Space Empires - Ideas Thread

You can pretty much create as many terrains as you'd like. Since this game is going to be somewhat abstract anyway (e.g. distances are not to scale) you could use gradations of "deep space" to make some systems farther apart or even inaccessible without certain techs, just by creating more than one kind of "ocean" with different movement costs, required techs, etc.

There is an obscure XML file that I believe controls the Y-height of terrain. When I looked at it it seemed like a bunch of numbers, but someone with some time to do research could probably reverse-engineer it to make terrains actually 3D (not that it'd be that helpful, as you wouldn't build on the underside of a planet, so maybe a semi-sphere is enough).

IIRC each tile is actually composed of 4 corners of the texture file, so blending will be a real toughie until you've figured out exactly how each texture file is fit together by the graphics engine (which is beyond the reach of even the SDK)
 
ForesterSOF said:
You can use the <PrereqTech>NONE</PrereqTech> in the Civ4Info.XML\units\XML so the whormhole points cant be used till an item is researched.
uhm, can you explain ? :hmm:

You mean, when I have a unit with prereqTech = NONE , it can't go on a wormhole ? Or are you thinking of a wormhole as a unit ?

Padmewan said:
You can pretty much create as many terrains as you'd like. Since this game is going to be somewhat abstract anyway (e.g. distances are not to scale) you could use gradations of "deep space" to make some systems farther apart or even inaccessible without certain techs, just by creating more than one kind of "ocean" with different movement costs, required techs, etc.

Yes, nice Idea :) then also systems are only reachable with wormholes for example .. thinking of Antares :D

There is an obscure XML file that I believe controls the Y-height of terrain. When I looked at it it seemed like a bunch of numbers, but someone with some time to do research could probably reverse-engineer it to make terrains actually 3D (not that it'd be that helpful, as you wouldn't build on the underside of a planet, so maybe a semi-sphere is enough).

IIRC each tile is actually composed of 4 corners of the texture file, so blending will be a real toughie until you've figured out exactly how each texture file is fit together by the graphics engine (which is beyond the reach of even the SDK)
Thanks for that info, I hope I can do something with the terrain graphics in a month or so .. currently I'm implementing the planet types and the citizen system ( that you have no worker in the surrounding space, but all as special citizens)
Having this done, terrain graphics can be the next thing, because then I have this plain version of my mod, which can be puplished as a development version for everyone ;)
 
Vadus said:
VIII. Religions
Well I really don't know yet what to do with religions ??

You could change this to a races philosophy(Ex: Vulcans are logical,Klingons are honorable warriors) these are kind of like religions in the sense that they believe to the core.
 
mrkingkong said:
Im sorry, but by Unit-Sandbox do you mean you are creating a window that will let you customise the ship? Because that is a brilliant idea, and exactly what i was about to suggest,
The goal is to use this unit sandbox for the unit concept of this mod ( see chapter III ) ;)

...until i re-read your first post...
well.. whats wrong in my first post ? :)


dlordmagic said:
You could change this to a races philosophy(Ex: Vulcans are logical,Klingons are honorable warriors) these are kind of like religions in the sense that they believe to the core.
yes, I also thought about using this for different races .. maybe the civs can be classified. For example Mankind are in class "Human" , also like the Greys .
And they will have the "Religion" Human from the beginning. With that kind of race-class the scientists can produce one additional research point. A civ with race "Insectoid" would have better farmers and workers instead ;)
 
Yes of course ;)

I see, you have already experiences with changing the terrain. So did you also changed the meshes (.nif files ) once with blender or another 3D studio ?
This is, what I'm currently doing, but I see that dalek master is pretty done with that
 
Vadus said:
Yes of course ;)

I see, you have already experiences with changing the terrain. So did you also changed the meshes (.nif files ) once with blender or another 3D studio ?
This is, what I'm currently doing, but I see that dalek master is pretty done with that

:suicide:

10 chars
 
hmm.. ok, a stupid situation. But you can post some ideas to my mod anyway ;)
@GarretSidzaka : maybe you can tell me, why I can't see a harbor at the coast when I'm building it ( as the first production task in the ancient era ). Maybe because coastal buildings are not visible on the map in the ancient era, but from the classical ? :hmm:
 
Yeah, i agree with forester. And in my Second Revolution mod, when i placed harbors in cities that didnt connect with the main oceans, the harbors/lighthouses/drydocks would only show up 50% of the time, and sometimes in wierd places like on the land. Wierd

as to modeling, i wish i knew how. but i can do crappy reskins of units, and i can do basic terrain meshes (see the stars terrain and lava terrain below). i can also code xml but i cant figure out python or SDK (C++) either. :(

I hope you can still find use for me! maybe, if you want, i can do that thing you requested where i make my stars terrain into a ocean terrain. I was thinking of making the zephyr sprites black and seeing if that sorta makes the stars "twinkle"

let me knoW!
 
GarretSidzaka said:
Yeah, i agree with forester. And in my Second Revolution mod, when i placed harbors in cities that didnt connect with the main oceans, the harbors/lighthouses/drydocks would only show up 50% of the time, and sometimes in wierd places like on the land. Wierd
Ah, ok, I will check that out.
I hope you can still find use for me! maybe, if you want, i can do that thing you requested where i make my stars terrain into a ocean terrain. I was thinking of making the zephyr sprites black and seeing if that sorta makes the stars "twinkle"

let me knoW!
Yeah, as we found out here it might be enough to repaint the heighmaps to get a half sphere from the current flat land (grass, plains, desert ... ). The heighmaps of the flat terrain itself has to be changed and additionaly the coast and coastblendmasks . Maybe the coastblendmasks refer to the TextureBlend elements in the CIV4ArtDefines_Terrain.xml ?
I think it is pretty good to take the flat land as planets. Currently in my mod it is working well to build a city on a "terran planet with rich minerals" ( which is a grassland isle ) and the city has bonuses on producing nutrients and production.

Another thing is to change the Peak Meshes to big spheres with a star-texture so that stars can be easily placed on the map ;)

And yes, having a space-ocean can be done quite quick ( I think ) and it will be a big step in this mod
 
hi, back again.
Today I tried to build some planets from the heightmaps and dds textures, but the result still isn't satisfying me. Somehow I can't use the flat terrain heightmaps, because making them round (with a black to white transition) don't has any effect in the game. And changing the hills is also not the best way.
So we have to use meshes. There are hill and peaks meshes in
Assets\art\terrain\features
, but how to use them in the game ? Hills and peaks are created from the heightmaps as I see.. what are these features then ?

current status attached
 

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Woah... something like this could breathe life back into the Battletech mod... neato.
 
One advantage of using .nif files for the planets, which I don't believe anyone has thought of yet, is the ability to animate them, so you could have rotating planets, or even fully rotating solar systems if you wished.
 
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