Max Tael Max Tael

RELEASE: Texture Pack I - Stars and Planets

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RELEASE: Texture Pack I - Stars and Planets

from Stardock Forums
Texture Pack I - Stars and Planets

This is some of the stuff I created to enhance my personal gaming experience. For simplification purposes, I'm excluding all custom planet types and other .entity changes and making this a plain texture pack. If I get some time, I'll try to sort out and polish the rest of the modded content and release it as a separate package sometime later this month.

Screenshots:
Screen01 Screen02 Screen03 Screen04

Primary download location:
http://files.filefront.com/Sins+Texture+Pack+I/;9639406;/fileinfo.html
Secondary download location:
http://rapidshare.com/files/92205748/Sins_Texture_Pack_I_-_Stars_and_Planets.zip.html
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Description
Slight visual upgrades of all planet and star textures: brightened stars, reworked and darkened volcanic types, retexturized gas giants, etc. With the exception of starfield.dds and starcorona2.dds, there are no resolution changes. Any possible performance impact should be completely negligible.

Disclaimer
Since I had no intention of redistributing this outside my LAN, I didn't bother to spend more than a couple of minutes on each texture. Don't expect anything groundbreaking. Please don't forget to back up the original textures (see the installation instructions below) and/or preview the new ones before you install the pack - you may end up reverting some of the changes, particularly the new gas giant textures that look entirely different from the originals. If that didn't scare you off, I do suggest you download and try out the package. The brightened stars alone should make it worthwhile.

Installation Instructions
Method 1: As of v1.02, extract the contents of the archive into your Sins of a Solar Empire folder (default C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar empire\) and run "MT Install.bat" that will automatically backup the original files to "MT Textures (backup)" and replace them with the new ones. If you as paranoid as I am, check the contents of the .bat file using a text editor. It's perfectly harmless.
Method 2: Allegedly, v1.03 will allow us to use custom textures without copying the whole 1Gb+ Textures directory into the mod folder. In this case, you may want to perform a "softer" installation of the pack by registering it as a game mod.
To do that (and to install any other mods), first you have to find the
modding
82,594 views 79 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
First off, im very impressed! But one of the gas giants icon in the infobar is wrong =P
And while the original star textures were far too dim, i dont like your green or red textures either. Especially the red one isnt red enough, and the green one looks a bit puke-ish :D

I do really hope you will make totally new textures as well, once the proper mod tools are released! And i hope you can ADD them to the game, so we can eventually have like 20 different ice textures to show up ingame, ah it will be a glorious time XD
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
Max Tael - The same guy that did the weather mods for Oblivion? All your stuff is awesome man. Thanks for taking the time, definitely an improvement over stock.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
Wow. This is some pretty wicked stuff. Thank you for the mod!
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
First off, im very impressed! But one of the gas giants icon in the infobar is wrong =P
And while the original star textures were far too dim, i dont like your green or red textures either. Especially the red one isnt red enough, and the green one looks a bit puke-ish

I do really hope you will make totally new textures as well, once the proper mod tools are released! And i hope you can ADD them to the game, so we can eventually have like 20 different ice textures to show up ingame, ah it will be a glorious time XD
End of quote


i read you on that. it's and awesome mod, but we will have to wait for multiple planet textures. right now one of my star systems has 5 of the same volcanic texture! lol. you know the upgraded mods are going to be sick!

Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
Is there any point or real demand in making multiple planet textures alone a large-scale release? The way I see it, there are no real differences between the types and no gameplay options concentrated around the planets themselves. It's basically just a couple of slot and population(=income) upgrades and quick access to orbital building options. Therefore, I'd rather try to implement new planet specific gameplay elements (GalCiv used to be considerably more advanced in that particular area) than make some unnecessary eye candy. What do you think?
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
Very cool work.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
I think you should make "unnecessary eye candy". Because its awesome.
Half of all Oblivion mods ever released were just eye candy, lod textures and stuff, and they are hugely popular and i myself count them as a must have, even if they dont change the gameplay.

I mean, if you love a game, why change it? I love this game, so i wouldnt want it changed, just the eye candy that doesnt have any affect on the gameplay.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
Damn - very nice indeed!

But could it be possible in any way to soften sunlight on planets surfaces, IMO it looks somewhat unnatural.

But my overall impression is clearly . . . :CONGRAT:
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
so does it work on ICO playing with other people? im pretty sure it wouldnt but if som1 knows it does please say so. too lazy to download it and figure it on my own right now.
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Is there any point or real demand in making multiple planet textures alone a large-scale release? The way I see it, there are no real differences between the types and no gameplay options concentrated around the planets themselves. It's basically just a couple of slot and population(=income) upgrades and quick access to orbital building options. Therefore, I'd rather try to implement new planet specific gameplay elements (GalCiv used to be considerably more advanced in that particular area) than make some unnecessary eye candy. What do you think?
End of quote


that's why these are "texture" mods. they have nothing to do with gameplay. they are visual mods. people only concerned with gameplay dont have to download it if they dont want to.

Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
i really like this pack, thank you :)

Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
Hey, good work! Question for you - I've been working on changing aspects of the default textures in the game (color / hue mostly) and I'm using photoshop with the nvidia plugin to do it.

Except... I think I'm doing something wrong. I haven't tested the new textures in game yet, but I have noticed that the textures that I end up creating are about half the size (2.3mb each vs 5.6mb each) of most of the un-modified textures. I'm saving the new textures with the default options that the nvidia tool gives me... but I'm thinking that perhaps I should be saving it in a different way...

What settings do you use when you save your new textures?
Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top
hmlee08, that 1/2 of the original size probably means you're not saving the alpha channel. Use DXT5 (interpolated alpha) instead of DXT1. If it were a gain or loss of roughly 1/3 of the original size, it would indicate a likely mipmap-related discrepancy. The absence of mipmaps is often not that important since they can be also generated at runtime by most rendering engines.
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
thinking about downloading your textures. I've been working on a solar system map in galaxy forge, but i keep having to use the same old planets for anything over 950km in diameter. Does this include good textures for the more dead moons overlaid onto the volcanic type? I hate having to use arctic over and over again just because it is the closest color match.

Also I'm looking for help play testing this map before I upload it. I'm at 80+ objects and I'm only at Jupiter. The starts will eventually be Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune; the whole map will be out to Eris by the time I'm done with it. Objects over 100km and under 950km i use asteroids, 950km and above i use the planet archetypes.
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
How do you reverse the installation?
Reply #43 from Stardock Forums Top
In your game folder, there is a subdirectory named "MT Textures (backup)" that contains the original files. Just move all or some of its contents into "Textures" to overwrite the modified textures.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
max, any way we can incorporate Uzii's oceanic planet mod with yours?

here's his thread:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=443&aid=300281

your mod should be the backbone of all planet mods imo.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
Copyright I, the author, waive all claim of copyright and place my versions of Starfield.dds, Planetgas0-cl.dds and Planetgas1-cl.dds into the public domain. Feel free to use them for any imaginable purpose and without any conditions.The rest of the images are all derivative works that are subject to the original terms of Sins of a Solar Empire licensing. Do not re-use outside of the Sins modding community.
End of quote


The way modding should be. 2 thumbs up!

Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
Quick request, could someone upload me the original starfield.dds?
I noticed that Tael's new one looks awfully tiled.. it's distracting. The rest of the new textures are brilliant though!

/e:
I did not use the install .bat, I did not make backups.
Yeah I know..
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
Impressive work! What did you use to create these (apart from PS)? I've also made a short attempt to customize the planets but with the textures you can apply to your brushes in PS it's hard to create believable planet surfaces. So where did you get your textures from (provided that you didn't create them yourself earlier) because doing something as detailed as your planets would rather be a matter of days than minutes.