Check out Crayon World, a site providing Free Graphics Stuff for people who wish to design race packs or just draw VGAP artwork.
To paraphrase a contributor to the VGAP4 discussion group (sorry, I've lost the source):
To create a new race you need:
- an interesting idea to make them different;
- Lots of graphics - for each ship, 3 fighters, 3 ground units, a race leader, a race logo, and up to 3 ground structures.
You should come up with ideas for unique abilities for your race, then you can ask Tim about what it is possible to do. And finally when version 4 is out and Tim has time to start making the race packs he will program the stuff needed for your race in, that way no one can make a super race that will ruin the fun of the game.
Note: there's at least one prototype race out there where the creator is poor on graphics and the drawings are simple line drawings. I actually found this reassuring - I've had a number of ideas for new races but thought "nah, I'd never be able to produce decent pictures for it". If the idea behind the race is intriguing enough, but you have no artistic ability, why not release a race pack anyway?
All pictures are at 160x120 resolution. I'm told Paint Shop Pro is good at smart resizing of pictures if they are too big. Nevertheless, getting the right level of detail and keeping them photorealistic is very tricky.
Most people making race pack pictures use POV-ray, a free graphics package. I've tried it, and I've tried some front end software like ac3d and Moray. In the end the "easy GUI" front end packages just added another layer of complication and wouldn't do what was needed. To my surprise I found that graph paper, and scripting POV ray (which has a simple English like syntax) was the most straightforward way of creating graphics.
Martin Lorenz commented on the above: "POV-ray is not too easy to learn (at least I hadn´t the nerve to do so...). Painting the ships by hand, scanning them in and then inversing the colors (can even be done with MS Paint) does wonderful results. Of course you need to choose your colors for painting very wisely... ie choose the inverse colors that you wish your ship to have. Examples for this technique are most of the Arborian vessels...
For making the midi there´s a midi program called Noteworthy Composer from ZDnet. It´s shareware and has a lot of nice features. But the non-registered version only allows a person to save their work 10
times.
Concerning the custom structures... Yes, they will have a power switch, but Tim woud need to add code to Planets4.exe to add a possibility to set a level. So in reality I´ve never seen a new race structure with a setting level... friendly (or command?) codes would be the solution in case of need."
Each ship requires 4 pictures at 160x120 resolution. These are: front and top view (rarely seen in the game); off-side angled view (the normal one); and energy view (don't worry about this, Tim will make it in a few minutes by some kind of colour processing of the top view). This is where a graphics package like POVray comes into its own. You might spend along time painting, or whatever a beautiful offside view. Then - argh! - there are 2 more views (top and front) required, and who wants to spend ages on them when they'll only be looked at occasionally? POVray and other graphical packages allow you to look at your model from a different angle quite easily.
You only need one picture of each fighter and mech unit.
Each race, in addition to special abilities, has 0 to 4 special ground structures. (It may share these with other races, but the point is not ALL races have them.) Special structures include:
- Resort
- Labour Mine
- Labour Camp
- Smuggler's Cantina
There are about 26 common ground structures. A race can be designed so that it can build any of the common ground structures, or none of them. You only need one picture (160x120 again) of the round structure. Race designers may want to note - they will need graphics; there is an option of giving the custom structure a power switch and a setting level. These custom structures are now part of the race pack file.
Custom structures can not be captured by an enemy race, common structures can be.
Races can live in asteroid belts.
Q: How many new races will there be?
A: From Tim: Earthers, Controllers, Others, Confederation. Ie 4.
