Answers to Ship Design/Factory Questions
Q:
I'm having a problem designing custom ships and using
the Factory. Is there additional information and newer tools that might help?
Q: Are there any more ships I can get for
use with Inner Space?
Q: If
I make custom ships for Inner Space, how do I share them with other users?
Q: I want to draw new ships for use in Inner Space.
How do I go about doing that?
Q: The big
ship doesn't show up or the colors are wrong for ships in the Factory. What could be
wrong?
Q: I
get a message saying my ship is too large, but I checked and my ship is smaller than 45
pixels high and 4 frames wide. What else could be causing this?
Q: I've
made a new ship, but it doesn't appear in the Factory Add dialog. What's the problem?
Q: If
I just want to create custom versions of existing ships, what can I customize?
If All Else Fails..
If you have not found the answer to your ship design question on this page and you
do not have the Ship Builder's Kit add-on,
you really should get the Ship Builder's Kit for $5US. It has a lot of information that
answers even more ship design questions and makes it much easier to make great ships as
well as share them with others and import other user's custom ships. Go to the
product page for details about the Ship
Builder's Kit and the online order form to order it.
If you still have an unanswered ship design question, use our Tech
Feedback Form to request technical assistance from us. If you have a tech problem not
answered on this page, it must be a new problem that neither our in-house testers nor
thousands of users have encountered before. As such, it is either a hardware
incompatibility or an unusual and difficult to reproduce software bug. We will do
our best to help in any case.
If you have a tech problem not
answered on this page, it must be a new problem that neither our in-house testers nor
thousands of users have encountered before. As such, it is either a hardware
incompatibility or an unusual and difficult to reproduce software bug. We will do
our best to help in any case.
If you have a tech problem not
answered on this page, it must be a new problem that neither our in-house testers nor
thousands of users have encountered before. As such, it is either a hardware
incompatibility or an unusual and difficult to reproduce software bug. We will do
our best to help in any case.
Q: I'm having a
problem designing custom ships and using the Factory. Is there additional information and
newer tools that might help?
A:
Due to great demand, we have put together an Inner
Space Ship Builder's Kit which includes a greatly Enhanced Ship Factory, detailed
online help on ship design and use of the Factory, plus all the original ship bitmaps from
Inner Space to use as a starting point to your own creations. The Enhanced Ship Factory
makes it easier to import free ships from our Ship Gallery,
edit your new ships creations, and export your custom ships to be submitted to the Ship Gallery. It also includes better error-checking that will
let you know if there are any problems with new ships you create and suggest what needs to
be changed. With all the original ship images from the game, creating high-quality custom
ships is much easier with the Ship Builder's Kit than if you started from scratch. All
that for only $5 US!. Check out the Ship Builder's Kit on the order
page.
Q: Are there any more ships I can get
for use with Inner Space?
A:
Yes, there are many ships available for FREE download from our Custom Ship Gallery page on this website. We have many more
user-created ships submitted for the Ship Gallery all the time, so there's always
something new to try. All of the ships on the Gallery can be downloaded for free, but you
need the Inner Space Ship Builder's Kit
to properly import user-created ships into your copy of the game. See the product page for
Ship Builder's Kit details.
Q: If I make custom ships for
Inner Space, how do I share them with other users?
A:
The Ship Builder's Kit makes it very easy
to create custom ships for Inner Space and export them to be sent to other users. If
you make custom ship(s), you can give copies of your custom ships to local friends on disk
or reach thousands of users at once by submitting your ship creations to us to post on our
Inner Space Custom Ship Gallery. The Enhanced Factory and
online help that come with the Factory make it very easy to export your custom
ship(s) to
be sent to us at inspace@sdispace.com for
posting to the Ship Gallery page on this website.
Q: I want to draw new ships
for use in Inner Space. How do I go about doing that?
A:
To design ships for Inner Space, you must have purchased and installed the full version of
Inner Space from a master disk. The printed Inner Space manual answers many questions
about ship design and how to create custom ships with the Inner Space Ship Factory.
Creating custom ships is somewhat complex, so make sure to read the documentation
carefully in the printed manual. For more information and tools to make ship creation
easier, order our Ship Builder's Kit for $5 US. (see
above) Please only email us with design questions if they aren't answered in the
printed and online documents and if you are a registered Inner Space user.
Q: The big ship doesn't show up or the colors are wrong for
ships in the Factory. What could be wrong?
A:
The game and Factory work best in 256 color mode, so it's important to make sure Windows
is running in that mode. 16-bit, 32-bit color, true color and 16 color modes don't work as
relaibly as 256 color mode. To check your video mode in Win 95, open the Control Panel,
Display Settings, Settings tab. In Win 3.1, open Windows Setup, Display Settings to see
video mode.
Q: I get a message saying my
ship is too large, but I checked and my ship is smaller than 45 pixels high and 4 frames
wide. What else could be causing this?
A:
Make sure your ship is less than 45 pixels INCLUDING the area around it. If you are using
Paintbrush this is easy to check. Under the Image menu, select Attributes. A dialog box
will appear with the image's width and height. Make sure the measurement is in pixels (or
pels) and not inches or picas. If the measurement is larger than 45 pixels, reduce the
size and try importing again. For other graphics program please check with the program's
user manual to find out how to set the width and height of your image.
Q: I've made a new ship, but it
doesn't appear in the Factory Add dialog. What's the problem?
A:
The most obvious things to check are that you are saving the image with a .DIB
extension and that you are placing it in the Inner Space ships directory. If you're in Win
95 and you've already checked those 2 things, the problem is most certainly that Win 95
defaults to hiding file extensions. This problem is easily fixed.
If a file is named MYSHIP.BMP, Windows 95 defaults to only showing MYSHIP as the name in
Explorer. If Win 95 is configured to hide file extensions, it also messes up files that
you save. If you try to save a new bitmap from Paintbrush as MYSHIP.DIB, it will actually
save it as MYSHIP.DIB.BMP. Since Explorer is hiding file extensions, the file appears to
be MYSHIP.DIB, but it isn't and it therefore doesn't work with the Ship Factory.
OK, so that's the problem and here's how to fix it. Open Explorer, then the View
Menu, Options item. Select the View tab and you will see some options including Hide
MS-DOS file extensions for registered file types. Make sure the Hide MS-DOS file
extensions checkbox is not checked.
That's it. You might want to restart Windows, but that's usually not necessary. You should
then be able to save files and get the actual file name and extension you typed. This will
allow you to add images you create to the Inner Space Ship Factory.
Q: If I just want to
create custom versions of existing ships, what can I customize?
A:
Quite a bit. You can make a copy of any ship in the list by hitting the New button while
looking at the ship of interest. You can then repaint the body, trim, and thrust colors,
change the initial weapon, attitudes to other ships, and set handling characteristics for
the ship's performance. You can also set the sound effect for that ship, which can even be
a WAV file of your creation.
