So… here’s something new.
While working on something totally unrelated* I saw how much wing shapes opened up spaceship design, and I thought damn, I wish I’d known that when I built Captain Forever. Then I remembered that I’m still building Captain Forever, in so much as I’m rebuilding it anyway. So I added space wings! Of course, space wings make no sense and decorative modules would starkly oppose the CF design, so… they’re shields. Which totally works. Think of them as ablative shielding for re-entry, serving double duty as laser fire absorbers. They’re lightweight and can take a lot of damage, but you can’t anchor other modules to them so they don’t replace girders. I think they’re pretty neat!
These won’t appear in Captain Forever Trilogy: Captain Forever because I want to keep the CF module pool constrained, but they will appear in Captain Forever Trilogy: Captain Successor and Captain Forever Trilogy: Captain Impostor. Also apparently I didn’t think ahead when naming any of these things.
After adding the shielding I saw opportunities to revamp or completely redesign other modules, so I’ve been sweeping through the module list doing exactly that. You can see here that I subconsciously copied the rounded girder shape from Remix, for example. Sorry about that Dean & Brian! Most modules have simply been tweaked to add variety of line intensity, which adds a surprising amount of texture to the screen. A handful of others either looked weird in the new renderer (eg bubble shields) or have always looked a bit terrible in my eyes (eg torpedo launchers), so they’ve been redesigned completely. I’m super happy with the results. It’s weird, but 7 years on CF is finally starting to look like it did in my head back when I started building it.
<3 Farbs
* Or maybe it’s not unrelated. Either way, it’s a surprise :)
Haha… the heart module’s little red weapon stalk drawing through the girder is burning my eyeballs. Luckily _I_ know that I’ve fixed it already. Now the stalk disappears whenever there’s a module there.
Ooh, digging the new look! Also, these wing shields are a great idea
Look forward to seeing what’s next. Probably PlayPen 2.
Haha. No, not PlayPen2. Probably. Though I do have some thoughts on that…
CFT:CF, CFT:CS and CFT:CI?
…even as acronyms they sound long. I guess that doesn’t really help much!
Take out the second C and it’s a bit better.
I think it sounds best if you just make Captain Forever Trilogy an acronym and take away the first “Captain” in each subtitle.
CFT Forever*, CFT Successor, and CFT Imposter
*Maybe “Original,” but Forever works
We need many more unique parts like this…have you ever thought of borrowing ideas from Remix or just straight-up brainstorming? I’ve already got some concepts in mind, and I’d be glad to share them with you.
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http://endless-sky.github.io/2017/04/04/timeline-of-ship-graphics.html
Its good to see that you’re alive Farbs. Any news on Dawnstar? Just really hoping to see build 9 in the near future.
Last I knew, TDS had been shelved in favor of a Captain Forever collection to be released on Steam.
Besides, it’s been two years. What would a “build 9” even be at this point? To me that would be like expecting Half-Life 2: Episode 3 to come out still.
@Chris K Build 9 would be an update for DawnStar. Maybe fix the Chrome transparency bug, or the scroll bug. Yes, it’s been non active for a long time, but Farbs is only 1 man with many dreams. My dream is a completed Captian Jameson (now dawnstar), which is why I became a supporter all those moons ago.
Hope we’ll see more DawnStar, pretty much been my favorite game for thr better part of a decade. I bet supporters would chip in financially or with coding help or if it would get us more updates…I would.