The ASCII Coalition (for AZ to use in SEV)

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

AZ once said that he wouldn't mind using ASCII Art shipsets in SEV, as long as the gameplay was good.....

Well AZ I don't know about the gameplay but here's your ASCII Art shipset: the appropriately named ASCII Coalition!

(note: is NOT intended for use in the game. Are text files, not BMPs.)

(note 2: Only got all ships, mine, sat and fighters. Still need to do troops and WPs. Don;t think I'll do things like fleet/unitgroup and such. Not neo-standard but that may eventually come.)

edit: clarified something I think most people didn't get.....

[geoschmo]

You should redo these into 128x128 bitmaps. And invert the colors, white on black. Then they will work in game and look fine.

[geoschmo]

Also, if I may make a humble suggestion. The Carriers look like they are carrying a bunch of letter I's. So why not make the fighters be letter I's? Same with the troops, they could be O's, small o's and larger O's.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

It was meant as kind of a joke, but thank you for taking it so seriously Geoschmo.

I don't think it'll ever become a real shipset, as I'm terrible at pictures, but you never know.

The reason the Carriers carry letter I's is that I thought that could represent fighters well, while the actual fighter portraits would display actual differences (the wings might be folded while they were on the carrier). The letter O's on the transport are not troops, they're meant to be some sort of cargo container or oil drum. The CL carries some of them to transport raw materials to use in the construction of the early colony. The /\ || shapes in the CL are meant to be insulation domes, with cargo being carried inside.

Troops and WPs may be coming up soon.

edit: Btw, does anyone know how to invert the colors? Please note I only have Paint available, and perhaps PowerPoint if necessary (as it can also be used for "graphic" editing, if you can even remotely call it that)

[Suicide Junkie]

MSpaint -> Image -> Invert Colors (CTRL-I)

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Tried to make bitmaps out of them, but sorry. The first ship I tried (Escort) became a jumbled mess.

Ctrl+I worked though. Thanks. I'll remember that.

[geoschmo]

I was able to get the smaller ships into paint just using a screenshot of the text file and pasting it. Then you can crop by draging the edges in or modify the attributes to get a 128x128 bitmap without changing the image at all. The problem is whith the larger ships they don't fit on a 128 square so you have to do some reducing. That's when it got jumbled up.

Someone might have a more sophisticated imaging software that can reduce them without distorting the image. Or you'd have to go into paint and create them on a smaller scale by painting individual pixels. It wouldn't be true text ASCII, but it would look like it.

Probably more work than it's worth, unless someone was suficently ammused with the idea to put the effort into doing it.

Oh, wait. You might be able to open the text ASCII files using word or something that can reduce the onsceen image without distorting it then take a screen shot of that and paste it into paint. I'll have to give that a try.

EDIT: Yeah, that worked to a point. It's certainly less distorted than resizing it in paint. It's recognizable as the baseship. But it lost a lot of detail.
[image]http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/uploads/341314-ASCII_Baseship_Portrait.bmp[/image]

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Hey Wow Thank you Geo that looks great..... Will try it sometimes, when posting goes slowly here!

[Suicide Junkie]

Or, why not just use a smaller font to scale them down?

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Would you believe me if I said that that honestly had not occured to me yet.

Though I do think that some of the finer points of the ships are lost when scaling them down.