Art again.

[Arne]

I guess I moved back to more realistic proportions. I like MoO1's playful comic style (X-COM did it too). I was thinking I could maybe adapt some MoO2 designs. For the silicoids... there could be a sort of bearded variant. I'm thinking... their bodies/shells vary a bit (Caddisfly larvae houses?). The Alkari, Bulrathi and Psylon are a bit harder to explain. Maybe I can use some MoO2 design elements for their armour.  The MoO2 Alkari could maybe be a parallel species on the same planet... more lizard-like. Haven't touched the Antarans. I suppose the MoO4 ones are kinda neat. Read something about them being morphologically similar to the Trilarians. Haven't seen a good full body shot of the Antarans though.
The MoO1 Mrrshans look a little bit like... kangaroo-cats, but I'm not sure if I want to go there.




Hey, you guys are from the wrong universe! Maybe a distant relative.




Some more polish on this piece, though the GUI elements are pretty random. Just searching for an overall feel. In 1920x1200 you have a lot of screen estate with today's big crisp screens. MoO1 interface is pretty good, I'm just missing a turn log listing (of the Master's popups etc), and a field for showing the current overflow feature of the sliders (SHIELD, T-FORM, SOIL, UPGR, etc.). Sometimes it's hard to know if there's something available. Saw there has been a few open source versions which could be good reference if I ever decide to do something myself (harder now with the active IP I guess). I've been playing the GOG version (it still has that High Master ending bug... something to do with sound card?).


Lastly, another ship experiment. So many ways to approach ship presentation. A slight angle like this maybe. I kind of like the MoO1 ship designs. It might be possible to get some variation out of them using a colour layer for faction flag colour. Makes for 864 ships though, but most of the work is the line art (144) and not the flat colour layer which could possibly be indexed and baked on boot.



Edit: GOG MoO possibly has more bugs than "abandonware" version... AI pops suddenly going down to 21. Sliders getting stuck on MAX instead of RESERV. Silicoid eco sliders shouldn't perhaps be settable via the new tech screen. Can't select planet after selecting enemy fleet, have to select my fleet first. Mouse sometimes/often doubleclick (unsure if my mouse or not).

[Jeff Graw]

This is all super awesome, and I'm sending you a PM

[Arne]

I started working on the star map generator some year ago. One thing that I wanted to do was to give each map more character. It's fun to set up a game using various parameters, but it kills some of the surprise for me, and maybe takes away from the challenge. So, I'm actually taking away all of the control but a few parameters:


Game length: Essentially map size. It's important to be able to choose a quick or long game.

Advantage: After map generation an algorithm will try to judge what position the various factions are in and if there's a fit for the chosen advantage. If not, a new map will be generated. The player does not get to choose race and there is no AI difficulty setting. Instead a player choosing to play at a "massive disadvantage" is likely to get a weaker race and a poor starting position compared to the (strongest?) opponent. I feel that this approach will be able to preserve the integrity of the various alien personalities better. 

Weirdness checkbox: Some of my star cluster shapes are weirder than others. Other things can be weird too, like lumpy faction starting positions, planet type distribution, maybe some strange tech advantage. These add up to a total weirdness factor so you don't know what weirdness you'll get.

Seed: Useful for shared games. Possibly including bitflags for the above parameters.

Attached screenshot of my simple prototype. I just added some range circle function because that's a helpful feature, early game at least. I think MoO is stronger on smaller maps and this one is a bit large, mostly to show variety.

[Arnuz]

Fantastic art!! And good ideas on the map generation bundle with difficulty.

[LordKane773]

1. Impressive! please do continue I want to see more.


2. now for the nitpicking (not about your art ) The GOG version of MOO is 1.3 and just packaged with dosbox, so any bugs present are present in the 1.3 version of the game.