[freespaceking]

Here are some new maps for the vidar http://rapidshare.com/files/24054512/vidar.zip.html

[Admiral Nelson]

What a surprise!  These are fantastic!! Freespaceking is now officially my hero....

[m2258734a]

  Looks great!

Hopefully everything works out here; I believe the image is now saved as a 32-bit RGBA .tga, so if I did everything correctly the background should be transparent. If not, I'll go back and see if I can fix it.

[Admiral Nelson]

Voila:



The dark side probably needs some atmospheric blurring at the edges?  (Waits for Herra )

[Admiral Nelson]

Incidentially, Gienah Cygni A is visible in the Vidar screenshots, and Gienah Cygni B in the planet shot for your review.

[m2258734a]

Let's see:

The atmosphere of Terran1 is blue due to Rayleigh scattering. Since Terran1 has a very similar structure to that of the Earth, the day side of Terran1 will experience a full bombardment of light directed from the orange giant. This light has to travel through a transparent solid, being the atmosphere, and in the process, comes into contact with atmospheric particles and molecules. Small particles and molecules, generally 1/10 the size of the wavelength of the light it deflects, will cause this light to scatter. What wavelength of light is scattered is proportional to the inverse fourth power of the intensity of the light itself. Therefore, blue light is the predominant wavelength of light that is scattered the most, giving Terran1 a blue sky. Without any light from Gienah Cygni A, the atmosphere cannot deflect any blue light to our eyes. So, on the dark side of Terran1, the sky will appear dark. Since the visible nature of the atmosphere is dependent on the light that travels through it (the atmosphere is illuminated, not luminous), the atmosphere should appear dark on the dark side of Terran1.

As for the size and apparent brightness of both stars, you nailed Gienah Cygni B right on the head. At nearly 2000 AU away from Gienah Cygni A, the red dwarf should appear no brighter than how a planet with a relatively high albedo, like Jupiter, would appear in our night sky.

Gienah Cygni A looks perfect, too. Since the orange giant is about 61 times the luminosity of the Sun, Terran1 would have to reside in a circumstellar habitable zone of ~7.8 AU. Given that Gienah Cygni A is 12 times larger than the Sun, at this distance away the orange giant would appear a little more than 80% the angular diameter of the Sun. I don't know the dimensions of the skybox, so I don't know how a diameter of 0.41 degrees would look like in-game. The current size looks fine to me. 

EDIT: The only thing I would disagree with is how the star appears to be residing inside a circumstellar shell of its own ejected matter. While the star is a giant, it is not an evolved giant and has not gotten to that stage in its lifetime. But who is to say that the star is actually inside the nebula, or that the nebula came from the giant for that matter. Regardless, it looks cool  .

I have updated Terran1 to give it a slight orange-like illumination (slight is probably an understatement). Tell me what you think, and maybe this will be the final version of the planet.

[Herra Tohtori]

The dark side probably needs some atmospheric blurring at the edges?  (Waits for Herra )

Yeah... there's atmosphere there too, and it causes a dimming effect to the nebulas and stars on background, even though it wouldn't be visible against black background.

I usually simply take the whole planet and blur the shadowed part outwards as well as the lighted part. If there's a lot of variation on the brightness near the edges of the planet, though, it causes the resulting atmosphere-blur to become non-uniform around the planet - there will appear to be parts that are of different colour/thickness than the planet itself. In that case, I do this:

-make a light blue or bluish texture same size as the planet texture (colour depends of the planet's qualities obviously)
-wrap it on a sphere with "map to object" (assuming that's what you are using...), using same lighting and size parameters as with the planets, but change the surface so that it doesn't cause glints and shiny reflections.


That should result in a sphere that has a shadow side and a light blue lighted side. Now, I put this layer beneath my planet and blur it at suitable level, depending on how thick an atmosphere I want.

If I need to, I multiply the layer a few times using "Screen" layer mode, which brightens up the atmospheric glow. Then I usually copy one blurred layer on top of everything and play with the layer modes and transparency, until I get an atmospheric effect I like. You can see what the dark side should look like in the pictures that I posted as png's a couple messages ago. Not that all planets should have the same thickness or intensity of the atmosphere, but the general idea should be that. Use artistic freedom...


...btw, those Vidar maps look absolutely fabulous.

How many textures does that ship use, and on what resolution?

[Admiral Nelson]

Vidar now has 4 maps at 512x512 resolution.  It used to have 1 128x128 map and three 64x64 maps.

[Admiral Nelson]

And here is the updated Terran1:



Orange tint seems appropriate for the system.

Incidentially, it's probably best to make a fresh post when you have made changes rather than an update, as it's easy to miss that you have done something.

EDIT: fixed fumble fingered image link.

[m2258734a]

Ah, ok    no problem then. I've been on other forums where double posting is avoided, so I usually do that here. I'll be sure to provide updates in new posts.

Looks like your image isn't working, unless that's what you are working on at the moment.

As for the atmospheric blur, I see what you all are saying now. I thought you meant that I need to make the atmosphere blue on the dark side of the planet. In that case, I'll go back and give the dark side a slight blur when I can. This last Terran1 should be the final one. 

[Herra Tohtori]

As for the atmospheric blur, I see what you all are saying now. I thought you meant that I need to make the atmosphere blue on the dark side of the planet. In that case, I'll go back and give the dark side a slight blur when I can. This last Terran1 should be the final one. 

Yeah... where the atmosphere receives light, it scatters it everywhere - including back to space, which causes the familiar blue glow of our planet and also the atmospheric glow. But obviously the shadow side doesn't receive direct light, so the atmosphere remains dark - but light traveling through it from the background stars or nebulae will still be affected, as some of the light will be absorbed to the atmosphere. Blurred dark edge works much better than glowing edge on the shadow side.


On a multi-star system the situation is a bit different, though... If there's for example another star behind the planet it could cause rather interesting phenomena.

[MP-Ryan]

Hey Nelson, when you've corrected some of the identified isues would you mind putting up another WIP file set?  I'll go through the campaign one more time and mak sure the kinks got ironed out.

[Mobius]

I'm back...school trip and interesting French girls to deal with <my sig has been updated! > but now I can get back to work!

I played the campaign and noticed much less bugs than the ones you reported here, Admiral Nelson.

Most of the bugs you mentioned can be fixed easily. Also:
1) Knossos warpmaps for ships arriving or departing in a Knossos;
2) You added text about Mintaka. I think we shouldn't touch the texts at all, unless they're to be grammar checked;
3) I don't think that changing the orientation of the Tanen is the only way to solve that problem with the Moloch. Activating the rear BVas, changing the lower SVas to a BVas or simply setting a waypoint for the Moloch(and reduce it's speed) would solve the problem;
4) What about the voice acting? I can redirect the voice acting for INFR1 to Warzone, but I have no time to copy and paste all the scripts so the voice actors can do their job.
5) What about some(voice acted!) single missions to release with the revamped campaign? All about events parallel to the storyline of Warzone. 2-4 single missions should be ok;
6) Great work with these planet bitmaps, guys!

[Admiral Nelson]

I'm back...school trip and interesting French girls to deal with <my sig has been updated! > but now I can get back to work!

Welcome back!

I played the campaign and noticed much less bugs than the ones you reported here, Admiral Nelson.

Most of the bugs you mentioned can be fixed easily. Also:
1) Knossos warpmaps for ships arriving or departing in a Knossos;

good point, yes.

2) You added text about Mintaka. I think we shouldn't touch the texts at all, unless they're to be grammar checked;

We don't need to be pedantic.  The text is needed to account for the fact that Mintaka is a quinternary system and not a supernova remnant.  This is no different than fixing any other mistake in the campaign.

3) I don't think that changing the orientation of the Tanen is the only way to solve that problem with the Moloch. Activating the rear BVas, changing the lower SVas to a BVas or simply setting a waypoint for the Moloch(and reduce it's speed) would solve the problem;

Perhaps, but it works fine now.

4) What about the voice acting? I can redirect the voice acting for INFR1 to Warzone, but I have no time to copy and paste all the scripts so the voice actors can do their job.

I can prepare the scripts, but I'd need to know how many folks you have lined up.

5) What about some(voice acted!) single missions to release with the revamped campaign? All about events parallel to the storyline of Warzone. 2-4 single missions should be ok;

Sure, but we should get the meat of the campaign done first.

Hey Nelson, when you've corrected some of the identified isues would you mind putting up another WIP file set?  I'll go through the campaign one more time and mak sure the kinks got ironed out.

Yep, I am going through all the stuff you posted, and will put an update out when its ready.

[MP-Ryan]

Muchos gracias =)

I have a 4-day weekend for Easter... which means some time for play-testing around my paper writing =)

[Mobius]

Muchas gracias?

MP-Ryan is also on TSP, so he can work on Warzone as well

The actors don't seem so active. I'll talk with Bob-san.

[Admiral Nelson]

Next Iteration:

WIP Download

Still WIP; fixed the stuff MP-Ryan brought up as well as other issues I found, primarily with directives and mission goals.

TO DO:

Create GTC Nicolas nameplate
Create Aeolus cruiser nameplates
Create high rez custom planets to replace the low res ones supplied with the campaign
Adjust backgrounds to make use of said new planets properly
Test all missions and verify that the failure conditions work correctly.  That is, deliberately fail the mission and make sure you get an appropriate nastygram.
Verify that no allied capital ship is destroyed without an appropriate in mission message and mention in debriefing.
List any fighter missions with a RTB message when enemy craft are still around.  For bomber missions, it is fine to depart if all enemy capships are destroyed.
Comm Nodes should blow up when the center crystal is destroyed
Add Knossos warp out effect where appropriate
Fix Vidar POF to correct misspelled "cyrochamber" subsystems
Report any mission in which enemy waves continue to appear after the mission objectives are met.
Make sure I didn't screw up anything in the campaign file in the course of bugfixing.

[m2258734a]

It looks like I underestimated the capabilities of my little laptop. I recently downloaded FSO onto my computer, so I'll be going through the missions as well. Haven't had much time to fix the Terran1 (I notice in that last picture with the orange tint there is a white layer surrounding the dark side of the planet. This was not intentional and is due to a transparency issue that I will have to fix), and I'm not as lucky as some of you who have a 4-day weekend,  , so I will try to fit in some time when it becomes available.

[Admiral Nelson]

Your work is always much appreciated.

[m2258734a]

No problem 

Well, I went through the first mission and here's what I found:

During the very first briefing, right before the actual mission briefing, I noticed two redundancies and one punctuation error.

I have been seeing this whenever Capella is mentioned, and I don't think it's necessary to call Capella "the Capella star" in the second portion of the briefing. The proper noun does not need to be used as an adjective. I guess that would be similar to saying the Sun star or the Sol star, or the Earth planet.

The second redundancy occurs on the 6th portion of the briefing. When using military time, it's not necessary to specify morning or evening since the 24-hour time is used to avoid any confusion between the two. So I believe it should be 1100 hours tomorrow, without the morning at the end.

Finally, I noticed on the same page that one sentence begins, "Squadron leader, Lt. Taine...." There needs to be a comma after Taine if I am not mistaken.

Enough of the picky stuff, here are some more crucial (if not less picky) findings:

During the actual mission briefing, the Disen is displayed as a cruiser. I don't remember if there is an icon for science vessels, so if there isn't disregard this finding.

After clicking on alpha wing, the 3D model is of a Hercules Mark II instead of the default Myrmidon used in the mission.

For the actual mission itself, the only things I noticed were the planet images and the Faustus' debris. The planets are fine, but I think I have seen the same planet in plenty of other missions used in the FS universe. The same goes for its Callisto-like satellite. If you would like, I can make a new planetary system for Regulus after Terran1 (and the main-sequence stars!!!) are finished. As for the Faustus debris, some of the pieces have rotation axes which are way off the debris' actual center of mass. In fact, the rotation axes extend outside the object. Maybe this has to do with the "no motion debris" flag, but it's something I noticed.

That's all from the first mission, I'll look through the next few missions when I get the chance.