[MOD] LeatherPoker's beautiful Nebulaes MOD for EM 2.x

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:56 pm

I found Leatherpoker's nebulae mod on this forum. The images looks gorgeous

Unfortunately it is a mod for the 1.X version of the game.
There are 11 nebulaes images inside this mod.

Now I saw on seejay's website a nebulae mod compatible with 2.x. But inside this mod there are only 5 different nebulaes (this is the new structure of moding nebulae, as from the readme of the customization kit), and, in my humble opinion, not as nearly beautiful as those from the 1.x mod of LeatherPoker

1) Why is it reduced from 11 files to 5 ? Some nebulae where removed in EM 2.X ?

2) I found this : http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... #pid159912 as an attempt to convert the old mod to the new. Does anyone have the 9MB file the guy made ?
__________________________________________________________________

EDIT (19/11/2015) : I updated the thread title so people can easily find LeatherPoker's Nebulae MOD for EM V2.x
Here is the download link

[Edited on 23/11/2015 by Keitarooo]

SeeJay · Post by **SeeJay** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:11 pm

Check this link and see if it contains anything you like:
www.evochron2.junholt.se/mods/Nebulae.zip

Created by Andrusynth

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:17 pm

IIRC, there are only five different background options. The expanded version of the game uses a six-sided "box" for each background and, to create the box, Vice included a program called EvochronCubeMapUtility for converting a single background image to the box. I used it myself to convert five different versions of the Milky Way (available at SeeJay's website). AFAIK, nobody took the time to convert Leatherpoker's backgrounds.

[Edited on 11-19-2015 by Marvin]

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:21 pm

@SeeJay
Yes, the link you gave me is the one I'm talking in my post

But I prefer LeatherPoker's Nebulae ^^

@Marvin
One guy (UMBO) took the time, and documented what he did (see the link in my post), but he said he had a 9MB file containing his conversion, and I was wondering if anyone got it on his computer

Anyway, I'll try to follow his directions and convert the nebulaes from LeatherPoker. I'll keep you guys posted !

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:43 pm

Actually, it sounds harder than it is. The tricky part is adjusting the original graphic if you want the keep the original front-to-back orientation. IIRC, the box is 180 degrees out from the way the single texture is displayed. Then, of course, you must start the game after each adjustment to make sure you got it right.

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:55 pm

Ok, as per this post : http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... #pid159912

I did this :

The 4 skyboxes (#1, #2, #3, and #4) are all easily seen:
#1 in Fauston
#2 in Sapphire
#3 in Lambda
#4 in Olympus

Some systems have no skybox. Onyx is example.

With heading 0Â° / pitch 0Â° / roll 0Â°, the six cube images do index as follow:
#0 -> front
#1 -> right
#2 -> back
#3 -> left
#4 -> down
#5 -> up

Ignoring c6.jpg, c10.jpg and c12.jpg, all images in the Enhanced Nebula pack are square shaped. They have generous dimensions (from 1280x1208 to 1950x1950) -- actually _excessive_ dimensions. Even at Full HD (1080p) a nebula worth 1024x1024 pixels would give you more detail (texel:pixel ratio > 1.0) than you could appreciate on the vertical axis, especially since you can't "zoom in" on them. In any case some graphics cards won't digest textures whose side size isn't a power of two, so a reshape was in order.

I've uniformed them all to 1024x1024. Some had to be resized. Others could be cropped.
Two or three had to be "cleaned" of the background noise, which -normally invisible- would reveal as you entered a planet's bright atmosphere and looked up, through the clouds. The translucencies would "add" to the colors, brightening the thing -as if you raised its gamma- and the noise would be exposed.

Here's the mapping (file renaming) I've done:

c1.jpg -> stars1-3.png
c2.jpg -> stars2-2.png
c3.jpg -> stars3-0.png
c4-jpg -> stars3-4.png
c5.jpg -> stars4-5.png

c7.jpg -> stars4-3.png
c8.jpg -> stars1-0.png (<-- also visible in the main menu screen)
c9.jpg -> stars4-4.png

c11.jpg -> stars2-0.png

The remaining stars*.*.png files are a black square (worth ~3 KB of compressed .png). Although "empty" they're necessary. Without these their "faces" of the cube maps would appear of a brighter shade of black, showing the "edges" of the cube faces containing actual nebula pictures. Again, this would become apparent if you descended on a planet and looked up through the bright sky.

I'll test what I did tonight... *finger crossed*

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 4:28 pm

Yup, four: http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... #pid164011

The fifth one doesn't count.

Blue, green, purple and brown is how I thought of the original backgrounds. The fifth is only seen in the Sol system. And, before the expansion, there was one other in Andromeda. As long as you follow the "naming" instructions in the Customizing Kit's ReadMe file, you should be fine. If you have problems, download a set from SeeJay's website as an example.

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:39 pm

It works, and I'm happy

[img=1000x600]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 514EAF7D5/[/img]

[img=1000x600]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 275EA62E8/[/img]

[img=1000x600]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... A78292FE0/[/img]

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:53 pm

There's nothing like success to brighten your day.

Sinbad · Post by **Sinbad** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:02 pm

Keitarooo! I used to use those nebulas when I was running the old Evochron Mercenary and I loved them! I have been missing them since EM 2.x! You're a genius! Download link, please please please?

Post by **DaveK** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:33 pm

ditto

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 12:08 am

I gave up on the nebulas because (and this is a very simply attempt at explanation and probably not totally accurate) systems that have a nebula have a # associated with it to define which nebula and color it will be - thus the naming convention in the Custom Kit.
I was trying to use some and all of a sudden the nebula background in Sapphire was gone and I didn't know why so I got the explanation from Vice and that's when I decided to skip it.

You have to know which systems use which color nebula and I don't know that - also I didn't want to take a chance on nebulas missing on uncharted systems because that's one what you can tell you area in an area where there are uncharted planets.

So I'm just letting the software do it's defaults and can be satisfied that all nebulas are working correctly.
Besides I like most of EM's default nebula bacckgrounds.

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:18 pm

I quickly put up a small web page for the download

You will see some compilation of cockpit mod / sounds / hud I use, on this page too.

SeeJay · Post by **SeeJay** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:32 pm

From post: 182004, Topic: tid=12159, author=Keitarooo wrote:I quickly put up a small web page for the download

You will see some compilation of cockpit mod / sounds / hud I use, on this page too.

Nice! And thanks for the links in the bottom!

Sinbad · Post by **Sinbad** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:59 pm

Awesome! Thanks Keitarooo! Great to have those nebulae again!

By the way the download link for the sounds doesn't seem to be working. The others are all ok.

Keitarooo · Post by **Keitarooo** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:23 pm

You are welcome ! I fixed the sound download link, it should work now