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FTL Remastered

Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:51 pm
by Phlakes
ModDB link

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I'm one of the many people who just got the game from the latest Humble Bundle, all my friends enjoyed it, everyone was like "you need to play this", etc. Anyway, I happen to do pixel art kind of sort of for a living so it was on my radar for that reason, and now seeing it up close I realize that the art really isn't very good. Lucky for me all the art is conveniently stored in that .dat file and I've been playing around for a day or two seeing what I can do.

i.e. Image

I'd like to remake everything and make it a big special project but I'm running into an bit of an obstacle actually getting them back into the game, in that I'm terrible with sensitive technical things like that (don't even get me started on Python). So since I'm new I have two questions-

1. Has someone already done this kind of thing? I looked around and there are a couple specific graphics updates but nothing too big that I could find.

2. If not could I get some clear directions on how to repack the art efficiently (I'm using FTL Dat Manager and it'll only do one file at a time, very unreliably)?

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:05 pm
by kartoFlane
Well, let me be the first to welcome you to the forums :)

First of all, I gotta say I'd be very interested in such a mod -- especially from someone who is experienced in the field of pixel art. That Rebel cruiser looks very juicy

Phlakes wrote:Has someone already done this kind of thing? I looked around and there are a couple specific graphics updates but nothing too big that I could find.

Yeah, while there were many mods that attempted to improve the graphical side of FTL, most of them were very small, or focused mostly on backgrounds. Nothing on the scale of an art overhaul, though

Phlakes wrote: If not could I get some clear directions on how to repack the art efficiently

Well, you could pack the images into .ftl files - which are just .zips with fancy extension, to differentiate them. You can read how to create such a file here, it's very easy once you get a hang of it.
These mod packages can be easily patched into the game using GMM or SMM, and are the standard way of distributing mods.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:25 am
by Phlakes
Trying that, everything looks like it's where it's supposed to be but the new art isn't in game. Do I have to do something with an .xml? I checked one of the background mods and they have an .xml in the data folder as well as the images in the img folder, not exactly sure why.

EDIT: Checked another mod, it just has the images. Figures. Still playing around.

EDIT2: Tried making the archive with 7 Zip instead of WinRAR and it's working.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 10:21 am
by Sleeper Service
Always cool to see ambitious new projects!

If you only want to replace existing graphics than you don't need to edit any xmls. The images have to have the same name as the original image and have to be at the same position in the folder structure. You need to mimic FTL folder structure and sprite names in you mod .ftl file so that the mod managers knows which files it should replace.

The sweet little cruiser background image you created there for example goes into the directory img/ship/fleet. You can find out how the original files are named and structure by extracting the entire graphic files, for example with FTL dat. Although you probably already did that to get the original sprites. ;)

I think your project would really be appreciate once finished. It is a little bit of work though. But I guess if you did this stuff for a living you might be able to progress quite fast with it. Editing ship graphic might get a little tedious cause you have to modify the gibs of the ship as well, which is just a lot of copy/past work.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:25 pm
by ehremzeus
You totally fixed that ugly and lame ship. Really good work, keep it up man. I'm looking forward to seeing more progress. :)

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:28 pm
by Phlakes
Wanted to try my hand at something a little bigger, so there was really only one thing to do.

Image

Things like that are actually better suited for vectors or regular full scale digital art, so it would be nice if I could use gradients like in the original, but if I'm trying to keep it consistent I'll need to just get the pixels as close as possible. It definitely shows better in small details than big forms.

Other than that I've been messing with some of the UI (like fixing that ugly ass engine symbol) and doing a few weapons, I might post an .ftl once there's a noticeable amount of progress.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:10 pm
by Seldser
my word that Kestral is sexy,I cannot wait to see what the other ships will look like

keep up the amazing work, I'm certainly excited for your first release

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:46 pm
by Kieve
I have to say, I do like the details on the Kestrel rework, enhanced while staying true to form. I'm not a fan of the colors though - any thoughts on keeping closer to the original color schemes (tan-gray / red-orange)? I'm not so much making a request as just asking why the hue shift.

Mind you I also have the same thought on the bronzed look of the rebel fleet ship, but it's just too sexy to nitpick over.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:48 pm
by Phlakes
Kieve wrote:any thoughts on keeping closer to the original color schemes (tan-gray / red-orange)? I'm not so much making a request as just asking why the hue shift.


The color choice was actually pretty arbitrary, the oranges are from that rebel ship and the greys are from the few weapons I've done (about 20 colors total so far, only 8 in the Kestrel), I haven't gotten around to playing with the pallete as a whole but since I'm trying to keep it uniform it would need to work for everything. The blue/yellowish orange contrast is still kind of nice though, at least better than beige/reddish orange, so I might try to keep some of that.

Re: A potential big art overhaul thing

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:55 am
by CrashSanders
This is simply the greatest, simpliest in it's core mod idea I've ever seen! And what's more: it's completely awesome and totally suitable for almost any mod that does not include new shapes. I'd imagine Sleeper Service's Captain's Edition stations, weapons and such with that level of detail.