Easiest way is just to stand back and Alt-O to save the blueprint but that doesn't always take the best pic. The more involved way you take a pic and manually replace the default screenshot with the one you want to use. First take a good pic(F7 key for screenshots). Then open that pic with an editing program(I use IrfanView) and change the size to 800x450. Next save that pic in the blueprint folder of the item. The path will look something like: D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Empyrion - Galactic Survival\Saves\Blueprints\76561198064185582\Name of Your Item Make sure the file type is saving as a jpeg. The names must also be the same. With IrfanView it defaults to .png so I switch that to jpeg in the save window. Then I click on the jpeg file already in the folder(the one I'm about to replace). That changes the name of the file I'm saving to match what's in the folder. Now that everything is set correctly click save. It asks if I want to replace the current file. I double check everything is good and then click yes. Look at the blueprint in game and its pic will be updated with the new one. Publish it. Done.
Bricks are practical. They work! He just wanted something that didn't look like one. He had an idea in mind but was having trouble translating that into the game. Spheres and curves are a lot more difficult to work with. And I'm not knocking anyone's building skills! I was just a little dismayed because he said he needed help polishing off a ship and turns out he needed a whole ship built. When it comes to building stuff it helps me to have an idea in mind and a picture to work from. I look for inspiration online a lot. One of my recent builds I documented some of the build process. It started off as a series of connected boxes that I sculpted into the shape I wanted. The boxes are helpful for establishing the rough dimensions of the vehicle but it can change as I go along. It's a process and there's a lot of trial and error involved. I'll borrow good ideas from others all the time if I see something clever and I've come up with my own little tricks and ways of adding detail. This one was going to be a Y-Wing until I started playing around with the wing pieces. I liked how that looked so I kept them and finished off the ship using design elements from Klingon ships. Spoiler And that's how you go from Brick™ to Not A Brick™. Which I'm getting better at. Some of my early stuff is pretty cringe worthy but sometimes I manage to nail it. Getting better at doing that consistently. I'm a lot better at adapting existing designs(like the Y-wing conversion) than coming up with a completely original idea. The very first thing I ever made was an adaptation of the Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. It was better than what others had done at the time but eventually someone came along and blew my version away(so I updated mine using their ideas). The stuff you find on my workshop are the ones that got published(and like I said not all of those are that great). What you never see is the junkyard full of stuff that didn't make it.
We all start out with the brick I remember mine still haha, I also remember thinking how daunting a task it looked to try and build ships with angles and curves, it was actually the good old tier 1 sv which taught me a simple and easy method of making non blocky design, going through long corner A,B,C,D in sequence in any direction keeps them alligned without having to rotate the blocks, this pattern can then be repeated to ones hearts content in any direction then learning a few other helpful blocks that can be used in conjuction with the 4 corners pattern, once I discovered this I made the DSS an old sv of mine with a cv counterpart, looked awesome though with the corner block work. Basically I made a CV version of the tier 1 sv and that was how I realised the blocks were just placed in a row in order to make patterns. It was like unlocking the secrets of the EGS building universe haha, well at least some. Most of my current boat hulls use the 4 corner sequence to make the hull.
What? Removed? Is it something with my PC that the link isn't taking me to a beautiful new BP? I was so looking forward to checking it out. As for bricks, sure my first designs looked like they were out of Minecraft. But they weren't what I considered bricks even though they lacked angled and curved blocks. It would be nearly a year after starting the game that I would start building my first brick. The SV docked to the CV here, that is a brick. Very big SV brick. But, hey, it flies! Now I have a very long list of things I plan to build so it will be quite a while before you see this CV and SV on the workshop. My favorite part of the SV is the staircase I had to create, because SV don't have stairs or elevators. Oh, and I affectionately call it my "Flying Brick" but it's official name is Carri-On C (for cargo as I plan to have a passenger variant as well).
Honestly looking at a freshly dropped core still intimidates me sometimes. It's like looking at a blank canvas. Sometimes I don't know where to begin. In a way it's like drawing and one of the things you learn is that everything is just a series of simple shapes connected together: ovals, spheres, triangles, squares, and rectangles. You can reduce anything to these simple shapes. The Y-wing is just a series of rectangles placed next to each other. A little rounding turns a couple of those into engine nacelles. A few angled blocks and you have the nose and cockpit, etc. You refine the shape as you go like a sculptor working a block of stone. Spheres and curving shapes are tough. One thing that's helped me(in addition to modifying other people's designs) is looking at some of the imported models people have made to see how a computer algorithm translated a sphere into blocks. Can't say I've mastered it but it's given me ideas.
I have the Steam overlay enabled and take a screenshots using F12. Steam gives you a .JPG (not a .PNG) file. I then rename the .JPG file and copy it into the blueprints folder.
So after a few days of fiddling around, I managed to whip up a lvl 3 base I was reasonably happy with. Welcome, ladies & gents, to Sirocco: I tested it out in my survival game, managed to squeeze it onto the highest peak on the map. Makes for an excellent vantage point, though there's a spaceport not too far away that I'll have to deal with eventually. Drones immediately took interest, but the sentry guns put them down with ease before they ever got near the place (with hanging positions from the landing pad, the guns had excellent firing position down the mountain, whereas drones apparently don't know how to shoot upward). All in all, I'm sure there's a few kinks to work out and I'd like to make it a bit cheaper, but it makes for a great little starter - will definitely be using this again in the future.
Well that cv i did in between the large cv... worked a Little bit more at it, and here it is… My first 'scientific' CV: Parallax Spoiler: some pics
Aaaarrrgghh, I didn't realise it did that. I updated the blueprint with a new picture (thanks everyone for the help) and it must have changed visibility to private. Should be OK now. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1524938421
Couple pics. It literally started life as a brick. He wanted guns all around the front. I was going to attach them but that was extra weight so I made them into 'drones'. Added some nacelles to the back. Mostly decorative but they do add some additional armor along the flanks. Spoiler An older prototype. I was being silly. Now that his version is done I'm making a modified version that will be a little more pve friendly, ie adding a hangar, venting thrusters externally, little bit more of an interior instead of solid metal. Moving some of the generators/RCS/fuel/thrusters into the nacelles. Still has a nice solid chunk of armor up front with some decoy fuel/power gens and a couple layers of armor everywhere else.
I finished the base finally, i was working on. By converting it to an POI for @Sephrajin POI challenge, i realiced that EGS wont let me publish bases with Admin Core. Does someone know how to circumnavigate this? Non-POI version: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1526328037
The problem I have is the picture for me is always taken before the the BP screen has been derendered. If they would add a .5 sec delay it would be better. Annoying to have to stash a bunch of separate beauty shots lol
A fun picture montage for you: Introducing, The Death Roller "The new way to assault an enemies base" (its easy to miss though) Steam Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1527528870
This Looks very promising, cant wait to check out the adm version! The only way to 'publish' adm cored blueprints is to share the according epd file directly. <EGS Install Dir>/saves/blueprint/<steamid>/<Blueprintname> hth
