Oolite Bulletins

This one’s overexposed. The bright white area stands out as a block of solid color.


This one looks like a big floating skull in the sky. :-)

The others are excellent, though. Although I actually prefer the style of the first two, especially the fact that there’s some noise in them; this produces a greater sense of randomness when they’re layered on top of each other at different sizes.

How about this?



I've had a bit of a spin around Leesti, and it doesn't look too bad to me.
Might be a bit too solid at the edges though . . .

Is this any better?

Looks a bit too square to me though.

OK Cool; noise like pixelated star specks:



or noise as in intricacy and detail:

I hate to point out the obvious, but while you design your nebula, please keep this important message by Ahruman in mind:

Ahruman wrote:

Although I actually prefer the style of the first two, especially the fact that there’s some noise in them; this produces a greater sense of randomness when they’re layered on top of each other at different sizes.

There is not much sense in designing a nebula that looks good as it is. It has to look good when multiple copies of it in different colours and sizes are clustered close to each other. Because this is the way the game uses the texture in order to create nebulae.

so... do we want more noise and randomness or less?

The previous two were an attempt to divine what sort of noise is desirable - particulate noise (like star grains) or complexity...

I believe that I have things around the wrong way.

Perhaps simpler designs that are smoother and when overlaid generate complexity.

stardotstar wrote:

Perhaps simpler designs that are smoother and when overlaid generate complexity.

That would be (and, in fact, was, in my humble entries to the contest) my approach.

I could be wrong, of course...

stardotstar wrote:

OK Cool; noise like pixelated star specks:

That’s what I was thinking of, although…

or noise as in intricacy and detail:

…this one worked out better than I expected.

As for the “layering” thing, understanding how nebula generation works is much easier than explaining it, but I think the top set of shots in this post and the bottom one in this one are about as illustrative as it’s going to get. (In the first one, the blue and yellow pictures are two clusters of many “blobs” on top of each other, and the “butterfly” is about six different clusters.) Or of course you could create a galaxy256.png with just a square outline in it. :-)

Ahruman wrote:

This one looks like a big floating skull in the sky.

Yeah, but think about the Oorban Myths that would spring up about it....
"Yessir, Commander Muddyboots. I remembers a young Jameson that said he was gonna shoot through th' eyes o' the Skull Nebula. He was a sturdily-built feller wi' a great mane o' jet black hair. He wus gone 'bout a three month and when he comes back t' dock, his Cobra was a real mess, her hull all teared up lik'n she wus chewed up 'n' spat out. As fer that pilot? When they dun drag him outta that cockpit his body was wasted away and his jet black hair had turned pearly-white. So I's a-sayin to ya, boy, steer well clear o' the Skull Nebula..."

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Yeah, but think about the Oorban Myths that would spring up about it....

Hmm… nebula textures have probability weighting in the new sky code (now enabled). { texture = "oolite-nebula-skull.png"; probability = 0.0005; }

Just one simple question.
The new nebulas effect will be random? Or they will be dedicated nebulas in specific systems?

Depends what you mean by “random”. They will be procedurally generated, exactly as they are now, except that there will be a variety of textures used.

Ahruman wrote:

Depends what you mean by “random”. They will be procedurally generated, exactly as they are now, except that there will be a variety of textures used.

Procedurally generated means that the next time I will be at the same system the nebulas will be at the same place with the same size.
But what about the shape?
The first time I will be at Isinor oolite-nebula-2.png will be used for a specific nebula and the next time maybe oolite-nebula-3.png for the same nebula or the png will be always the same?
Do not misunderstand me. I will love it regardless the method. I just want to understand

The same sky will be generated for the system each time, unless there’s a bug. Or you install additional nebula textures, in which case they’ll all change.

Here is one with much more pixelated star matter, (probably too much) but is also assymetrical, large and simple - it should overlay quite well - especially if the nebula are arranged in rotated as well as scaled layers.



softer


BTW are they better interlaced or normal encoding??

It doesn’t matter as far as Oolite’s concerned, so go with whatever’s smallest. In roughly 100% of all cases, this will be non-interlaced. (I’ll be running the winning entries through optipng anyway.)