Graphical Quibbles...

[Lord Tirian]

It's invisible both with Animations On and Off. The improvement is always invisible in-game, such as in Final Frontier.
I have the same problems with Asteroids by the way.

Hmmm... there's either a problem with space environment gloss or with the way the skin partitions are done. I've attached a zip with two versions of the extraction facility - could you test them to see whether it shows up?

Another thing: I'm going through the special ability buttons now... and I've found a couple of special abilities that are a bit "bland" - Precision, Accuracy, Anti-Personnel, Anti-Tank. Other special abilities are more descriptive (Empath Song, Deep Radar, Anti-Grav Struts, Storage Bay), which makes finding fitting symbols a bit easier and, frankly, I think they have way more flavour. So... are these names there to stay or do you have any other ideas to name them?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Hmmm... there's either a problem with space environment gloss or with the way the skin partitions are done. I've attached a zip with two versions of the extraction facility - could you test them to see whether it shows up?

Thanks!

The test nif is still invisible everywhere.
The noanim is visible in SceneViewer (hurray! ), but it crashes the game when placed on the map, and gives a python exception in the pedia. Looks like the same problem as with the Energy Nexus?

Another thing: I'm going through the special ability buttons now... and I've found a couple of special abilities that are a bit "bland" - Precision, Accuracy, Anti-Personnel, Anti-Tank. Other special abilities are more descriptive (Empath Song, Deep Radar, Anti-Grav Struts, Storage Bay), which makes finding fitting symbols a bit easier and, frankly, I think they have way more flavour. So... are these names there to stay or do you have any other ideas to name them?

I don't have any other ideas, but if you have, do tell!

Btw, as said before I'm not 100% sure yet what things to make promotions, and which special abilities. Another reason why I'm not strongly encouraging making promotion buttons.
Basically I want special abilities to give qualitative benefits, and promotions quantitative benefits, ie you can do the same with unpromoted units by just throwing more of them at the problem.
Anti-Tank and Anti-Personnel are quantitative benefits, so I think one day I'll turn them back into promotions. The only reason why I made them special abilities earlier in development was because I needed some special abilities to be available for each unit which didn't require any technology. Since there's now the Light special ability, this requirement has fallen away.

 

[Lord Tirian]

The test nif is still invisible everywhere.
The noanim is visible in SceneViewer (hurray! ), but it crashes the game when placed on the map, and gives a python exception in the pedia. Looks like the same problem as with the Energy Nexus?

I think I've pinned down the problem - you graphics card seems to have problems with the way the animation (and the skinpartition and boning required for that) is done (and the Final Frontier asteroids are animated in the same way). The crash for the last nif came from me just plucking stuff out and looking at it in SceneViewer - was just a rough test, after all.

I cleaned the nif up, now it should work without crashing (at least it shows up without problems in the game for me, this time I've tested it! ) - the bad news is just that this process killed the animation the model had before (because it caused your problem, after all). I've attached the model, it uses the original texture.

Another reason why I'm not strongly encouraging making promotion buttons.

Oops. To get a feel for it, I made buttons for every currently available special ability today!

I kept the buttons for the ones with the generic names generic as well - but most buttons should remind you of stuff, because I pillaged the SMAC icons and kitbashed them into new shapes. The thing I like is that they still look distinct when zoomed down (like in the unit display, civilopedia and so on). Not sure whether you want to use them, but I just attached them (including a XML - and tested in-game as well!), so you can try them for yourself, if you want to. Of course, I can change stuff, make more etc.

In case you like them, they're pretty easy to recreate - no special tricks or anything on them, just the way normal promo buttons are made, just with slightly different background and colours (I described that somewhere upthread, IIRC).

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Maniac, get a better comp.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks!

the bad news is just that this process killed the animation the model had before (because it caused your problem, after all).

Do you have any idea why the Extraction Facility animations would cause problems, and all other animations not?

In case you like them, they're pretty easy to recreate - no special tricks or anything on them, just the way normal promo buttons are made, just with slightly different background and colours (I described that somewhere upthread, IIRC).

Do you have the source files for the icons before any special effects were applied on them? Would be useful if/when Anti-Tank/Personnal was turned into promotions.

Maniac, get a better comp.

When Civ6 is released, I promise.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Do you have any idea why the Extraction Facility animations would cause problems, and all other animations not?

Not 100% sure, but I think it's the way the animation is done. Most Civ Models have a model and the animation in an extra file - this seems work fine for you. There are simple models with in-built animation, which also work for you (or you would've complained about some of my models before, like the psionic gate or the subspace generator). But the Final Frontier models add a layer of extra complexity on that - these models also have bones and skin partition data like full-blown unit models (these skin partitions are used to associate not only the mesh, but also the "skin" to the bones), which seems to trouble your PC.

Not too surprising, as skin partitions have some association with shaders (you can have skin partition without shaders, but to have shaders you must have skin partition data), which is a weak spot of your PC anyway - while they're still models without shaders... they still seem to trouble it - how old is your PC/graphics card? (I just assume that you have up-to-date drivers, as that would be another problematic point)

Do you have the source files for the icons before any special effects were applied on them? Would be useful if/when Anti-Tank/Personnal was turned into promotions.

Not as source files per se, as it's .psd (which is useless to you), but I copied the shapes for you as .pngs, so you can play around with them - and I've also thrown in a classic promotion version (since I only had to revert the colours to the original ones), in case you need it.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Not too surprising, as skin partitions have some association with shaders (you can have skin partition without shaders, but to have shaders you must have skin partition data)

- the problem was waaaaay simpler - the supposedly "shaderless" model actually uses a shader. I just didn't suspect that, because I didn't think something that stupid could be going on.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Ah, triple-posting... anyway, who cares... here's stuff. One quibble I had was xenofungus: 1) when you scrolled over the map, it flickered; 2) next to jungles, it just flickered all the time.

1) was due to a lack of mipmaps in the fungus texture - I think I know why, to avoid the fungus edges to get blurry when you zoom. I put back the mipmaps and edited them by hand to preserve the sharp edges. Result: No more flickering during movement, yet the fungus doesn't get blurry.

2) this was due to the fact that fungus uses the jungle model as a base - and next to actual jungle, the shapes overlapped perfectly, so the game just oscillated between both - because they were in the same place. I resolved that by shifting the position of the fungus minimally. Not enough to be noticed by the human eye (I couldn't even see the shift in NifSkope!) - but enough for the game to resolve the issue.

Attached is the fixed texture and the fixed fungus models - just plug them into your assets and you should get flicker-free fungus!

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

A delight for my eyes, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Not as source files per se, as it's .psd (which is useless to you), but I copied the shapes for you as .pngs, so you can play around with them - and I've also thrown in a classic promotion version (since I only had to revert the colours to the original ones), in case you need it.

Thanks!

- the problem was waaaaay simpler - the supposedly "shaderless" model actually uses a shader. I just didn't suspect that, because I didn't think something that stupid could be going on.

Does that mean it would actually be easy to make a shaderless version that uses the animations?

Ah, triple-posting... anyway, who cares... here's stuff. One quibble I had was xenofungus: 1) when you scrolled over the map, it flickered; 2) next to jungles, it just flickered all the time.

Thanks I'll check it out!

 

[Lord Tirian]

Does that mean it would actually be easy to make a shaderless version that uses the animations?

Not sure - I never went that way - I always just added shaders, I never removed them, so I don't know. I'll try it, however (it's not exactly an exciting animation anyway - it's just the cylinders on the end of the "feet" going up and down).

Additional stuff: Worked on the Temple of Planet model (yes, today seems to be a prolific day for me!) - it's still complex (917 polys), but that's due to the shape with the little towers and all the roofs. It's the same scale as before - and this time I checked it in game, I'm getting paranoid after the Energy Nexus! On the plus side, this means you always get screenshots of my tests!

Since the model is among the more complex ones with 917 polys - I could cut the little towers and parts of the base for a "light" version that can be used as temple of planet - and the big thing here could remain the VoP shrine - what do you think? (for shrine and/or temple)

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Since the model is among the more complex ones with 917 polys - I could cut the little towers and parts of the base for a "light" version that can be used as temple of planet - and the big thing here could remain the VoP shrine - what do you think? (for shrine and/or temple)

I discussed with Maniac before to strip this model of its towers to have a second model for a facility. Personally I'm all for it.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I discussed with Maniac before to strip this model of its towers to have a second model for a facility. Personally I'm all for it.

Well, I just went ahead and did it - not a lot of work since I had the model in Blender already - main work as adding a new building shadow. This version only has 287 polys - and I think it still looks nice and "VoP-ish". It uses the same texture as the big temple. The screenshot used the same scale as before - and I think it fits, though you might want to put it into a smaller node as it takes up less space than before. And perhaps bump up the fInterfaceScale by a little bit (to 0.5 or 0.55 or so), but that's a matter of taste.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks! Love your two Temples of Planet, and your suggestions on how to use them.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Does that mean it would actually be easy to make a shaderless version that uses the animations?

Okay, I think I've done it. It doesn't have shaders and... I can see it in the civilopedia and it moves. Wasn't as straightforward as I hoped for, though. There's a subtle difference to the FF model - the FF model is slightly rotated in the x-plane, this model isn't - but I preferred it that way, so I left it as it is (if you really feel the need to rotate it, I think you could do that in the LSystem anyway). Just to let you know, because if you use it, you want to use it as the only model (as fx-entry as well) to keep it consistent for Planetfall.

However, you definitely should try it out yourself first - my PC showed it, but mine shows shaders as well. No clue how it looks on yours.

Also, a little question: Why is the interface SMAX-style green? Your preference or because Rubin did it like that back then for C4:AC? Just asking, because I always felt the green tint for SMAX was a bit silly, like "hey, we have aliens, now everything must be ALIEN-GREEN" - and I always changed it back to the original SMAC interface!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Oh, more posting! Did some more stuff...

1) Did a spawning spot model for land and sea. I used the CoP wallpaper as starting point, but made it look a bit more "organic" - it fits nicely into the fungus. If you think it's too easy to overlook, you may want to bump up the size a bit. Bot are 300ish in polycount.

2) I didn't like the banana nutrients (I really don't like too much things from vanilla popping up, especially if re-purposed, it sort of breaks the feel), so I took the tobacco resource (from the Crossroads scenario) and recoloured it in the style of the SMAC nutrients (also fiddled with it a bit to get a nice patch of plants together). It's small and lightweight - 87 polys and crops fungus/woods around it, so it should be noticeable.

3) When I modified the fungus (see above), I saw that it not only used the jungle as base, but that it still had all the trees in it, just totally transparent, which is - of course - a heap of unnecessary polygons. I removed these invisible elements and used a bit of the fungus texture, that wasn't used before (a yellowish patch), though I darkened it a bit. The new fungus models have only around 2/3rds of the original polygons - and even the file size was halved. And since fungus is so prevalent, it reduced lag on the map during scrolling noticeably!
However, there's one bit I couldn't work out: The sea fungus version has orange stalks sticking out of the water - during the change, they darkened (because something seems to cast a shadow) strangely enough, it doesn't happen with the land version. I don't understand why, so I can't fix that - you have decide whether to use it, but the reduction in polygons is quite a bit.

For all three things: If you want changes, tell me, then I'll work on it.

And to end off, another little question: I figured out how to modify stuff so it conforms to the shape of the terrain, which is nice for improvements - meaning the borehole model (SMAC mine) can now look pretty good on all terrains, including peaks. Which means one could use it as a mine (for nostalgia reasons, of course) - once there's a new borehole graphic. Interested in it? Because then I might tackle that at some point... (just to let me know whether it would be helpful to try it at all - I still want to keep fixing the older models first).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Again great work

For the spawning spot...I think you cought the style shown on the wallpaper very well and it looks now a lot more credible. The old rice graphics only positive thing was that is was graphically so disturbing (red fungus - green spawning point) that you cannot overlook it. So increasing size might be a good idea, as spotting spawning points easy and reliable is critical.

The Nutrients graphic is fine. Ok, some leafs don't imply food as much as a banana does, but OTOH bananas are clearly too much "earth" to fit in Alpha Centauri.

 

[Lord Tirian]

So increasing size might be a good idea, as spotting spawning points easy and reliable is critical.

True, but the texture should hold up to that - making it bigger might also allows you to see the little icky tendrils coming out of the caves! (right now that detail is only visible in the datalinks) I just lean towards keeping things a bit smaller, because I don't want to make them "THIS BIG!"

The Nutrients graphic is fine. Ok, some leafs don't imply food as much as a banana does, but OTOH bananas are clearly too much "earth" to fit in Alpha Centauri.

I might redo it at some point - the SMAC graphic actually has long bulby things (a bit like unopened sweetcorn) sticking out of the ground with some scattered round seeds or so. However, I want to keep it low poly (less than ~100) - and to it with cleverly arranged textures like the vanilla Civ plant resources - but couldn't get it to look nice and visible in-game. If I - or somebody else - can whip up a nice looking nutrient bonus at some point, one can still re-use my leafs - could be used as all sorts of herbs or so (as a replacement for Fungicides, for example).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Okay, I think I've done it.
...
1) Did a spawning spot model for land and sea.
2) I didn't like the banana nutrients
3) When I modified the fungus ...

Thanks I'll try it out!

Also, a little question: Why is the interface SMAX-style green? Your preference or because Rubin did it like that back then for C4:AC? Just asking, because I always felt the green tint for SMAX was a bit silly, like "hey, we have aliens, now everything must be ALIEN-GREEN" - and I always changed it back to the original SMAC interface!

Rubin made the interface. I don't have a vision or strong opinion about the interface, except of course that it is much better than the vanilla one.

For all three things: If you want changes, tell me, then I'll work on it.

Could you do the same thing for hybrid forest as for fungus?? Since that has both forest and jungle trees, that's even heavier on polygons. I don't know if it would still look good, but besides removing invisible trees perhaps some experimenting could alo be done by reducing both the amount of fungus and forest trees.

And to end off, another little question: I figured out how to modify stuff so it conforms to the shape of the terrain, which is nice for improvements - meaning the borehole model (SMAC mine) can now look pretty good on all terrains, including peaks. Which means one could use it as a mine (for nostalgia reasons, of course) - once there's a new borehole graphic. Interested in it? Because then I might tackle that at some point... (just to let me know whether it would be helpful to try it at all - I still want to keep fixing the older models first).

I don't understand what you mean, how boreholes could appear on a non-flat ridge terrain.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Rubin made the interface. I don't have a vision or strong opinion about the interface, except of course that it is much better than the vanilla one.

Yeah, it is pretty cool - but I noticed some vanilla icons around (in the city screen and the map), showing the bread/hammer/gold icons and wanted to change these - but when I'm on the interface anyway, I thought I might end up wanting to change other stuff - so I figured out it would be better to ask first to know what your stance is on it.

Could you do the same thing for hybrid forest as for fungus?? Since that has both forest and jungle trees, that's even heavier on polygons. I don't know if it would still look good, but besides removing invisible trees perhaps some experimenting could alo be done by reducing both the amount of fungus and forest trees.

Right, I'll take a look at it!

I don't understand what you mean, how boreholes could appear on a non-flat ridge terrain.

Ah, sorry - I didn't meant boreholes, just the model they currently have, because it's the original SMAC mine. But earlier - first page of this thread - you said that it wouldn't work that well as mine, because it didn't look good on peaks - and because you lacked a decent borehole model.

Cheers, LT.