[MOD] Immersive environments 1.1 [09-11-2011]

The place to discuss scripting and game modifications for X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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djrygar
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Post by djrygar »

now we only need to combine it with New Dimensions mod :D

that would be something nice ;) I previosly did such join, by simply copying planet/background data in xmls (Size and Background mod + vanilla backgrounds), but in few sectors it resulted in colliding objects (gates inside atmosphere etc)

but I want to play with both mods (Connary's backgrounds inside New Dimensions mod), so I guess I'll have to spend another few hours on copypasting
kush
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Post by kush »

Just installed this, and wicked does not come close, connary - great work! 8)
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MadMan983
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Post by MadMan983 »

beautiful, so beautiful.
When ever people agree with me i always feel i must be wrong.
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e1team
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Post by e1team »

I just have to say it: Wow! Simply wow! Totally different game experience! Connary, great job!
"I feel like that's not the way fantasy space travel works in the real fantasy universe."
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enenra
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Post by enenra »

enenra wrote:
connary wrote:Thanks to all for your kind words¡ Deep blue sectors added¡¡

enenra wrote:I'm very interested in how the texture of the nebula planes spawned in the sector look. :)
Spawned? sorry i dont understand what do you mean, my english is poor.
Well, my spanish is much worse so I won't even try that. :D

Basically, the nebula which appears in sectors and is not in the background texture (which is applied to the inside of a sphere, encompassing the sector) is composed of planes which are generated around the object in the sector, the player is looking at. These planes have the nebula texture on them. As I have been experimenting with making them look better myself, I'm interested in how your textures look and manage to get this feel of a "nebula soup" across. :)
enenra wrote: About the planet clouds - are you sure you want to remove tiling? It does eliminate repetition but the cloud texture is pretty good and the tiling is barely noticeable anyway. No tiling makes the texture look pretty bad ingame because it has to be displayed on such a large area.
Im not changing the UV mapping of the planet and the texture tiling, im eliminating something wrong that happened whit the clone tool in some part of the texture creating weird effect of repetition. This image will show exactly what im talking about:
[ external image ]
i modified the texture eliminating the repeated clouds. I hope this can clear the subject.
Not quite sure what you mean just yet but I'll check out the texture again and see whether I can spot that area. :)
Just want to bring this up. I'm very interested in this matter. :)

P.S. Try this: Fill the background textures with just one colour which is similiar to the nebula color of the plane-textures appearing ingame. That will intensify the feeling of a really thick nebula - especially paired with removing stars and all planets in sectors with these nebulas.
panzerkw
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Post by panzerkw »

First off, I love the mod so far, has made the universe much "clearer" visually and it's very beautiful.

One thing I noticed - the new nebula, on my game it sort of gets pretty bright as it becomes visible, then fades out as my ships goes past it. As a result, in SETA, my computer monitor looks like a big strobe light. It hurts my eyes. Can the brightness of the nebula clouds be turned down a bit?
connary
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Post by connary »

panzerkw wrote:First off, I love the mod so far, has made the universe much "clearer" visually and it's very beautiful.

One thing I noticed - the new nebula, on my game it sort of gets pretty bright as it becomes visible, then fades out as my ships goes past it. As a result, in SETA, my computer monitor looks like a big strobe light. It hurts my eyes. Can the brightness of the nebula clouds be turned down a bit?
I need more info PanzerKw. Evidently the mod its not intended to burn your eyes in any way, in fact i started to work on fog sectors (i suppose you are talking about a fog sector) and the mod will make this sectors more soft and dense without the contrasted nebulas floating around the player ship. Can be a different gamma setting between our monitors, i dunno.

I need to know which sector. Every sector have its own nebula (fog).
An screenshot can help me a lot to know what you are talking about.

enenra wrote:Just want to bring this up. I'm very interested in this matter. Smile

P.S. Try this: Fill the background textures with just one colour which is similiar to the nebula color of the plane-textures appearing ingame. That will intensify the feeling of a really thick nebula - especially paired with removing stars and all planets in sectors with these nebulas.
Well, this is the idea for the dense fog sectors (wip at this moment).
Im changing the background scene (sphere) to a non fog sector one to avoid the use of the same texture for the background and the floating fog. The background must be a very dense cloud storm texture with very few details coloured depending on sector and then using the same cloud scheme with the same color for the fog. I think this can bring to us a very dense cloud looking sector like its intended in ''The Hole'' sector. Whitout stars of course.
Evidently not always the same.
I think that its the same idea you are showing.
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e1team
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Post by e1team »

BTW connary. I wanted to ask about Home of Light. I mean, I was blown away and much surprised to find it completely opposite of it's name. Not that it is a bad thing, quite the opposite. It is magnificent! But I'm curious what was the idea behind changing it so drastically?
"I feel like that's not the way fantasy space travel works in the real fantasy universe."
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djrygar
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Post by djrygar »

the problem with bright nebulae might be different than different gammas.

I have seen something similar in sector background mod, clearly not intended by author, the planes ('billboards' in 3D jargon) were clearly visible, I mean you could easily see squares that were passing by your ship. The textures appeared very bright.

I think it could have somthing to do with displaying method (add, substract, multiply etc, like photoshop layers) of texture.
connary
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Post by connary »

e1team wrote:BTW connary. I wanted to ask about Home of Light. I mean, I was blown away and much surprised to find it completely opposite of it's name. Not that it is a bad thing, quite the opposite. It is magnificent! But I'm curious what was the idea behind changing it so drastically?
Well, the description:

'''Scattered In the shadow of the now terraformed planet Kho's haven........ recently recolonised.....'''

I created the sector in the dark side of Kho's Haven but surrounded by a luminescent blue light of the Argon core sectors. Its a very bright sector in fact and the sun emerging from the side of the planet creates a nice view bringing the name to the sector. The planet dont have city lights cause its recently recolonised.
The vanilla one was a very dark view, far, far, far away from the game description.
connary
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Post by connary »

djrygar wrote:the problem with bright nebulae might be different than different gammas.

I have seen something similar in sector background mod, clearly not intended by author, the planes ('billboards' in 3D jargon) were clearly visible, I mean you could easily see squares that were passing by your ship. The textures appeared very bright.

I think it could have somthing to do with displaying method (add, substract, multiply etc, like photoshop layers) of texture.
Definitely i work a lot to avoid the square view of the billboards. The external perimeter of the texture must be black to solve this problem. About the brightness, can be the amount of nebulae in the sector. In fact the fog blue sector had the maximum amount of nebulae billboards possible. This creates a dense '''white''' vapor cause this planes dont show the dark colors only the clear ones. For me its a good result, like flying through a cloud but i dont know if other monitor settings can create a excessively bright sector or perhaps something is messed in some way.
StormMagi
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Post by StormMagi »

djrygar wrote:the problem with bright nebulae might be different than different gammas.

I have seen something similar in sector background mod, clearly not intended by author, the planes ('billboards' in 3D jargon) were clearly visible, I mean you could easily see squares that were passing by your ship. The textures appeared very bright.

I think it could have somthing to do with displaying method (add, substract, multiply etc, like photoshop layers) of texture.
I think it might have to do with video card drivers as well or other video card settings. I know I was able to see those billboards for a while (~2 driver versions iirc).
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The-Last-Communist
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Post by The-Last-Communist »

realy good , this is butifull !!!!
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panzerkw
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Post by panzerkw »

connary wrote: I need more info PanzerKw. Evidently the mod its not intended to burn your eyes in any way, in fact i started to work on fog sectors (i suppose you are talking about a fog sector) and the mod will make this sectors more soft and dense without the contrasted nebulas floating around the player ship. Can be a different gamma setting between our monitors, i dunno.
Right it's only the dense fog sectors (Omicron Lyrae, Circle of Labour, etc) that I'm having this issue with. In a fast ship, like the Kestrel, 10X SETA really is like staring at strobe light.

I went for a trip to The Moon sector and saw that the Earth is a grey globe (like an untextured sphere). Going into the Earth sector, though, the Earth is textured.
connary
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Post by connary »

panzerkw wrote: Right it's only the dense fog sectors (Omicron Lyrae, Circle of Labour, etc) that I'm having this issue with. In a fast ship, like the Kestrel, 10X SETA really is like staring at strobe light.

I went for a trip to The Moon sector and saw that the Earth is a grey globe (like an untextured sphere). Going into the Earth sector, though, the Earth is textured.
Like other people says it seems than can be a GPU problem, perhaps something related to the drivers.
You are talking about textures disappearing on some planets or a general problem with the fog ingame. My mod dont change the planet textures and the majority of the fog sectors are unchanged in this Beta version.
Bobucles
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Post by Bobucles »

In a dark environment, the human iris will expand to take in extra light. Color receptors do not work at low levels, and rods begin to restore their night vision proteins. This leaves a period of up to several minutes before full nighttime greyscale color vision kicks in. Standard lights would appear far brighter than usual. In extreme darkness the signals from the eye will compete with natural neural noise created by the brain, creating an effect not unlike film grain. Bright and high frequency(green/blue) light levels would burn away night vision, causing glare while the iris contracts, and requiring the eye to regain night vision. Why do I mention this? Because I'm bored, and it may give a few ideas for the look of extra dark sectors. Or an extra dark sector that suddenly lights up in a firefight.

Visual effects are extremely complex, because the eye itself can only see a narrow band of lumen range at a time, and space has a HUGE lumen range. Space environments thus can't actually be made "realistic", because realistically the eye has a lot of trouble staring at blinding glare and pitch black at the same time. But understandably, that's not good for gameplay.

The mod looks great. I may have to start a new game just to see it all.
panzerkw
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Post by panzerkw »

I did a clean install of the game along with the mod and the Earth in the Moon sector is back to normal.

I'm not sure how else to describe the fog thing. It's only in very thick fog sectors like Omicron Lyrae, The Vestibule, Circle of Labour, etc as the difference between dark and light is much higher than with the stock fog. For Omicron Lyrae, I actually have to wear sunglasses while transiting that sector 8)

If it helps at all I am using a GTX 260, drivers 196.21 with an LG monitor. Brightness and Contrast set to +50% and Gamma to 1.0. Gamma in the game was left at the stock setting.
connary
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Post by connary »

panzerkw wrote:I did a clean install of the game along with the mod and the Earth in the Moon sector is back to normal.

I'm not sure how else to describe the fog thing. It's only in very thick fog sectors like Omicron Lyrae, The Vestibule, Circle of Labour, etc as the difference between dark and light is much higher than with the stock fog. For Omicron Lyrae, I actually have to wear sunglasses while transiting that sector 8)

If it helps at all I am using a GTX 260, drivers 196.21 with an LG monitor. Brightness and Contrast set to +50% and Gamma to 1.0. Gamma in the game was left at the stock setting.
I checked Omicron Lyrae and you are talking about my modded fog blue sectors. They are intended to look like a dense cloud, a white cloud. It looks good in standard fly imho but the weird effect appear in J mode due how the billboard works in this game. In fact its the exact same weird effect that the vanilla game but perhaps more visible due the incremented amount of billboards on this sector.
Im studying different effects for the fog sectors but with not so good results. The billboard technique its not really good for a fog effect.

I need more feedback about the look of this sector and then take a decision about which direction take, or maintain the dense vapour look or definitely delete all the fog adding a new background.
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MadMan983
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Post by MadMan983 »

for some reson when i go to kah-ak sector 841 evrything explodes. staions ships, the lot. any ideas?
When ever people agree with me i always feel i must be wrong.
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e1team
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Post by e1team »

I personally liked the new looks of Omicron Lyre, and noticed no bugs whatsoever. Dunno about others, but I like it.
"I feel like that's not the way fantasy space travel works in the real fantasy universe."
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