sigget Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Geosphere Texture Maker v1.0The geosphere uses 10 textures that have been calcualted from a single image built by NASA using satellite imagery. That image and several others can be found here and they're a good example of how your replacement images should look. SkillTool v1.1Zer0 fixed a few issues with version 1.0 and added a feature that disables trainings until the soldier have the stats that are required. Total Commander VFS Plugin v0.1Ive written a plugin for Total Commander, previously called Windows Commander. Its still in beta stage but im releasing it now to see if there's any interest in it. If you think that you'll be using it please let me know and i'll continue working on it. If you run into problems and/or bugs using these programs please let me know so i can fix them, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Very nice sigget! I love the TC plugin. I wrote a little howto that I added to the zip before adding it to the tools section. Here it is: To use this plugin with Total Commander, you have to do this:- Download the program from: https://www.ghisler.com/- Install the program- Unpack the tcvfs.wcx to some directory, for example: "C:\Program Files\totalcmd\Plugins"- Start Total Commander, and go into Configuration->Options- Find the menu Packer, and click the "Configure packer extension WCXs"- Write "vfs" in the upper right window, and click "New type..."- Choose the tcvfs.wcx file- Then click OK Now all you have to browse your way to the UFO:Aftermath directory, and double click oneof the .vfs files. Most of the game data can be found in gamedata.vfs. Happy modding! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Excellent work with the Geosphere Texture Maker https://www.boks.staghosting.com/images/smilies/thumbup1.gif . Do you know of an easy way to apply your own cloud texture over the top of the world map? I'm not much of a Photoshop wiz so any advice appreciated EDIT: Just a thought. You could apply the cloud texture over the whole biomass textures to stop it looking like the biomass is on top of the clouds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zer0 Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Hehe, I made a new geosphere with 2048x2048 textures out of a 8192x4096 blue marble picture. The texturesize of all 10 over 120 MB(!) but it worked lik a charm and it looks much better in the game than the old textures. It should look even better with an even larger blue marble source. Would anyone be interested in a mod with a highres geosphere? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 I sure would Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Jeebus! Where would you upload it too?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zer0 Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Jeebus! Where would you upload it too?! Hmm, that's actually a pretty good question... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Um, how big would it be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zer0 Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 Compressed into a vfs-file it takes around 35 MB... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Why make a mod that's a big download when everyone can do it themselves now, thanks to siggets Geosphere Texture Maker? It's easy to use and you'd just need to write step by step instructions or even just a batch file for adding them to a .vfs file .Unless of course the original image was 35MB, then you'd probably be better off using a lower res texture . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigget Posted January 13, 2004 Author Share Posted January 13, 2004 Boks, do you have any idea how long his calculations would take? Cause he's now considering using the fullres blue marble image. And besides, im not sure how my program behaves when it gets an image that large. Chances are that he'll have to rewrite my program to read the image piece by piece from disk. Considering these issues, a 35 meg download doesnt seem that large. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strahd Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Nice a Total Commander plugin!! I'm gonna test this as soon as possibile. And yes I want it finished Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigget Posted January 13, 2004 Author Share Posted January 13, 2004 I actually thought the total commander plugin would go by unnoticed. Mostly because i didnt think anyone was using total commander but also because i didnt think there was a need for it. Its clear to me now that i was wrong. Again, please give me as much feedback as you can! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Boks, do you have any idea how long his calculations would take? Cause he's now considering using the fullres blue marble image. And besides, im not sure how my program behaves when it gets an image that large. Chances are that he'll have to rewrite my program to read the image piece by piece from disk. Considering these issues, a 35 meg download doesnt seem that large. :-)1 minute 40 seconds (on my 1.5 GHz, 256MB RAM (haha ) machine) , that's 10 seconds per image. You make it sound like it would take hours! Sheesh, and I thought I was impatient! hehe The problem I found was that the geoscape then crawled at a slow pace of about 1-2fps. It looked a bit better, but I can't say I would of noticed if I hadn't been looking for the differences. I would expect a slightly higher res than the original to be sufficient, but anything over that, I would consider overkill and pointless. Just a couple of minor things I noticed about the Geosphere Texture Maker. The filtered file types should include *.tiff (two f's as well as one). Of course, I know this can be worked around with "All Files", but just letting you know . Also, each time you click "Go", the progress bar at the bottom should be reset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 It is possible that I could host that file Zer0. And most people are too lazy to do it themselves Boks, so we better make it a mod (or better, ALPine plugin if possible). Go Zer0! As for Total Commander, I do not use it sigget. But with this new functionality, I do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boks Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 For a 35MB download, I'd want want more than just the geoshpere looking a little better. Not really worth it in my most humblest of opinions . By all means, try it out and let me know if you disagree . If you're going to make a mod out of it, at least do it for a few resolutions so the user can choose their preference . Just my 2p worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 The mod would only be interesting for people with broadband, that's for sure. And it's not really usefull, just kind of cool (and it beats downloading 200 MB earth pictures, right ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zer0 Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Well, I've now managed to create 2048x2048 textures from a blue marble source at 43200x21600 resolution. It took around 10 minutes per image to generate on a 2,53 mhz P4. I had to make some changes to sigget's code since the raw imagedata takes up 2,6 GB of space and it's kind of hard to allocate that much ram, so don't try this with the original version:). Anyway, the result looks great, much better than from the 8192x4096 source. It runs fine on my computer with 1 GB ram and 9700pro, but it might get really slow if you have less ram, especially if you have less than 128 MB videoram. In that case 1024x1024 textures should work better. Slaughter, if you want it just tell me where to put it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigget Posted January 13, 2004 Author Share Posted January 13, 2004 Boks, thanks for the feedback, its been added to the todo list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Will look into it tomorrow Zer0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martin Posted January 15, 2004 Share Posted January 15, 2004 Congratulations, sigget, on extremely cool pieces of software. The Total Commander plugin is very useful, we're going to use it ourselves. And the texture maker -- I think I can appreciate it is not a trivial problem. We had the higher resoltuion textures as well but in the end we included such as would work on lower range of video cards as well (the original minimum specs were 32MB video RAM). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigget Posted January 15, 2004 Author Share Posted January 15, 2004 Thanks! There'll be an updated version out soon, now that i know there's an interest in it. 10 2048x2048 textures are definitely to heavy for low end cards. I thought i'd ask you now since highres mod's of the globe will be out shortly, are the blue marble images in the public domain or are there some legal restrictions on their use? I couldnt find anything about this on the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpl. Facehugger Posted January 15, 2004 Share Posted January 15, 2004 Is there any way that you could release the option to use the high res textures in a patch or something, martin? I mean, those textures from the early screenshots looked great! (Even better then the current ones) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted January 24, 2004 Share Posted January 24, 2004 Better post a warning and tested system specs. Or we're gonna have a whole lot of complaints about "why does my [insert low end system specs] run like drunk snails on molasses when i'm using the high-res version?" It's true. I have actually met these people. I call one of them "mom"... ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaughter Posted January 24, 2004 Share Posted January 24, 2004 hehe, I did try to put a warning in the news post... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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