010 11:45:32 AM   
Okim


Posts: 209
Joined: 1/29/2010
From: Russian Federation
Status: offline 		What about animated ship images? Can we create animated ships?

(in reply to Okim)
Post #: 21
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 3/8/2010 5:19:28 AM   
Sarissofoi


Posts: 329
Joined: 2/1/2010
Status: offline 		BTW  Question about race stats.
I know that you can giva any race some sor of bonus,
like bomus(cheaper) troops maintance or bonus(faster) resarch.
But it is possible to give a penalty? I mean slower resarch or higher upkeep for troops?



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(in reply to Okim)
Post #: 22
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/19/2010 7:36:02 AM   
DTFS

 

Posts: 27
Joined: 8/6/2010
Status: offline 		one thing i dont understand how do i set which troop image goes to which culture \ nation \ race

(in reply to Sarissofoi)
Post #: 23
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/19/2010 11:18:12 AM   
Igard


Posts: 2282
Joined: 3/29/2010
From: Scotland
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: DTFS

one thing i dont understand how do i set which troop image goes to which culture \ nation \ race


The troop image number is the same as the race image number. So race_1.png would have the troop image, troop_1.png.

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The Picard Era for Distant Worlds

Igard's Romulan Stormbird

(in reply to DTFS)
Post #: 24
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/20/2010 12:45:31 AM   
DTFS

 

Posts: 27
Joined: 8/6/2010
Status: offline 		thanks Go it Now Finally i thought as much but i guess i messed up the image number :\ now its working

(in reply to Igard)
Post #: 25
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/18/2011 10:11:16 AM   
Galsco

 

Posts: 1
Joined: 8/18/2011
Status: offline 		Is anyone aware of an alternate download location for the Customization Guide?
I wish to play around and see if I can make anything neat but for some reason the download for the PDF fails after about 40kb no matter how many times I try it.

(in reply to DTFS)
Post #: 26
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/18/2011 10:33:27 AM   
Data


Posts: 3909
Joined: 1/3/2011
Status: offline 		Hi Galsco and welcome to the forum. afaik there is no other. But I remember I had no problems so I can send it to you. Let me see.

< Message edited by Data -- 8/18/2011 10:36:09 AM >

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...Igniting stellar cores....Recharging reactors...Recalibrating hyperdrives....

(in reply to Galsco)
Post #: 27
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 8/18/2011 10:37:35 AM   
Data


Posts: 3909
Joined: 1/3/2011
Status: offline 		I downloaded it again but it seems I cannot attach it to an email or pm here. pm me with an alternate mail and I'll send it to you.

_____________________________

...Igniting stellar cores....Recharging reactors...Recalibrating hyperdrives....

(in reply to Data)
Post #: 28
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 12/1/2011 6:49:16 PM   
Gray Area

 

Posts: 15
Joined: 12/1/2011
Status: offline 		I too cannot download the customization guide. Could one of you gents send me a copy down the wires?
Thanks,


_____________________________

Gray Area

(in reply to Data)
Post #: 29
RE: Customization Guide Released for Distant Worlds - 12/1/2011 9:20:55 PM   
Igard


Posts: 2282
Joined: 3/29/2010
From: Scotland
Status: offline 		Hi Gray Area, welcome to the forums.

I've PM'd you the file, but be aware this has not been updated for Distant Worlds Legends yet. It wasn't updated for Return of the Shakturi either, but there are still some relevant bits of information.


_____________________________

The Picard Era for Distant Worlds

Igard's Romulan Stormbird

(in reply to Gray Area)
Post #: 30
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