Using Stock shipsets for PBW games...
 

Ok, You ever have one of those moments where something occurs to you and it's so simple it's like "Well Duh! <Smacks head>"? I had one of those moments today.

Something that comes up a lot in PBW games is how do you determine what shipset a player is using so you don't try to use the same one? Not a problem if you are using custom shipsets, cause you can select the shipset you are using when you upload your empire file and it will display it on the game info screen. But if you are using a stock shipset, what to do?

You can type the name of the shipset in parenthases with your empire name. Kind of bulky, but it gets the job done. You can have a list in the game forum, but you know how well that works usually.

So my idea today was to upload the stock shipsets to the PBW file library with the custom ones so each player can select the appropriate one when they are uploading their empire file. That's a waste of PBW resources, so instead of that what I did was make up a bitmap that has images of the 20 stock races and uploaded that 20 times and named it the various stock shipsets. "Stock Shipset - Abbidon", etc. The bitmap may come in handy if you aren't sure of the name of the shipset, but know what it looks like. (The lizard guys...) It's small if you want to download it, it's not neccesary to download it if you don't need it.

Anyway, use it and enjoy it. Hope it helps. It's not a required that you use it, but it's there as an option to help avoid confusion.

Geoschmo
PBW Admin Team

[ 02 April 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]</p>

Re: Using Stock shipsets for PBW games...
 

Good idea. I have always wished the stock shipsets were in the list when uploading your empires.

Something that would make that picklist easier: Sort the shipsets alphabetically. It is hard to find the shipset you are looking for. And when the shipset is not in the list it is especially hard to determine that.

Which brings up my next point...what's the possibility of adding all the shipsets that came on the Gold CD to PBW? I decided to use the Ghizrea shipset from the AndresLescanoRaceStylePack.zip in a game and did not see it in the list of shipsets on PBW. I imagine there are others...

Re: Using Stock shipsets for PBW games...
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Bman:
Something that would make that picklist easier: Sort the shipsets alphabetically. It is hard to find the shipset you are looking for. And when the shipset is not in the list it is especially hard to determine that.

Which brings up my next point...what's the possibility of adding all the shipsets that came on the Gold CD to PBW? I decided to use the Ghizrea shipset from the AndresLescanoRaceStylePack.zip in a game and did not see it in the list of shipsets on PBW. I imagine there are others...<hr></blockquote>

Yes, alphabetical would be easier. I am not sure why it's not now. We are looking into that. One thing I do that works though is if you click in the shipset name box and then hit the first letter of the shipset you are looking for a few times, it will toggle through all the shipsets starting with that letter.

We would have no problem with someone uploading one or more of those shipsets to the file library. Normally all we ask is that you get permission from the author. I don't know if being included on the CD could be taken as permission or not.

As far as uploading all of them, I would just rather people upload them as they need them, rather than put a bunch on there that people may or may not want to use.

Perhaps the various shipset authors and collectors, Andres and others, could put someting on their websites or in a readme file that it is ok for you to upload the shipset to the PBW file library. Or you could email them and ask. I am sure they would appreciate the feedback and would like knowing that people are using them.

Geoschmo