[Admiral Nelson]

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.

Yeah this can be better wordsmithed.

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.

It is redundant, but I heard this sort of usage all the time when I was on a USMC project.

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.

okay.

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.

FS1 has a faustus icon, but not FS2.  Whenever the icon code gets changed to remove the present hardcoded limit, it could be brought into FS2.

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

oops...

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.

It would be great to have unique planets, but I suspect that it would take a long time to do.  I'd like to start with upgrading all the low rez planets in Warzone first, as these don't look so good alongside all of the other upgraded graphics.

No idea about the debris.  This sounds like an issue in the POF file itself.

[jr2]

Someone was working on new planets, IIRC...

[MP-Ryan]

I'll have a look at this on Friday and go through it again.

[Mobius]

Working for/with MP-Ryan is a pleasure.

[m2258734a]

It is redundant, but I heard this sort of usage all the time when I was on a USMC project.

Oh really, what sort of Marine project were you on? I'm a military guy myself, and I am currently finishing up my sophomore semester in AFROTC. Looks like I'll be going through Field Training during the end of July. But about the statement, it's no big deal. I was only being picky.

As for the quote about Lt. Taine, I don't remember if exactly how the sentence started. If "Squadron leader" is being used as a title, then no commas are necessary at all in the sentence. If the sentence was structured like this: "Your squadron leader, Lt. Taine...", then a comma is necessary after Taine.

I might have to report a bug about the Faustus if that is really the case. I'll look into it in depth over the weekend.

About the planets, I agree. I'll make new ones as soon as I finish those that really need the improvement. It looks like I have two moons, and five planets left.

EDIT: I'm not too sure of anyone specific who is working on planets for FS other than me. A while ago there was one user who posted several planets and a tutorial on how to make them. Haven't heard from that user in a long time. Topgun made some .pcx planets but I don't think they were ever completely finished. Then of course there are several users, including Herra, who are providing their works of art on another thread in the Fan Fiction and Art section. Looks like Aardwolf has made the latest contribution with his icy planet. Maybe we should open up a new thread and collaborate with one another to enhance the low resolution planets used in various campaigns, and to create new ones for future usage.

[Admiral Nelson]

The project was developing a manpower plan for MCEITS, a restructuring of USMC servers.  I went all over the country and abroad to produce it.

Here is a two pager on the project:
Case Study

There is a lot of comma misuse in the text, it will take a few more times through to clean it all out.

A high rez planet pack is really a good idea.  I wouldn't be surprised if other campaigns used these planets.  Even the stock planets could use an overhaul - the recolored Jupiter and Mars examples especially.

[m2258734a]

That's incredible; are you the mastermind behind the project and how long have you been integrating this into the USMC?

About the high resolution planets:
I posted on Herra's "Celestial Object Thread", and so far Aardwolf has posted his cool (no pun intended) high resolution ice planet. I would love to see everyone's artwork in all of the FS campaigns, but this is most likely going to take a while since making such planets is not on everyone's high priority list. But we will see.

As for planets and satellites for Warzone, it looks like Terran1 is finally completed (well.... depending on how it looks in-game). Here it is, atmospheric blur and all.

[Admiral Nelson]

I was the mastermind of the project described in the two pager, though this was just a small chunk of the whole initiative.  My current clients are commercial and not military, though.

We might actually be able to use Aardwolf's planet -- one of the Warzone planets is just a recolored version of another.  The ice world might be nice instead of the clone world.

And here we are:

[m2258734a]

I am very impressed, but now I've learned that even entrepreneurs can't get enough of Freespace   

Yeah I was just thinking about the duplicate planet in Warzone. Looks like we got two planets down, I'll go ahead and tell Aardwolf, as he'll probably want to be credited for the contribution.

Hmmm... can you do me a favor and shift the planet away from the nebula so the dark side of the planet is set against a black background? This is only temporary and you can move the planet back afterwards, but I wanted to see if the whitish glow is actually being caused by the nebula itself and not a transparency issue. Hopefully the atmosphere turns black against the black background. Thanks, I'd really appreciate it.

[Admiral Nelson]

I haven't really made up my mind on the positioning of any planet yet anyway....

[m2258734a]

Thanks, now I know it is a transparency issue. Errrrg . I'm at a loss right now and I really don't know how I can fix this. I guess I will have to experiment...

[m2258734a]

OK, maybe this is the final Terran1...

[Admiral Nelson]

hmmm:

[m2258734a]

 ...

I can just imagine this thread getting filled up with Terran1s, with some one-word comments from me after each image. I believe what is going on is that after I save my file as a 32-bit TGA, everything that was once transparent turns white. The alpha channel is still there, but now instead of there being an atmosphere that blends into transparency, it's blending into white. If I were to do the same with a black background, I would get a tiny black layer within the atmosphere as visible in the first successful Terran1 image without the black box behind it. I'm slowly running out of ideas.

Using the (0,255,0) green in the background only works for .pcx files, correct? I guess I will have to keep trying.

By all means, delete the older images of Terran1 so the thread can be easier to navigate through for those with slower connections. I wouldn't want to fill up your thread like this,  .

[Herra Tohtori]

Nonono.

It looks exactly what you have made it to look. Which is, you're still using uniform colour atmospheric glow layer as far as I can see.

In order to make a dark atmosphere effect on the shadow side, the atmosphere on the dark side needs to be black before blurred. In other words.... ehm, pictures:

This is how I usually do it:

-Make a new layer and colour it blue (you'll likely need to experiment to find a good colour for your planet...)



-Apply map to sphere to this layer with the light at appropriate place (if you did the whole planet this way, don't move the bugger), and set the environmental light to zero and rise up the diffusion factor a bit (again, experiment)
-set the background to transparent.




-you should now have a blue sphere with a dark shadow area. Blur this layer (value depends of size) and throw a couple of them under your planet surface layer, and perhaps one above, and experiment with transparency and layer modes to find a suitable combination.



 

[Herra Tohtori]

Sorry for double post, but this is really more clarifying with the red background. Your atmosphere layer should look like this (roughly):



Edges transparent, dark blurred atmosphere at the shadow region, and blue (or whatever colour) blurred atmosphere where the planet is lighted.

And note that this is a really fast job to just clarify the matter... the lighting is kinda fuxxored, but it's good enough for clarifying purposes.

[m2258734a]

Thanks for the tutorial 

The problem is that what you are doing is basically what I am doing. The file that I provided has a similar effect, with the exception that the atmosphere on Terran1 isn't as hazy and thick as the planet you have created. So I ended up with a final product with a dark atmosphere on the antisunward side, and a bluish atmosphere on the sunward side, yet whenever I save the image as a 32-bit TGA everything transparent turns white. What you are seeing in-game is not what I am seeing when I am ready to save the image.

The atmosphere, as far as I can see, is whiter than the final product and practically flushed out most of the blue that was there. The same goes for the dark side, and since it was black to begin with, it appears to be a bright gray color.

It seems like no matter what I do, the atmosphere either gets an extra hint of white when the image saves with a white background, or an extra hint of black when the planet is saved against a black background. The background is always transparent, but whenever I save, it turns opaque. For this particular planet, I did not use GIMP, but Paint Shop Pro XI (it came with my laptop so I decided to see what I could do with it). I've done all I could by checking up on tutorials and how-tos, but I can't seem to get the atmosphere working properly. Any ideas?

[Admiral Nelson]

Well, here is Aardwolf's ice planet, anyways....

[MP-Ryan]

I'm going through the updated Warzone campaign again tonight.  Anything else I need to look for other than what's already been mentioned?

[Admiral Nelson]

Head anis might be one thing.  I noticed at least one other mission with schizoid wingmen talking to themselves....   Mostly otherwise I think just the stuff in the TODO list I posted last.

Incidentially, not all the planet bitmaps included in Warzone  are actually found in missions.  Only these are used:
$BitmapX: p_lava1       ;created by Dark
$BitmapX: p_moon2       ;from the Restricted Access planet pack
$BitmapX: p_deadp1      ;created by Dark
$BitmapX: p_deadp2       ;created by Dark
$BitmapX: p_terran1       ;created by Dark
$BitmapX: p_darkplanet1      ;created by Dark