Commonly Asked Questions

Q. Why does funky stuff happen to my ship's textures when I import a ship?
A. Make sure that the ship has only one texture. Multiple textures are currently not supported. Try to combine the multiple texture maps into one map and reimport the ship. Non-texture map coloring is supported, however.

Q. I've put a ton of turrets on my capital ship, but they don't seem to fire at the starfighters around them. Are my gunners blind?
A. Yes. Gunners can suffer from space sickness just as pilots can. (Just kidding.) The turrets only pick their targets when the ship is in 'attack' mode. Capital ships currently want to attack on ships that are close to their size. Based on their aggression level they will eventually target smaller and smaller ships, so if the capital ship is significantly bigger then any other ship around it, it can take some time before the ship will go to 'attack' mode for just fighters. This will be addressed in future releases of the screensaver, giving you more control on how capital ships act. For now, if you want to have a capital ship get into it with a bunch of starfighters, reducing its perception range to the range of the guns can help in some situations. The best solution is to have an enemy target within sensor range of the capital ship that is large enough.

Q. I just imported my ship and it doesn't appear in the graphic window.
A. First off, make sure the model you're importing is in .3DS format. Note that only ~75% of .3DS format ships import right. Other import formats and/or a better .3DS importer may appear in future releases. Second, make sure there isn't a ship there. Dragging the mouse in the window to rotate the ship will force an update in that window. If that still doesn't do it, turn on the Draw Solid option. If your ship has no texture or coloring to it, the mesh may appear black but the solid will appear white like a mask.

Q. Why does Anakin appear young in the vision at the end of Jedi and Obi-Wan is still old?
A. Trust in the Force, young padawan. We have no clue.

Q. How do I keep the editor from crashing?!?! I just lost a ton of work!
A. This is a beta. There's all kinds of stuff that can happen unexpectedly. For the most part it's pretty stable, but you should always save after any amount of work and preferably keep backups of your ship.

Q. How come "XXXX" ship isn't offered under the goodies link?
A. Ack! You're asking this in the Commonly Asked Questions page of the Ship Editor?!?! Build it and they will come [to download it]. There's always room for more!

Q. Why does it take sooo dang long to save my ship?
A. Remember, until you're ready for the "final" version, turning on the Don't compute per vertex shading information option can greatly speed up saves.

Q. Can I edit a texture separate from the ship once it's made?
A. Most definitely. The Ship Editor was designed with that in mind. It's great for quickly changing the texture of the ship without having to go into the Ship Editor. Good for squadron and marking changes.

Q. I've got a great .shp file I made of E.T.'s ship. It's totally badass! Where do I upload it?
A. Yeah... hmm....

Q. Why are my ships just flying around and not attacking each other?
A. More than likely your ships are out of each others' perception ranges. Either move the ships closer together in the scenario or make their perception ranges larger. Also if both sides have suffered heavy losses the surviving pilots might be a little freaked out and need to recover a bit before engaging the enemy again. But aggression is more of a scenario editing issue.

Q. Man, this screensaver rocks! Is it still in development and are there improvements and extras around the corner?
A. Most definitely. The developer is constantly working on it (when he's not sick). Look for new and improved stuff regularly!

Q. I've got an idea for the screensaver or a question that isn't answered here.
A. There's a forum set up just for questions and comments about the screensaver or the editors. Click here to go there now.