[***Project***] Continuum Galaxy Concept

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Do you have any more news on this project for us yet?

[Mr G]

HI!

Dunno if anyone here has played a game called 'Independence War' or 'IWar' but yahh that game got me hooked on space sims!
i love X3 and all its addons cause its sooo deep and beautiful! i just wish it had the flow of Iwar 2! they had a great system for getting round that might be implementable in some kind of way...

they had full systems with a star or twin stars with planets and moons etc... each system conect by gate jump points called lagrange points.

getting around a system was dead simple, you had your normal thrusters for general getting around near stations and traffic areas, and a drive system tied into autopilot called an LDS drive. n god that was fun!

basically using thrusters looked a lot like X3 with the planets as backgrounds, untill u opperate the LDS! then u realised how rediculously huge the star systems are! they were modeled almost in proper scale! but it was beautiful as youd look in awe as a huge planet went from a spec to filling your whole screen! it was a drive system that u used purely with autopilot as manualy its insanely dificult to opperate. it had an exponential speed control

that part of the game was modeled with such finesse and elegance that you could play with it for hours!

id highly suggest u take a look at it too.. it a relatively old game now so itd be cheap as chips!

G

[Zoed Vega]

Moderator erased post

[Lancefighter]

Ehh.

That would be rather hard to render for low-spec computer like mine... which is bad.

Might be able to get around that with a lod range thingamajig, but its not fun...

[repatomonor21]

I dont like that idea that only capital ships can mount jumpdrive, but meh, good luck creating it.

[Realspace]

Hi people, I just want to thank for the encouraging words ... so I'm not here to disappoint your expectations, I still think this project is viable and only needs time.

many more features can be added, using modelling and galaxy editing even some ideas, such as the black hole, can be done (I mean, I know exactley how to do it).

unfortunally at the moment I don't own a PC (but I'll buy it next month) and, given the circumstances, I'll be expecting the new X3 Terran etc. to come out, hoping to find that some previously hardcoded features (such as sector max size) can be finally modded ... but I must say my expectations are not very high..

by that time I'd like to involve some of those who expressed their interest to participate to the project, if they still wish.

see you next month..

[Empror Jonatan]

I'm still intrested in that project ( especially when i have a new computer ) and just know that i'm not good at modding but to test or do ship spec or anything else who is not modding or scripting so just send the material needed to my mail and i will try to do the job if you agreed to

[spacefueladdict]

Hi realspace, i'm really looking forward to this project being completed, i thought your backgrounds for X3 were amazing, do you have any info on expected comletion? would also like to volunteer for testing duties!

[Realspace]

Very good!

as also other modders, I'm excited to see what the ne X3TC will be.

I've already ordered a copy so I'll probably take a month of "free play" with no modding matter to discuss ... then we'll see if the new game offers some new potentiality to the Continuum project...maybe sectors will be finally larger ??

So in max 2 months I'll make a call for help in this topic to invite all volunteers...keep in touch...and have fune with the new incoming chapter!

[oxilas]

Well it's a new year full of excitement!

How is the modding and exploration of Terran Conflict going?

I am hoping that the Continuum Project will start up soon. I have been playing around a lot with modding some new ships and learning to use 3ds max. I am also starting to learn scripting.

When I first saw this topic it created a lot of interest for myself because if we have a more realistic space to travel through it creates a lot of possibilities for new things.

One item I believe would be cool to add into this new area of space is a space city. I am working on modeling a city in space. I guess you can say it is similar in concept to the ship that was modeled after Atlantis from Stargate but on a much greater scale.

Also with this project it would be possible to ring moons or even planets with defense rings or even cities like in Starship troopers or Arthur C. Clarke's books 2060 and 3001.

What does everyone think? Would it be a waste of time to build such huge stations and cities?

Hope we hear from you soon Realspace.

[Realspace]

Wow..I definetly like your visionary approach...this is sci-fi after all and the game is worth so long it can wonder us with such visions of the future

Tha fact that you can successfully use 3ds max with x3 is a big thing, becouse that was what limited me alot with planet modelling, for instance.

I'm starting to think that the x serie has become "gold" enough and that we need to make a step further into mdding it with total conversions and such.

the x universe is great, inded it lasted for 4 games (some are repetitions... ) but this is becouse it is fascinating, but now it is time to move on.

Observe was the first to do it with his Trasced serie, and we have mission editor now

What I'd like to understand as for now is how different the TC engine can be in terms of modification of ship's physics, universe layout, sector size.

keep in touch

[zombie-uk]

Sounds to me you are making a entirly new game....Why not sell it as a individual game? still have x3 on say dixc 1 and then the mod on disc 2.

Still my fav out of the mods is Xtended, well it did so well most of the ships are in TC!!

Oh how about fixing the lil prob;em of only having one star per system?

I noticed when i added a 2nd + star in galaxy editor, the planets, stations rtc just light up hole....whit a bugger.....
Any ideas Mr. God of X3 Cycrow?
You have a knack of fixing these things.

[oxilas]

What tool did you use for modding the planets? That has also been a struggle for myself. I have created several pretty basic planets in 3ds max 8 and 9 and while they look good for their basic design it has been difficult to get them working correctly in the game.

I imagine you just replaced the current planets with new bob files and then edited the game files for size and effects?

[Realspace]

Sounds to me you are making a entirly new game....Why not sell it as a individual game? still have x3 on say dixc 1 and then the mod on disc 2.

Still my fav out of the mods is Xtended, well it did so well most of the ships are in TC!!

Oh how about fixing the lil prob;em of only having one star per system?

I noticed when i added a 2nd + star in galaxy editor, the planets, stations rtc just light up hole....whit a bugger.....
Any ideas Mr. God of X3 Cycrow?
You have a knack of fixing these things.

my solution to fix the problem of incorrect lighting of multiple suns is simple...eliminate suns and put fake suns on the nebula layer
maybe it was solved in TC? I've not it so cant tell..

What tool did you use for modding the planets? That has also been a struggle for myself. I have created several pretty basic planets in 3ds max 8 and 9 and while they look good for their basic design it has been difficult to get them working correctly in the game.

I imagine you just replaced the current planets with new bob files and then edited the game files for size and effects?

I worked using word pad and the observe's editor. of course had to convert bod/bob then as always I do when direct approach is not possible, I adapted the models available. so for instance you can tae a planet, let's say, on of the smal ones that has less texture for each mapped surface, use a different (bigger) texture, increase the size of the sphere to whatever you want, change the shader. this is all possible to be done with wordpad, what you can not do is a different uv-mapping of the sphere, and you cant add materials ... but there's plenty of diff. models available, some with less/more materials.

I had a lot of probelms to convert planets with 3ds max. it seems to work with ships but planets never

consider that I created planets with very complex uv-mapping, such as different textures in the same material (imagine you can map desert, forests, mountains, cities on the same material). it is a lot of work but it is worth becouse you only need to make 1-2 models, then change the textures and different complex planets are created.

I have created a map for earth with 8 different texture (this meas you can use 8 times a 4096x4096 dds tex for the surface... (virtualy a 32000x32000 pix file!!) .... imagine the level of detail you achieve without having lag problems (x3 reads max 8192x8192 dds file for each material, but load time is huge...)

----------------------------------------------------------------
I was asked by PM what solution I used to create the planets you see in the first pics. It was ong time ago and have not the materials to check now (they are packed), but I seem to remeber it was achieved with this modifications:

1) a more deep blue haze texture
2) a custom terrain texture, created by me with the lunar cell of Photoshop, then a lot of work on it. I added lakes, mountain chains, ecc. the idea inded was that you can fly very low on orbit and see all that stuff.
the model is probably a medium-sixe planet 8so same water and clouds.
3) modific. of the shader
4) the second planet is a nice findings of mine .... eh eh eh.. just take a look inside the old non-more-used stuff inside the cat files
It uses an opposite approach of water/terrain materials overlapping, so is limited by the possibility to make it really difuse (unusable wiith very large planets)

[Realspace]

people, I must admit that the new TC has realy slowed this my project down.
I have not time to work on it as I wished, but I could spare a few hours a week, yes, and I could, even if slowly, go on with it. but since TC is the new engine to use, I stopped working on reunion so since I've no time to restart all with TC this is a problem...

this mod is a huge work and to do it for the last available engine is a must, also becouse I see all the comunity has moved to it, I see brilliant scripts created for it, I supose it offers better modding solutions..

am meditating on a soution ...

[enenra]

First: Thanks for answering my questions!

Then: One new thing in TC is that the engine is able to - like in X2 - process multiple light sources. This allows mappers to place multiple suns in one system. Maybe a side effect is that it's possible to place lightsources in other places than a sun. Whether it works with the background I don't know.

Maybe I can help you with other problems as well - feel free to ask me if you need help.

Ah, and to get back to the questions:

1. That's all? Interesting. I didn't know the haze overlayed the planet as well. I thought it was only placed on the outside.

2. I also discovered LunarCell some time ago. Though I'll try to go without too much changes on the generated maps.
How did you implement those maps? Did you take the whole texture and put it over the planet or did you use an other method of UV-mapping? (by using a sphere rather than the model used by the standard X3R planets)

3. What did you change? Did you activate the bump- and spec-maps?

4. Yeah. I noticed quite a few unused planet models and textures as well.

[Realspace]

ok..so i took the time to decompile the stuff and look inside.

so this is an exampe of wat you can do by simplu using a different haze, changing then the light of the clouds (same tex), and of cours using my custom texture for terrain.

same planet, same model

left my argon, right vanilla argon

[ external image ]

and this is the detail if you zoom 2x (plaets of course are at the same distance from the ship)

left vanilla, right my argon (sorry for inverting pics)

[ external image ]

so you see my terrain is much better and offers orbital views (it can be used also for low orbit planets.

I aslo see that clouds are better, dont remember if I also chenged the dds other than the light values, i'll tell you later

finally, this is my terrain when zoomed 4x

[ external image ]

now...only now my tex starts to show some artifact, when vanilla one does at only 2x. but still mine is better at 4x then vanila at 2x (I think ) and consider 4x zoom is ALOT, really, it would be a huge planet if at 1x, so some "little" texture working can give great results for having new planets.


{Oversized images replced with links. jlehtone}

[Shadow dream]

:thumb_up:8) Those planets are just awesom! I hope that we (we=all x players) will be able to have a look at that mod of our own soon! It just looks sooo cool!!! Fantastic work!

Shadow

[enenra]

Yep, looks definitely better. Any chance you could upload the body and its textures so I can take a look at the changes directly in the file? (It's quite hard to see what has been changed in the texture if you only have the end product)

[jazzdd]

Hey,
at first, the planets are an awesome work i think, they are looking really cool.
but i have something to add regarding a realistic space. 4000km in real space are nothing. moon and earth for example are 380000km in distance. but in comparison with normal x3 distances your space is really realistc

So i am eager to try your mod. when can we try out the first sectors?