[SotF] Cosmos Ad Infinitum

You, sir, are absolutly insane.

In a good way.

Seriously.

How you did it all is simply mindboggling.

Sooo.... I'm confused.  Does this generate new systems (during or outside of gameplay?), new textures, or just make the process of moding easier for the user?

Coming up with a mod name is the hardest part.

It's not too confusing...

I'll be releasing planet system mods using the tools I've created.

I won't be releasing the tools.

There are a lot of neat and interesting fictional planet textures available. This mod attempts to make them available for Sins.

In regards to your other question, Sins can't dynamically generate systems during gameplay, so I'm pre-generating systems as separate mods. I'm also generating some planet textures myself and will build my own fictional system. I may combine the planet textures I like the most into one single mod down the road. If you like variety in planets then you might enjoy this. Either way, I'm creating this because I like seeing the different planets and plan to use some of them in my mod as well.

I have around 12 other systems picked out I'd like to convert already (13 if you count mine).

Still the amount you create is a lot, and does seem quite astounding to people like me who just seem stumble around.

Thats a good name, I like it. Great stuff!

Awww crap, you beat me to it. 

I was also trying to come up with a way to easily switch planets between games to give more variety with less game load. Also added a good chunk to http://soase.weebly.com/add-planets.html

I made up some blocks to represent the sizes of the icon set required for planets. Now I can use this single image to determine how to lay out my new planets icon sheet. icons_planets_set.xcf is a Gimp project file for a single planets icons. Make sure both layers are on and the icons layer is selected. Line up a copy of each icon over the proper block. Turn off the yellow Background Layer and save as TGA.

 Some examples from Sins Plus

City	Forest	Grass

 See http://soase.weebly.com/new-planets.html for the rest of Sins Plus. This page is a WIP.

This shows a new 512 x 512 sheet will fit 12 sets of icons with little waste area. To add more than 12 create a sheet 512 x 1024 that will hold up to 24 icon sets or even 1024 x 1024 will hold 48 sets. I was thinking that multiple sheets of 12 sets might be a good way to switch the extra planets loaded. icons_planets_x12.xcf is a Gimp project file for 12 planets icon set. Make sure both layers are on and the icons layer is selected. Line up a copy of the icon set created above onto 1 of the 12 placements. Turn off the yellow Background Layer and save as TGA. I am hoping to have a collection of icon_planet_sets.tga so people can easily build there own icons_planets_m0d.tga sheets.

planets_m0d.brushes has all the brush locations for the 12 sets of icons. Just rename or match up the brush name with the planet entities brush links.

Also working on http://soase.weebly.com/planet-bonuses.html and a way to easily add your own choices to each planet.

Thanks, it's mainly just my coding skills I'm leaning on here. Lots of other people like you make really creative pieces of work. Your modelling abilities are really becoming fantastic from what I'm seeing.

We think a like. I've setup similar blocks with my latest builds to help layout my icons. It's a little different but serves the same purpose. For example I have undetected icons for each icon size moon, dwarf, giant in addition to normal.

I like the dark side effect on those icons and pictures though. I may have to create a filter to simulate that effect for my stuff.

It's amazing the game stays fairly fresh with only 2 of each planet type in regular sins. I just want some variety that will feel more random with the increased amount of planet texture possibilities.

On the side, I'm considering baking the Sins plus planets to the optimized model which would reduce their texture size down to 2.7 meg.

I never thought about the undetected and mainview needing different sizes.

I did start on this before as I really didn't like the ticks that Celestial Bodies added so I should have remembered. Maybe each planet size should have its own set so the large PICTURE_PLANET brush image can be sized to suit.

EDIT:

Desert Giant
	1st attempt at resizing. The bottom 2 will need render shots from XSI but you get the idea.
Desert
Desert Dwarf
Desert Moon

*lurks patiently in the background to consider use in Distant Stars*

I don't care for the ticks either... The different main view icons make it look much neater anyway.

I also like the picture sets you've got their for the different planet sizes (I may shamelessly use that )

I take projections from 3d-coat to make my icons...

I think there's some good possibilities. I'm considering the ramifications to DS as I go through my coding.

Removed section due to redesign.

With Rendering in XSI I can use lights for great effect. I still need to test the Giant icons in-game as I don't want them to large, just noticeably larger.

I've been doing some research on planetary bodies and it's probably more of a naming issue. The smallest planetary (Spherical Bodies) are generally accepted as Dwarf Planets which their general size is less than Luna (Moon). Also calling it Moon felt wrong to me and I'll probably shift it around to be a little more accurate. The dwarf size is still good for smaller planets, just need to rename it (ugh!, names). I don't feel I need to be entirely accurate but it helps to have a model to work from.

Asteroids

Dwarf Planets will be the smallest spherical planets in one size.

Terrestrial Planets will be the next, possibly in two sizes.

Gas Giants will be the largest with possibly two sizes.

I'm not sure how I want to handle moons currently. Nova's attempt is interesting and adds visual flavor and may be used for ambience. The binary planet model also is ok and adds some visual flavor. I have another idea I may try when I get on my home computer too. But I do agree, moons should be in the gravity well of the system.

I haven't been able to get 7DS's "DeadlyForge" anywhere and haven't had the time to hand create it but within it is a "supermassive black hole".   Neat concept (I know, it's a star).  Would be wonderful to see that done as well. 

Along the same line, supermassive Blue stars and red super giants would be great adds in the stellar models--all could use the same "extra large" mesh--and for the insanely creative it provides one more planet mesh to work with.

So I would love to see Red Super Giants, Blue Super Giants and Supermassive Singularities.

I'm also wondering if an invisible star could be made--one that is physically there but doesn't show in game.  A small, very low count one would be useful for creating no-pass zones in plasma storms and the like and using them to generate additional ranged effects from them.

So I may have figured out how to fix this (or atleast make look better) today googling at work. Will give it a test when I get home

i once was going to add a blackhole, then i read that blackholes were invisible, and though "wow, that would be boring as hell." and gave up.

I have been going through the planet mesh files fixing the texture links and wondering why half the planet meshes are exact duplicates.

• Planet_Terran_0.mesh = Planet_Terran_1.mesh
• Planet_Terran_2.mesh = Planet_Terran_3.mesh
• Planet_Ice_0.mesh = Planet_Ice_1.mesh
• Planet_Ice_2.mesh = Planet_Ice_3.mesh
• Planet_Desert_0.mesh = Planet_Desert_1.mesh
• Planet_Desert_2.mesh = Planet_Desert_3.mesh
• Planet_Volcanic_0.mesh = Planet_Volcanic_1.mesh
• Planet_Volcanic_2.mesh = Planet_Volcanic_3.mesh

GomDad Rotten hell   

Why the crap is there 3 sets of icons for each planet when there are only 2 sets of textures. I may as well start from scratch. Does a different asteroidTemplate or dustCloudTemplate justify a different set of icons that do not look like the planet? Now I have to redo my template sheet.

No black hole is completely invisible.  They emit non-visible energy as they "evaporate" which gives off heat and that heat in turn excites gas near the singularity--as does it's magnetic field.  Also, matter is "falling" into a black hole at near the speed of light--dust makes quite a sparkle as it collides at that speed.

So a black hole would have at the very least a diffuse glow about it--even if it was simply a dusty grey slightly lighter than space.  Most black holes will have swirling clouds of glowing gas about them and some will be brighter than entire galaxies.

The large star sizes is what I am looking for--which would also make an interesting "superplanet".

Is there a way for texturers out there to make truly seamless textures for planets?  A tutorial might be nice for that aspect.

Nova's approach would be really nice for "artificial  worlds" or worlds with permanent, man-made  capturable structures about them.

if you have 3ds max 2011 then you can use the viewport canvas, i have found it to be quite handy.

I wish.  I don't do warez and I ain't got the cash to spring for it.

So MyFist0/Rus--what IS with the redundant textures he's talking about?

It's redundant meshes really. Sins only uses two textures per planet type but has 4 meshes (2 for each) defined. It may be at one time they had additional meshes but decreased the amount due to system memory limitations at the time.

Basically they took something out of the fridge and didn't clean up the stain it left (yay analogy)

Ok--new name proposal for your mod:  "Flux Aeterna"...Latin for "Always in Change".

Har Har...I crack me up.

After re-reading the OP I was wondering how this script would work. I was hoping that my tutorial could be incorporated into a working planet mod but not sure if thats possible here.

I was thinking of having all the planet entities included but having a script that would load a new entity.manifest, brush.manifest and GalaxyScenarioDef. I did at one time make a UI that renamed files so have 4 or 5 files like

• GalaxyScenarioDef_SOL
• GalaxyScenarioDef_RIGEL
• GalaxyScenarioDef_TENORIAS

Each system would have its own brush file and planet_icons.tga with different brush.manifest for different systems.

Then upon picking the desired system the UI would rename the original GalaxyScenarioDef to GalaxyScenarioDef_ORG then rename the picked system to GalaxyScenarioDef then do the same for the brush.manifest and entity.manifest. Almost instant new planets without loading all the assets from all the planets.

I updated post 5 with different size icon templates and corresponding brush files

Interesting idea.

So what do my scripts do? They do all the leg work for generating new planet and bonus entities, generating brushes files, generating mesh files, and wiring into the GalaxyScenarioDef. The input to this process is reading the planet cl textures. The only manual work I need to do is create proper cl and da textures and the icons.

Then with mod stacking you can place the desired system above the base mod or expansion it is configured for.

Yes, this is how I'm building my systems. Every file excluding the common shared have unique names so as to support blending of the systems if desired.

As I'm a fan of randomization though, I could see running a script the swaps out what the active system prior to starting up Sins. That would be a very simple script to do what you are suggesting and would be a cool feature.

First problem though is getting enough systems to make it worthwhile.

I like them, but I'm using a different template set for these system that works well with what I'm trying to do.

Click the planet to jump to the weebly page. Download includes the Dwarf, Standard and Giant mesh, icons, textures and XSI scenes. This page will act as a template for other planets as I add them. Images and icons are from 3d renders.

Should I start a new thread, post on different page or keep bumping this thread.

Crap I forgot the GF icons.