FQM Beta 5 Posted

[Fyron]

Announcing the posting of FQM 5.00 Beta 5, for SE5.

download link (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/sev/mods/FQM5.00Beta5.rar) (878 kb)

Note that the mod now contains Credits and License files.

Beta 5 version history:
1. Added - New StarGlow.bmp texture with solar flare effects, courtesy of Captain Kwok.
2. Added - New PlanetGlow.bmp texture for better atmospheric effects on planets, courtesy of Captain Kwok.
3. Added - Green stars. Texture coloring courtesy of Captain Kwok.
4. Changed - Reduced the size of atmosphere glow for large and huge planets.
5. Added - Large Ringed planets have a Tiny atmosphere glow. Huge Ringed planets have a Small atmosphere glow.
6. Note - The solar system named planets (eg: Mercury, Earth) do not have glows. They do not appear to be used in-game (no references exist in StellarObjectTypes.txt).

Please note that this is a work in progress. There are bound to be quirks, which you should report. All suggestions for improvement are welcome!

It seems that SE5 still indexes data by file position, rather than name. As such, this version will tend to break savegames created with beta 4.

[Captain Kwok]

I see you just used the two-toned atmosphere glow for all planets?

[Fyron]

Yes.

[Santiago]

There were other choices? Curious as to what they are.

[Captain Kwok]

There are a few typos in the Quadrant type description with "nebualaes". I'm glad you lined up the values in bitmap...effects but what's with the decimals without leading zeroes and the incorrect number of digits (ie .5 instead of 0.50 etc)!?

[Captain Kwok]

Santiago said:There were other choices? Curious as to what they are.

Nothing major. There was an alternate glow for gas giants that didn't have the thin bright glow near the surface.

[Santiago]

Thanks for the Info- Just getting ready to look at it now.

[Santiago]

Very colorful- Altho 1st thoughts - some look good- some are almost a mismatch. I guess this is the nature of planets and atmospheres. I have one, a yellow ringed planet with a CO2 atmosphere (green) with bright orange rings. Very Neon. One of nearly the same color are harder to distiguish unless zoomed in on.

Does the atmosphere tend to make the planets look flat? That thought just occurred to me.

Speaking of neon and gases- What about other atmosphere types- Is it a lot of changes to add? Chlorine, Sulphur Dioxide, Helium (pop talks funny so communication is difficult), Nitrogen, Maybe Neon, Krypton (Pop is very Strong) and Nitrous Oxide ( pop is very very happy)

Green stars look good to me

[henk brouwer]

The solar flare effects are a really nice touch.

I'm glad that ringed planets now also have atmosphere glows, it's very usefull to be able to see at a glance what kind of planets a system has.

I have to agree with santiago on the brightness/contrast of the planetglows, I prefered the planetglows from the previous FQM version, they were more subtle, but easy enough to see.

Anyhow, great work. I can recommend this mod to anyone. Nobody should start a game without it.

[Fyron]

Captain Kwok said:
"...what's with the decimals without leading zeroes and the incorrect number of digits (ie .5 instead of 0.50 etc)!?"

I could understand the spaces for readability issues, but padding 0s? Who cares?

"There are a few typos in the Quadrant type description with "nebualaes"."

That appears to be inherited from the stock typo in the Ancient quadrant description.

Santiago said:
"some are almost a mismatch. I guess this is the nature of planets and atmospheres."

MM screwed the pooch and did not follow any sort of consistent color guide for mapping planet textures to atmospheres. There are Methane planets that are blue and practically indistinguishable from O2 planets, for example.

"What about other atmosphere types- Is it a lot of changes to add?"

Not really difficult. It just requires having sets of textures to use for each type...

[Captain Kwok]

Sorry if I prefer to have my decimal points lined up!

---

One of the problems with the planet glows is that they are drawn behind the planet which gives them that 2d flat look. Anyway I think I could do a better job on the planet glows.

A slightly larger 3d sphere around the planet with a lightly coloured almost transparent texture would look the best but not quite possible in SE:V.

[Fyron]

What if it was set to be on top of the planet texture? The atm would blend in more then.

[Captain Kwok]

In that case try a circular image of a mostly constant shade to see what happens. It should be a dark gray close to black to not be too overpowering. I seem to recall in the outer regions of the current glow, background objects were visible so it might work out ok.

[Fyron]

Working on some fancy quadrant types...

http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/spoke.jpg

[Santiago]

I think you're aware that I asked about adding moons to the same hex as a planet awhile back which I have done. While combining various changes to Kwok's new BM and most of yours, (still undecided on the new planet glows) with other various mods. I ran a quick check to make sure the game works.

Maybe it's the remants of a blasted planet or a new planet coalescing together. (moon placed in asteroid belt). Actually 2 in one system. Anyway it works for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

Consider them to represent large asteroids with minimal levels of effective gravity that you can place small colonies on. Or perhaps regions with lots of such large asteroids.

[Caduceus]

I like the new Beta, hadn't seen the first few as I couldn't get my torrent to link correctly, even after going through your painstaking tutorial.

[Fyron]

The nebula are a performance concern on some systems. One way to help might be to make the individual clouds bigger, and reduce the number of them. Compare the original to the new version, and tell me what you think:

40 small clouds per storm (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/fqm_neb_sml.jpg)

20 large clouds per storm (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/fqm_neb_big.jpg)

I'm leaning towards even bigger:

20 huge clouds per storm (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/fqm_neb_huge.jpg), with larger distances between them

[Captain Kwok]

I think that would work out nicely.

[Raapys]

How hard will it be to spot ships/fleets/whatever under them?

[Captain Kwok]

If the nebula has obscuration greater than your ship's sensors - you're not going to be able to see the ship, clouds or no clouds.

[Fyron]

After various optimizations, they are looking more like these:

a view at a normal angle (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/fqm_neb_normal_angle2.jpg)

a top down view (http://www.spaceempires.net/files/temp/fqm_neb_final.jpg)

[Caduceus]

That is totally cool, Fyron. I like it. A lot.