Hey Matress,

Yeah, Game relevant data that helps improve game play.

CB

Hmm interesting. I know this is a prototype, but i'll state the obvious about it; 1) remove the lines, and 2) give it a background. Otherwise it looks pretty good...although i'll admit I initially thought the first one was a front-on view of a weirdly-proportioned Ambassador class ship at first...

That's because the new numbers for pop cap make the homesystems start with more than 100 pop...
My explanation was correct, trust me.

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Page 2
Part2: -> Part 2:
Part3: -> Part 3:
areas of game. -> areas of the game.
Galaxy shouldn't be in bold.
Remove the period at the end of the System Management description.

Page 10
(for the last turn). -> (for the previous turn).
"You get more if you start at higher levels." : Currently, not true. Don't know if that'll change though.

Page 13
Selection of station to build is limited to stations available at the time (tech).

Page 18
"Dry docks for ship building are built in the build queue. As technology advances, dry docks have increased capacity for ship construction. Eventually 3 can be built at a time." : This is a little confusing. Shipyards are built in the build queue, each one has a given number of Docks according to their tech level/size. IIRC the # of Docks is 1/2/4 for Basic/Medium/Advanced Shipyards. That's how many ships the Shipyard can have being built at one time.

Page 24
Page 25 should be in bold.

Page 26
"Credits are used for diplomacy and limited purchases of technology (to rush their construction to completion)." : I don't particularly like the term purchase of technology. You are speeding up the building of structures.

Page 27
GALAXY DISPLAY -> GALAXY Display

Page 30
quadrants. of the galaxy. -> quadrants of the galaxy.

I must say, you have beautiful manual there, Bashir

.iceman - You're amazing. I scoured that manual. The really neat one was the hyphen that was bold.

Zeleni - Thanks, coming from an artist like you really makes it a compliment.

Matress - Yeah, the lines are supposed to go. Right now, I am making progress on texturing but am not there yet. At this point it looked better with the lines. I was also thinking about how the originals had the green polygon structures in the background.

Captain B.

Yeah, I like the green lines of the originals as well. It's like the object in the images are works in progress, which I suppose the pursuit of technological progress always is.

It was a nightmare cleaning up those original images so that the transparencies that you see in Supremacy would work though.

So MOE, YOU cleaned up the images? A very nice job and a lot of work I know.

Anyone: help me build a list of accepted game features (the ones not yet in the game) to include at the end of the manual.

CB

Yeah, I manually cleaned up the images myself. I copied them into Micro$oft Paint, cleaned them up pixel-by-pixel, pasted them into Irfanview, applied the transparent colour then saved them as .png files. I'm still making improvements to them over time as there are still some dead pixels. My most recently updated image is the Acamarian Sovereign's Palace, which I cleaned up (For about the sixth time) last week. I'm a bit nit-picky about pixels.

Here's a before and after of the work I did on the image last week. I keep backups of pretty much everything game-related on my computer. I've removed the transparent colour so you can see the difference more easily.



In the game itself, the blue-and-red nebula background shows through any transparent (White as above) areas in any images, so if you see any BOTF-derived images in the game, have a closer look at them.

Nice work MOE

What program (Oops you already said Microsoft Paint - do you mean the Paint program that comes with Windows?) and command in the program do you use to paint the NULL / no picture / white part of the image? Are you just painting it like you would paint a color? Are you painting one pixel at a time? I have never been able to locate this function in the paint programs I have. The Starfleet emblem to the right of this post is an example. What I would REALLY like to do is be able to pour the null with a "paint area" (often seen as a pouring paint can) command.

CB

Yes, I use the Micro$oft Paint program that comes with Windows. Click on the icon that looks like a pencil to draw one pixel at a time.

To make the background transparent, I first had to ensure that every single pixel that I wanted to be in the background was the exact same colour, so I drew over each pixel in a colour that wasn't currently in use in the picture. (Such as bright green). I then used the fill tool to change the background colour to black. The hard part was ensuring it was a shade of black that wasn't already in use in the image, or those extra pixels would be included in the transparent colour, resulting in the broken pixels that you can see in the first image I posted above.

Once i'd done that, all I had to do was copy and paste the image into Irfanview and save it as a .png image. Irfanview then asked me during the saving whether I wanted to add a transparency to the image, and I simply clicked on a background area of the image to make all pixels of the exact same colour invisible.

Paint cannot save files in the .png file type, nor can it apply transparencies. I simply use Paint to edit/manipulate the images. That's actually how I did the animation for my avatar as well. Jigalypuff was the one that actually made the little guy. I wouldn't have a clue how to draw anything like that.

I use GIMP for the ships and stations on a transparent background png in game images. It is a free download and has functionality closer to Photoshop than Micro$oft Paint.

In the case of models the ship is viewed in the 3D model program on a colored background where the background color is not found or trace present in the model. Take a screen shot of the model. Open GIMP and create a transparent layer. Past the screen shot over the transparency and then select the background color in the pasted image. Clean up the selection at the edges and delete the selection. There is your ship on a transparent background. It is a little more complicated than that to find all the buttons but the process is that simple.

GIMP is a more powerful graphics tool than Paint. I also use GIMP to do all the weapons fire, glow and glare in the png images. It makes them look hot.

With the Galaxy comment I meant this line in the explanation of Part 2 (Page 2):
Galaxy Management – Everything done in the game’s galaxy



Page 9
sector population -> system population

Thanks .iceman, it's done. Me and proof reading skill -- not so much.

Should I look in some database for accepted features not yet in the game?

The energy research station I am working on is getting better.

CB

@Bashir, it's minor thing but on page 17 of manual you have screen capture of supremacy with wrong bunker network image, what i mean is it looks wierd cause image of bunker network is a photo instead of cpu generated image. I know that isn't your fault just looks odd to me so replace screen capture with another building. Otherwise very very nice.

The image is correct, although it is being used for the wrong structure. It is in fact a render that someone made rather than it being a photo - in fact Captain Bashir made it himself. He's been learning how to use Lightwave and i've been giving him ideas to improve the image via email.

The structure that this image is meant for is the minor race Hardened Bunkers. I've got the image saved in my Supremacy images folder ready for any future updates I send to Mike, and Dafedz has included it in his database as well. Since Mike hasn't released a game update since May though, it hasn't yet been released to the masses.

You can find information on the minor race generic defense structures and their images on Dafedz's latest database update, which you can find Here. Note that some of the images are suggestions by Dafedz though and aren't yet official.

It's not render defenetly, it's photo image edited in photoshop if it is render then textures used are photos.

Sentences in parenthesis should not start with capital letters IMO; MoE thinks the opposite.

Page 2
Three times the same text in green in a small area is a bit overkill; Part 2 doesn't have any of those titles either... (yet, maybe)

Page 3
Introduction -> Introduction: [missing colon]
Page 23, Page 24 and Page 28 should probably be in bold
The numbers in green, not sure they're necessary

Page 4
"worm hole that would either jump them to a distant sector of the galaxy - or destroy their ship."
Maybe it's me, but shouldn't either the word "either" or the hyphen/minus sign go?

Page 26
Assigning Trade routes -> Assigning trade routes

Page 28
Mentions the base growth rates; somewhere (Part 2?) it could be explained that a system's growth rate is the average of the growth rates of all the planets in it, taking type vs race into account

The manual changes are in. I also bought Adobe Acrobat Pro and used it to convert the file instead of NitroPDF. To my surprise four things happened. 1) Conversion was quicker, 2) the file was 1/4 to 1/5 the size when done 3) it retained the attractive shadowing effect in my Word 2007 source file and 4) it's sharper. Adobe, there is no substitute. So check it out.

Zeleni: Updated the Orion emblem in it. Also working on a CGI version of the bunker.

Captain Bashir

Thanks, it looks great.

Page 13 looks weird, "Construction ships can" section - it's broken up.

Page 28, table 3, the line is weird.

Page 3
word CHAT shouldn't be in bold

Page 11
sector / system -> system [redundant]
Assigning a Trade route -> Assigning a trade route
word CHAT in the bottom is broken up into two parts
Information on trade routes is kind of duplicated with page 26

Page 20
remove word "Bonus" in "Bonus research capacity..." (or replace word "aided" with "granted" or something similar)
remove parenthesis in "(or race equivalent)" for consistency

Page 27
The AoI doesn't stop at 300, some systems have more than that.
Scan range isn't limited to 1/0 for HW/colonies; building scanners in systems increases it; I'd remove the part about coinciding with initial AoI, might not be true in the future.
GR is only the average after the main planet is full IIRC, up till then it's the main planet's; can't recall if it's only for Ideal planets though; also don't know if it's intended or a bug.

Ooops. The corrections have been made. Didn't catch the format issue. I am not sure I fully follow your last comment on Page 27. I may not have it right. On the redundant trade route section, the text will become more unique as Mike enhances the programming.

Kenneth_of_Borg: Thanks.

CB

For example, on the homesystem, GR will be 5% up until the home*world* is full, then becomes the average for the system. I think it used to be like that, not sure now. Never understood if it was a bug or not though.

You've got to be really observant to catch a "bug" like that. I added what you said.
Captain B.

Hehe, you have no idea.

Sorry to go back on topic


Page 9
in center of the red area -> in the center of the red area

Page 26
more ships mean -> more ships means
sector's population -> system's population

Page 30
right side justification

.iceman - Good spotting (it's done) and yes, I am actually feeling guilt over having started a 2D image thread in the manual thread (even before you said it). Is there any way to move all the posts to a "2D research" Images thread?

Threads split. The images and posts are now located in a thread called Tech Images.

...And for .Iceman's information, the forums are backwards. The posts that get split are those that haven't been selected instead of the ones that have been. Odd system. Anyways, all sorted now.

Thanks for cleaning up my mess. CB