[Herra Tohtori]

Yeah, the rivers were an experiment.

If you want some reference, NASA pictures are good, but GoogleEarth is not. It's a map program after all. Better would be NASA's WorldWind 1.4, which is pretty sweet. Includes atmospheric scattering, sun shading and satellite imagery of Earth. Although there's a bit too much ambient light on the dark side of the planet IMHO... but it's still cool.

Anyhow, the cloud coverage itself is not a problem, it's a planet-specific as well as season-specific property of planets. The thing is, the clouds in the new Terran1 have only little variety, and they kinda look like light gray pancakes tossed on top of the surface. Well, not really that bad... they're better than my first attempts, but that kind of clouds would mean that there's only very little wind going on in the atmosphere.


And btw... quoting big images is not really good practice, I don't have any particular problem with it but it does clutter threads un-necessarily.

[jr2]

Well the image resize tags don't work. 

EDIT: Here

[MP-Ryan]

What I'm talking about is that a terminator line practically always divides a sphere in half: dark and illuminated sides. That means that looked from the side, the shadow line starts from the exact opposite sides of the planet; how it curves then is up to the placement of light sources.

Ummm... maybe I'm missing this in your post, but the terminator line depends entirely upon the light source.  Point being, that much more than half the planet (that we see in FS) COULD be illuminated if the sun were place directly behind your spacecraft:  i.e.  (Planet)  ---- (You) --- (Sun)  In that case, the player's view of the entire planet (well, almost, planets are tilted) would be illuminated.

I don't know where the sun is placed in that particular mission, so maybe I'm wrong, but it seems incorrect to say the terminator line is off when you don't know precisely where the light source was located (in this case, the sun in the mission).

*shrug*  Just sayin' =)

[Herra Tohtori]

Obviously. That's why I imcluded the cover-my-arse-words "practically always".

In the end, you get the planet's light part by placing tangents to both the planet and the star, and then check what the angle between the tangents is. In most normal solar systems, the angle between the tangents is so close to zero that it's safe to say that one half of the planet is illuminated, other half is in shadow. Take Earth for example. The Sun is tiny, it's only about third of a degree in apparent diameter. It is enough to make shadows blurry at edges, but it is not enough to significantly affect the location of the terminator.

Of course there can be exotic systems with low intensity huge star and low orbit planet, in which case much more than half of the planet would be illuminated... but that would require that the star's apparent diameter was at least 20-30 degrees or more for the effect on terminator to be notable. And that's huge... Imagine if our sun would be that size. We obviously wouldn't remain solit for very long, but five degrees equals to about the width of a palm when you have your hand extended. So, if sun was 20 degrees in apparent diameter, it would fill about four palm width in the sky.

I daresay that in most cases there's no reason the GTVA would ever go that near to any star...

For all practical purposes, stars can be viewed as point light sources for what it's worth. It's way simpler that way and produces realistic enough results for most cases. And since we don't have soft shadows (or even stencil shadows for that matter), it doesn't really matter much.


EDIT: Ah, you misunderstood me. The terminator line is the line that divides the planet in two halves. How much about the planet's light side and dark side are visible is obviously entirely dependant on relative attitudes of the planet, star and the viewpoint.

But the dark side always covers roughly half of the planet, and the other half of the sphere is illuminated by the star. Except in mentioned exotic systems where there's no real need to be.

[Macfie]

I've got a bitmap for Warzone to use with the mod.  I'm attaching the bitmap and mod file.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Admiral Nelson]

Nice, thank you!

[Goober5000]

I've got a bitmap for Warzone to use with the mod.  I'm attaching the bitmap and mod file.

War 2 One?

You might want to find a different Z.

[Admiral Nelson]

I guess it isn't Z best....

[Goober5000]

A little 2 orthogonal, methinks...

[phreak]

oh god that was horrible goober.

*downloads camp*

[Macfie]

I've got a bitmap for Warzone to use with the mod.  I'm attaching the bitmap and mod file.

War 2 One?

You might want to find a different Z.

That is the way it was written on the original website.

[MP-Ryan]

Nelson, the debug is spitting up turret /spline path errors in the first and second mission.  Haven't tried number 3 yet.  The first mission the error concerns the Faustus, and in the second it's the Moloch.

EDIT: 

Mission 3 has an XTSR during the in-game text transmissions.

Also, in mission 4 I assume those pixelated boxes are eventually becoming planets or something? =)

[Admiral Nelson]

Well, years ago when Warzone was released, I'm sure the planets were really good.  You see why they need to be made high rez for 2007....

The spline path thing is related to models and not the missions.  I am not sure which pack has fully correct models pending the next media vps.

Fixed the XSTR message. 

Please check all directives when you test; I found in mission 2 one directive read "Destroy X" but the actual event attached to it was to protect the Valius.  There have been a variety of similar problems.  I have fixed another issue in the defend the Warlock mission in the nebula in which there is no abort mission directive, and possible trouble with the sequencing of certain messages.

[m2258734a]

Well, Terran1 is almost finished. What I would like to ask is what file type should I make the image, and what size should the final image be after resolution reduction.

[Herra Tohtori]

Most likely DXT3 or DXT5 format DDS file would do... as to size, that depends on what size you want it to be in the mission!

I could calculate it accurately, but as a general rule you should pay attention to where the mission happens. Most likely key installations and events would be located on high orbit, likely on geosynchronous altitude, which are planet-specific. For earth, that altitude is about 35000 km... from which altitude Earth would appear to be about 17 degrees in apparent diameter.

Now, if you don't use any -fov X.XX command line, the default field of view in FS2 is 43 degrees horizontally. 17 degrees is about 40% of that. If the horizontal resolution of the game is 1280 pixels, 40% of that is 512 pixels...

So, if you would only have high orbit missions over some planet, you wouldn't need bigger planets than 512x512 resolution.

But it is likely that at some stage you or someone else would like to have a lower orbit mission around that planet, and in that case a bigger planet image would be required. 1024x1024 would offer possibility to do this, without being overly big. A planet of that size can be used to fill the screen from top to bottom, and quite frankly that is already big in FS2 mission. IMHO all missions closer to planet than that should be made with skyboxes anyway, so that would be a good resolution.


So... depending on the atmospheric blending, use either DXT3 or DXT5 compression DDS images. AS a rule of thumb, DXT5 has better alpha blending so if you have a thick atmosphere around your planet, blending to transparent space, use DXT5; if it's a lifeless rock or a gas giant with relatively thin atmosphere, use DXT3. Try both, though, and look which gives better results. If there's no noticeable difference, I would use DXT3 for planets.

[Admiral Nelson]

There aren't any low orbit missions in Warzone, although this may well be due to the fact that retail can not handle a planet of that size that will look at all decent.  I think 512 square should work fine.  Terran1 is already much much better than the original low rez bitmap.

[MP-Ryan]

Well, years ago when Warzone was released, I'm sure the planets were really good.  You see why they need to be made high rez for 2007....

The spline path thing is related to models and not the missions.  I am not sure which pack has fully correct models pending the next media vps.

Fixed the XSTR message. 

Please check all directives when you test; I found in mission 2 one directive read "Destroy X" but the actual event attached to it was to protect the Valius.  There have been a variety of similar problems.  I have fixed another issue in the defend the Warlock mission in the nebula in which there is no abort mission directive, and possible trouble with the sequencing of certain messages.

I was being a smart ass, but literally in the destroy depot mission there are 3 boxes of yellow and white pixels.  I'm assuming those are planets or something but I'm not at all sure.  Hence why I'm asking.  I can post a screenshot when I'm back on my PC on Sunday.

Sorry, I should have mentioned the directives thing in mission 3 with the Valius.  There's a "destroy Aquarius" directive when the Knossos first appears, but Aquarius doesn't arrive for a minute or so.  I'm guessing this is the one you fixed, since you actually are supposed to be defending the Valius.  I'll keep that in mind for future testing.

Also, in mission 4 the Equinox says its beam cannons are opening fire when you're still some distance from the depot, but it doesn't actually shoot until you get much closer.  Guessing there's a problem with event timing there.  I'd suggest the Equinox should open fire while you're still on your way in, as the transmission hints, rather than when you get close, as actually happens.

[Admiral Nelson]

Sounds like some flag problem in the launcher?  I see planets, just low resolution examples; no boxes.

There are a lot of funky directives in Warzone.  I look at them all now in testing.

I'll check on the message timing for the Equinox.

[m2258734a]

Before:


After:


I just remembered that I am still having DDS difficulties. I would appreciate it if someone could convert the image into DXT3 or DXT5 as soon as I release it. Adm. Nelson, what system does Terran1 reside in?

[Admiral Nelson]

Gienah Cygni.

So much better than the old one.