Space Empires

[Kenta'arka]

Those new stars are fantastic!

 

[A Viking Yeti]

I renamed all the improvments and wonders, renamed a couple of the modern planes to be units in the game too. Unfortunatly, I can't edit pcx's so I can only do .bix editing. Here's the zip, please tell me where I could find a good zipping program if this one does not work. It includes a rough (very rough) model of our solar system and a fictional one of alpha centari.

 

[Vadus]

Sounds cool , but I'll be not online for the next weeks from today(X-Mas Holidays ) , so I can't try your bix ...

btw : not C3C ??

 

[A Viking Yeti]

I used PtW instead of C3C because I don't have C3C, yet . Just so there's no mistake, the bix (in game, that is) probably won't work at all. I renamed all the Sciences and Improvements but I didn't change the wonder splashes' names or graphics themselves. I would need someone else to do that, I can't edit pcx's. Am I repeating myself, ? Thanks for replying.

BTW: this is how I did mine (unit wise), Coast Units=Orbital Ships, Sea Units=Interplanetary Ships, Ocean Units=Interstellar Ships, Air Units=Hyperspace (or whatever you want to call it) Ships. This way, when you get to near the end of the game, you discover science advances leading to Teleportation Centers (airports) and the units are able to cover such large distances instantaneously since they now can create worm holes/black holes/bends in space-time. If anyone has any suggestions on changing or improving my ideas, I'm all ears.

 

[Yuurei]

Originally posted by A Viking Yeti
BTW: this is how I did mine (unit wise), Coast Units=Orbital Ships, Sea Units=Interplanetary Ships, Ocean Units=Interstellar Ships, Air Units=Hyperspace (or whatever you want to call it) Ships. This way, when you get to near the end of the game, you discover science advances leading to Teleportation Centers (airports) and the units are able to cover such large distances instantaneously since they now can create worm holes/black holes/bends in space-time. If anyone has any suggestions on changing or improving my ideas, I'm all ears.

I think this all sounds very logical. I like it. I would love to see someone get a mod complete using this stuff. If a basic mod could be completed, that could then be used as a base for other Sci-fi scenarios using alterations for things like Star Trek, B5, or even Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars.

Yuurei.


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[aaglo]

Did I mention that this space terrain looks fantastic

 

[A Viking Yeti]

The graphics do look great, but I have a couple questions. What about orbits, gravitational attraction, black holes, etc... I think if we did make a space mod, it would have to be very unrealistic to represent a planet with a single tile. Oh well, it'll still be fun to play . Maybe, to add some realism, we should make the barbarian camp a black hole, and have the low level barbs be comets/asteroids and the advanced barbs be radiation/particle bursts or something. Then the asteroids/comets would be stylized after the cruise missle, so as not to directly fight with units on the planet; and radiation/particle bursts would be the same except with invisable checked. You could make the barb levels of activity be intersellar activity or something. Just a thought.

 

[Gringo]

Fantastic terrain MOD...

Now all we need are the Unit Cretor wiz guys to make a legion of civ-flavour space ships...

I wonder if you could make the space ship units in 2D like the MOO 1&2 series... If you can do that I may try to start making some ships untill the real pros have time to whip up some standard 3D ones...

 

[Kenta'arka]

Hey Vadus, do you think you can remove the black "aura" (don't know how to call it, see screenshot) around stars? It's annoying to keep a distance of one tile between star and planets...

 

[Kenta'arka]

forgot the screenshot:

 

[Vadus]

Hi

The second Update is out!


- nicer AsteriodsFields
- Update on Terran (american) and organic (asian) Cities
- "Coast"-Space has a bigger Stardense to differ from "Sea"-Space
- "Ocean"-Space has a lower Stardense to differ from "Sea"- and "Coast" Space

with this, the terrain is done except the bonus-grassland. Next changes will be on resources, cities, ground-modifications ...

Has anyone a good idea how the bonus terran-planet could look like ?

Get the newest version in the end of the first post !

@ Kenta'arka :

It is possible, but than we have the old, tiny stars. To make them bigger means to let them lap over the next tiles..

That was done in the first update, and now there is only one tiny star left.
Look into the marsh.pcx . The second star is a one-tiled star. You could change the pcx, if you can, to use that star in special cases..

 

[Kenta'arka]

I don't mean the star itself, the new ones are much better. Just there is a black "aura" around them, and that black stuff make planets look bad if they are in a tile next to the star.

Oh, btw: Why is there a blue bubble above terran planets sometimes? (see my screenshot few posts above)

 

[Vadus]

yes, the black aura is necessary because it is a bit brighter than the space-black color. So there is a runny transition from the bright starlight to the dark space. Otherwise you have a conspicuous border between the starlight and the deep space, that doesen't look fine..

The one solution I see is to take the one tiled star...

The blue bubble is the actual bonus grassland symbol. It's from the parent space-terrain, which I took. Because of that i asked for good ideas to replace the actual bonus grasland resource. (which only appears on terrain planets)
Maybe a gaian planet or a native civilisation ? ...

 

[Cyborganics]

Hi.

Nice active forum going on here, nice!

I would like to share something...

http://www.cyborganics.org/components/images/samples/spacesamples.html

^ A sample of some art I quickly created last night.

The big image is a screen capture from civxedit, with a mod I started into very recently. I am using a single tundre/plain/grass/desert tile schema for 'significant' planets (big ones) by using coastal transition tiles to full effect and a growing library of smaller planets (as resources) for added value on important interstellar realestate. The stars and blackholes are (of all things) ... pollution tiles!

(The stars are really just cosmetic, it's the resource tiles that define the real gameplay in my design.)

I have astroids and other interstellar terrain all planned out too as well as a variety of independant tech trees, civilizations and units. The idea I had was to focus the gameplay on significant features in the gamespace, design a dependancy on rare and volitile artifacts for more advanced city projects and a bunch of other crazy unorthodox civdom that I wont bore you with right now. It's Probably too ambitious I'm sure anyway.

I may still do some more work on the art and mod but I thought I would offer the artwork for folks to use in thier mods now. (Just in case I never get done what I started.) From what I've read this thread is the closest to what I was scheming up.


Vadus, feel free to salvage what you can from the art in the above link... just be sure to give credit by mentioning my website in the readme if you do, please and thanks. If you need higher color quality images, let me know and I will get the files online.

If you have any requests for planet styles or something, feel free to ask - I can punch this stuff out really fast. (~15 minutes a planet)


I can also do up ships and such quickly but the flic conversions are a real time killer but I got it working now, yay.

 

[Vadus]

Wow ! great Cyborganics !

Could you post your Terrain-Files, so that I could test it ? I also thought of diffenrent sizes of Planets by changing the coast-line, but I guessed it would be to much work , so that I only use one tiled planet sizes. It would make things easier when I saw the technique of creating multiple tiled planets, which have still a circle form..

If you have some good Ideas in resources, let me know. I think a "Native Civ" Resource like in Moo is cool, and different mineral or gas occurence

The ship is also great! ... And you have already a flc-file from that ? Fantastic Maybe you should post it in the Units-Forum. With space-ships you will not only help me, but 2 or 3 other Space-Mods, which are running currently.

And many Thanks for your help !!!

You're searching for other Space-Mods in progress? Here :

Smoking Mirrors Space Armada
Daftpanzers SpaceWars Mod
Glorefinders StarTrek Mod

My "Space Empires" is, you see, still in the TerrainMod-phase

 

[Kenta'arka]

yay, a Ferengi ship
If you already got the flc done for that, it would be very useful for the Star Trek MOD...

 

[embryodead]

I'm so deeply into fantasy stuff right now that I haven't time to think of sci-fi recently, but development looks better and better! Cyborganics planets and ship previews look awesome! I also like those gameplay ideas.

One idea that came into my mind are nebulas on larger scale using non-overlay tileset (sea should work, otherwise some LM terrain) - I'm thinking of nebulas that link just as normal terrain does forming larger coulds (that's much more work though). These could be mined for hydrogen (gas miners).

 

[Cyborganics]

Thanks.

Here's some of the pcx art, it's ~750kb ...

http://www.cyborganics.org/components/images/samples/spaceciv.zip

NOTE: use single plains, tundra, grass and desert for major planets. Single pollution for small stars, square (2 by 2) pollution for big reds and a 3 by 3 "X" (or "+") formation for a blackhole image and "T" intersections will produce empty space. I am going to provide resource images and info later to help give some of those cellestial objects 'meaning' later. So, you have to be mindful when placing down 'terrain' in Civ3QEdit.

The smaller planets are resources, only twelve at the moment.

BTW, you can add more resources by making the pcx longer. Check out my resource pcx in the zip to see what I mean, I don't know what the limit might be. So the universe has a lot of potential with that in mind. Unless there is something I don't know that is going to cause a melt down... probably the case.


I was thinking I might use LM plains as a land buffer on the island 'planets' for the benefit of the AI. I hope the logic they plugged into C3C is robust enough to handle what I'm going to throw at it. It would have been nice to be able to lay down 'hot spots' in the editor that tell the AI 'this is good' or bad...

Maybe the Victory towers can help do that? If I can use them to help the AI settle on key areas (like major planets) then I'm all giggles.


I'll post up the spacetrader ship and others when I get the animations done right and working in-game.

 

[Cyborganics]

Bah, damn multiple-double-single-many clicks...


(Later)


Uh, yeah don't bother much with that art package folks... except for eye candy purposes. I need to finese something so that it will work with the AI's colonizing preferences, so it's back to re-working the layout on the CSO files.



bummer.

 

[Vadus]

@ embryodead :

I'm thinking of nebulas that link just as normal terrain does forming larger coulds (that's much more work though).

hmm, it would be nice to have LM Sea as galactic Nebular, but LM Sea is already needed to place the LM-Planets (because, to have the right transitions they need to be embedded into LM Sea)

Maybe it is possible to create a completly new Terrain based on LM Ocean ? ...

@cyborganics

Single pollution for small stars, square (2 by 2) pollution for big reds and a 3 by 3 "X" (or "+") formation for a blackhole image

... that implies for the gameplay no pollution creation

The smaller planets are resources, only twelve at the moment.

ahh, thats the dodge !
I also thought of resource-planets in the beginning of creating the space-terrain, but abolished that idea, because so I can't place any resources (like several mineral types) on the planets. On the other hand I would have had almost unlimited different planet-types, but I decided to use Land-Terrain as planets to have many possibilities on resources.
What I had in mind as I saw your screenshot was the abilitiy to create big and one tiled planets with Land-Terrain.
My imagination :
a one tiled planed consist of 4 pieces (4 angles, left, right, up, down) as it is realized in my Space Terrain
but I ask myself if it is also possible to create a big circle planet with Land-terrain (as you did) and combine this with one tiled Land Terrain Planets ?
I will test your terrain in some hours. It would be quite cool if that idea work, but I guess then it's no longer possible to place a planet right next to another...

I was thinking I might use LM plains as a land buffer on the island 'planets' for the benefit of the AI.

you mean Land-Brigdes ? I did that with Asteroid-Fields

Maybe the Victory towers can help do that? If I can use them to help the AI settle on key areas (like major planets) then I'm all giggles.

I don't know, is a Victory Flag not tied to a city ? I hope to make only planets settleable the AI will work with that...