'Improved' sky for SoM

[dmpdesign]

Actually scratch that for now John, I found a texture I want to work with. ‎  I will hopefully have it tested by end of day and up here for you guys to look at.

[dmpdesign]

Uploading a quick template so anyone using a photo editor can quickly see what pixel they need to use for the starting and ending values of the 256 x 256 square for each file piece.

Just thought it might be useful to anyone that is going to make their own textures.

[dmpdesign]

OK, did a starry sky with moon. ‎  Feel free to download it and try it out.

https://www.swordofmoonlight.com/SOMTool...ywMoon.zip

This set removes the fog, and the moving clouds and makes a clear night sky with the moon at a southeast position about 2/3 the way up the horizon.

The file structure as it is named in the zip file will over write the 'blue sky' map files in SOM, so be sure to back those up before you pop this one in. ‎  Also, to test youll need to set the map to blue sky, and set your fog color to 0,0,0 for the RGB. ‎  I recommend a .5 distance on the fog as well and a draw distance of about 35-30 meters.

Please let me know what you think. ‎  Next thing Im going to do is a similar sky with a castle in the background, similar to KF2's area in the old battleground.

[AsusX2]

Yah, new drivers probably wont fix it and i dont really have the time to mess with it anyway. instead i put together a couple old mach's, use them as workstations for som and meta. I'll use my x64 strictly for testing and music. seems to be the easyiest way. P.s. I really wish you would give more credit, I've been doing hardware and electronics since Heathkit's. If you remember them. It was a long time ago. the problem is'nt over clocking or underclocking, it's a compatibility issue between dx11, x64 bit hardware and the game nothing more. I was just letting W.v. know about a technical issue I found. He did ask. Anyway, I did find a way to disable D.D. The results were, shall we say, unpleasent to say the least. Haaaaaa. I wont be trying that again anytime soon. needless to say I found a GeForce 56 works just fine so I will be sticking with that for the two LoPro's. Lifes a learning curve and it's my turn to learn.

[AsusX2]

Sorry aboul last! Tough day. The know it all who did'nt know anything that I had to listen to today can BUUURRRNNNN. You guy's are cool with me! and again, Sorry bout that.

[dmpdesign]

I had the same problem you described with the original mapset until I made the sky layers black.

I think it might have something to do with the darkness setting...let me explain.

John mentioned the star sky pattern was 'nearly black' but not completely black right?

well I have noticed with textures I have put on items in SOM that are nearly black, if I lower the lighting setting of the map eventually those textures will become see through (SOM's way of interpretting pure black in a texture).

My guess is if your ambient lighting in the map were higher, or maybe your darkness setting in the system menu were up higher, it might not be see through. ‎ 

The easiest fix is to pull the sky layers I put into the model file above, they are black and even with the horizon layers being see through, they wont show up on a white ish gray background.

Just something to try, I could most definitely be wrong hehe.

[Holy_Diver]

It sounds like you're seeing what I was seeing, in which case underclocking always fixed it. I never made a connection to 64bit hardware, but I found many online posts suggesting underclocking and that always made this go away. Underclocking just means you're giving the hardware more time to breath so inconsistencies don't happen. I felt put upon too, but what can you do. That said I don't know for sure that is what's happening, but it sounds like it. I'm suprised if SOM could make that happen.

But about black squares, that can also happen because I've noticed when SOM knocks out pixels, even though with filtering on, that whole pixel turns black in a square shape. I never tried turning up the lighting as Todd suggests (nor would I want to) ...eventually I was going to lean on everyone to help correct all the textures that are prone to doing that. I know the slime and the griffin have a lot of holes in them.

[Holy_Diver]

PS: can someone explain to me all the different layers in the sky and how they integrate with SOM? I'm kinda surprised to hear about what sounds like a bunch of different layers. To me I only ever saw the backdrop and the clouds whizzing by. Was there more going on there that I missed? Or was John able to add more layers? Or what?

I was out late tonight and I noticed the moon peaking thru clouds whizzing by not quite as fast as SOM's, and I realized one reason SOM's night sky looks so unnatural maybe, is the light from the moon refracting thru the clouds tends to only happen within a tight halo around the moon. Making the clouds only visible primarily around the moon via some transparent halo or even injecting a omni hardware light in there somehow might have an eerie effect. Somehow slowing down those clouds in general might also make it more appealing.

PPS: Eventually I'm going to add an extension that will just take a "static" background model (scene file) and draw it around the level. Like a skybox 3D castle or whatever you want to put back there.

[dmpdesign]

In short, john created an entirely new model set with several layers and such to improve the very generic 256x256 texture limitation of the current model.

In his download file there is a very nicely laid out explanation of all the layers, how to configure them and how they are used..would probably be easier just to read from that than try to respell it out here.

Once john is totally satisfied with his new sky tool kit, I will make a section for its use on the main site outlining everything in his detailed document.

[AsusX2]

H.D. if you do manage to get that sky idea done. would you be interested in sharing. it sound like a great idea and i'm really not a fan of the current sky models. I found it almost impossidle to clock down my cards and no sli didnt help either so i built 2 lower end comps, They run the sky txt,s beautfully, old and new! A new sky really is needed though. if possible I really wood like to help if i can, Maby testing it, if you'd like? if not, it's O.k. just think its a good idea and wanted to offer any help. Good luck.