Should there be a Mars Trilogy mod?

[GarretSidzaka]

Some one mentioned in my mars map thread that we should do a mod based on the Mars Trilogy by Kin Stanley Robinson.

Would it be set in Red Mars, and be nothing but rock and ice?
Or, should it be mostly rock and fellfields and ice like Green Mars?
Or covered in oceans (like my mars map) the way it is in Blue Mars?

 

[surt]

Make it 3 eras in the tech tree, and swap out the graphics/tiles when the player hits the relevant era.

 

[woodelf]

I like the all 3 idea, but wonder how to handle it if you hit the era and everyone else is lagging behind.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

COULd we get a python guru to make a "global warming" effect to change the plots terrain.

i would do a terrain reskin like woodelf's got. i would make the default regolith tileset, then a lichen tile set, then have grasslans for the fertile biomes and forests too.

but how would you make the oceanus borealus & hellas sea???

 

[GeoModder]

Have a bonedry map, with sanddunes representing the northern lowlands and hellas bassin. Rocky landfills to simulate the Mariner Vallis and other deepcut Vallis throughout Mars, cratered hills and flat terrain to simulate the higher elevated lands and eventually mountains to simulate the Tharsis Bulge and the few other high-altitude area's. Oh, and polar caps with the ice overlay on them of course.

Now, make it so that on sanddunes and landfills an improvement can pump up ice to the adjacent unimproved plots of the same type (AI-modification needed here so it would build this improvement), cratered hills/flat terrain can be seeded by algae which spread on their own (like forests do).

Then you could do that once sufficient civs have completed the Iceplanetoid Capture (dependent on mapsize) AND a civ has created a Solar Lens wonder the icecap-covered plots melt to water (except on the poles), the algae covered terrain switches to plains/plainhills/tundra and all plains/cratered terrain can be terraformed to a sort of grassland or just planted by trees or covered by farms and such. Forests could be seeded with deer/fur, tundra with bears and so on.

Voilà, you have a terraformed Mars.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

so geomodder, do we have a mod? can you do these scripts? can you direct me to a tutorial for terran skinning so i can get on it? where are terrain reskins in these forums? I have a basic map that i would modify with the reskins, and there are some decent editors ive used. also ive been learning simple texture editing in gimp2.0

im interested in this mod. we could set the civ's leaderheads to represent the first hundred who began factions. perhaps you could play the boghandovists and win the first revolution? a
nd the space elevator grapics are good to have, but they could use edit. like, could the building modelers put at the top of the cable an "asteroid" to anchor the tether.

yeah..?

 

[GeoModder]

I'm not a scripter, modeller nor coder, Garret. The only thing I'm good at is spitting out ideas/suggestions.

 

[woodelf]

No stealing our idea man! You can "borrow" him.

 

[matthewv]

can you direct me to a tutorial for terran skinning so i can get on it? where are terrain reskins in these forums? I have a basic map that i would modify with the reskins, and there are some decent editors ive used. also ive been learning simple texture editing in gimp2.0

There are currently no tutorials for terrain "skinning". The only terrain reskins I have seen on these forums are the Blue marble terrain mod, Hell mod, and Song of the moon mod. (I did the terrain graphics for the Song of the moon mod)

If you want to reskin terrain the first thing you will need to do is unpak the art files. You will find the .dds files the are used for terrain skins in the art/terrain/textures folder(IIRC).

 

[Niccolo]

There are currently no tutorials for terrain "skinning". The only terrain reskins I have seen on these forums are the Blue marble terrain mod, Hell mod, and Song of the moon mod. (I did the terrain graphics for the Song of the moon mod)

If you want to reskin terrain the first thing you will need to do is unpak the art files. You will find the .dds files the are used for terrain skins in the art/terrain/textures folder(IIRC).

The Hell Mod thread is actually here. But thanks for the plug You terrain graphics for Song of the Moon inspired me. Awesome job on Song of the Moon's terrain.

Originally, I was playing around with doing an undersea mod, or perhaps acquatic civilizations on Enceladus; but such a project would require a totally new set of unit models (not just reskins) for merfolk, intelligent squid and what not... also I was having trouble trying to make the terrain look like it was underwater since I would need some kind of flowing distortion effect over the whole visible map.

I found that reskinning terrain is actually much easier for me than reskinning units. Just grab the .dds files, export them to photoshop, modify them slightly, import and you are done. You can get a lot of different looking terrain just by changing the colors but not the geometry.

Another problem I was going to have with an undersea mod would have been trenches. That would involve a change to geometry, though maybe you could hack something up with modifying coasts.

I ended up modifying a lot of different .dds files to make the sea of fire, but I suspect many of them aren't being used. I suppose I should dig into the XML and figure it out.

Getting the colors to be complimentary is the tough part. I've had some really ugly orange and red terrain.

I think a Red Mars terrain would bretty easy to do and could be a pretty quick reskin of the Song of the Moon terrain. +trenches. Adjusting brightness/contrast, as well as adjusting the color range (shadow, highlites, medium tones... yellow-blue), and color replacement can take you very far.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=163911...I think a Red Mars terrain would bretty easy to do and could be a pretty quick reskin of the Song of the Moon terrain. +trenches. Adjusting brightness/contrast, as well as adjusting the color range (shadow, highlites, medium tones... yellow-blue), and color replacement can take you very far.

do any mooninites in the moon mod mind if i tinker with some graphics on mars???

 

[GeoModder]

Garret, get hold of a MrEarl. He claims he knows someone who made martian terrain.

 

[matthewv]

do any mooninites in the moon mod mind if i tinker with some graphics on mars???

I don't mind. Do you have a copy of the moon mod? (currently there are no working down links for the song of the mond thread) If you don't already have a copy of the mood mod just let me know and I will upload the terrain graphics files for you.

The Hell Mod thread is actually here.

Sorry about the wrong link. I fixed it now.

 

[woodelf]

Do we get royalties?

I mean, will Matt get them....

 

[GarretSidzaka]

I will give you guys $2 dollars to split (just kidding) what country do i have to wire it to?

im not sure how that royalty thing works. i personally wouldn't want them for something like this that no-one buys.
now if firaxis made 'song of the moon' into an expansion and make you the man, well you would get royalties off of each $50 spent for that expansion by consumers.