CaptKev <-- Those planets look absolutely bloody gorgeous!
I'm sure an OXP with these textures will be a hit on these boards.
(Very subtle hint to get it done, and release it pronto
I'm still quite amazed by the stuff that's being created for this - a completely free version of a twenty-odd year old game, with all input purely voluntary!
Here's the textures so far, if there are any planet textures people would like me to include (especially along the lines as suggested by Disembodied) then upload them to me. Make sure there at least 1024 x 512 pixels.
The quicker I can get all the textures the quicker I can release the OXP.
Download Fighter HUD, Stingray and System Redux from the EliteWiki
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
I keep meaning to write a procedural texture generator to produce 2D wrapping images. There are various algorithms for this that produce a variety of effects. By having the colour palette abruptly shift at some point(s) you can get sea/land(/snowy mountains).
Must get round to this at some stage and let you have a play to produce more textures...
I think they are superb, just one comment, there does seem to be a lot of blueish planets, which I guess would indicate water. In this highly inhabited galaxy it probably doesn't matter with all the different life forms out there, anyway at least Mr Whippy will be sorted
The Grey Haired Commander has spoken!
OK so I'm a PC user - "you know whats scary? Out of billions of sperm I was the fastest"
It's somebody's Celestia resource page. It contains links to download a Planetary Textures Generator, a patch for said generator, and a bunch of planetary textures including Mars with canals and Coruscant. There are email details given for the creators of these items, so if they're any good presumably permission could be sought...
OK... back home now, and the site I mentioned above has a broken link to to the Coruscant file. However, it was a derived work (with permission) from someone at SciFi3D called Topa: here's a link to the original file on that site.
The "Mars with canals" might be interesting to use for a Poor Agricultural, though.
@TGHC, I've decided to stop at five earth like planets which leaves another eleven for other types, just changing the land/sea ratios doesn't really make them look very different.
Download Fighter HUD, Stingray and System Redux from the EliteWiki
Hmm... an interesting site here. Permission would be required to use the textures but it should be free of charge, at least! (Edit: just noticed LittleBear beat me to this one by some considerable margin...)
And some of the planetary maps here might be useable... Callisto and Ganymede have a sort of scarred industrial look to them.
Last edited by Disembodied on Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
right. i have a procedural texture generator working now.
It needs a GUI (instead of rebuilding the code each time) to get allow easy adjustment of the parameters
It needs a a better 2D interpolation than simple linear between the nearest 4 points. Although adding extra smoothing on the later passes does stop all the peaks looking too much like pyramids.
It possibly needs some sort of palette generating tool as well, it took me a while fiddling about with polynomials to generate a mars like palette... Otherwise it can always be tweaked in photoshop etc.
I'd forgotten how fiddly all this stuff is from first principles!
And how much fun it is once you get it working!
Anybody got somewhere I can upload an image or two to show the sort of thing it spits out?