Graphical Quibbles...

[Maniac]

You mean making the farm buildings bigger as Lord Tirian requested?

(The Marine Lab code has not been added yet in this file

 

[GeoModder]

Downloaded it, thanks.
Yes, I meant making the main farm buildings bigger as LT requested. I'll probably need to create a new leaf size in PlotLSystem to avoid graphics cropping in eachother.
I'll add the marine lab code too then.

 

[GeoModder]

My latest stab at the Borehole Cluster, glowing and fluctuating lights inside the worked version. See screenshot. The scale can still be adjusted if necessary.
Now, I had to create an entry in PlotLSystem with the scale attribute. Otherwise you'd see 2 different sized borehole clusters on top of eachother when worked on the gamemap. I think this "double showup" is because the cluster is both a bonus and a improvement.

A question on Mt. Planet: is it normal it is stretched vertically in a game?

Next are finally those farms.

 

[Lord Tirian]

A question on Mt. Planet: is it normal it is stretched vertically in a game?

Yep. It's actually made to follow the contour of the ground below it, similar to the way farms are following the ground. I used that as little trick to make blend into the terrain better, since peaks can have so many shapes.

The little drawback is that the ContourGeometry tag messes a lot with the alpha channel, hence the rather peculiar set up of the nif. Took quite a bit of work to get this right. If you animate that, you might want to release it in the graphics subforum - other people might value a volcano that works on top of (almost) any terrain.

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Oh, but I already animated the volcano. I attached the plantation smoke plume to it.

 

[GeoModder]

Things are progressing...

What you see on the screenshot are:

• East and north of the base the first stage, 2 farm domes. The main one at scale 2.0, the second at scale 1.5.
• West of the base the second stage, the Outpost at scale 2.0 and a farm with scale 1.5. And 2 Believer city buildings of course. I haven't worked on the scaling of those yet.
• Northwest of the base the third stage, the Settlement at scale 2.0 with an undomed farm at scale 1.5 and 3 Believer city buildings.
• And last the fourth stage, Eden at scale 2.0 like the rest. 2 undomed farms at scale 1.5 and a whole bunch of Believer city buildings. Too many if you ask me.

I still have to tinker a bit with the positions because there are still a few croppings, but that's just number crunching. What I want as feedback is the number of extra domes/buildings for each stage next to the main graphic. As you can see, Eden has way too many side buildings and they're even floating in the air above the river.
Also, I want to know if the current scale is good for the main improvement, and if the smaller scale for the side domes should be maintained, be made smaller or be made the same as the main improvement.

Start posting, people.

 

[Maniac]

I guess it's Lord Tirian who should reply to this.

Cool screenshot in any case - I'll use it to accompany a patch announcement.

 

[GeoModder]

5 factions are done with the farm buildings - Believers, Gaians, Hive, Morganites and Peacekeepers.
I introduced artstyle tags for the Data Angels, Drones, Cyborgs and Pirates.
Fixed the missing Peacekeeper HQ graphic.
Positioning of the farm buildings is neigh perfect. I made it so that 5 1x1 and 5 2x2 spots are defined for the side buildings. Since there are now 6 extra buildings used in Eden, that gives a randomized factor of which 4 spots will stay open.
Question, are the pirates capable of building farms? If not, I don't have to bother xml'ing farms for them.

Oh, on using the screenshot - don't, positioning is much better now and it shows. Just tell me what faction you want a screenshot of and I'll deliver.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I guess it's Lord Tirian who should reply to this.

Heh. It looks pretty good - I only thought that either the Eden is too cluttered or the settlement a bit too sparse, but GeoModder has apparently taken care of that - can't wait to see how it looks now!

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

@Maniac

Scalewise, things are confused for the Solar collector and greenhouse now.
Please tell me which size you want in Planetfall: the bigger or smaller (or something else of course like between the two). The bigger is the natural scale of the nif itself. The smaller with using the scale attribute in either artdefines_improvement or PlotLsystem.
The thing is, if I don't define a scale in PlotLsystem, the nif size itself will show, overriding the scale property defined in artdefines_improvement. That seems to be the way the gameembryo engine does things.

Just for code-efficiency reasons, you know.

 

[Maniac]

I'd say go for whatever scale it was before adding references in PlotLSystem changed things.

 

[Maniac]

Does anyone know where I could find a short clip of the scene where River Tam says in the Firefly episode "Trash": "I can kill you with my brain"? Would be a fun occasional selection sound for the Psion.

 

[GeoModder]

Does anyone know where I could find a short clip of the scene where River Tam says in the Firefly episode "Trash": "I can kill you with my brain"? Would be a fun occasional selection sound for the Psion.

Do you know in which episode she says this? I have few of them on my harddrive (9 through 13).

 

[Maniac]

"Trash", the episode in which they steal the Lassiter with Saffron, is ep11 according to wikipedia.

 

[GeoModder]

Okay, it seems I can make an audio file from the whole episode, but that's still 77 megs.
Can you do something with that (cutting/pasting part of the track with some program on your end) or recommend me a (freeware) program to do so?
Btw, I confirmed it's in ep11, almost in the end.

 

[Maniac]

Can you do something with that (cutting/pasting part of the track with some program on your end) or recommend me a (freeware) program to do so?

Certainly!

1) Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_windows Freeware audio recorder: download and install

2) http://civcomm.weplayciv.com/polycast/lame_dll.zip (for exporting recordings in Audacity in MP3 format, instructions within ZIP)

In Audacity, there's some dropdown box where you can select 'Wave Out Mix'. That will record every sound your computer produces in stereo.

When that's set, start playing the episode some ten seconds before the famous sentence, quickly switch back to Audacity and hit the red Record button. Then don't touch anything - no switching windows, no raising the taskbar, no touching the mouse - until River has spoken the sentence. Then click Stop two seconds later or so, just to be safe. The recording can now be exported as an mp3. 128kb/s stereo should do the trick. That gives a much smaller file to upload, and I can edit it further myself.

 

[GeoModder]

Thanks. It will take a few days before I can come back to this. Have to wrap up what I'm busy with for Planetfall before uploading it, and tomorrow I'll probably have no time.

 

[Panopticon]

I'm getting a pink graphic for fortified Chopper, but it only happens a fraction of the time.

 

[GeoModder]

Here's some xml work on factions, improvements, citysets and base buildings.

• scaling of greenhouse, algae lab and solar collector should now be as original.
• farms are scaled up and linked for all factions except the progenitors.
• made the correct link for University and Peacekeeper HQ graphics after the arrival era.
• linked Alpha Prime as HQ for the Consciousness. It wasn't used anymore thus...
• Linked Drone, Pirate and Conscioussness cityset art to the prefab graphics. Angels use the Morganite graphics. Just temporary until some nice soul comes up with unique art for those factions.
• rescaled, renoded and relinked some base facilities in the arrival era like academy, biolab, rec commons and infirmary. And the Military Academy is correctly linked to its graphic now instead of the SDI which the barracks already uses.
• Created artstyles for the SMAX factions and linked them up in civilizationsinfos.

Maniac, please let me know when you download this.

 

[Maniac]

Downloaded!