[General Battuta]

I was going to note this in the screenshots thread, but I thought HerraTohtori deserved his own plaudits for it. We've done some amateur astrography for War in Heaven, largely courtesy of the aforementioned Mr. Tohtori.

We've built our mission geography by using a program called Celestia to calculate the position of the Solar System's planets in 2387. We use this map and some Speed of Plot voodoo to get a rough idea of how subspace jumps will work (long jumps take longer to plot, intervening bodies also complicate factors.) Action off of the plane of the ecliptic is, of course, less troubled by the intervening-bodies problem.

We also use it to determine fairly realistic positioning and size for the Sun in each mission. In general our visible distances are pretty true to life - if you're at Luna, for instance, the Earth will be realistically sized. Space is dark, so a lot of the missions farther from the Sun will be dark too: at Kuiper distances, the Sun is just a particularly bright star. HerraTohtori is a bit less exacting about realistic sun positioning, but it's still a concern: the Saturn skybox, for example, had the sun moved to realistically indicate which side of the planet's rings would be illuminated in the correct month of 2387.

It's a small touch, but it's neat to know that the planets, at least, are realistically positioned. The node itself presumably has a predictable but eccentric orbit, but unfortunately Celestia doesn't help with that yet.

Some of our team members are playing with the level of 'ambient' lighting right now to see what effect it has on the mood. We're leaning towards the dark approach right now, since it's a wee bit moodier. With a large number of missions completed, we have a lot of different distances from Sol to play with.

[Herra Tohtori]

Some of you may have seen this already in IRC so I might as well post this image here:



(Moon surface textures subject to change).


NB: I'm not really obsessive-compulsive, I just tend to think that if you do something you might as well go the extra mile and see if the real deal (or as close as I can bother to go) works as well as better than more imaginary sceneries.

As it happens, it often does...

As far as inaccuracies go - well, if you're good at astronomy you might've noticed that the Sun is positioned near Taurus and not exactly on the ecliptic as seen from the Earth (and Moon, which is close enough to not make a real difference) which would mean April/May while WiH supposedly - if I recall correctly - happens in fall of 2387 or thereabouts, but really, even I'm not anally retentive enough to actually worry about that... even though I know it.

[NGTM-1R]

I really hate the dark bit.

Hell even on Pluto you ought to be getting at least a decent lightbulb's worth of light. Kuiper distances are rarely worthwhile because there's not much out there to fight over.

[The E]

You are aware of the "custom lighting settings" thing?

[Herra Tohtori]

I really hate the dark bit.

Hell even on Pluto you ought to be getting at least a decent lightbulb's worth of light. Kuiper distances are rarely worthwhile because there's not much out there to fight over.

It's not exactly finalized. The idea I have is that the amount of ambient lighting would increase as you go further from the Sun, to simulate the increasing darkness as eyes adapt to it, whereas on inner solar system you'll get bright light from the Sun and high contrast from very low ambient lighting.

And yeah we are not doing a correct 1/r^2 light intensity attenuation, as it would just be totally unfeasible to be fighting in the shade all the time. The exact amount of "base" ambient light that you would get in "deep space" we haven't exactly settled yet.

In addition to using ambient lighting in the missions, we're experimenting with using light sources for the planets in the skyboxes as well. For example, in the Moon you'll get blue light cast from the location of the Earth on the sky... as demonstrated here:



(Again, Moon surface subject to change...)


Oh by the way, does -ambient_factor N command line tag override mission-defined ambience values?

[General Battuta]

Kuiper distances are rarely worthwhile because there's not much out there to fight over.

Exactly why one might end up there.

[NGTM-1R]

Exactly why one might end up there.

This is true, under certain conditions I was unaware actually pertained yet.

[General Battuta]

Basically, once the war is totally lost in Mission 6, you spend the rest of War in Heaven playing minigames and doing diplomacy with dialogue choices to build a homestead in the Kuiper belt.

Comet wrangling!

[High Max]

;-)

[Snail]

Spoiler:

The GTVA are hiding the GTD Terranova in the Kupier Belt, it's the final boss of WiH

[High Max]

;-)

[Fury]

It's not exactly finalized. The idea I have is that the amount of ambient lighting would increase as you go further from the Sun, to simulate the increasing darkness as eyes adapt to it, whereas on inner solar system you'll get bright light from the Sun and high contrast from very low ambient lighting.

I'm not too sure about this part. IMO missions looked better if they had ambient lighting at zero and only source of light is the Sun and reflection from planets when present. But like I said on irc, I'm a sucker for dark missions.

[-Norbert-]

You are aware of the "custom lighting settings" thing?

So how does that work out?
If I put custom settings in the launcher, would that mean every misison would have the same lighting, because those override the in-mission settings, or will the game use an average value of the launcher settings and the in-mission ones?

[Herra Tohtori]

It's not exactly finalized. The idea I have is that the amount of ambient lighting would increase as you go further from the Sun, to simulate the increasing darkness as eyes adapt to it, whereas on inner solar system you'll get bright light from the Sun and high contrast from very low ambient lighting.

I'm not too sure about this part. IMO missions looked better if they had ambient lighting at zero and only source of light is the Sun and reflection from planets when present. But like I said on irc, I'm a sucker for dark missions.

That's why it's not finalized. Luckily, this is about one of the easiest things to experiment with...

[SpardaSon21]

Can we get the dark missions?  I like dark missions, especially if I get to see all the light emitted from weapons fire show up vividly on ships.  Unfortunately I can't find the page on the wiki that lists the various settings some people use.

[Jeff Vader]

I can't find the page on the wiki that lists the various settings some people use.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Sample_Lighting_Settings

[Snail]

That page is borderline orphaned. We should link to it more...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Snail has a point.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/Sample_Lighting_Settings

[Angelus]

I demand MOAR screenshots! Pronto!

[asyikarea51]

Celestia, eh.

I never got the hang of it enough to even figure out how to put anything custom in it. I guess that's what happens when one is spoiled by the ease of FS modding (at least, at the start of it anyway)...