New Planetary Animations

Note: If someone already is working on this, or it isn't possible, let me know.

I think some new aimations for the planets when i'm looking at them from space would be intresting, as well as add some variety to the worlds I'm uncerimoniously dumping my digital underlings on. Here are some Ideas:

Hurricanes

Lava (just a black patch on a certain area with cracks that slowly cycle between red, orange, and yellow)

Whirlpools in oceans

HUGE columms of smoke rising from volcanoes (this is probobly suited for lower-quality planets)



4,887 views 9 replies
Reply #1 Top
thats impossible, you just can change the cloud and planet textures and make something similar, but no animation. sry.
Reply #2 Top
 

Oops. This was supposed to be a suggestion. I don't know the first thing about modding, (need to tkae computer classes lol) I was just puttting the word out. Oh, well.  
Reply #3 Top

Hehe  It's a good suggestion , but too much work for this expansion    Perhaps GC3!

Reply #4 Top

Hehe  It's a good suggestion , but too much work for this expansion    Perhaps GC3!

End of quote


TELL ME ABOUT IT!
Reply #5 Top
Actually... Animations there isn't, but you can replace the Sphere model which is the planet you are seeing. You can change it's model to add various things. Such as opposite rotation, change the tilt, add a space station orbiting it (example: Kuat) But you do need some modelling skills.

There is also the cloud file in the GFX/FX folder, which is unmoddable, but if someone can get this somehow to work, we might be able to give certain planets their own clouds, and make them move etc.
Reply #6 Top
If you replace the sphere.x file, it will be the same for every planet on the map, not just select ones. And it isn't the cloud textures aren't moddable, they are, its just that they are used for all planets, you can't define different cloud textures for different planets. At this time that is...
Reply #7 Top
Well, I am sure we can mod the way clouds are selected if it isn't random. How come sometimes, Earth gets all the nice cool clouds, and Mars gets ugly clouds, I noticed this problem and found out that clouds4.png appears more times on Mars than every other planet. So I made those clouds look like Mars' clouds and not the white and beautiful clouds of Earth. You should look into it.

And of course, if you change one model, it goes for everyone, but I won't mind to have an orbiting starbase on every planet... On Space Empires: Star Fury, each planet type had it's own model, so that rings would come with the model, when I changed that, I could make it that only habitable planets got starbase over them. That was really cool.
Reply #8 Top
The way the cloud textures are selected is random, the fact you are seeing a particular texture selected more than another is pure chance. AS i said, as of now, there is no way to mod the way cloud textures are selected per planet.

As per changing the sphere.x model, if you add a space station to it, it's going to be on EVERY planet in the game, including EVERY uninhabited and uninhabitable one. And obviously, unlike Space Empires, GC2 doesn't have a different model for each planet (which would be really inefficient and an unneccessary memory hog).

I read in another thread you are still only using Dread Lords, you have to take into account that with DA, memory usage jumped quite a bit, and now with TA the focus is on minimizing the amount of memory used, to avoid the "out of memory" errors that are popping up for a lot of people.
Reply #9 Top
Yeah! I figured out that it will be on each planet, including Stars (Suns) and just because you made me wonder all day long, I decided to make a mod about it. A mod which changes the sphere.x file and you should wait patiently until it is approved.

Space Empires doesn't have model for each planet, it's only for each planet type, that is Habitable, Not Habitable, Gas Giant, Moon, Gas Giant with Rings, Habitable with Rings, Not Habitable with Rings and I think that is it.

And I never encountered such "out of memory" error in the past, so I didn't understand. Yes, I do use Dread Lords, but this is about to change soon anyway.

EDIT: Ok, but there must be some connection to it, it happens each and every game, I also thought this is because Mars is level 4 while Earth is 11, but all those pure chances are not so rare, in fact, when I took the screenshot for the new mod, it was as I told you, and I will screenshot that for you if you wish.