New 1.65 exe for Windows posted (experimental)

Post by **dajt** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:37 am

I've posted a new replacement exe for 1.65 users. The details of what's in it can be found in the announcement on the berlios site.

It is half the size of the other recent replacement exes because I stripped the debugging information from all the libraries in my GCC 4.1.1 installation which saves a lot of space in the output it produces when libraries are statically linked (like the C++ runtime library).

hwtan · Post by **hwtan** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:46 am

Where can I find this replacement file?

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:58 am

Click on the "files" tab on the Berlios site, when you are reading Dajt's message.

Anyway, good work, Dajt!

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 10:39 am

Hmm...

I must admit that the planets now look pretty weird, as if they had been painted with water colours... The first version provided more "planet-like" graphics, in my opinion...

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 1:05 pm

I have toi agree with Wolfwood. Although the rendering looks really good, and the clouds move independently of the surface, the colours look like an accident in a paint factory.

Sorry if that sounds overly critical. Can the clouds not be white or light grey and the surfaces have the normal water/land mix please?

stevesims · Post by **stevesims** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:38 pm

Just what is a "normal" land/water mix?

Some planets won't have any water - others may be a water-world.

These are alien worlds - they aren't all going to look just like Earth...

I say bring on the odd coloured planets!

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:52 pm

Ah, but where the inhabitants are oxygen breathers, there's bound to be water as well. So, I'd like to see more "normal" planets around.

Also, I think the resolution of the planet textures was better in the previous version. Now, as I said, the texture seems a bit "watered"...

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:45 pm

By 'normal land-water mix' I mean that water is blue(ish) and land is green(ish). Currently Lave has a striated deep purple surface and bright green clouds with grey bits in.

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 9:47 pm

I seem to remember that the SNES Elite had similar...

hwtan · Post by **hwtan** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:30 am

Wolfwood:

Click on the "files" tab on the Berlios site, when you are reading Dajt's message.

I can only see the 1.65 installer and not the .exe replacement file. Also, the date of the installer is 5 May 2006.

hwtan · Post by **hwtan** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:34 am

I find it, it is the oolite-1.65-tp3.exe. The date distracted me. Thanks.

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:39 am

Hmmm, tp3 just closes as soon as it starts for me...

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:42 am

Did you chance it's name to oolite.exe (replacing the original) and then started it normally from the desktop shortcut.

It closes immediately, if you just try to run the .exe file itself.

Post by **dajt** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:13 am

I've posted another textured planets exe here.

This one switches back to more earth-like colours while I try to find a way to use the game generated colours better.

I've turned the brightness down a little so the planets don't look as cartoony as before.

I changed the gradients so mountains and ice show up much higher so there are less of them.

I made a change to the planet rendering code so it doesn't colour the planet and atmosphere vertexes which added too much of the system colour to them. I can play around with this and try to get some system colour but not as much as there was.

If you also set your ambient lighting down as suggested by winston, it looks pretty cool.

Next exe I'll add a planetinfo.plist entry so you can select earth colours or game colours.

The trick with the game colours is that I ask the library to create a single uniform gradient from the sea colour to the land colour. This means there isn't that much variation and you don't get recognisable features like you do with more varied gradient sets. I need to find nice ways to generate more interesting gradient sets based on the game's colour selections.

I should add some randomness into the cloud generator seeding - the weather is always the same when you go to a particular planet.

I should add in variations in the noise generators used, so we'll get some very rocky/cliffy planets, and some liquid surface planets, maybe some gas giants. This could take a while.

If you're using these exes, be on the lookout for texture problems - the planet and cloud textures probably use up a lot of memory and you might find either them or some others go missing. Let me know if you see something weird.

ramon · Post by **ramon** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:08 am

The trick with the game colours is that I ask the library to create a single uniform gradient from the sea colour to the land colour. This means there isn't that much variation and you don't get recognisable features like you do with more varied gradient sets. I need to find nice ways to generate more interesting gradient sets based on the game's colour selections.

Is there a way of having a gradient for the land mass and a block colour for liquid, and then maybe having a liquid height for the water (so for a dry planet have the water level at 0% and for a water planet have the level at 100%).

So for earth the land mass gradient could be green-brown say (or if you could have three colours in the gradient green-brown-white). The sea would be blue and set the sea level to about 70% maybe, to give big expanses of water with land contenients.

This way there would be a definate difference between land and sea.