WIP: High-resolution Nebulas mod

OPs cannot be edited, so here are the late thoughts:

C. Is it possible through modding to actually expand the number of nebulas the game will choose from or is this fixed?

D. Are the nebulas of fixed size, meaning they always take the same space on-screen regardless of resolution (high-resolution nebulas do not take more space)? - from what I've seen, this seems to be case.

WOW.. that's great looking.
Not a modder myself, but appreciation is always good right?

Hope you get some help on this, and look forward to seeing more.

Looks very nice! Is it kind of difficult to see your units through that?

I think you might want to check out Logic Sequence's mod. He did some Nebula work in that too: Logic Sequence's Hi-res Graphics Mod

Yes I use his mod and I noticed he has some nebulas too. This is an area open to discussion, as actually I'm pretty undecided on what to do with the content already present in the game and with LogicSequence's mod. This actual content, inclunding LogicSequence's mod, is in 256x256. The texture you see on the screenshot is over 1800x1800. As far as blending goes, there's an obvious contrast between a high-res and a low-res texture. So as my work progresses I think this mod should be a stand-alone replacement because it will not blend well with current nebulas, maybe except a couple of them. However I'm not even sure if it can actually replace actual content. And I don't want anyone to be forced to choose between LogicSequence's mod and this one. Ideally they should be able to use my mod for nebulas, and LogicSequence's mod for everything else.




I wasn't a modder until 15 minutes ago   . Thanks for your appreciation.

On a static screenshot it appears so, but in-game as you often move the camera around it becomes evident what is background and what is foreground. Maybe you'll want to reduce nebula density though.

I'd like to add that my source material, at least until now, has been the STScI's hubble site and is of public domain as stated in their copyright notice. http://hubblesite.org/copyright/

Here's my second screenshot and now I'm going to bed.

those are very good nebula's. I'm also glad you replaced it with real ones too. I think I can name everyone you posted off by heart. Well done.

Most likely they can NOT be changed, unless the devs specifically put something like that in, but that sounds kind of hard to implement.

The second screen shot is beautiful. The first is a nice first try, but it's way too bright.

They're... beatiful...

Sniff.


It would be nice to have a pretty background to look at while trying to become absolute ruler of the galaxy. Just make sure that they don't interfere with our ability to play the game. I don't want to be worrying about trying to find my ships with that kinds of background.

Thanks for all constructive criticism, and compliments. Yes I will absolutely have to redo the first one if it's to make it in the final product.

I'll need some help on the technical how-to's. For instance, the mod installation could be as simple as manually replacing the original nebulas with these, and, if LogicSequence's mod is installed, replacing his' with some more of mine. Would that work? Anyhoo I'll have to try but would like some input from some more knowledged people.

Create a folder in the GalCiv2\Mods folder. In that folder, copy ModDescription.xml from the Mods\Default folder and open it in Notepad. Where it says "This is a generic mods folder for casual mods.", replace that with the name of your mod. Then in Mods\YourModFolder, create a "Gfx" folder. In this, create another folder called "Space". In this put your nebula textures. That should do it .

If I do it this, way, will these textures override any previous textures, ie: original and LS's high-res mod?

These look great!

No they won't, they will be stored as a separate mod, but in-game they will. Although, if you do it this way, they will not be able to be used in conjunction with LS's mod unless the mods are merged.

I would like this mod to be a stand-alone replacement to the original game textures, and in case LS's high-res mod is installed, a replacement to both the original and his nebula textures, while keeping the rest of his textures.

I'm working fast and have created nine new textures. Hopefully I will be able to test them tomorrow evening.

DrAsik - what I would suggest is just work your own files. Ther'es no need to create dependancies on Logic's great work. Just create it as an independant project and if someone wants to use them they can plop them in the \\My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\Gfx\Space folder.

This way a person doesn't have to enable mods, and the game will function normally with Metaverse. Of course you can make it use the mods folder instead... just a suggestion from the peanut gallery

Nice work!

looks awesome!

More eye-candy for ya:

I didn't even know you could do that. But this seems to be the easiest way, yes. Now however, when using my textures in conjuction with DS's mod, you get a mix of very detailed textures and blurry ones. Though it sometimes ends up looking really good:



As I'll post more screenshots please comment and tell me which are your favorite ones or how can I improve on these, as in the end it appears I'll have to select eight for the final product, no more. Actually this number could jump to 16 if I am to exploit LS's mod by adding other textures to replace his', but I'm really undecided.

Still mesmerizing your eyes   

I completed four additional textures this afternoon. I was bothered with my nebulas contrasting too much with the background, like pictures glued on it (which is really how it works, but you don't want it to look like that). So now I am working with much more transparency. This way I don't have to reduce brightness as much, and they integrate much more seamlessly into the background. I'll post screenshots as soon as possible, the new ones are absolutely beautiful.

Performance-wise, using textures above 1000x1000 leads to very noticeable slowdowns, so I have set an upper limit of 960 pixels for the largest side of all textures I create. This has been effective in keeping the framerate high.

Please comment on my current work. I'll probably release this within the next week.

The look nice, though as you say a couple of them are a bit too strong in the screenshots above. Transparency will probably help it a lot.

As Kryo said, they're a little too "strong" for my tastes in the screnshots... That's one of the reasons i didn't make High-Res nebulas for my High-Res mod. Well, in fact, i actually did. But i cut them long before i released them mod, because while they looked visually great, once you actually played with them in the game, they became... Annoying.

Since the game layers the nabula graphics in an attempt to "peice together" unique nebulas, using actual nebula graphics looked bad, imo. Having the same nebula repeated all over the map was unrealistic looking and distracting. So i cut the new maps in favor of modified versions of the old ones, to add more color, but still keep them in a manor that they could be peiced and layered together to form different non-identical looking nebulas.

But the graphics here sure look great! Maybe you can get around the problems i had. Keep up the good work!

beautiful, work, I hope this come to fruitition.

Btw, on a uber geek side note, I was displaying you pictures to my father, who is an ametuer astronomer. Not only did he recognize that they were from the hubble database, on top of that he was able to name half of the shots or tell what type of shot was. For example, he believes the 3rd pic of of the Cat's Eye with a possible planetary nebula mixed in. The 8th picture is actually an image of radio waves (probably IR or UV - its "too specific" for general Rf imagery - his words not mine).

Either way, we both agree it is a beautiful background.

Yes what happens is that individually they look good, and I can make them look not too distracting (although, beauty should be distracting), but as you explain, LogicSequence, the game likes to patch them together, while that's not what I have in mind when creating them. The easiest way around this is to reduce nebula density to something very low, and put star density reasonably high. Now you have a sky filled with stars, and here and there something worth looking at. It's a completly different feel - more realistic probably, which doesn't necessarly mean better. Though if you look completly downwards, through the z-axis, you will see a couple nebulas patched together, the game always does that.

I think with some work I can make it a worthy alternative to the blurry ones, which have the obvious advantage of mixing well and being able to fill the background without becoming annoying. I had a healthy "wow" when after playing for a while I pointed the camera in a direction I had never tried before, and suddenly giant bluish clouds filled my view.

The main difficulty is to find pictures with the right potential. A close-up of orion is infinitely cool, but it just can't be incorporated well. Most of what I've shown you until now won't make it in the final product.

Final screenshot for today. Yes, that's a stupid military resource in front of my beautiful nebula, what a shame.