Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Angelus on November 11, 2008, 11:18:11 am
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Is it possible to reduce the amount of lighting from the Sun, or to have a mission without sun?
I'm after a really dark environment, where the only lighting comes from Stars and/ or a Sun that's REALLY far away.
Playing around with the feature tab settings is in this case not an option.
Reducing the size of the sun bitmap to the minimum doesn't do anything noteable.
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You can always put a planet over the sun blocking most of the light.
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You can always put a planet over the sun blocking most of the light.
does it nullify the flare effect completely?
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It used to if the planet was bigger than the sun. Haven't tried it in quite some time though.
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Ah, will test that, thx!
A bitmap with random placed stars, to fit the starfield.pof map( more or less).
Does that also nullify the lighting ( from the sun ) applied to ships?
What about making the sun bitmap opaque? Would that work too?
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Some MODs, like TBP, have an "ambient" option for Suns. This provides light with out a specific souce. So, "Ambient_Red" will cover the mission area in red light without need for a red sun.
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Well, he wants a dark environment, so he might not even want any light at all.
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Ambient black?
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ambient in red, very low emittion, Im guessing he wont need to have a completely black env, or maybe he can use a dark nebula or something.
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Dark Nebula...I like how that sounds :D
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I've tested it.
Placing a planet over the sun doesn't work, the sun is visible through the planet ( and even 9 planets ).
Painting the sun bitmap in black gives a REALLY sexy effect, reduces the amount of lighting, but the flare is still visible. Hm, have to paint the flare black too.
@terran_emperor: will check that out, sounds interesting. :)
EDIT: The flare is gone, but the lighting is still there, and heading toward the sun, although not visible anymore, makes you go blind.
The effect isn't that intense like before. but still annoying.
Checking the B5 option...
EDIT:
The B5 ambient effect did it, after editing the values a bit.
It's exactly what i'm looking for, the only thing that still bothers a bit is the effect you get if you look into the sun,
although it's way better then before. I assume it's part of the code?
Thx to everyone!
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Glad to be of service.
I'm surprised thad FUBAR-BDHR didnt mention it, especially since he's part of the TBP team
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If you have space for one more ship in ships TBL, create a massive square plane, texture it with statrs and place it at a distance far enough such that the stars appear normal size and the "ship" cannot be reached easily. Actually, this is sounding like too much work...
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there's the remove sun bitmap sexp.
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there's the remove sun bitmap sexp.
ouch, i never checked that in the default 3.6.9 FRED of BtRL, mainly because BtRL has no Nebulaes.
*note to self: output SEXPs to html*
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I'm surprised thad FUBAR-BDHR didnt mention it, especially since he's part of the TBP team
I'm not much for background making don't have the patients for it. I usually just "borrow" Vid's
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You can have a sun in the mission and just get rid of it with the remove-sun-bitmap sexp at the very beginning. The ambient level is then the only thing that contributes to lighting.
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thx!
Next question:
I need clouds ( poofs ) floating through the area, but to have 'em i have to enable full nebula.
I've tried to make the background ( nbackcust ) fully transparent ( an empty file- flood fill black and then 0 opacity), but ingame i get a blue screen.
Any ideas how to make a fully transparent background?
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you mean clouds that behave like asteroid/debris fields?
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I mean the effect you see when you are flying through a full nebula, only without the colored background.
I thought it's possible to have those clouds and make the background ( pattern ) transparent.
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I' wouldnt know. Sorry.
Are you trying to make an Atmosphere environment?
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I'm after a "dust" effect for my Asteroid field mission.
Since there is yet no option to make the full nebula "more transparent" and increase the distance you can spot ships, i've thought this would be the best approach to get the effect.
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I mean the effect you see when you are flying through a full nebula, only without the colored background.
I thought it's possible to have those clouds and make the background ( pattern ) transparent.
You mean to see the stars right behind the nebula?? like a more "transparent" nebula?
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I'm after a "dust" effect for my Asteroid field mission.
Yeah, I'm surprised there isn't more dust implemented in the asteroid fields in FS2. It is after all, a dirty bunch of floating rocks.
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I mean the effect you see when you are flying through a full nebula, only without the colored background.
I thought it's possible to have those clouds and make the background ( pattern ) transparent.
You mean to see the stars right behind the nebula?? like a more "transparent" nebula?
Imagine there are "dust clouds" on this picture. :)
(http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/3360/starshy7.jpg)
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You know what? I was honestly thinking about saying that. How hard would dust clouds be to implement in FSO?
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It would require changes to the code, the way the engine handles nebulaes.
I think it's possible to get that effect without coding, using effects ( anis, like explosions, asteroids, whatever ) that are triggered somehow.
I hope someone can tell me if it's possible to use the clouds ( pattern ) in conjunction with a transparent background ( poof ). Like i said earlier, i get an blue background with that file i mentioned earlier.
Either i did something wrong or the engine don't like transparent backgrounds as poofs and colors them blue.
I hope it's the former...
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you could always try a starfield background
*Keep the cloud pattern same
*change background part from transparent to a starfield
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Tried replacing the transparent file i created with the starfield, the result was an blue background. This is odd,'cause the blue background seems to be set by the engine if no Pattern is available ( a while back, i tried to add nebula to the game, i had only the nbackcust file, which was grey. I accidently checked nbackblack - the result was a blue background, although there was only colored pattern ( the grey one ) )
Can someone test that too?
Any help is most appreciated!
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Tried replacing the transparent file i created with the starfield, the result was an blue background. This is odd,'cause the blue background seems to be set by the engine if no Pattern is available ( a while back, i tried to add nebula to the game, i had only the nbackcust file, which was grey. I accidently checked nbackblack - the result was a blue background, although there was only colored pattern ( the grey one ) )
Can someone test that too?
Any help is most appreciated!
Hi, just noticed yout PM... I have never seen a blue background due to missing textures, but I have seen completely white background due to exceedingly large texture size (on my older graphics card), and (IIRC) the background was also set on white in case of a missing texture once, so perhaps you should check the texture sizes and what is supported by your graphics device.
Can't really help more without seeing the files themselves though.
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Tried replacing the transparent file i created with the starfield, the result was an blue background. This is odd,'cause the blue background seems to be set by the engine if no Pattern is available ( a while back, i tried to add nebula to the game, i had only the nbackcust file, which was grey. I accidently checked nbackblack - the result was a blue background, although there was only colored pattern ( the grey one ) )
Can someone test that too?
Any help is most appreciated!
Hi, just noticed yout PM... I have never seen a blue background due to missing textures, but I have seen completely white background due to exceedingly large texture size (on my older graphics card), and (IIRC) the background was also set on white in case of a missing texture once, so perhaps you should check the texture sizes and what is supported by your graphics device.
Can't really help more without seeing the files themselves though.
Thx for the response Herra. :)
The transparent pattern/ background i created, has the same size as the ones i found in FSO.
The prob is, it doesn't show up as transparent.
The starfield was reduced in size to fit the size of the original file.
My Gfx is a ATI Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB DDR3, it should handle such files well.
If you have some free time, i could send you the two files.