yeah, somebody's here just shoot your questions

cool i was hoping there would be someone around ... i need a program thats easy to use to make ships for starlancer and now that i beet it ( with a regular old preider no less) also for freelancer sence im geting it on friday. i have never done this before so it would be nice to be able to maybe just tweek some already created ships ... thanks

well, first, you can tweak the stats of the ships (what weapons they use, how fast they are etc.) with the programs available here at TLR.
To make real new ships, you need a 3d-modelling software (I've heard that Blender is a decent freeware modelling program.
You also need a 2d graphic program like photoshop or paint shop pro for textures.

well i suck i have been trying but i cant figure it out ... oh well i beet starlancer the other day and i want to get free lancer so ill just have to play that now

If you really want to model, then try and try and try.
if you look at this pic
(the first starlancer model i ever made)
and this

you'll see that no one is born with those skills, but if you try hard, you can learn them.

Ok say you already have your model and texture made how could you put it in the game?

ok, you first need the model in .3ds format (if your 3d program of choice doesn't support exporting to 3ds, try deep exploration to convert it), and your texture as 256x256 bitmap using the SL color Palette (.pal file comes with SLEdit).
Get the latest SLEdit and 3ds2sl.dll, install them, and then use SLEdit to convert the ship and import it

RubberEagle, I am sorry for such a basic question, but I am trying to learn how to do this. I would like to add to the community.
Please explain more about the need and the usage of the SL color Palette (.pal file comes with SLEdit). Thank you.
---MadMark

here's basically how i made the textures:
I first made the textures in a 2d drawing app like paint shop pro or photoshop with the standard RGB color set (=without changing anything. just new image, and on to the drawing).
then, when i had finished the texture, i would apply the SL palette.
you have to set the color-depth to 8 bit indexed and then you'll be prompted do tell your program where the .pal file with the colors you want is. load the .pal file from sledit (there are 2 files, just try with wich your textures look better (on a case-by-case basis).

now this method has a big flaw: when you do the textures, you'll probably use lots of colors that aren't on the palette file. The sl palette file is rather limited in colors to the greyish and brownish spectrum.. (no really nice red or blue or yellow or green, only those dark shades). The result often looks nowhere as good as the original, and sometimes your program uses a "wrong" color (means that there or other colors in the palette that you would rather have used).

the only way to circumvent this is to apply the palette BEFORE making the texture, but in most apps this will limit the functions available to you.

what i probably should mention too is that there is the possibility of using 24(?)bit textures. but the importing in sl is a pain. normally, with the8-bit textures, SLEdit creates the green briefing textures for you on the fly. but with the 24 bit textures, it doesn't. so you have to create your own g_texture1.bmp and manually import them.
also, the 24 bit textures will have quite an impact on performance... (though maybe not as much on todays machines)

I hope that helps

Thank you for the information, this explains a great deal. I tried to apply the .pal, but I must be a bit of an idiot. I am using Photoshop 7 and I can't figure out how to apply the .pal to my texture. I can't find any information on the web that talks about this ether. I find this strange; I never have trouble finding information. Perhaps I don’t know enough to ask the right question. Is there a tutorial out there that gives a step by step for Photoshop?
What I did was create a texture that was 8 bit, 256 by 256, and I thought I was done. Do you think it is possible that Photoshop doesn’t do this? That can’t be.
---MadMark or should I say Mark the confused

I'm pretty sure that photoshop can use palettes, i'll check when i'm home and have acces to PS

ok, i've checked.
go to Image->Mode->Indexed->Custom->Load
That should do it.

T H A N K Y O U ! ! ! ! ! !



---Mark

you're welcome