New Spaceships

My favorite two are the Floran and Glitch ships.

I want to play a Hylotl, so I hope there are customization options available to make their ship less derpy.
Also not digging the red, I might find the whole design more appealing were I able to swap to a softer color.

Really, the eye on the front portion needs to be changed. The perfectly-round dead fish eye look just isn't working.

 

I think I have a vague idea why the human ship looks militaristic. I am guessing it´s due to the tentacles taking over earth, perhaps there was an effort to try and drive an exterminate them from the face of the planet, that failed and eventually you as a player escape in a military ship.
It could have been something that didnt happen over day and night, and it just developed, humanity tried to prepare for it but it wasnt able to overcome the power of the tentacles.

 

The Glitch has literally a Floating Castle! Sweet!

And they look much better now!

 

I tried to stick to 5 max per color palette which is standard to Starbound (3-5 shades of a color, multiple colors, but no real limitations on the overall palette). This includes the human ship which has both a grey and a black palette.
I'd like to some day go over some of the older art and make the colors more consistent but we really just have some "recommendations" for colors rather than any defining palette.

I don't know about obtaining other ships any time soon. The ship upgrades are still planned but I'm not sure if they'll be at the very beginning of the Beta because we haven't drawn the updated ships upgraded yet.

 

Ah I forgot about those. Yes, those resemble the Human ships way more than the Ebon Hawk does.

 

Do you have a template for the ships, that I can use?
I'm tempted to remake my own ship for my race.

 

Oh god. Just when I thought I had decided on my first race, I see the new Avian ship and it blows my mind.

Avians had just cemented themselves in last place, and then BAM I find myself making justifications for them.

 

Great looking ship, but why does the Human ship have two engines whereas all other ships have one? This seems mechanically inconsistent and could be a further problems if ships are upgradeable later.

I'd suggest making the Human ship have one engine like all the other ones. Here's a suggestion how (sorry for my poor pixel skills, it's just a rough example):

 

There's not really any strict template but adding your own ship isn't too hard. Especially since I can do it as a non-programmer.
Basically you draw your ship. The inside is still based on an 8x8 grid so keep that in mind (but can have a custom shape). Then there's a small png based on that same 8x8 grid where using specific colors (their exactly color code) you can define the borders/floors/etc of the ship, place objects in the ship, etc. Then there's a json with easy to understand stuff to alter the objects, color code, ship positioning, etc.
Once you get used to that if you have the time you can drawn your own ship that is completely different than this one, with a different inside and with a different object spawning within, blablabla.

3 parts.
The ship.
The png that defines where everything is.
The json.

Because I deemed it so!

 

Dude look at the heavy front end. It NEEDS two engines

 

Also this is a militaristic type ship, you will need more thruster power due to the weapons and ammunition.

Plus we are not seeing the ships from the right angle, perhaps the other ships have 2 engines, but we just cant see it from this position.
They could be side by side, like something similar to this ship here

 

Yea in all honestly the Floran ship just killed the race for me haha.. If i can speak freely i think the Florans are more categorized as a "Feminsh" race not the man eating plant race that i was hoping for. The reason i say this is because they Florans have little Male looking foliage and the ship is pink with flowers going around it.. Time to jump ship! into a new starter race haha oh well

 

Sure, but in this case, I'd adjust all the ships to have a variable number/shape/position of engines. Then it's natural for every ship to be different. But when 5 out of 6 ships (all from vastly different races) have exactly one engine, shaped almost exactly the same, and placed in exactly the same spot, while a single race has 2 engines, it just looks inconsistent.

Good point, but being this is a 2D game (a constructable sandbox 2D game, no less), it's an inherent assumption that everything "important" is always visible in two-dimensions (or more strictly, several 2D layers: foreground tiles, background tiles, and far background (planet/sky). Imagine if we had to treat the rest of the planets as 3D - all the common building/mining process would be undermined (pun intended). Your 2D house, for example, only makes sense if you don't assume its just the front wall to a 3D house, with the other 3 walls missing.

Unless the engines are designed to be strictly decorative with no functional use, they should be placed side-by-side as to be visible in a 2D projection.

 

Yeah the only one I don't like is the floran their lore says they are backwards engineering and scavengers, the ship either needs to be
A: Cobbled together from the different ships
B: be so overgrown with plant life that it's almost unnoticeable as to what it was.
C: Built from their own but look more like a floating ramshackle overgrown ship.

 

You mean something like this bro?
Two thrusters side by side

 

So they killed the old crew and took this ship for themselves. Scavenging at it's very best.

Although I do think it would be nice if they had a more unique ship design.

More plants is probably a good idea, but that could be a challenge in its own way.

 

That would be piracy, scavenging, they came across a battle site/ space ship graveyard and put the working parts together.

 

You say potayto, I say potahto.

Maybe they "repaired" the old crew away.

 

But this would be ultimately my suggestion in order to make it feel like the human ship does not look more powerful than other ships due to having two engines. The solution is to have a big engine, but slightly smaller than the other ones, and two very small engines that are there just for added acceleration and top speed.



It will still look inconsistent with other ships, but overall the difference is not as big as having 2 engines.