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Any way to make planets look more realistic?


jpinard
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I'm sorry if this is a stupid question or has been asked before. But this s my first BC type game, and am wondering if there's some way to mod the planets so they look real. Maybe have some textures of Earth so it looks like Earth instead of the blue pattern it currently is.

Thanks for reading and helping me

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Earth looks like Earth to me! GalcomHQ is hovering over the Pacific ocean. Thats why it looks blue. I was confused myself when I first saw it. I then hyperjumped away from the planet, and 'Observed' the planet through Tacops and it looked fine to me. They must have one hell of a weather control network in place. No clouds!

Oh BTW, for some odd reason, the planet Majoris in the Majoris system looks exactly like Earth. Either the mechanoids build a replica of Earth because they thought it looked cool, or someone put the wrong texture on the wrong planet. Ooops!

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well surely then modding tools could inprove that? Hmm but I dont know how to texture a planet so.. :-) Well I also would imagine if they used highly detailed textures on every single planet the game would take up like what 10 or more cds? Oh and thanks for posting the cheat codes with the game documentation :-) nice.

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I actually attempted to replace many of the planetary maps for BCM/BCMG. SC's right, you can't (currently) get any higher resolution maps on the planets. You *can* however change the textures to your hearts content... I replaced many planet (8bit?) textures in BCM with better looking 24bit textures... but I don't think that is really neccessary here. Some graphical improvements *I'd* personally like to see in future incarnations are:

1. Atmospheric effects like clouds that slowly revolve around the planet.

2. Real planetary umbrae... so you can see from space if your about to ingress into the dark... it would also provide some spectaular Kodak moments. At the moment planets are pretty well lit from all angles... it's the one thing that bugs me the most about BC/UC games. And you can't just make a texture for it since planets rotate in real time =(

3. The Sun... right now the lens flare just kinda pops out of empty space. Since the game assumes the light being cast on the planet comes from the side where the nebula is, the default lens flare is a little odd.

4. Real planetary umbrae... (for the uninitiated, that is the planets shadow... or night side).

5. Bump-mapped planets. If used in conjunction with realistic lighting on the globe, bump maps could make the planet look mind-bogglingly real. The only thing is, considering the great distances this would have to be done with great subtlety.

At any rate, the cloud thing is easy to fix, I just applied a cloud texture to the prexisting planet texture. Sure, the clouds dont move or anything but the planet sure looks cooler... at least to me

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quote:

Originally posted by Scrivener:

2. Real planetary umbrae... so you can see from space if your about to ingress into the dark... it would also provide some spectaular Kodak moments. At the moment planets are pretty well lit from all angles... it's the one thing that bugs me the most about BC/UC games. And you can't just make a texture for it since planets rotate in real time =(

If I'm not mistaken, the reason it works this way is so that regardless of your approach angle you arrive in the atmosphere above your first waypoint. I like it this way.

As far as approaching on a dark side. I have done it. Fly to the moon nav point, then plot a waypoint on Earth in a dark zone and HJ in. Your approach will be on the sunless side of the planet and it is shadowed.

Of course if the waypoint I set was on the sunny side, then I'd go from a dark approach to light atmosphere. But I'd rather that happen than have to fly the thousands of miles between entry on the dark side and my first waypoint on the sunny side.

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