It's that time of week where it's time to talk about how we spent our time
during the week! 
Since March is looming which means our work on the Beta will have to wrap up
pretty soon, I spent most of my week trying to finalize some important GFX, as
well as look forward to future graphical related projects!
#3 - First we have a test that I did to see how well Corel would work for
making Ship Textures.
The current problem we have is
that, to get all the textures into the game without certain Video Cards
exploding, we have to bring the texture size down a bit more than they were
intended to be viewed...a mistake that I think anybody new to 3d design can make
0 
The result is that, when in-game, textures that used to look nice and crisp are blurry and hard to distinguish.
What we're hoping to do is utilize the genius of vector graphics to make
textures that can be exported at any size and still be nice and crisp, opposed
to the pains of down-sampling.
#2 - Second we have some new icons for the new Planetary Management screen.
As much as I loved PaulK's
Pink
Smiling House image, I think these are going to fit the art style a bit
better
#1 - Finally we have, IMHO, one of the more exciting revelations I've
experienced during GalCiv2's development.
As we've talked about before, Ship design is one of the big new features we're
working into the sequel. Not just weapons, engines, and such, but also
Structural Attachments ("Bling") that can drastically alter the way your ships
look.
Our plan was, If we make the system work properly, we'll be
able to get away with only having 5 styles of ships, each with their own unique
"Bling". By mixing and matching Structural Attachments, we'd be able to
design very unique looking ships for all the different races.
This was all hypothetical...until NOW!
The above image is actually 3 of the different ship designs we
made for the Beta. None of these will probably make it into the final game
(we haven't even started designing the Human Style Ships), but it's nice to see
how much of a difference Jewelry can make. Several of the same Hull Types
were used between the races, but with the change of colors and the different
Jewelry, I don't think most players would even notice.
And, If I may be so bold, the ships look better (or at least as good) as the
pre-rendered ones from GalCiv1!
A very nice validation that the ship design mechanic is
heading in the right direction