VBAM Games Forums

Posted: **Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:09 am**

Here is a teaser of the almost finished Ship Generator.

All the hard work is done, just working on the interface and the ability to save ships

Posted: **Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:13 am**

Now that looks really good

Posted: **Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:59 pm**

Any chance for having a a single colum of complete stats on the Top of this, like what is found at the bottom of the SysGen for inhabited worlds. Actually, you could put the full stats on either the top or left side; it would allow for quick comparisons. Just put the 2 vessels displays one on top of the other (either printed out sheets or on 2 windowed screens), then slide the top page down a tiny bit (or right if stats are on left side). You would move it down just enough to get the row of stats for both showing and use the top sheets' stat identifiers for reference.

Edited to add this:
This wouldn't be useful on most mobile apps , but would just be cool if you were on a larger screen, or had printed the vessel stats out. and wanted to compare you new designs vs your old one. Or compare your ememy's ships vs your own designs to get a quick understanding of which areas are each designs strengths and weaknesses.
There may not be enough ststs for this to be NEEDED, buy I just love to compare things in a visually easy manner, what do you folk think?

Posted: **Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:55 pm**

Instead of CT, Construction Time, in the upper part, why not use BT so it matches the Built Time listed in the lower part? It also gives a different starting letter for that stat so there aren't so many things starting with C and is easier to identify at a quick glance.

--Mav

Posted: **Sat Sep 17, 2011 5:51 pm**

OK .. here is a beta version to play with. It lacks the ability to "save" the ship design and doesn't yet handle maintenance numbers below 1.

http://vbam.spellbound.co.uk/2eshipgen/2eshipgen.html?scale=20

First off the only working parameter so far is &scale= which will set the slider scale. This is helpful where you know your biggest shipyard for instance can only make ships of size 30 and therefore you will not need numbers above 30 or so. The scale maximum limit is around 400, which should be enough for all but the largest ancient empire super ships.

There are two approaches you can take to design, firstly you can spend points on all the interesting items you want and then alter construction cost to meet the "overspend" shown in the Mass units box.

The other is to set your spending limit in construction cost first and then choose your items required to meet the "underspend" in the Mass units box.

You can see below the first MU box on the left shows "overspend" .. the one on the right shows "underspend".

To increase the value of any attribute you can select it from the drop down list or click on its box.
This will then make the "slider" in the middle of the screen represent that item and you can slide it up or down. It also responds to left/right, up/down, mouse scroll wheel commands or if in a touch environment just slide it with your finger.

The plan will be to generate/save a URL which will enable you to get back to any ship design as you require.

In addition when finished a stand alone / downloadable version will be made for mobile devices.

Have a play, but remember its still in "Beta" and as such things may well not work the way you think they should. If you have any comments or suggested changes please don't hesitate to make them known.

Posted: **Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:15 pm**

I liked it, It looks to be a bit faster than the spreadsheet I'm using, but it also doesn't look like it has ALL the special techs (but then again you did warn that this is a beta)

Overall I liked it.

Posted: **Thu Sep 22, 2011 4:24 am**

Very, very cool. The only feature request that I can really see is that it would be nice if the MU number or box would turn red when the maximum number of mass units is exceeded to make it more obvious when you've reached illegal design territory.

Also, I am not sure if the generator is calculating maintenance cost correctly. You only get charged for the mass units that you actually use, so a unit that uses fewer than its maximum can end up being slightly cheaper to maintain than a unit of the same cost that used more mass units. This becomes more pronounced at higher tech levels when players have oodles of mass units to spend on a unit's design.

Posted: **Thu Sep 22, 2011 1:40 pm**

@ BLHarrison : I have now added all the items in the current PDF that had MU cost

@ Tyrel Lohr: I added the MU colour change when over the limit and moved the small indicator higher. I also adjusted Maintenance to be on MU used, rather than construction cost. Is it round down, round up or round nearest?

Here is a list of all current items in the Ship Generator. I would appreciate it if you could look through and see if there are any errors so I can change them.

Code: Select all

Name					   	      MU Cost per
'Construction Cost',              1                                         
'Tech Level',                     1                                         
'Defense',                        1                                         
'Anti-Ship',                      1                                         
'Point Defense',                  1                                         
'Command Rating',                 1                                         
'Anti-Fighter',                   1                                         
'Armor',                          0.5                                       
'Armored Batteries',              2                                         
'Artificial Gravity',             0.25 * C$               
'Assault',                        1                                         
'Atmospheric',                    0.5  * C$               
'Auto Repair',                    5                                         
'Battle Satellite',               2                                         
'Blockade',                       1                                         
'Blockade Runner',                1                                         
'Boarding',                       1                                         
'Bombardment',                    1                                         
'Bulkhead',                       0.5                                       
'Cargo',                          1                                         
'Comm Jammer',                    3                                         
'Communications',                 2                                         
'Deception',                      0.25 * C$               
'Decoy',                          0.25                                      
'Electronic Warfare',             1                                         
'Electronic Warfare Attack',      1                                         
'Electronic Warfare Protection',  1                                         
'Electronic Warfare Support',     1                                         
'Expendable',                     0.25                                      
'Farming',                       10                                         
'FTL (Starship)',                 0.5  * C$               
'FTL Tuner',                      0.1  * C$               
'Gunship',                        1                                         
'Hangar',                         1                                         
'Intelligence',                   1                                         
'Interceptors',                   2                                         
'Intergalactic Drive',            2                                         
'Jammer',                         1                                         
'Launch Bay',                     1                                         
'Launch Bay',                    10                                         
'Jump',                           1                                         
'Mass Driver',                    5                                         
'Medical',                        2                                         
'Ramming',                        2                                         
'Repair',                         3                                         
'Science',                       10                                         
'Scout',                          1                                         
'Shield',                         1                                         
'Shield (Reflective)',            2                                         
'Shield Generator',               2                                         
'Shield Projector',               1                                         
'Shield Resonant',                2                                         
'Siege',                          5   
'Suicide',                        1   
'Trade',                         10  
'Training',                      10 
'Transporters',                   2

Posted: **Thu Sep 22, 2011 1:59 pm**

The mouse cursor for all the clickable/editable stats is pointer, except for DV. I'm guessing that's an oversight?

Code: Select all

#topboxcdollar, #topboxtl, #topboxas, #topboxdf, #topboxpd, #topboxcr[??, #topboxdv??] {
        cursor: pointer;
    }

Posted: **Thu Sep 22, 2011 2:30 pm**

Worse .. its a spelling mistake ... I have it as #topboxdf ... should be #topboxdv!

Thanks

Posted: **Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:56 pm**

Latest Version uploaded ...

http://vbam.spellbound.co.uk/2eshipgen/2eshipgen.html?scale=20&cc=5&tl=3&dv=2&as=3&pd=3&cr=3&arm=4&name=Dread

As you can see I am almost done working on the saving and loading mechanism. URL attributes for all the various pieces of technology are created and working. I only need to hook up the "Finish" button to make it work. But as its midnight that can wait till tomorrow!

In addition a help mechanism has been setup ... if you double click on the Armor button or the DV button it will popup a help screen describing the relevant system / attribute. As with most of my work double tap on touch based devices is done, however I have no Android device so if someone could test the double tap and report it would be helpful.

Example below

As always and comments / questions welcome.

Posted: **Fri Sep 23, 2011 2:27 pm**

Wow way cool!

Posted: **Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:34 pm**

I opened it up on my Droid 2 and the double tap works fine. What doesn't seem to work is any way to close the popup and return to the form without closing the whole thing out.

Posted: **Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:37 pm**

Thanks Charles, there should be a small circular X in the top right (as seen in the picture above) ... is it not there ?

Posted: **Fri Sep 23, 2011 8:22 pm**

It's there, but when I tried to touch it, the screen was registering the contact with the underlying form instead of closing out the popup. May, honestly, just be a feature of my big ol' fingers.

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