[Muriac]

I recently heard about Lightspeed's nebula pack, and I looked it up and downloaded it. The nebulae look beautiful, but I don't know how to install it. I know how to throw a bunch of vp files into the FS2 directory, but I don't know what to do with all the pcx, tga and fs2 files that comprise the nebula pack. I know it's probably a simple process, but I can't find it anywhere.

Also, what other things should I consider getting? I used to think that the mediaVPs were pretty much it, but Lightspeed's nebulae are awesome and I'm wondering what else I'm missing.

Thanks in advance.

[Muriac]

Fifteen views and nobody knows how to install the nebula pack? I guess this thread will be helpful to a lot of people.

[taylor]

The improved nebula for the main campaign are already in the MediaVPs.  The all new set (the really, *really* nice ones) doesn't work with the main campaign, you'd have to rely mods/missions which specifically make use of them.  Which are you trying to use?

[Muriac]

The ones from Lightspeed's NaRR10. It looks like more than a dozen systems have .fs2 files associated with them. Doesn't that put them in the main campaign? The nebulae themselves look like this:

[attachment deleted by admin]

[ARSPR]

I recently heard about Lightspeed's nebula pack, and I looked it up and downloaded it. The nebulae look beautiful, but I don't know how to install it. I know how to throw a bunch of vp files into the FS2 directory, but I don't know what to do with all the pcx, tga and fs2 files that comprise the nebula pack. I know it's probably a simple process, but I can't find it anywhere.

As Taylor has said, you need a MOD that uses that nebula pack. I think you are asking what to do with the files. fs2 files are example missions so forget them, you can delete them if you want. You must put tga and pcx within data\effects and stars.tbl within data\tables. But I do recomend you to build a vp instead of copying the files in Freespace2\data. vps are like zip files, they just contain other folder and files.

Then use multimod feature to use them. Example => If you have built a vp called LS.vp, put it in a folder with the name you want (MOD_LS can be a good one). Then in Derelict (this mod uses LS Nebulas) edit MOD.INI and in SecondryList you must put:

Code: [Select]

SecondryList = ,MOD_LS,whatever other folders this mod uses;
If all this info is like Chinese to you, please read Karajorma faq (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/intro.html) as you DO need to know more about how FS2_open is installed and works

[Muriac]

That makes sense. I was under the impression that the pack included a modified version of the FS2 campaign which would use the LS nebulae. Is there such a replacement?

Presumably I can't make a VP file on a Mac. Is there somewhere I can download the LS nebulae in VP format? Or is a VP just a zip file with its extension changed to .vp? Because I can do that.

[Backslash]

Here's a post with the Lightspeed nebulae in VP format...

You are sort of right... the pack you downloaded included the work-in-progress to create a standardized look for each solarsystem (i.e. Gamma Draconis, Delta Serpentes, Alpha Centauri etc., hence the example missions), which would then be applied to the FS2 campaign.  But it hasn't been finished.

VP is a little more complicated than renaming the zip.  I think there might be a VP creator for the Mac but I dunno what it's called... the only cross-platform ones I found looking today were for Linux.

[WMCoolmon]

Polonius and VPMagic should work on mac, if someone compiles for it.

[ARSPR]

You can also put the files inside data folder without making a vp but use Freespace2\LS_MOD\data. (or whatever) not Freespace2\data. Remember to do the right subfolders.

In this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39114.0.html) Taylor explains the valid file types you can put in each subfolder.

[Turambar]

i wish someone would update the main campaign to use the nebulas properly

it could be sooo pretty

[taylor]

Polonius and VPMagic should work on mac, if someone compiles for it.

Source?

[WMCoolmon]

Source?

Polonius, Linux release

Polonius, current source. Upgraded to wxWidgets 2.6.2, IIRC, but I haven't tried compiling on anything but Windows since. The zip should have all the required files, just not in a directory structure, probably easier to work with that way.

VPMagic, current source - I had a little trouble with this one, it looks like the attachment was deleted and I couldn't find the original source release. I put the same files together, but I bet it's going to need some tweaking, as I've made changes to VPLib since then for Polonius.

[taylor]

I've only had a quick look at Polonius, but it's not even remotely endian safe.  I'll have to rewrite/add the loading and saving functions before a non-Intel version would be possible.  I don't really care enough to fix all of that right now but I'll try and get to it at some point.  It all needs to be converted to use standard type sizes anyway (ie, "int32_t" rather than "int"), since there is no point in assuming crap like that for a new app.  Just because it works on something that's not Windows x86 based doesn't make it cross-platform.


@Muriac:  If you don't mind a command line tool then you could use cfilearchiver/cfileextractor.  Those are already in the Xcode project file in CVS if you can build from source.  Just set one of them as the active target and Cmd-B to produce the binary.  cfilearchiver will make VPs and cfileextractor will extract them.  Neither is really difficult to use.  I don't mind just uploading universal binary versions of them though if you need me to.

[Muriac]

I'm still on PPC, so that'll do nicely. Thanks very much!

[taylor]

http://icculus.org/~taylor/misc/cfile_tools.dmg

That includes both cfilearchiver and cfileextractor.  Both should be pretty easy to figure out, just run them without any options to get usage, but if you have questions let me know.

[WMCoolmon]

I've only had a quick look at Polonius, but it's not even remotely endian safe.  I'll have to rewrite/add the loading and saving functions before a non-Intel version would be possible.  I don't really care enough to fix all of that right now but I'll try and get to it at some point.  It all needs to be converted to use standard type sizes anyway (ie, "int32_t" rather than "int"), since there is no point in assuming crap like that for a new app.  Just because it works on something that's not Windows x86 based doesn't make it cross-platform.

Hmm, well I used wxWidgets for it, and did have to make some mods to get it working under L64 (As far as the VP library goes, AFAIK the GUI had no big issues).

I'd be interested in seeing the source if/when you do all that crossplatform stuff, although Polonius (Being my second significant wxWidgets project) has some minor issues. Such as, right-clicking and middle-clicking not working at all, and no Unicode support, and it may still hang on exit under Linux. The list tabs also don't resize very well, but I'm not too concerned about that.

As far as vplib goes, I'd probably want to try and get rid of that dependency on virtfile if I were rewriting it today. The abstraction is mostly used to load, read, and write the VP index and isn't really necessary, it could be done with some hard-to-read but fast C.