plusnine's Default Pack Extension for Servers and Clients

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    plusnine's Default Pack Extension for Servers and Clients
    utilizing the Starmade Custom textures and block config to extend the possibilities of the Default Pack




    About the Pack

    The pack is made to be compatible with single-player games and multi-player servers. No default game values are changed, and all new blocks exist only in the predefined custom ranges. Great care was taken to ensure balance not just for the server I play on, but to match the vanilla Starmade experience with the notable exception of a few blocks. Blocks included that server administrators do not wish to be enabled are noted and can be easily commented out of the included BlockConfigImport.xml file. This must be done before you launch Starmade!

    Onto some of the features and screenshots!

    New Hulls!

    • Each hull is fully integrated into the Starmade established crafting chain using existing minerals. Three new "Pretty Pink", "Argent" and "Burnished" Ingots (each with wedges) round out this set to expand the color combinations for your ship exteriors! All new hulls come with all five shapes, cut from their primary block, just like default hulls are crafted.
    • 3 new basic hulls: Pretty Pink, Lime and Cream
    • 4 new standard armors: Hot Pink, Emerald, Gold and Teal
    • 4 new advanced armors: Wine, Olive, Rust and Navy

    New Lights!

    • Bottom row: Lime, Teal, Indigo and Pink Lights: Created by combining two rod lights in a Standard Factory. The glass requirement was removed to account for the higher capsule cost of making these lights. They activate, deactivate and work with logic just like the default lights.
    New Animated Decor!

    • RidleyTech, RetroTech and OpsTech monitors are crafted by combining Display Modules with Decorative Charts in a Standard Factory. The animated display appears on all sides, so you will want to close these blocks off for most effective use.
    RidleyTech: Static Monitor A, Static Monitor B, Anomaly Monitor, Distance Monitor, Oscilloscope Monitor
    RetroTech: Server Monitor, Asteroid Monitor, Lifeform Monitor, Assault Monitor, Tunnel Monitor
    OpsTech: Galaxy Monitor, Planet Monitor, Flux Monitor, Warp Monitor
    PN-FONT for Grey Standard Armor

    • Includes A-Z, 0-9, Symbols, and Borders: created by combining Grey Standard Armor with White Paint in a Standard Factory. Characters are printed on a single orientable face of the block. The other faces retain the appearance of Grey Standard Armor.
    Hazard Extension Set

    • Found under the Decorative tab, these blocks give extra life to your hazard displays with Danger, Power, Toxic, Radioactive and Biohazard symbols. these are created from Yellow Hazard Armor in a Standard Factory. No additional materials are required to create the signs.
    Emblems!

    • These uncraftable items are perfect for doling out to prominent factions on the server, or just to use in creative reconstruction projects. Some are from the factions on my server, some are from all over sci-fi, film, TV and video games!
    And more!

    • "Delta" Currency blocks for servers running a no-shop, Metal Grill based economy (be sure to delete or comment these out if you do not want to use them on your server, as they will unbalance a credit-based economy!)
    • Minecrafters Rejoice: Logs, plus three shades of Wood Planks with wedges, created from Wood in a basic factory!
    • Secret Doors: Plex doors with a singe face of grey standard armor! (Crafted in a Standard Factory for 1 Plex Door and 1 Grey Standard Armor)
    • Liquid Water: Crafted from Ice in a Basic Factory, this is water you can move through!
    All this and more, plus 30 texture pack spaces for you to put your server's specific personality into the mix! Learn to texture and block config and do me one better!

    You may not use this pack or any of its contents on a pay-to-play server.

    If you like this texture pack
    You may be interested in some of my other StarMade-related items:


    Credits and thanks:

    • kupu for a troubleshooting and consultation session that went far above and beyond the call of duty.
    • Caumen, spacie, and cpt_Psy for testing things and giving feedback along the entire process.
    • Everyone on Mushroom Fleet who contributed an original emblem design for their faction.
    • the amazing MrDiv for allowing non-commercial projects to utilize some of his incredible animated GIFs on the monitors.
    • The special effects and motion graphics artists and designers who designed many of the emblems and monitor effects I recreated for use in this pack. your work is loved and appreciated by many.
    Known Issues
    • BLURRY TEXTURES: Due to hardcoded texture filters, custom textures have a slight blur at the edges of the pixels and do not appear as sharp as the game's default textures. This bug has been reported to Schine
    • UGLY COMPRESSION MARKS, ESPECIALLY ON PN-FONT BLOCKS: Some blocks may appear with ugly compression marks far worse than the standard starmade textures. To alleviate this, go to Settings -> Show Advanced Options in the Starmade connection setup, and turn "Texture 2D Compression" to "OFF"
    • TEXTURE SWAPPING ANIMATED BLOCKS, ESPECIALLY ON DELTA 1000: Due to a mipmapping bug, the Delta 1000 may texture swap at a distance and appear to "blink". This bug has been reported to Schine
    • CLIENTS DOWNLOAD BUT DO NOT USE CUSTOM TEXTURE PACKS: Due to clients downloading textures but not ultimately using them, players connecting to servers using the pack will need to either move the downloaded textures into their installations customBlockTextures folder, or download the pack from this site and install it manually. Some servers and players will crash repeatedly on attempting to download the pack.zip. Manually installed clients who then reject the server's offer of custom textures will work just fine. This bug has been reported to Schine.
    • INVENTORY ICONS ARE MISSING: A manual installation is recommended since it includes the icons for the new blocks, and the downloaded texture pack does not, requiring the player to bake them in themselves (press Tab+F9, Tab+Left/Right until you find the page you want, orient, and press Tab+Enter to bake your new icons in - find a sector with good even lighting to do this!). A feature request has been made to Schine to include icons along with the custom texture pack and block config files.
    FAQ
    • Q. Are you going to -
      • A: No.
    • Q. I have a server, are you willing to -
      • A: No.
    • Q. I don't know how to use the block config! Will you -
      • A: No.
    • Q. I would really prefer it if the pack contained -
      • A: That's nice for you, but I do not give a fig what you want or what you think of me.
    • Q. Your texture pack sucks!
      • A: Cool. Can't wait to see yours. I'm sure it'll be better than mine.
     
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    Reilly Reese

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    Wonder just how utilized this pack will be. I know some people SkylordLuke Could do with these for special builds and machinima.
     

    kupu

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    Looks awesome. Nice work!

    kupu for an troubleshooting and consultation session that went far above and beyond the call of duty.
    Was a pleasure. Great to see someone make use of the custom textures in such a big way.
     

    therimmer96

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    Will you be releasing the orignal project file (PSD, XCF etc) so that we can make our own changes like our own emblems?
     
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    Will you be releasing the orignal project file (PSD, XCF etc) so that we can make our own changes like our own emblems?
    you are welcome to make any personal changes to the pack you need to, but you don't need my PSD to make your own cutout emblems. to make mine, i just created solid cutouts of the shape / emblem i wanted, and mask-layered them using direct copies of kupu's official starmade texture files. ultimately, if you want to deal with the tangle of what is where in a texture file, you just have to learn how it all works and make a system for yourself. distributing my 500 MB working file is just not a feasible thing for me. i also intentionally left about 30 IDs blank so people could add their stuff in without needing to worry about the tangle of tetras inside animated block frames.

    i've had a few requests for an extended font pack which i will probably release a set of layered PNGs for so people can choose up to four font colors and hulls to print on. (the font is set up at exactly 25% of the available textures and IDs). this file will probably be a much easier jumping off point for major edits to the pack.
     
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    Can we get this added to the base game!?!?! How much does the community have to pay you to get you to release it to schine?!?!??! GAH! NEED ALL THE BLOCKS!!!!
     

    kupu

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    Can we get this added to the base game!?!?! How much does the community have to pay you to get you to release it to schine?!?!??! GAH! NEED ALL THE BLOCKS!!!!
    The majority of these blocks will not be added to the vanilla game in the foreseeable future.
    However, this is in no way a snub on the efforts and quality plusnine has achieved.

    It is because the very nature of these blocks are best implemented in exactly the way plusnine has. As a server side add-on pack.
    Faction emblems, text blocks of varying typefaces and server specific RP elements are and will always be best created per individual server.
     

    Reilly Reese

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    Thing is for a server to use this don't players have to go and install this pack manually?
     

    therimmer96

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    Thing is for a server to use this don't players have to go and install this pack manually?
    No. When you connect to a server running custom blocks, you will get a prompt asking you to automatically download them.
     
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    Thing is for a server to use this don't players have to go and install this pack manually?
    Greetings, Thadius:
    • The server need only install the block config for the back, which adds the blocks, what they are and what textures are to be used to the game.
    • If you install the textures, the server will pack them up and send them to the client. at the moment, starmade clients to not actually make use of the texture packs they download, so you have to install them manually out of your client database folder. these packs are also still missing the inventory icons for the new blocks, so it is recommended that players download and install the pack themselves, and then reject the server's offer of a 20 mb texture pack they cannot use. rejecting a server's textures only needs to be done once, the client will not ask again. This is why i recommend servers ONLY install the block config: save yourself 20 MB of file transfer for every client that they cannot in the end use and just let your players know that you are using the pack and where to download a copy for their client.
    • who knows how this feature will be completed or revised in the future? i have spoken with kupu about getting the clients to use the downloaded packs and the ability to include the inventory icons in the pack that the server sends, so hopefully this can happen. i believe the best way to make this feature a priority is for servers to start using the features that already work, i.e. the custom blocks. the bug reporting on the feature has been rather lackluster so far, so the more the better!
    hope this helps,

    ~pn.
     
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    not sure i remember this episode, but it is pretty good....

     
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    concepting a few interior detail bonus blocks for this edition of the pack. these are emissive mapped indicators that can be toggled via logic to change their state.
    - an airlock indicator, great for door sequences.
    - a ready / please wait indicator, great for logic sequences, elevators, storage operations, etc.
    - working on a 'keyboard' decorative, a few new emblems, and some other goodies as well.


     
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    some color touch ups to make the blocks less confusing and more distinguishable from a distance. here they are next to the build blocks and factories, which they fit in nicely with.

    i also installed their crafting recipes today. i've decided on the following recipe for these five new blocks:
    build block + activation module -> advanced factory

    the new keyboard computer will be very cheap to make, just 10 mesh, similar to many of the colored decorative screens.