Starsphere Journey (Documentation of the journey)

Forsaken

Awesome! I’m looking forward to this!

chovynz

First thing I have done, is throw myself into it. There’s no point in wasting time!

Second thing I’ve done is actually ASK Discovery if they want some more starspheres. Lol. Imagine doing work that isn’t wanted!

In any case, this project goes on! Even if Discovery didn’t want a new starsphere, (which they do), this may help other new modders along the way. I know I’m going to enjoy this.

Personal Journal of the Journey.

Xarian_Prime

<grumbles>I woulda thought disco had enough of its own… lolz…

Starsphere’s are hard to come by… u might want to think about making your works available outside Disco as well

Either way… good idea, i’ll follow this journey.</grumbles>

chovynz

Xarian_Prime wrote:
<grumbles>I woulda thought disco had enough of its own… lolz…

Starsphere’s are hard to come by… u might want to think about making your works available outside Disco as well

Either way… good idea, i’ll follow this journey.</grumbles>

Lol at <grumbles>. Funny enough, as far as I’m aware they have no new starscapes, except for the Nomad ones done by Treewyrm.

Starspheres are hard to come by : and yes, That is why I’m making this journey available in this way. I don’t know what Igiss will say about the “end result”. As in, If I give something to Discovery, will it come under a NDA? Or will it be free for all? Those are questions that I’ll have to cross when it actually comes to that point.

From my point of view, I’m happy for anyone to use the things I come up with. I think, I would make them for the FL community at large, and “allow/push Igiss into using one”, if he’s agreeable to that idea.</grumbles>

chovynz

Day 1 : Learn what the hell I’m doing.

Read up on Forums about what a starsphere is, whos done it, what’s involved.
Talk to Seth Karlo : Modder from Discovery, whos done it before.
Setup Documentation files. I’m using Google Docs.
Find out that I’m not prepared.
Drink some coffee
Try to figure out how I’m going to fix mistakes that I make. Do I use SVN or something else? Making backups of everything is likely to chew up my HD space. Or webspace. Not that that actually matters anymore since upgrading my bandwith from 5gigs to 20gigs. How am I going to do this light-weight?
Tuck someone into bed.
Edit lots of chat log, and check back on the Starport to see if there are replies. Hoorah! they like it.
Put some inspirational music on. Homeworld music or Red are doing ti for me at the moment.
Carry on with the documentation. And setup process.

chovynz

Day #1 part 2
I managed to talk to Treewyrm about the whole starsphere thing. Had an very interesting talk with him about what makes up a starsphere and how he’s gone about it. Most of the info is relevant to creating a new SS.

Posted in my Private Journal for now. I’ll add it to here later.

Thoughts that have come out of my searching so far:

There’s no Blender 3ds exporter as yet. Lots of people have been saying so, and some intensive searches support this.
It seems you must have Milkshape. This is a pity because I refuse to install pirated software, and can’t yet afford Milkshape (for only this). I’ll have to think up a way around this obstacle. Obviously asking someone else to do certain things would be one option, however that’s not the best option for my own learning.
FriendlyFire, and Forsaken did some work on Starspheres for SWWT. Might be a good idea to talk to them about what they have found too.

Ugh. Brain getting tired. Need to stop looking.

Vesko

Yep that’s right, SW:WT does have some amazing starspheres. Would be a good idea to sak them about it.

Anyway, looks like you’re making progress. Good luck.

CK256

Starspheres! now that an off centre choice for a modding career, good for you

I’ve had some fairly decent results results by editing the nebula starsphere section essentially replacing the MIP TGA images with new ones using UTF editor.

Another approach I used was copying an existing nebula starsphere and then removing some of the nodes with UTF editor

I used the GIMP 2 image editor for creating and sizing the TGA images (from 256x256 pixels down to 1x1 I think), and used Hard CMP to quickly view the results.

G-Max might be worth trying although the copy I have wouldn’t read the starsphere files perhaps there’s a plug in available to allow this .

One thing I would suggest is to build a folder/directory structure to hold the MIP0 to MIP8 TGA (horizontally flipped I think) since it’s really easy to mix up a lot of identically named files.

Happy trails

CK256

Forsaken

Starspheres are nothing more than a model. Just like any other. The most difficult thing is making the texture which comprises of the starsphere background.

One of the most important things in my opinion is to keep the Nebula and Stars separated.

chovynz

Day #2
I started with the question, “How does FL orient the starsphere? What does it look like ingame?” First thing I will do is find out the starsphere for New York, then export it, make another texture, and re-apply the image.

So the first thing is to load up the FLServer to see what things look like in game.

And then my computer crashed. It didn’t like something and after I went into Freelancer to take some screenies, I got kicked from the server because of “Internet connection problems”. I’ll try to get my own server working before having some pictures. I already know what New York looks like, but I’m going to have another look at it, to see if there’s anything I’ve missed.

-Question : Make Own Server to test in MP-
Is this really necessary? I’m sure starspheres work just as well in SP as they do on MP.

In the meantime, I can reseach some other related things. Like, what are the system internal names?

I start by searching for the correct file. I poke around Data > Universe, but don’t find it. Is there a list just like the faction list? I opened one ini file up and took a look around. Br02.ini I “THINK” this is Liverpool due to this line “comment = Liverpool / Magellan Jumpgate”, however it’s a long winded way around of doing this.

chovynz

Day 3
Well, after a week of puking and diarhea (sorry if TMI!) I’m back to continue my journey. I follow up on the above in finding out the system internal names. I have a hunch I’ll need these.

Found the list. In the Discovery Mod this is \IONCROSS\GAMEDATA_systems.txt. Note: It’s in an odd form. Why is it in the order added, instead of alphabetical?

Question : Is this the same file for a SDK or unmodded Version?

So I can see from the list that Li01 is New York. Obviously; however having the list is useful for later. Now I will attempt to have a look at the New York Starsphere.

As we can see there are two files that may be involved. Lets open the first in the UTF Editor. Starsphere_li01.cmp

When opening starsphere_li01.cmp up in UTFeditor we can see the following list. The Texture part is what we are interested in for now.

In exporting each of the tga’s one by one we can see that these images are indexed tga files. Except for the Galactic Belt, all the images start at MIP0, at the size of 256 pixels by 256 pixels. Each subsequent image is then divided by two, so we get this:

MIP0 = 256 x 256
MIP1 = 128 x 128
MIP2 = 64 x 64
MIP3 = 32 x 32
MIP4 = 16 x 16
MIP5 = 8 x 8
MIP6 = 4 x 4
MIP7 = 2 x 2
MIP8 = 1 x 1

I don’t yet know why they bothered putting a 1 x 1 pixel image in, (or an 8px for that matter). There’s bound to be some reason, yet to be discovered.

Out of curiousity I looked at li01 starsphere model (that’s the .cmp file) in Hard CMP to see what the model actually looks like.

Same model but textured.

Same model turned 180(ish)

And wired view of 180 with (guessed) explanations.

The log of HardCMP says thus :

Direct3D Interface created
Dx9 Format supported
Failed to create the DX9 device
Valid Dx9 Config: Devtype = 1 behaviour = 40 depth = 4D

Dx9 Device Created
InitD3D Done
InitGeometry started
InitGeometry started
Loading UTF
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\STARSPHERE\starsphere_li01.cmp
Loading Texture
Texture Loaded
Meshes loaded
Hardpoints loaded
Loading Fix
Creating Vertex buffers
Creating Index Buffers
Loading Textures from mats
Loading UTF(s)
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\asteroid_dock.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_badlands.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_berylium.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_debris.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_debris2.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_fragments.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_gas_mine.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_ice.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_lava.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_loot.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_mineable.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_minedout.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_mines.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_nomad.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_rock.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_toxic.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\ast_uranium.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\freeport7.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\nomad.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\nomad_lair.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_co_base.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dockable01.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dockable02.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dockable03.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dockable04.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dyson.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_dyson_city.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_mbase.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_misc01.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_misc02.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_ring.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_space_dmg.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_space_tank.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_tink.mat
\Desktop\Modding Discovery\DATA\SOLAR\solar_mat_tlr.mat
Assigning Textures

I find it interesting that nomad textures are loaded in New York. Obviously some textures have been re-used from other things. Still, that is unexpected.

It should be noted here that the crow nebula image and the walker nebula images are on flat planes. That is obvious to see from the pictures, but I’m just pointing it out to those who missed it the first time. You can do some fantastic stuff with flat planes if you know what you are doing.

Also, from a designers point of view, the MIP1 textures look like they have been “Sharpened” from the MIP0 textures. That is a common technique in texturing, to make the lower resolution textures stand out more, when the detail is set lower.

adoxa

If you use the latest UTF Editor (topic), it will highlight each part (you’ll need .NET 3.5 and a “recent” DX update). There are also tools on my site for translating nicknames & ids, as well as straight text files for vanilla system and base nicknames.

chovynz

adoxa wrote:
If you use the latest UTF Editor (topic), it will highlight each part (you’ll need .NET 3.5 and a “recent” DX update). There are also tools on my site for translating nicknames & ids, as well as straight text files for vanilla system and base nicknames.

Hah! Waddyah know. Thanks man.

Edit: Whoa! this gives me a whole lot more info that I don’t know about! lol. Thanks