Vega Strike Forums

I don't want to sound cynical and don't take this the wrong way, but those planets just don't look right.

It makes the planets look too small. There is too little variation in colours... there don't tend to be big sweeping gradients like that. You also have clouds and other gaseous mass adding their own distortions.

Take a look at Nasa's blue marble pics of earth.

I know we've got to be pragmatic and practical. I just think there's room for improvement, still.

@charlieg: Yeah, you're completly right, but it is really hard to do something that will look 'real', at least it is for me
I especially like hurleybirds work (as seen in this thread and as mentioned some posts above).
They look a lot better (more real) anything i can come up with.

Anyway, 'cloud' textures are already possible and mentioned in various threads in the forum (Sol-II, hurleybirds thread, etc...)


Pontiac

Just to say that I received some music on Babylon 5 theme, made by Kensuguro, and well, this guy is really good, the music is awesome

Ok, that's the last screenshots with VS backgrounds//planets, I still hunt for bugs in my universe, but indeed the harder parts of the work belong to the past. This ship was a nightmare to export, due to some non planar polygons not really easy to replace with triangles:

Finally after a long long time (okok, it was just month) I can read this thread again.

WOOT, B5 inspired music ... yeah i just cant wait to hear it

Is there still demand for my crappy planet textures?
I didn't do anything in that direction since my last post so there are no new ones 'yet'. And the last ones i mad really don't look 'real'.. as mentioned before

Pontiac

Yes! there is still demand! I'm asking myself if I do like Peteyg, a first release with only graphics stuffs, like mehes, planets or other, or if I spend more time trying to finish my python learnig and commit some missions with my firt release. What your feeling? I hope if I post submit a firts beta soon (as a "proof on concept")I will get more help from some python and other useful gurus, as I received many mails, but it bother me to post an unfinished work. So what's your feeling?

etheral walker wrote:Yes! there is still demand!

What type of planet textures do you need?
I can generate some decent caribean and lava planets (as seen above ready posted). For other ones i need some time to figure out the right gradient

I'm asking myself if I do like Peteyg, a first release with only graphics stuffs, like mehes, planets or other, or if I spend more time trying to finish my python learnig and commit some missions with my firt release. What your feeling? I hope if I post submit a firts beta soon (as a "proof on concept")I will get more help from some python and other useful gurus, as I received many mails, but it bother me to post an unfinished work. So what's your feeling?

If it was i to decide it would mainly depend on how long the 'python-learning-phase' will last. If it a bunch of time a pre-release would be better. But then you may get feature request after feature request i bet
But since this is normally a hard thing to tell i would suggest you to make a small test-release for a decent number of vs/b5 ppl for 'alphatesting'.
For example: If the mod has a bunch of missions tell each tester to concentrate on one mission and find bugs/faults/etc...

Pontiac

Ok, i added some new pics in the planet directory here (big pngs):
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... _textures/
08_04 is a complete new terrain.
Especially check out the *lv*.png and "*rp.png" ones. What do you think of them?
lv=lava
rp=red planet

All used gradients and source files for planetgenesis have been uploaded too.

Pontiac

I have one suggestion for the planet texutres. They look really clean, too clean, especially the lava world. Little bumps, cracks, and wastelands would make a huge difference. Just putting a huge detail texture on the entire thing might help too. Also watch out about making some colors really bright. Th lava appears to be pretty bright, it might be better as a deeper red, and the sand on the carribean textures can look overly bright as well.

Keep up the good work!

hurleybird wrote:I have one suggestion for the planet texutres. They look really clean, too clean, especially the lava world. Little bumps, cracks, and wastelands would make a huge difference. Just putting a huge detail texture on the entire thing might help too.

I'm not a good artist (if at all ) when it comes to details.
Do you have tutorials or something like that where i can see how other ppl make craters/bumps/cracks/etc?

Also watch out about making some colors really bright. Th lava appears to be pretty bright, it might be better as a deeper red, and the sand on the carribean textures can look overly bright as well.

That's a thing I'm still trying to adjust in the gradients. I just can't get it to work (right now) so that it doesn't look strange

Thanks for your c&c
Pontiac

etheral walker wrote:I'm asking myself if I do like Peteyg, a first release with only graphics stuffs, like mehes, planets or other, or if I spend more time trying to finish my python learnig and commit some missions with my firt release.

Definitely, definitely, do a release now with all the graphics.

Call it beta1 and announce it to freshmeat and happypenguin. Then you'll get a whole lot of interest from the many B5 fans out there who'll think OMFG when they see the amount of and the quality of the work done so far. Who knows, some of them may even want to help out with your missions.

Ok, I think it will come during the end of the week end. AS announced, no missions, but all systems/models/backgrounds/weapons/what_you_want_other_that_python will be here

will there be any 'sample' missions, like in vegatrek, where therwes just a buch of ships fighting eachother?

That's one of the question I must answer fast For now it's just vegastrike remodeled/repainted by me, with some modifs to explore universe.mission and some other, I'm not good enough so soon to write a full mission from scratch in python

ah, what you could probably do is just take existing missions from VS or vegatrek (with peteyG's conesent) and modify them to use your B5 ships.

Heh. I wouldn't have any problem with that. But I bet one could come up with better missions than are in Vega Trek right now, without too much trouble.

Thanks PeteyG, I will study your scripts, so

You should start up your own sf project (or maybe one on savannah) to contain all your stuff etheral walker.

I mean, at the moment, what would happen if your computer died? Just where is all this hard work stored?

for now the actual matter is a problem of upload, it seems I have too many connections errors to upload it Otherwise I make some backup CDs of my work each week, so I will not lose all my work

does anybody knows some ftp servers which accept resuming transfer?

etheral walker wrote:does anybody knows some ftp servers which accept resuming transfer?

No idea, but i have a suggestion for you: make some (small) splitted zip files out of you stuff and upload them (to sf).
If anything goes wrong you just need to upload the rest of the files.

(Additional you can extract the files via ssh on the server)


Anybody knows if sf-ftp supports upload-resume (does any?)

I will try to upload it from my work location on monday, and if not I will commit it via cvs on my sf page

etheral walker wrote:I will try to upload it from my work location on monday, and if not I will commit it via cvs on my sf page

Any update? And is your SF page an actual SF project or a subpage of the VS project?

I wasted time trying to upload but unsuccessfully, the file was incomplete, so I sent a cd to put it on tuxfamily servers, which are down for now . So wait and see for now, I will try to find another way as soon as I got some time