Modding Battlescape

Naiba · March 13, 2016, 12:00am

Anyone have a number for how much larger the gas giant is than the terrestrial world? I want to scale all the numbers for the rings up for it to check and see if i can swap them over onto the world that makes sense to have them.

INovaeFlavien · March 13, 2016, 12:04am

The planetary radiuses are in the config files IIRC, the gas giant was jupiter sized.

Naiba · March 13, 2016, 12:06am

I just realized i could check that way, but thanks for the confirmation!
also… That wasn’t a no!

*Edit, I borked on working out the numbers, but it really was as easy as copy&paste to move the rings to a different planet! I feel like this is the start of something real beautiful as far as modding goes and it’s only going to get better.

ThornEel · March 13, 2016, 1:09am

I wasn’t editing the right ClientConfig…

Some fun with the GalaxyDensity image

Black picture (empty galaxy):

The HDR is a bit low, but unsurprisingly space is way darker

Still, we can see white dots/blobs. AFAICT, those are star clusters, whose density is independent from the star density (IIRC they make a halo all around the galaxy, not just sitting in the disc)

Here is what the galactic core looks like

And here is what the opposed side looks like

Here is what it looks like from outside the galaxy

Lomsor · March 13, 2016, 3:01am

Naiba tried to change the colour of the gas giant. Eventually we found out that you also have to change the atmosphere, as it heavily changed the colour coming from the underlying cloud layer. I just equalized the atmosphere colour so it would be white.

<Atmosphere State="true" >
    <Thickness Value="300.0" />
    <BetaR Red="0.00015" Green="0.00015" Blue="0.0015" />
    <HR Value="64.0" />
    <BetaMSca Red="0.02" Green="0.02" Blue="0.02" />
    <BetaMEx Red="0.022" Green="0.022" Blue="0.022" />
    <HM Value="1.2" />
    <G Value="0.75" />
</Atmosphere>
<Cloud LayerID="1" State="true" Transparent="false" >
    <Altitude Value="0.0" />
    <RotationSpeed Value="-0.00025" />
    <NoiseScale X="1.25" Y="12.0" Z="1.35" />
    <NoiseOffset X="3.5612" Y="3.5612" Z="3.5612" />
    <MeanColor Red="0.01" Green="0.2" Blue="0.001" />
    <ColorVariance Red="0.1" Green="0.002" Blue="0.001" />
    <Persistence Value="0.9" />
    <Recursions Value="5" />
    <Deform Scale="32.0" Strength="0.25" />
</Cloud>

Made a small error:
Red=“0.00015” Green=“0.00015” Blue=“0.00 0 15”

Here you can see how much the atmosphere changes the end result. Above is without the zero I forgot to add, below is with properly white atmosphere without any colour “falsification”.

Trying to escape the acid sea.

Tsintsir · March 13, 2016, 6:09am

After seeing the cloud post, I poked around and managed to enable oceans. Not sure if anyone has posted about that yet, forgive me if so!

In “Dev\Projects\Infinity Battlescape\Config\planets\terrestrial.xml” change the following block from:

<Ground State="true" >
    <Patch TexRes="512" />
    <SeaLevel Value="0.0" />
    <Slope Power="1.0" />
    <Fractal Altitude="0.25" Slope="0.3" />
    <Biome TexRes="2048" />
</Ground>
<Ocean State="false" >
    <DeepColor Red="0.00175" Green="0.0035" Blue="0.0105" />
    <ShallowColor Red="0.0075" Green="0.030" Blue="0.0112" />
    <Spectrum TimeScale="0.5" Amplitude="1.0" Wind="600.0" />
    <Foam State="true" ParamX="-1.0" ParamY="0.99" ParamZ="30.0" ParamW="0.01" Intensity="0.3" Texture="$Textures/Foam.png" />
</Ocean>

to:

<Ground State="true" >
    <Patch TexRes="512" />
    <SeaLevel Value="0.3" />
    <Slope Power="1.0" />
    <Fractal Altitude="0.25" Slope="0.3" />
    <Biome TexRes="2048" />
</Ground>
<Ocean State="true" >
    <DeepColor Red="0.00175" Green="0.0035" Blue="0.0105" />
    <ShallowColor Red="0.0075" Green="0.030" Blue="0.0112" />
    <Spectrum TimeScale="0.5" Amplitude="1.0" Wind="600.0" />
    <Foam State="false" ParamX="-1.0" ParamY="0.99" ParamZ="30.0" ParamW="0.01" Intensity="0.3" Texture="$Textures/Foam.png" />
</Ocean>

i.e. change:

SeaLevel value to 0.3 (there is a comment containing this value in the provided file, if you don’t know how to uncomment it just ignore it and change 0.0 to 0.3)
Ocean state should be set to true
Foam State should be set to false (the game will first crash if you do not move the Foam.png file up a directory/change the path for the foam, and then crash for other reasons I have not diagnosed if you do that and still leave foam enabled)

Some screenshots:

SpaceJay · March 13, 2016, 8:33am

This is what I get with ocean height at 0.2

JCHD · March 13, 2016, 9:19am

AH oceans working!

Good! Gonna fiddle now, and post the results after!

Naiba · March 13, 2016, 1:42pm

You’ve got white clouds above you now, that means the HDR is going to try and compensate for the additional brightness by dimming everything
(The brightness equilibrium for it is set a tad low at the moment).

Naiba · March 13, 2016, 4:14pm

Been messing about with Rotation Speed… managed to get motion blur along the inside of my cockpit just from looking at the planet with a speed of 1000… Will try with something a little lower.

*Seems as though structures on the planet don’t move with it.
*Is it measured in revolutions per minute?

Freeman · March 13, 2016, 5:42pm

Set to 0.01 is enough though, but it seems have a lot of problems.

Naiba · March 13, 2016, 5:45pm

Well 0.0007 would be earth-ish rotation speed if my maths is right.

ThornEel · March 13, 2016, 7:33pm

More galaxy fun! (Couldn’t upload all the images last time - JPEG does work way better, possibly because of image size)

Empty picture (min density galaxy), from the centre of the galaxy (coordinates 0,0,0)

And seen from the ground

White picture (max density galaxy)

Here are the core.

The opposite side. The line seems to be an artefact from the engine pushed a bit too far, density-wise.

This is what it looks like, seen from outside. Looks like someone went a bit overboard with galactic engineering.
In addition to stars, the engine also generates dark clouds.

Here is what it looks like from the centre of the galaxy. With HDR it isn’t very visible, but it is clearly brighter than with the empty galaxy

And seen from the ground

And of course, this can be (ab)used for drawing pictures on the sky
It is looking at your soul!!

Tabaluga · March 17, 2016, 2:51am

looks fantastic … it is for me a very amazing first start. But i think it needs many improvements for the atmosphere.
What i negative attention is, the 2d clouds. It looks very clean to me and i think this is not state of art today ingame. 3d volumetic clouds and fog with sub surface scattering effects, light rays (and so on) . i know they are very system intensive, but a game with 3d fogs or clouds is first class. maybe it can be also procedual created and rendering as lod how the planets are generated.

i think it would be a very cool feeling if you enter the atmosphere and you are flying through a dense blanket of clouds.

Naiba · March 18, 2016, 9:12am

“improved atmospheric effects such as volumetric clouds, storm systems, etc”
The $600,000 stretch goal.

JCHD · March 18, 2016, 9:50pm

I think the volumetric clouds, or at least improved clouds shouldn’t be a stretch goal, but a primary goal.
The strong point of the I-Novae engine is the planet generator.
To make the planets more real, and make people go WOW, the clouds should be better.

Same for oceans.
If INS can make those work properly, it will improve the look of the terestial planet significantly.

ThornEel · March 18, 2016, 10:18pm

Playing a bit more with the galaxy, I went to hung for one of those globular clusters seen from afar on previous attempts.

I used this custom galaxy, which is empty black apart from a marker and its coordinates (with 0;0 at the centre of the image) - to use, copy your GalaxyDensity.tga to use as a template, open it with, say, Gimp, and put this image on top of it before export. Or do what the hell you want, this is the modding thread after all!

I used those coordinates for the next screenshots:

<Galaxy State="true"> <Position X="7500.0" Y="-1800.0" Z="30000.0"/> <Rotation X="0.0" Y="0.0" Z="0.0" W="0.0"/> <DensityFile>$Dev/Galaxy/GalaxyMarker.tga</DensityFile> <Seed>0</Seed> </Galaxy>

Rotation is put at 0 for ease of empirical galactic engineering.
X is horizontal
Z is vertical
Y is depth: negative is in front of the image, positive is behind the image.

The image is 1600x1600 pixels. One pixel is on the order of 10 coordinate units. With a 100 000 ly diametre galaxy, this amounts to about 60 ly by pixel.
Centre seems to be 0;0;0 though I have yet to confirm there is no offset.

Here is what it looks like from those coordinates (definitely not meant for extreme contrasts):

And here is what I was chasing after. (The glow on the corner is the left part of the numbers.)

I am not sure how far it is yet, but I would say a dozen light-years at most. Fiddling around to get a hang of the coordinate system, then trying to catch one of those “little” buggers really made me feel the crushing immensity of a galaxy in whole new ways. Those things are vast.

But here’s something curious. See here, with other, more distant cluster visible:

See, they are way more luminous.
In fact, this is with HDR at its nightest. Even the cockpit is too bright to let it be seen, otherwise. Here is what it looks like with a distant planet

and with the entire system, even at this range and angle

It becomes totally invisible.

I suspect that it always keep the same luminosity with distance, but spread it. Which is pretty bizarre. I may try to see if it’s not simply because some clusters are brighter than others (though even so, I’m not sure it should work that way).

Also, if you want your own galactic monster, feel free to use this!

ThornEel · March 20, 2016, 6:00pm

With the above-shown galaxy marker density map, I tried chasing a star. If you want to see the result by yourself, it is at
<Position X="7565.13" Y="-1006.55" Z="29978.60"/> <Rotation X="0.0" Y="0.0" Z="0.0" W="0.0"/> <DensityFile>$Dev/Galaxy/GalaxyMarker.tga</DensityFile> <Seed>0</Seed>

but at some point, it stops getting brighter and starts jiggling around (due to the still 32 bit precision galaxy engine). At those coordinates, it jitters around almost half the sky.

During this chase, I played with planetary values to get away faster and see the sky more freely. Here is what it looks like when you divide planet radius by 100. Note that gravity was also reduced by 1000 and considerably more powerful engines used on the ship.

Here are some pictures of Kerbattlescape Space Program!

Let’s start with our terrestrial friend:

Note the star at the left, just below the ring - this is the one I was chasing. If you stay immobile long enough, it will stop jittering. Otherwise, it will jump around the entire sreen - and even try to follow the centre of the screen sometimes.

Plains and mountains are still somehow recognisable.

Though the whole perspective becomes funky

And once landed:

Then, Cinder

It is the most, ah, atmospheric of all the planets IMHO, and it still is even like that.

Then there’s that Mars-like hellball.

It starts nice enough, looking like a weirdly coloured Cinder-bis, without the convenient “plains”, though.

But when closing down, spikes sharpen, multiply and appear in front of you, and the whole thing start to look like it is trying to kill you.

You can’t even land on it, as soon as you cut the engines, it will indeed punch you to death.

Stay away from this world, it is not a place for humans.

And then, there’s Rethe Prime, that is so cute!

Also played a bit with weapons stats. Here is what happens when you catch with your own (rapid-)fire!

Lomsor · March 20, 2016, 6:17pm

Those planets are scary.

Cyc · March 21, 2016, 6:15am

Awesome mountains, I like !