Ship Assets

A while back I started using Dungeondraft, and now I’ve started to work on some assets for it of my own. I’m mostly needing to use it for Traveller, and though there are some SciFi assets available (though not nearly as many as there are for fantasy) there are gaps which I’d like to fill.

They are mostly for my own use, but I do plan to release them as CC0 (or CC-BY at the very least) so that anyone else can use them in their own maps if they turn out to be useful. I’m also not sure that I like the subscription model that is used by a lot of Dungeondraft asset creators. I’d prefer to do my own, rather than worry about what the license state of a particular subscription model is – especially if I want to use maps in commercial products.

My initial additions are walls – in particular for the hulls of starships. I’ve decided to try to go for a different wall type for each of the different types of hull – Titanium-Steel, Crystaliron, etc. I also have variants for different levels of armour – no armour, light armour and heavy armour for each type. It’s not absolutely necessary, but might give a slightly different feel for different types of ships.

I’m following them up with some bridge items – consoles and computers etc. They’re a bit basic at the moment, but it’s a start.

The next stage will probably be engineering. I could do something similar to the Mongoose icons, but I’d prefer them to be more ‘realistic’ rather than abstract. The problem with the Mongoose icons are that they look like map icons – perfectly practical, but don’t look great in a VTT.

I’d prefer some objects that look like large drive systems and fusion reactors etc, which can be hooked together to build large systems for larger ships.

Currently objects are being drawn as SVGs, but I might switch to using blender for some of them.

I’ll also need outdoor assets – landing pads, markings, buildings and roads. Initially something to allow me to come up with some basic class E starport designs, or small SciFi settlements and bases, and then working up from there.

How much time I’ll get to spend on this, and therefore how far I’ll get, I don’t know yet. I’m also trying to put together a Traveller character sheet for FoundryVTT, and that is taking a lot of effort to get it right. But just in case anyone is interested in taking a look – the source files are currently in a GitLab repository.

Samuel Penn