[Official] Project Perfection

[Tonberry]

The sky gradient is now much more bright and orange/yellow during the day, and at night much darker. It also has a new ultra high res cloud tile.

Example of the old daytime sky.

Reference for the new sky.​

As you can see the standard sky is a lot more washed out, and although the clouds are much more distunguishable, they look terrible if you actually stop and look at them properly.

The new tile is far less obvious which helps it blend with the gradient and the resolution of it just makes this look even better. Its still just a quick job as I was just seeing what could be done with the cloud tiles. I'll certainly be revisiting it, along with all other environment map stuff once the terrain and flora is sorted.

 

[Joshino]

Anymore news?

 

[Tonberry]

Anymore news?

Life's still a bit hectic at the moment, hopefully I'll get some time to get back to work shortly.

 

[Vlock]

ive been keeping an eye on this for a while. It looks superb and cant wait to see the project completed.

Just wanted to say, it looks outstanding, and good work.

 

[MechWarrior001]

So from what I know of this covers terrain and structure textures. Will object textures and particle sprites be improved as-well? Or will that be reserved for a entirely different project?

 

[Tonberry]

So from what I know of this covers terrain and structure textures. Will object textures and particle sprites be improved as-well? Or will that be reserved for a entirely different project?

It covers the appearence of terrain and environment based elements such as flora, trees ect. Structures MAY be included in the end, but don't take that as a garentee. Other objects like clothes/armor wont be included either.

I have sub project going at the moment which deals with combat/weapons/particles. I'm mainly working on it for testing purposes with the client.

I'll be releasing the first of these tests as a small modpack. In regards to my interests the test was actually unsuccessful. The work involved particles, but since this one didn't work I have removed the particle elements of the package and will be releasing it just including the other changes it makes. Hint: weapon changes.

I'm certain the community will enjoy to have it as an option to mix the game up a bit.

This release will probably also tie to a series of modpacks, but since their primary reason is my own personal tests, don't expect wonders from them.

 

[Kayliaah]

New sky is intriguing, definitely old school.

Did you mod the sky gradients only or the colorramps as well?
I assume you did the cloudtile too, the default ones are ugly as hell.

I still have my new ground textures for Tatooine, which now looks much better at high res + forced AA, though I don't know if you've already worked on Tatooine or if you're still doing Dantooine.

You left me in the dark when you went AWOL.

 

[Ragnarok_Strike]

New sky is intriguing, definitely old school.

Did you mod the sky gradients only or the colorramps as well?
I assume you did the cloudtile too, the default ones are ugly as hell.

I still have my new ground textures for Tatooine, which now looks much better at high res + forced AA, though I don't know if you've already worked on Tatooine or if you're still doing Dantooine.

You left me in the dark when you went AWOL.

Does this mean those ugly 2D clouds on Tatooine and Naboo look 3D now?

 

[Tonberry]

New sky is intriguing, definitely old school.

Did you mod the sky gradients only or the colorramps as well?
I assume you did the cloudtile too, the default ones are ugly as hell.

I still have my new ground textures for Tatooine, which now looks much better at high res + forced AA, though I don't know if you've already worked on Tatooine or if you're still doing Dantooine.

You left me in the dark when you went AWOL.

Pfft you disappeared from the modding scene, not my fault.

I did the gradients but most of my effort went into new cloud tiles. Changing the colorramps isn't really needed and best to avoid anyway since they usually cause more problems than they're worth.

And no, I haven't started Tat yet, I made a few rock textures for use with tat and a few other planets but thats it. I messed up a lot of stuff so as soon as I get a long period of time to work without anything else getting in the way I'm going to revert to a incredibly early revision and start over.

Does this mean those ugly 2D clouds on Tatooine and Naboo look 3D now?

They aren't and don't really look massively 3D no, but they look a hell of a lot better than those ugly current clouds yeah. That sky was actually my first test so the finished versions will be much nicer.

 

[Kayliaah]

I disappeared when? I don't even remember.
Though you disappeared for a longer time.

What kind of problems do the colorramps cause? That's news, I have dozens of modded colorramps without an issue, the only annoying thing is actually server side, the weather can't change fast enough to show me if my new lighting looks fine, but otherwise there is no issue, I documented what the colorramps do myself, each row, on the PreCU client and NGE client, so basically you can compare though I wonder how SOE got the NGE ones to work properly, there are 10 rows that come from nowhere and the files think it's still a 8 rows lol.


3D clouds would be neat, but it's a little harder than retexturing I'm afraid.
Simply redrawing the clouds at a high res and you're set, the original ones are like HUGE pixels, new ones must be smaller and more transparent.


You're going to revert back and start over? :/

 

[Tonberry]

I disappeared when? I don't even remember.
Though you disappeared for a longer time.

What kind of problems do the colorramps cause? That's news, I have dozens of modded colorramps without an issue, the only annoying thing is actually server side, the weather can't change fast enough to show me if my new lighting looks fine, but otherwise there is no issue, I documented what the colorramps do myself, each row, on the PreCU client and NGE client, so basically you can compare though I wonder how SOE got the NGE ones to work properly, there are 10 rows that come from nowhere and the files think it's still a 8 rows lol.


3D clouds would be neat, but it's a little harder than retexturing I'm afraid.
Simply redrawing the clouds at a high res and you're set, the original ones are like HUGE pixels, new ones must be smaller and more transparent.


You're going to revert back and start over? :/

No significant problems with colorramps, just a pain to work with really. In NGE I would say its worth the time to fix them since everything looks hideous by default, but pre-cu everything already looks perfectly fine in my opinion.

I'm not going to fully revert. I made a few bugs which I didnt have the time to fix, then I took a break and when I got back around to messing with it I had completely forgot the source of the bugs, its much easier just to start over. The art is already done so its just trial and error client work really.

 

[Kayliaah]

It was a pain too lol, if you need to work on them one day to bring a new feel to planetary lighting I'll give you the docs, or I might just write a little tutorial when I can be bothered.
I actually like parts of the NGE lighting, at dawn for some planets and day for others, but it's far from perfect. It could be easy to give Tatooine a more old school feel like the movie or the KOTOR's Tatooine (which was already tried by a guy at ModSource).

I know what you mean, if you take a break it's hard to start from where you left, it's why I now write down what to do next, on REAL paper!

In any case, it looks promising for what I've seen of Dantooine and those new clouds.

 

[Tonberry]

It was a pain too lol, it you need to work on them one day to bring a new feel to planetary lighting I'll give you the docs, or I might just write a little tutorial when I can be bothered.
I actually like parts of the NGE lighting, at dawn for some planets and day for others, but it's far from perfect. It could be easy to give Tatooine a more old school feel like the movie or the KOTOR's Tatooine (which was already tried by a guy at ModSource).

I know what you mean, if you take a break it's hard to start from where you left, it's why I now write down what to do next, on REAL paper!

In any case, it looks promising for what I've seen of Dantooine and those new clouds.

I do document most of my work as I go along, granted I could've made it a little better for this, but even if I had the bugs were still to randomly spread out to fix them all in a realistic timescale.

 

[Kayliaah]

It was a pain too lol, it you need to work on them one day to bring a new feel to planetary lighting I'll give you the docs, or I might just write a little tutorial when I can be bothered.
I actually like parts of the NGE lighting, at dawn for some planets and day for others, but it's far from perfect. It could be easy to give Tatooine a more old school feel like the movie or the KOTOR's Tatooine (which was already tried by a guy at ModSource).

I know what you mean, if you take a break it's hard to start from where you left, it's why I now write down what to do next, on REAL paper!

In any case, it looks promising for what I've seen of Dantooine and those new clouds.

I do document most of my work as I go along, granted I could've made it a little better for this, but even if I had the bugs were still to randomly spread out to fix them all in a realistic timescale.

What kind of bugs are those exactly? Texture issues? Size issue?
It has to be a terrain problem, those files are just too big, good thing there is a search function.


I have so much to do, too many ideas I don't know where to start.
And stupid SWGEmu forums being slow as hell makes me mad!

 

[Tonberry]

It was a pain too lol, it you need to work on them one day to bring a new feel to planetary lighting I'll give you the docs, or I might just write a little tutorial when I can be bothered.
I actually like parts of the NGE lighting, at dawn for some planets and day for others, but it's far from perfect. It could be easy to give Tatooine a more old school feel like the movie or the KOTOR's Tatooine (which was already tried by a guy at ModSource).

I know what you mean, if you take a break it's hard to start from where you left, it's why I now write down what to do next, on REAL paper!

In any case, it looks promising for what I've seen of Dantooine and those new clouds.

I do document most of my work as I go along, granted I could've made it a little better for this, but even if I had the bugs were still to randomly spread out to fix them all in a realistic timescale.

What kind of bugs are those exactly? Texture issues? Size issue?
It has to be a terrain problem, those files are just too big, good thing there is a search function.


I have so much to do, too many ideas I don't know where to start.
And stupid SWGEmu forums being slow as hell makes me mad!

Yeah the bugs were mainly textures/objects in the terrain, some of which even with a search function I just couldn't seem to locate. I've concluded the file may be damaged in some way which is why some of the bugs just cant be fixed.

I have plenty of ideas at the moment as well. Just finished another set of loadings screens actually. The forums are making me mad too.

 

[Kayliaah]

Goddamnit show me those loading screens!

I was remaking the current Eyes of the Empire loading screen with its current image to fit the new display, and I did this yesterday, guess what the servers have been down since then, oh I'm mad.
Added an Alpha channel to the picture as well for future uses, but I can't test anything right now!

It's when the servers are down that I wish I had a internal server for myself to I could test those mods without being bothered by Liberator's memory leaks and the like.

I see for the damaged terrain file, main problem with TRE Explorer is that there is no way to revert back on the fly like any other editor, if you saved something you can't go back you have to manually re-add the original stuff or something else if you want to fix anything.

Oh and the memory leaks in TRE Explorer ouch, I don't know if you've got this problem too but when you view too many textures inside TRE Explorer after a while it tells you something like "Not enough memory" everything starts glitching and you can't view anything anymore, you have to restart the program, it's not annoying AT ALL.
Since the program is slow sometimes when you open the whole TOC file, it wastes your precious modding time.

 

[Tonberry]

Goddamnit show me those loading screens!

I was remaking the current Eyes of the Empire loading screen with its current image to fit the new display, and I did this yesterday, guess what the servers have been down since then, oh I'm mad.
Added an Alpha channel to the picture as well for future uses, but I can't test anything right now!

It's when the servers are down that I wish I had a internal server for myself to I could test those mods without being bothered by Liberator's memory leaks and the like.

I see for the damaged terrain file, main problem with TRE Explorer is that there is no way to revert back on the fly like any other editor, if you saved something you can't go back you have to manually re-add the original stuff or something else if you want to fix anything.

Oh and the memory leaks in TRE Explorer ouch, I don't know if you've got this problem too but when you view too many textures inside TRE Explorer after a while it tells you something like "Not enough memory" everything starts glitching and you can't view anything anymore, you have to restart the program, it's not annoying AT ALL.
Since the program is slow sometimes when you open the whole TOC file, it wastes your precious modding time.

Thats one of them, they're all in the same format with 5 different colors, each featuring different characters.

I know exactly what you mean about TRE Explorer. It can get incredibly frustrating. The source is available so it'd be very nice if a talented programmer could pimp it out eventually.

P.S - If you have a lot of modding inspiration at the moment then you may want to join up with me for my latest mini-project idea, drop me a PM if you're interested and then I'll give you the details.

 

[Kayliaah]

Wow this is original and well done!
So basically your loading screens are using one and only texture, meaning the frame AND the background image are both part of the same texture.

So I suppose what you want to do is not only having different background pictures and text for your loading screens but you want to make each loading screen different by having the background image, the frame and the text different, and I hadn't even thought of that lol.

Really nice work, I can't wait to see how it looks when it's actually loading the game.


And should I drop you a PM on here or the (really slow) SWGEmu forums?
What should I say? I there a pass code?

 

[Tonberry]

Wow this is original and well done!
So basically your loading screens are using one and only texture, meaning the frame AND the background image are both part of the same texture.

So I suppose what you want to do is not only having different background pictures and text for your loading screens but you want to make each loading screen different by having the background image, the frame and the text different, and I hadn't even thought of that lol.

Really nice work, I can't wait to see how it looks when it's actually loading the game.


And should I drop you a PM on here or the (really slow) SWGEmu forums?
What should I say? I there a pass code?

Actually these screens are split into parts like the standard stuff. I have a PSD setup pre-sliced so I can do any work to the whole thing and export the whole lot in pretty much one click. I'm too lazy to use the new style screens.

Sure here is probably quicker for PMs. You can say whatever you like, including a random pass code if you really want to.

 

[Kayliaah]

I see, well with the altered ui files you won't need to cut the texture anymore.
Working on one big texture is less annoying than using corners and all that crap.
Or perhaps now that you have your pre sliced stuff you don't need to change it, I don't know.

I never used PSD's myself, might be useful one day.