Blue Marble?

[lymond]

I just installed Fall Further for the first time this weekend and tried playing some maps. I noticed that the worlds are very dark and ugly. Is blue marble or the like implemented for FF to make it bright and shiny? Is there something I did wrong?

thanks

 

[MaxAstro]

Ironically enough, Blue Marble was included up until a few versions ago when it was removed. I am not entirely sure of the reason why it was removed.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

to make the download smaller I guess.

 

[lymond]

wow....that just doesn't seem logical unless there's a workaround. i guess i've been playing with blue marble in all forms of civ for so long that I can't go back. Fall Further looks absolutely terrible without it.

any ideas on how to get this to work?

 

[WarKirby]

If you want blue marble... install it!

It's a mod component that is available right here on the site.

the only reason it was removed, is that kael decided to remove it, and rather unusually, vehem chose to propagate that change. A decision I'm not sure about. Extra choice is always nice, on one hand. But on the other hand, it adds almost 60 MB to the download size

You can get it here if you want it: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=6

I don't think the erebus terrain textures are ugly at all, though. Dark fantasy isn't supposed to be bright and shiny
But I feel in general, the darker look makes grassland look more fertile.

 

[admtanaka]

I prefer FF without Blue Marble.

It's a matter of taste, I suppose.

 

[xienwolf]

Most FfH fans agree (According to a Poll long ago) that the darker terrain is better for a dark fantasy setting (and in general), the method of implementing the second set of terrain in the code was somewhat clunky, and it inflated the download size for something which was only utilized by a small minority, and was actually quite simple to overwrite the base files with (since that small minority ALWAYS wanted to use BM), so could be downloaded by other means.

Further, FF has added new terrains which Blue Marble doesn't have matches for. Placing Blue Marble in for the terrains which it DOES have makes the few it DOESN'T have stick out horribly.

So end picture is that it just wasn't worth keeping in the code. Honestly it's surprising Kael placed it in as a gameoption in the first place, but he might have already been looking at Scenarios at that point and contemplating having some of them look different by utilizing Blue Marble.

 

[lymond]

whoa....didn't realize it was so unpopular for ff fans. it seems to work great with regular ffh stuff. i guess i could try installing it but figured it had to be coded differently since ffh has a special install file for it.

you know...I think the option is nice, but i guess I can see the need to reduce file size (even thought 60 mb really is nothing nowadays.

i know this may be a reach, especially since FF appears to install standalone now as opposed to copying files from FFH, but maybe if it could somehow point to FFH during install to pull in blue marble that would be pretty cool.

oh...one more thing...i get the whole dark fantasy/dark map thing. I can feel that. I just think it's a bit too dull.

 

[Iceciro]

60mb isn't much as far as space goes, but if you're getting bad download speeds that day it can add up there.

 

[MaxAstro]

i know this may be a reach, especially since FF appears to install standalone now as opposed to copying files from FFH, but maybe if it could somehow point to FFH during install to pull in blue marble that would be pretty cool.

The problem with that is that FfH no longer uses Blue Marble either. In fact, it was pulled out of FfH before it was removed from FF.

EDIT: Also, because game options have to be hardcoded into the DLL, there is no way to have the option of having the option of Blue Marble, if you see what I am trying to say. Unless the game option is added back in (in which case Blue Marble HAS to be included in the download to support the option), the only choices are completely replacing the defaults with Blue Marble, or not using it at all.