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 #51 from Sins Forums Top
Very,Very nice job.
Though why is the Blue sun the only one thats really bright, Would be cool if the others were too.
Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top
I really like the improved textures, they look a lot nicer! Thanks for making these available. The only thing is that the background stars seems to have actually had quite a performance impact; dropped my framerate a good bit. But other than that, great!
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top
I've been playing around with textures too. I'm currently adding more variations of existing planets. I now have 4 ice planets and 4 volcanic planets, I even added a moon "planet" type (with 4 variations).

The trouble I'm having, is getting them to wrap seamlessly. Is there a trick to that?


I didn't happen to get a screenshot and I'm at work, so...


This is pretty much for my personal use since the textures I'm using are from X3, and I can't distribute them without getting Egosoft's permission. If I can get them to wrap right, I might ask so I can give it to the public.
Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top
Using photoshop?
If so, load the texture and click on Filters/Other and choose Offset and change the top slider a bit.
Click ok and fix the edges so they match, then undo the offset :)
Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top
Using photoshop?
If so, load the texture and click on Filters/Other and choose Offset and change the top slider a bit.Click ok and fix the edges so they match, then undo the offset
End of quote


I haven't had any problems yet making textures, but the more planets I make, the more textures I do, so that is a REALLY handy piece of information, thank you very much.

Just the poles to sort out, but I don't think PS can help us there, just trial and error.
Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top
Nice work man! Really makes them stand out better in the game.
Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top
I'm glad you realized for this release that there's no such thing as a green star. Any star with the maximum intensity in the green range appears white. I may download this and give it a try.
Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top
This is a great Sins mod, and at the moment by far my favorite. However something that kind of kills it is the star background. Its not fully seamless so the eye candy isn't as nice. Besides that this mod is great and I hope you'll make more textures to make more unique planets.
Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top
You noticed the star background too? , its like lots of square's :D

Can we have a texture pack II with more stuff plzz! :D
Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top
Sweet mod max! I loved the weather/increased vegetation mod you did for oblivion awhile back, this looks just as good, keep up the good work!
Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top
Any update for 1.03?
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I would like to know this as well. I thought we would be able to load the mod through the game *without* having to modify directories.
Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top
Hey an awesome mod! Thanks a bunch for doing it!

Looks great!
Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top
Anyone tried this with 1.04 yet?
Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top
Anyone tried this with 1.04 yet?
End of quote


I have and mine hasn't worked with the 1.04 game so far. The planets and asteroids are opaque. I havn't heard of any fixes for this other than manually removing the modded files. I'm thinking about just doing a clean re-install. :/
Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top
It's been working fine for me, though when I installed it I was really new at modding Sins and actually just pasted over the files in the main game folder after making a backup. I've never had any problems with it though, and I'm running 1.04 (and Sins Plus combined with Bailknight's graphical update, if that makes a difference).
Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top
I didn't bother to spend more than a couple of minutes on each texture. Don't expect anything groundbreaking.
End of quote


Groundbreaking? These textures blow the water out of the default ones, thats grounbreaking enough for me. Just finished the download, time to test them out.

EDIT: Well I love it, the only issue I have is the new space background doesn't look that great. In my opinion there are WAY to many specle stars. Anyone know a way I can stick that in another folder and replace it with the old one?
Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top
LordSethD, all you need to do is remove the "starfield.dds" file (and re-enable the mod). I tested it on my computer, and the new space background is gone. Everything else seems to work fine.
Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top
I really wish you would add green stars. The reason why is because as far as I know there is green stars, we just can't see them to the ability of our eyes so they appear white. By this time in the future I think that Humanity and the other races would have built some kind of enhancement for our eyes to let us see a lot more than we could naturally. Also maybe you could enhance the planets and stars further? Like adding a white dwarf star and some more textures for gas giants that look like uranus and neptune and saturn.
Reply #71 from Sins Forums Top
Oh yah and by the pics it seems like their is no added yellow sun texture? Is this true?
Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top
Oh yah and by the pics it seems like their is no added yellow sun texture? Is this true?
End of quote


There is a new texture/brightness for the yellow star, I've been using this texture pack for a while.
Reply #73 from Sins Forums Top
I just downloaded this, and was trying to use it as a mod, rather than dropping the textures into the game folders and replacing the original textures. I have 1.05 installed. I placed the "MT Textures" folder into the mods folder, as instructed in the Readme, and renamed it to "Textures". I loaded the game, and tried to enable the mod. It appears to have done something, since the mod is now listed as enabled, and there is a checksum listed. But the textures don't show up. The stars still look the same, and none of the planets have changed that I can tell. They don't look wrong or corrupted, they simply fail to use the new textures. Any idea what I did wrong?
Reply #74 from Sins Forums Top
Nevermind. I slightly misunderstood the directions - I had set up the folders slightly wrong. It should be mods/Mt Textures/Textures, with the .dds files ending up in the final Textures folder. I had just renamed the "MT Textures" folder that extracted from the archive, so I had mods/Textures, which is apparently why it wasn't working. In any case, I got everything where it's supposed to be, and it appears to be working now. They look very nice, but there seems to be something odd about the background starfield texture. It seems to be made of square patches, and they don't blend into each other. It sort of looks like the texture is tiled, but isn't set up to tile seamlessly.

Thank you for taking the time to make these available to the community.
Reply #75 from Sins Forums Top
Just download the mod, pretty good change. My only complaint is the being able to see all the borders for the squares that make up the skybox. Is there a file in your mod I can delete that will just use the original skyboxes?