[diamondgeezer]

Yes, I ran a search first


Hokay. I've got this massive great star in a mission, but it's dawning on me that the overwhelming glare is just a tad daft - you can barely make out the edges of your HUD, and everything inside and including the aiming reticle is completely lost.

The star is staying where it is, and it's so close that a complete lack of glare would be wrong -  so I'm wondering if there's a method for turning down the glare of the star, preferably without mucking around with the source-code (since this modding lark is complicated enough as it is...). I'm vaguely aware that the glare thing is hard-coded, but is there anything I can do with the tbls?

Also, if it does come down to a source-code job, is there anything that's been done for this already, and how does a computer illiterate dumbass like meself go about implementing it?


Standing by. .  .   .    .     .

[Fineus]

What about this, would it be possible to have a "HUD Projected Anti-Glare Device" added in, which - as the sun crosses your screen - darkens the area over and around the sun (to about twice the diameter). Thus you don't loose all your visuals but you do loose the general area around the sun. Perhaps the blocked out area could be made partially transparent so that you can still see whats around you in the general area... It might be a really nice HUD generated effect (you could turn it on/off with the HUD indicator menu, perhaps altering its color and so on?)

And I think it'd work.. if a missile lock indicator can track a target accross the screen then it must be possible to make something do similar for the sun - even though that's a part of the background and not the actual "mission".

[Hudzy]

The star's position uses co-ordinates though, so the game must be able to track it somehow. I like this idea. I was having the same problem a while back.

[aldo_14]

$Sun:      SunViolet
$Sunglow:   SunglowViolet
$SunRGBI:   0.66 0.44 0.54 1.0

Try turning down the last number there.... AFAIK RGBI is "Red, Green, Blue, Intensity", so you may be able to reduce the glare. like that.

EDIT;  That's in stars.tbl bytheway.

[Whitelight]

Also putting 3 suns in a mission can  cause of glare, i`ve had this problem, couldn`t see the enemy, but they had no problem finding me AAAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhh shot down again..dratts...

[CP5670]

I have actually had the problem of the star creating the glare being too weak considering how close the star is in one of the missions; I created a new sun entry in stars.tbl and messed around with the values aldo spoke of. Two of them overlapping each other also works, but that makes it too bright.

[IceFire]

Intensity only affects the color as far as I can tell.

[StratComm]

You could make a background image (like a nebula) that is the same as the star, making it big in FRED, then placing a smaller sun at the same coordinates.  I'm not positive that this would work, but it would be worth a try.

[Star Dragon]

New to messing around with stars tbl and wondering do you have to have a defualt sun? what if I wanna make a DARK system (IE no sun) and have a ick of an ecplise with just the circle of light in the pic visible (I got some from astronomy pages and they rock!.).  the goal would be to rely on you sensors until you get right on the targets tail (engine glows help). Also this would be CRITICAL to recreate the robotech mission BlitzKrieg when you are in Saturn's shadow and are waiting in the ring (Use asteroids)... Also I wanna use the neat pics I got of blue,Red,Green suns. I want a BLOOD RED system for shivans! Would I have to use a full nebula for that???

[Anaz]

Originally posted by Star Dragon
New to messing around with stars tbl and wondering do you have to have a defualt sun? what if I wanna make a DARK system (IE no sun) and have a ick of an ecplise with just the circle of light in the pic visible (I got some from astronomy pages and they rock!.).  the goal would be to rely on you sensors until you get right on the targets tail (engine glows help). Also this would be CRITICAL to recreate the robotech mission BlitzKrieg when you are in Saturn's shadow and are waiting in the ring (Use asteroids)... Also I wanna use the neat pics I got of blue,Red,Green suns. I want a BLOOD RED system for shivans! Would I have to use a full nebula for that???

nope. Download TBP and use their stars.tbl. The remove ambiant does exactly that.

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by Star Dragon
New to messing around with stars tbl and wondering do you have to have a defualt sun? what if I wanna make a DARK system (IE no sun) and have a ick of an ecplise with just the circle of light in the pic visible (I got some from astronomy pages and they rock!.).  the goal would be to rely on you sensors until you get right on the targets tail (engine glows help). Also this would be CRITICAL to recreate the robotech mission BlitzKrieg when you are in Saturn's shadow and are waiting in the ring (Use asteroids)... Also I wanna use the neat pics I got of blue,Red,Green suns. I want a BLOOD RED system for shivans! Would I have to use a full nebula for that???

Wow, make sure you post some screenshots of that when its done.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Star Dragon
Also I wanna use the neat pics I got of blue,Red,Green suns. I want a BLOOD RED system for shivans! Would I have to use a full nebula for that???

You would just use a REALLY red sun, and leave the background black.  You wouldn't want red backgrounds unless you were inside something.  Putting a lot of red nebulas around the star might help with the appearance.

[Anaz]

Originally posted by Analazon


nope. Download TBP and use their stars.tbl. The remove ambiant does exactly that.

[diamondgeezer]

OK... you know if a big ship passes between the player and the sun it'll blank out the glare, right? What if I put a really big but invisible ship in the general direction of the sun? The player could see through the invisible texture, but would it stop the glare?

[Fineus]

I can't see why not...

[CP5670]

I think that would work, but it would probably block out the glare completely; you want a little of it, right?

[diamondgeezer]

Well, ideally, yes, I'd like to be able to adjust the sun glare, either from FRED or from the suns.tbl

[ZylonBane]

That sounds much more complicated than just putting a huge sun-looking bitmap in the background with a little "real" sun centered on it.

Anyway, when you put in huge sizes for the sun it renders the corona really wonky. As I'm sure you've discovered.

[Knight Templar]

I always thought suns were cool, especially in multiplayer as you ave a tactical advantage.

It's also kinda realistic, although on the other hand it might be realistic that they would have something like the Canopy darkeners ala SW.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
As I'm sure you've discovered.

Don't worry, it's not that huge

As an alternative to reducing the glare, is there a practical way of making the cockpit opaque or something, so that you don't loose it in the glare?