Niborande Nightshade
Zandathorn Industries
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Posted - 2014.03.07 09:18:00 -
[1] - Quote
Use the Rigging/Weapon Fitting system to paint ships
No idea if this is suggested before, and if not I do not know why not, for it is so obvious.
But the game has a perfect system to have painting integrated with as far as I know (or understand programming) little effort and minimum impact on the databases and GPUGÇÖs.
If you would create an extra rigging like thing with slots to the fitting of a ship which will hold the paint for that ship it will mean there does not have to be a new ship type ID for every painted ship it just uses the same system as now but instead of showing the much more complex graphical representations of moving shooting missile launchers, rail guns mining lasers, it fills a specific part of the ship with the colour of the paint.
And you can go as wild as you want letGÇÖs say a rookie ship and a shuttle only get 1 slot in the paint rig so they pick 1 colour, a frigate depending on the complexity and tec level 2-4 and the bigger (more complex) the ship the more colour slots till like 8 on a titan.
And each paint slot is for pre designated areas on the ship like something that is now dark gray on a caldari ship is 1 slot and the light part is slot 2 and the rest stays the base colour.
To make it so you use the philosophy larger ships need higher ISK to fit, use a system that uses amounts of paint to fill a slot, like it would in the real world 10 l for a rookie shipGÇÖs details and
10.000 l for a titan, so only if you got enough paint you can finalise the paint job
You can use like 1 l of a paint to preview a paint job, but to get the paint job done, you need the specified quantity of that paint in your hangar, before pressing the paint button (yes a new button in the fitting menu) but it does save with the fittings so a corp or alliance can easily spread a saved corp fit with corp colours to its members.
Now to monetize it just make blueprints to produce the paints.
Keep the high quality ones in the aur shop (and plz do not specify the $ costs just tell ppl they can pay plex/ISK for them as well and leave it at that so you do not get the riot from a few years back)
Like for the aur shop: the Blackest black, whitest white, gold, silver maybe even pure red, green, bleu etc so these are the premium paints (T2 or T3)
For the LP shops: use the npc corp colours to sell at their shops but if they use black, just make it greyish and if they use red make it duller in colour so like these are common colours (T1) and this way players that want to produce a specific colour have
to get LP with a NPC corp that sells that colour paint blueprints
So the making of the paint is regulated by the blueprints, the different amounts needed make it a titan costs more to paint than a frigate. Now to keep the paint flowing and the market healthy paint is used up in a paint job, so for each new ship or repaint you need to get the required amount of paint. (only preview uses 1 unit of a paint)
If you sell a ship on the market you have to repackage it so it has no damages and no paint job (that is lost in the packaging process, if ppl want to sell painted ships use the contract and trade systems.
If you want to remove a paint job just repackage it, if you got rigs on it you want to keep, use the needed amount of paint but now a paint remover or transparent paint (an extra but low cost commodity).
So this way you do not have to have tons of different ship models or IDGÇÖs for each paint job, older API systems like kill boards keep functioning because the just show the base model till they update their systems to handle paintjobs, your GPU just uses the base model only fills specific parts with a colour specified in the paint GÇ£rigGÇ¥.
And while you are at it add a decal rig as well :)
Use blue prints to give 4 types of decals T1 corp decal, T2 aliance decal and T3 personal and special decals.
Depending on which one you fit in the decal GÇ£rigGÇ¥ the basic empire icon, on the ship, changes to your corp logo, alliance logo or special logo like a pirate faction.
The personal logo is prob a bit more work for you would have to have a place where you store personal logoGÇÖs for a palyer (these are made in the same way as the corp logoGÇÖs so no flying obsanities but just a bit more personalisation).
So when flying for letGÇÖs say an alliance with a bee in the logo, it can paint their ships yellow and black with the alliance logo on the side.
Now if someone would drop the alliance/corp to a NPC corp te paint stays but the logo changes to the empire logo (if an alliance decal is fitted) or to the new corp if a corp decal is fitted.
But a like with the paint "rig" a corp or alliance can easily save a fit and then, mass fit corp ships in the colours and logo of the alliance or corp.
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