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Modded Skybox

By Multianna on May 15, 2007 6:05:59 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Multianna

Join Date 10/2006
+10
Heres a few trys to change the skybox, i know im not good at this




And my favorits



44 Replies
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Reply #26
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 17, 2007 2:09:53 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Heres another attempt, this time i changed the colors of the small stars


If you can see the change, try one of these
BMP 5mb
or
PNG 1.4mb
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Reply #27
lordkosc
Join Date 12/2006
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May 17, 2007 2:45:57 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
leave the skybox alone!!!!!!!! waaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!
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Reply #28
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 17, 2007 4:13:38 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
And another to show some stars that are abit closer



BMP version 5mb
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Reply #29
startrekdork
Join Date 06/2002
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May 17, 2007 7:05:03 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Multianna, what other mods have you worked on for Sins? Did you manage to add in new ships?


I mean new ships with the current models but different values.
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Reply #30
Spartan
Join Date 03/2006
+171
May 17, 2007 10:16:17 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Good stuff to be sure. It must be nice to have so much free time. Keep up the great work.
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Reply #31
Major Stress
Join Date 05/2006
+138
May 18, 2007 4:29:42 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
You can't import new models into the game just yet. You will need the games Forge Tools to do that. However pretty much every texture, and script is accessible, and can be edited. Textures with photoshop, and the nvidia dds plugins, and pretty much all scripts can be edited with wordpad. If any new modders tinker around with the games files just make sure you back up your originals 1st.

Nice job on the backgrounds Multi. Tho i can see why most of the sky box's are bright. It is because the textures of the ships are very dark, and hard to see in a black background. I think a touch of nebula is nice in some areas, but i agree that all bright orange, green, or blue is a bit excessive. Tho i do like the games gray skybox.

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Reply #32
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 18, 2007 2:51:32 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

Multianna, what other mods have you worked on for Sins? Did you manage to add in new ships?


I mean new ships with the current models but different values.


i havent been fooling around with any codes, just some of the skybox images.


Good stuff to be sure. It must be nice to have so much free time. Keep up the great work.


Thx The free time will end at some point, but for now i got more then enough
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Reply #33
Major Stress
Join Date 05/2006
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May 18, 2007 4:44:26 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
This is weird. I replaced the files with your new skybox and the game still plays with the old vanilla skybox's, then i went as far as to delete all the skybox files and the game STILL plays with the old skybox's. I would think ether one of 2 things would happen. with no skybox the game "should" crash, or have a white background. I said ok let me check and see if i didnt have 2 instances of the game installed, but i only have one, and the modifications i make to ship textures load up. Whats going on?
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Reply #34
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 18, 2007 4:59:11 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
as i said above you should replace them all, with my file

The once to replace:

SkyboxBackdrop2.dds
SkyboxBackdrop3.dds
SkyboxBackdrop4.dds
SkyboxBackdrop5.dds
SkyboxBackdrop6.dds

Or change color to red, for a better chance of hitting the "SkyboxBackdrop6.dds" skybox.

Kryo told above, that Blair have said, its totaly random. But to my experiance i got 8 out of 10 to get the SkyboxBackdrop6.dds, when choosing the team color red
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Reply #35
Blair Fraser
Join Date 10/2006
+139
Moderator
May 18, 2007 10:55:07 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

The skyboxes aren't fully random but stars are. The type of star you get determines the valid choices of skyboxes that can be associated with it.

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Reply #36
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 19, 2007 1:26:58 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Thx that explains alot
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Reply #37
Spartan
Join Date 03/2006
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May 19, 2007 1:28:24 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
At least I'm not the only one with issues getting Multianna's box to work.
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Reply #38
Major Stress
Join Date 05/2006
+138
May 19, 2007 1:37:39 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
It still doesnt explain why when i DELETE EVERY texture with the name skybox on it i still get skybox's like the files were still there. Are they cached in another folder when the game loads up?
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Reply #39
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 19, 2007 1:57:39 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

At least I'm not the only one with issues getting Multianna's box to work.


you tryed to choose the color red?
oh and dont change any configuration, just overwrite the other files.
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Reply #40
Multianna
Join Date 10/2006
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May 19, 2007 6:03:06 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums

It still doesnt explain why when i DELETE EVERY texture with the name skybox on it i still get skybox's like the files were still there. Are they cached in another folder when the game loads up?


hmm, i dunno about that, will have to look abit deeper

So are none of you able to make it work with the zipped version while overwriting all the SkyboxBackdrop's ?
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Reply #41
Major Stress
Join Date 05/2006
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May 19, 2007 7:03:30 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
I haven't been able to make any skybox mods work at all. Not just yours but any changes i make myself. See above post. The funny thing is texture changes i make to ships show up. It is really wierd that if there are no skybox textures at all that the game still shows the original skybox's. This is why i am thinking the skybox is cached somewhere else. I just dont know where. May need some dev help with this one.

EDIT: I just did another test modifying ship textures while using your skybox, and while the ship texture changes show up very clearly, your skybox, or any skybox changes made do not show up. Blair, if you are reading this can you explain to us how the skybox loads up in game or if there is a file to modify to make it work. Im still dumbfounded at the fact the skybox loads even though all the textures are deleted.
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Reply #42
voidster
Join Date 06/2004
0
June 26, 2007 3:56:40 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
hey folks,

I thought id add some "light" so to speak on the skybox modding, at least the stuff ive discovered. (hopefully not upsetting the old post stuff)

If you look at the STAR_BLUE.entity file, it references several skybox mesh names. I changed the blue file to list only one mesh file reference.

numSkyboxMeshNames 1
meshName "SkyboxBackdrop2"

it seems they blend multiple mesh files to make the backgrounds. So by simplifying it down to one mesh, then we can go into the other file SkyBoxProperties.skyboxbackdropdata (eesh what a filename.) There you can change several things color wise, for instance i made the ambient light/dark colors to read 000000 (prob should be 8 chars but hey its the same value). That fixed what i consider the typical game look (eg: WAAAAYYY too much light all over the place from ONE sun)

After that i swapped/copied/etc SkyboxBackdrop7.dds from the texture directory, and renamed it SkyboxBackdrop2.dds, (allways make backup files) Then pasted it in, overwriting the orginal. Im pretty happy with the results, ya get a decent background, and better lighting conditions (for me anyhow i like the one source light)

Ill have to get photoshop up and running and toy around with the texture files. Whats cool is that even in the beta 2 this has so much potential. I hope to see them adding animated backgrounds like they have on the suns surface. If your truly in a nebula environment, there should be some sort of light show going on in the background. (example: HW:CA)
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Reply #43
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
+392
Stardock
June 26, 2007 7:37:23 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
it seems they blend multiple mesh files to make the backgrounds. So by simplifying it down to one mesh


Actually the skyboxes listed in the star entities are just the list of possible ones that can be randomly picked for that star color. Only one is used at a time.
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Reply #44
Blair Fraser
Join Date 10/2006
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Moderator
June 26, 2007 10:12:33 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
Don't forget as well that in multiple solar system games there are actually as many skyboxes as there are stars. The skybox you see is dependant on which star the camera is closest to and if you are far away from all you just see black and stars.
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