Dude, you rule! I was looking exactly for this! A planet_neutron_2500! Thank you!

Ha ha, exactly what i was after too, top stuff m8, big planets here i come.

On a side note, i've created giant suns if anyone is interested

where is the sur files to planets, if you want to make a small planet it is boring when you crash into a invisable wall a killometre from the visable surface

.sph files need no SUR files. They are both SUR and visual.

Yeh, SUR files re for more complicatedly shaped objects, to make ingame physics calculation faster. But collision detection on a simple sphere is fast anyway.

@Gibbon - the sun.sph file doesn't have any textures so how would you see a difference in size if it's invisible in the first place?

I think he means creating giant Star (With Stararch.ini)

This is great but, erh, wont the textures look a bit stretched? how to change?

great pSYCHO!

I just startet today to test if i could make suns and planets from a bigger size as i realized that the .sph files must be converted too. Seraching here in LancersReactor brought me direct to your tutorial. Saved a lot of time

Does anybody know how to change the textures and what in detail the sub-entries in the .mat file for each used material mean? Seems to me that there are used different materials for the LOD. Maybe also something like orientation or coordinates ?

Has somebody successful created and maped new textures to a planet ?

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Has somebody successful created and maped new textures to a planet ?

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I can answer that, partially, with "yes" (Partially because I've found it can be a real bugger to really fit the textures on the 6 sides of the globe perfeclty together - a planet is, as it were, a cube inflated to a globe. So I haven't done it entirely perfect, but came close.)

I have no time to write an elaborate "how-to", but you can use the UTF editor to examine the files making up a planet. There are three specific files for each planet: a txm-file, a sph-file, and a mat-file.

In case of the planet_gasgrncld_3000, there are

DATA\SOLAR\PLANETS\PLANET_GASGRNCLD\planet_gasgrncld_3000.sph

The nodes M0, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5 refer, in ASCII mode, to the names of the nodes in corresponding mat-file.

(Note that more than one sph-files can refer to the same mat- and txm-files; that's why some planets come in various sizes)


DATA\SOLAR\PLANETS\PLANET_GASGRNCLD\planet_gasgrncld.mat

In each main node of this file, there's a sub-node called Dt_name , which in ASCII refers to a node in the corresponding txm-file.

(There are also often references to other generic texture-files,like Dt_name refering to "detailmap_ocean"; I haven't really found out how these are precisely used in relation to the specific texture files)


DATA\SOLAR\PLANETS\planet_gasgrncld.txm

The nodes of the txm-file each contain a DDS-file which is the actual texture of one of the six sides of the planet.


(The original planets actually only use 3 different sides, and use the same texture for the opposing side. Look in the sph-files.)


So, if you want to create a new planet, copy-and rename an entry in solararch.ini, and copy-and-rename the corresponding txm-, sph- and mat-files (and note that the last two of these are in a separate folder, while the txm-files are all in DATA\SOLAR\PLANETS). And play around with the different values. You can use the UTF editor to export the DDS-files from the txm-file, and, after editing the, re-import them into it.

NOTE: make sure you change all the node names, otherwise the game will confuse between the custom and original ones.

I hope this will help you a bit. Good luck with it!









Edited by - moonhead on 1/4/2005 12:30:14 PM

@ Louva Deus

You're correct but there is a workaround, i can make them any size you like and they work! Screenshots are available if you think i'm telling porkies lol
It's one of the features of the Galactica Hellgate mod from Gizmo Studios which i'm working on...

@Friendly Fire

You know what i'm talking about lol, well spotted!


Edited by - Gibbon on 1/20/2005 3:58:56 PM

Is there a program or mod already made that will scale the planets and bases to a realistic size already made, or will I have to do such a task by hand?

I'd appreciate it if there was a program

BTW, what is the planet name of Planet Manhattan (ie what folder under the solars directory cooresponds to it?)? I was thinking that it was either earth plain or earth_city, but does anyone know for sure?

Thanks,
VrmlBasic

Edited by - vrmlbasic on 2/4/2005 9:50:05 PM

Lol, realistic size. That would be thousands of km even for the smaller planets. With FLs rendering limitations etc. etc., the result would not be very pretty. You would never be able to have a look at the thing from some distance, because once you are far enough the thing will not be rendered anymore due to the distance...

has anyone got a way to make a ship lets say the titan but with 12 turrets or like all dimondbacks or somethin like that