[MOD] IEX - AP/TC Sector Visual Enhancement - IEX 1.5b (27/07/2014)

[WildDoktor]

Yes...it works, and it's amazing!

Playing now...there goes the next 3 months of my life.

Thanks so much for your help Dreamer2008!

[Vayde]

Bit late to the party here but if memory serves, you can export your empire in LU, install this mod and then import your empire and IEX thinks its a new game start.

[Whismerhill]

pictures don't really do this mod justice, it just looks better while playing
and gives a great ambiance to sectors!
one of my preferred mods, even though I generally favor gameplay enhancements over graphics

[Hariwulf]

Please, could we get a version compatible with Mayhem 2?

[Atarax]

Hey guys, not too sure if I'm allowed to post bugs here Hoping that someone has perhaps come across this before or could point me in the right direction.

Some sectors in my game seem to have problems loading the skybox, eg. Black Hole Sun where the skybox is completely black.. some sectors are like this while some are not.. It's not game breaking, but I'm wondering if this might IEX related? I'm concerned to break anything by messing with my mod list!

I'm fairly new to X3 and modding it so apologies if I dont know something in advance. Here is my mod load order:

1-4 Egosoft

5-9 LU

10 IE (iex files)

11 IEX

12 LUi (Patch for IEX)

13 LU Gate Redesign mod

14 Cockpits

15 No Dust in sectors

https://scontent.fbne2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=5CBDC9C1

[Moonrat]

Have you done this in both the original '...\X3TC' and '...\X3TC\addon' folders as per the OP?

[Daemonjax]

Anyone know how to go about hiding the background stars from a particular sector?

For example, Omicron Lyrae -- which is sector 13,6 in x3-universe.xml. Sectors like that shouldn't have the stars so visible because it's so foggy.

EDIT: And of course I figure it out like a minute later.

So... in case anyone else is wondering:

1) Start by determining the actual sector coordinates, and look in the x3-universe.xml file to get the tbackground that sector is using. For example, the first two lines for omicron lyrae (which I knew to be 13,6 by looking at some decent maps online):
<o f="4" t="1" x="13" y="6" r="1" size="14000000" m="0" p="-1" qtrade="100" qfight="100" qbuild="100" qthink="100">
<o t="2" s="9" neb="0" stars="0"/>

The only thing we care about is the x="13" y="6" part (to verify that we're looking at the sector we want), and on the 2nd line the s="9" part -- that's the tbackgrounds reference. The trick is that it starts at 0, so this is actually the 10th entry in Tbackgrounds.

2) Open Tbackgrounds and look at 10th entry. The only thing we care about is the image name: fogblue

3) Go into \objects\environments\nebulae\fogblue\ and open nebula_fogblue_stars_01.bob in a hex editor or decent text editor like notepad++, and find the texture file. In this case it ended in .tga, but I suppose it could have been a .dds file maybe in there. The game engine will use a dds file in place of a tga even when the model file says tga, so when looking for the actual texture keep that in mind because it might be a dds regardless.

4) Either edit the bob file and slightly change the name of the texture (as long as its the same number of characters, editing it using a text or hex editor should be fine) so that this bob file points to a new texture or directly edit that texture -- might want to grep all bod / bob files to see if that texture is used elsewhere before deciding. When grepping you need to include all binary files in the search.

[Greg_G]

Was Litcube's fog ever rolled into IEX? I noted the last mention of it in a rather old post (quoted below) so I'm thinking not, but perhaps it was included in one of the subsequent LUi updates instead.

IEX 1.6a gradually coming together (probable list includes)...

• ...
  'Litcube' fog
  ...

Thanks either way!'

Edit:
I decided to try both with and without IEX 1.5b + LUi 1.7.0 and, with, it does seem to lack the Litcube fog.

I'm torn. I have to admit the Litcube fog looks amazing in comparison, but at the same time I've only played vanilla fog in my previous playthroughs so IEX is tempting me.

[Moonrat]

I'm afraid that I never got the Litcube fog incorporation into IEX finished and now real life has taken over well and truly. If someone wants to do this either (as a patch?) or then please be my guest
Just please make sure that myself, Connary & Litcube all get the right amount of mention and please place links from whatever you post back to our OPs.

[Greg_G]

I'm afraid that I never got the Litcube fog incorporation into IEX finished and now real life has taken over well and truly. If someone wants to do this either (as a patch?) or then please be my guest
Just please make sure that myself, Connary & Litcube all get the right amount of mention and please place links from whatever you post back to our OPs.

For what it's worth, I ended up opting for IEX and certainly haven't regretted it at all. As with my original TC and AP playthroughs I just stopped noticing the fog within a few hours, but I enjoy the IEX scenery all the time. Thanks so much!