SysNES 1: A Murky Pool of Light

[Thlayli]

So, mea culpa - I had to go do some collaboration work in Germany for a few months and left my computer with the NES files behind. I'm back now, but unfortunately I've decided I can't budget the near day of work an update is now taking, or any nesing really. I was also somewhat dissatisified with the direction of the game and the problems with my economic model.

Watch this space winter 2011 for when I'll have finished my PhD (knock on wood), and will possibly restart this or do SysNES-2 in a similar setting with better graphics, an actual GUI and autogenerated maps.

A taster (images not made by me)

Thanks for all your contributions, its been great fun.

One of the best NESes in recent times. Especially in an age when there are almost no good NESes left. I'm truly sorry to see it go.

 

[Thlayli]

Technically speaking, it's both winter and 2011.

This was one of the best NESes in the history of the forum. I have no doubt all of its players will return if dis has the guts to moderate it again!

 

[Matt0088]

This was one of the best NESes in the history of the forum. I have no doubt all of its players will return if dis has the guts to moderate it again!

Yes. (to both)

 

[Kentharu]

Yes

xcl

 

[Kraznaya]

Indubitably.

 

[Matt0088]

Tbh those planet icons are unbelievable beautiful, especially now that I realize that Kaus II, Kaus III, Terebellum II, and Terebellum III, and Horn II (IIRC) are all shown.

 

[alex994]

There is no doubt! I shall return!

 

[Symphony D.]

Hello. I'm going to steal Disenfrancised's thunder just a little, but since ya'll liked this game so much, I think he'd approve. Plus [the below] was my own work anyway (to a capacity). This does give away Terebellum and Ascella, but I figure you might not get to see them in play and, if you do, the respective parties won't mind too much. Here were some things in the pipes, until it was postponed indefinitely. Consider it a teaser to whet your appetites:

Updated Title Header:

Updated System Map:

Spoiler :

Updated System Map Legend:

 

[Matt0088]

Your way with graphics never ceases to amaze me. Didn't really want Terebellum (re)revealed, but considering I already did so (before taking it down recently), w/e. I'd love to know how you made the planet images.

 

[Kraznaya]

Thanks for giving us a measure of what the community is missing for having driven you off. It is of course stunning.

 

[Milarqui]

Damn. That's so cool. Only bad thing is that the writing is slightly complicated to understand.

 

[Symphony D.]

I'd love to know how you made the planet images.

Why not. About half of those were appropriated from the Internet, and usually modified in some fashion or another to fit the existing drawings. The other half were (shoddily) custom built. Here's a somewhat edited e-mail I sent to Disenfrancised:

Greg Martin's Tutorial: Make a Planet
Dinyctis's Planet Tutorial
Mike Culver's Cooking with gas! Gas Giants in Photoshop
The Ultimate Gimp Planet Tutorial
DJKay's Planet Tutorial Version 2
Chris Schaffer's Painted Planets
SphereUK's Planetary Clouds Tutorial V2
rodrigogua's Creating Planet Rings

I don't use all of these personally and have developed a somewhat standard process for making planets, but investigating all of these may yield some nice insights. The most advanced methods I've seen are done by a fellow named hoevelkamp and he actually renders his planets in 3DSMax. If you're serious about producing large, high-quality planetary art, I would definitely recommend his techniques above my own piddly process, although making hundreds of planets in this fashion would be extremely time-consuming (part of the reason I haven't used it on this project, as my inner perfectionist is restrained by laziness).

hoevelkamp's 3ds Max Planet Map Tutorial
hoevelkamp's 3ds Max Planet Tutorial
hoevelkamp's 3ds Max Gas Giant Tutorial

My own process is as follows. Feel free to try it out and ask questions if I was excessively vague at any point. The main trick to creating decent planets is all in step 2, and it really just takes a lot of experimentation to wind up with something decent.

1. Make a new image somewhere around 1200x1200 to 800x800 (it depends on how many planets of this type you want to produce from a given "canvas"; bigger is better although a lot of detail will be lost).
2. You now need to make your planet's "surface". The method described in Mike Culver's tutorial on gas giants is sufficient for their surfaces, with modifications allowing for creation of Titan-like or Venus-like planets. Rocky planets are more difficult. To-date I have acquired Earth-like planets from other sources as they're much more involved than other kinds, although they require modification most of the time.Go to town with applying textures. Use different colors (white, black, gray, etc.) and different modes (brush mode normal, texture mode linear dodge, multiply, linear burn, etc.) to create different layers. "Build up" your planet in this fashion, applying cracks or craters last depending on what type it is. You will generally want to adjust contrast to an extreme (up to +100 run twice, perhaps) to get certain features to show up. Contrast is more important than fine detail to get things to appear when you resize. You may also want to include a rendered clouds layer as in gas planets, and a third layer with some painted on colors. This takes the most experimentation to get right. You're going to need some decent textures to pull this off, and I've provided some I find useful.
3. Duplicate your finished texture and run filter/stylize/emboss on it. Make a copy and follow Greg Martin's embossing section.
4. Make a 600x600 elliptical marquee without antialiasing and select some part of your canvas that you particularly like. Copy it.
5. Paste into a new document. Delete any background so it's just the planet. Adjust the size of the file to 700x700 ("canvas size" not "image size;" the planet should remain 600x600).
6. Magic wand the space around your planet and then select the inverse so just the planet is selected. Use filter/distort/spherize at 100%. Maybe run it again at 50% if you want (I usually don't).
7. Still selecting just the planet, use filter/render/lighting effects with the light source on the left and the contact point on the far-left center edge, such that the planet is clearly more illuminated on one side more than the other. You'll want to fiddle with the settings so that half the planet isn't in darkness; only the far right edge should mostly be black.
8. If your planet is going to have any atmosphere, duplicate your planet layer and set it aside for now.
9. Make a new layer.
10. Make an elliptical marquee of 600x900 or so and move it such that the right edge goes from between 12 to 1 o'clock on your planet to between 5 to 6 o'clock.
11. Invert your selection and flood fill black. Deselect.
12. Run filter/blur/Gaussian blur with a radius of 20 pixels or so.
13. Select your planet layer and magic wand the empty space around the planet.
14. Select the shadow layer you've just created and hit delete. This should leave only the planet partially shadowed.
15. Adjust the transparency of the shadow layer. Somewhere between 70% to 95% depending on the brightness of the planet is advisable.
16. If there's an atmosphere, use Greg Martin's inner/outer glow method on your duplicated planet but have the radii be around 25/10 instead of his 15/75. This can be fiddled with depending on atmospheric thickness. Instead of erasing with the eraser, use the lasso tool with a feather of 15 to trace along the edge of the planetary shadow and all the way to the edges of the document. Magic wand the empty space to be sure that the atmosphere has been deleted on the right side (everywhere from roughly 12 to 6 o'clock) because if you don't, you will wind up with an irritating glow when you shrink the planet.
17. Copy and paste to the main document. Use edit/transform to resize appropriately.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Pretty, although yes, the text is a bit unreadable.

You hanging around for long or just getting peoples hearts to jump in their throats and giving pretty gifts to others?

Spoiler Symphony D's Stuff :

Hello. I'm going to steal Disenfrancised's thunder just a little, but since ya'll liked this game so much, I think he'd approve. Plus it was my own work anyway (to a capacity). This does give away Terebellum and Ascella, but I figure you might not get to see them in play and, if you do, the respective parties won't mind too much. Here were some things in the pipes, until it was postponed indefinitely. Consider it a teaser to whet your appetites:

Updated Title Header:

Updated System Map:

Spoiler :

Updated System Map Legend:

Why not. About half of those were appropriated from the Internet, and usually modified in some fashion or another to fit the existing drawings. The other half were (shoddily) custom built. Here's a somewhat edited e-mail I sent to Disenfrancised:

 

[Symphony D.]

Same excuse Disenfrancised used on the first few pages: it's the future. And it's less ugly than that really old version of Kremlin or Nyet he was using. Minimum lines per character. It's called Avenger, by the way. Used in the DICE logo. Had to learn how to make a pixel font for the tiny version. Never try getting into typography.

As to me, I covered that elsewhere, man. Stay engaged with your community. Also, the backup's cute. I like that. I guess I could check back later to see if there are burning questions that need answering.

 

[Kentharu]

I dislike the font, but considering how awesome everything else is it isn't much of an issue.

Welcome back.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Same excuse Disenfrancised used on the first few pages: it's the future. And it's less ugly than that really old version of Kremlin or Nyet he was using. Minimum lines per character. It's called Avenger, by the way. Used in the DICE logo. Had to learn how to make a pixel font for the tiny version. Never try getting into typography.

As to me, I covered that elsewhere, man. Stay engaged with your community. Also, the backup's cute. I like that. I guess I could check back later to see if there are burning questions that need answering.

Laptop died and completing my Masters degree, part of why the backup is not moving forward yet.

 

[Thlayli]

Excuse me for a moment while I get over my shock.

---

Welcome back Symphony!

Should we resend our orders for the last turn to you? You could definitely carry on with it if dis still doesn't have the time.

 

[Symphony D.]

Laptop died and completing my Masters degree, part of why the backup is not moving forward yet.

Meant you quoting me.

Should we resend our orders for the last turn to you? You could definitely carry on with it if dis still doesn't have the time.

Mmm. Perhaps some poor wording on my part in that post has confused you. I've edited for clarity. What I submitted was my work (other than the planets I took). This was wholly Disenfrancised's game regarding rules, updates, operations, and so on. I just volunteered to and helped coordinate on upgrading his graphics, I don't have access to any of his systems and couldn't run this game.

 

[Thlayli]

Ah, regrettable. Even so, the updated graphics are cool.

 

[Disenfrancised]

Mmm. Perhaps some poor wording on my part in that post has confused you. I've edited for clarity. What I submitted was my work (other than the planets I took). This was wholly Disenfrancised's game regarding rules, updates, operations, and so on. I just volunteered to and helped coordinate on upgrading his graphics, I don't have access to any of his systems and couldn't run this game.

Heh, I could certainly pass on the system to you (or rather the actually properly functional entirely spreadsheet based version I made for Kal) if you do want to run it .

Always nice to see those pretty pretty planets, my only annoyence with using them would be the incessant feeling I need to update the ships and all other supporting graphics as well .