dobdriver's new tricks

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

Today I have started a new career to go along with mapping. So I started with something very easy, new textures for one's backgrounds. These are in HD and one can get their paws on them HERE

These will probably be the only game backgrounds I release, although I do have a set of higher quality ones that I may release somewhere else.

Ennedi pretty well has the daylight side of things covered, although I'm not a fan of putting in images as it hightlights the tiling effect a bit too much for me.


A couple of things I would like to work on are, the effect when the lights are turned off, unfortunately the game also dims the stars and turns them a bit blue. I'm not sure what controls this lighting effect and it maybe unfixable.

The other thing is the background texture in the region view, it's all well and swoopy to have dinky flash HD textures in the game and then one exits to region view to be greeted by ghastly grey checks. Ugghhh...

Anyhow here's some night and days.



The stars remain tight and ony a single pixel through to zoom 6


One can see how the stars also dim down.


Thanks for looking and have a great day.
That's all for now

Cheers
dobdriver

[thingfishs]

well well, being a member of two teams and a high profile mapper not enough for ya?
Reaching for the stars eh?

Well, looks like you got them, and in HD no less...

I'm pleased to hear you've got some more tricks up your sleeve and I'll be interested to see what else a man of your talents might achieve in SC4 CC.

I tested the first dodgy, presumably SD (spit) version of your star BG, and I liked it. But I agree with the night mode thing: that's where you really want the stars. Is it possible in anyway (and I ask this to you, as well as the passing community at large), to have two sets of BG images? That would be sweet. If it were I would just have the stars on at night time, and at day either black or something else.

Good luck, and keep driving that dob.

[dobdriver]

First up I have released a new pack at another place, there are 2 versions, mono and colour(very subtle) and the monos are a bit different to the stex upload. You can get a copy HERE

Things old mate,

The short answer to your first question, nup.

The second question is probably short as well, but I'll waffle on a bit to keep us all entertained. The first actually worked quite well and were small and light and the originals 128x128 size, unfortunately not only are they tiled but also resized by the game to 256x256 or some such number and what one ends up with is star bloat.
The three new versions I've made are 1024x1024, so these get resized down and voila pinpoint stars, even in the closest zooms. Now the trick to getting more stars as one zooms in is to have a good spread of brightness so at farther zooms only the brighter stars are showing and as one zooms in more are displayed.

The night mode thing I think will not be solved easily if at all as the game lays the night texture over the whole game tableau, trying to get the game to only map to the city borders which are movable would be a computational nightmare I think, I may be wrong but it doesn't really look to be an easy fix. A halfa sed workaround could if one runs in night mode a lot, make some specific night mode stars. ie much brighter and with a yellow tint to to counteract the blue crud maxis sticks on.

Unfortunately one cannot have two sets of background textures in the one directory as there would be name conflicts. Also the image displayed is controlled by the zoom level whilst the night texture overlay is controlled by some sort of counter and how to marry the two up I wouldn't have clue.
On a side note to this, it is not actually necessary to have all 5 textures in one's plugins directory. ie If one only has one texture say corresponding to zoom 1 and ones game opens the city on zoom 5, it will show a solid black background until one zooms out to 1 then it will pick up the texture and show it on all zooms.
It is also not necessary to have different textures for all the zooms, If one looks at the textures from Ennedi's sets and also from the set I uploaded to the stex one will see they are the same image per each set although this does not have to be the case. As the two sets I have uploaded to another place will show all the textures have been individually tuned in their brightness values for optimum results.

Hope this helps you out old mate and Cheers
dobdriver

I thought I drove a big one you wait till you see the new one

[thingfishs]

Well I've had a go with the new spiffy ones, and this is what I found... (plus pigeons)

Firstly they are much nicer than the first lot.



(Maxis night mode) - stars were nice and bright, however when holding right click to move around the city, the stars all noticeably dimmed, and then reverted when you let go.



(Gizmo night mode) - stars were, as expected, much dimmer. Perhaps you could make a gizmo version as well. But also at this intensity the dimming effect, if there, wasn't really perceptible.

(I actually like the stars dimmer as well though, you have to look hard for them, just like in a city. In maxis mode it's more like being out in the desert...)



I wonder, could you incorporate stars into the black, underground area?  (EDIT: which is courtesy of Heblem's mod http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=22588) But I want ALL stars, I look forward to seeing what you come up with)

[dobdriver]

G'Day Things old mate,

I was just admiring them and spiffy thet are, but I've got no pigeons.

Firstly the dimming is to do with monitor refresh rates and probably shows more with lcds' as these typically refresh slower than crts'. This dimming is also noticable during daylight hours and more so at high zooms with the city tile off the screen (less distraction for one's eyes). With gizmo's dark night because it so much darker the effect of turning on and off pixels quickly is less pronounced.

I actually like the stars dimmer as well though, you have to look hard for them, just like in a city.

That's alright for you city folk, but us country mice, well we like a little brightness in the sky

I wonder, could you incorporate stars into the black, underground area?

The first version are working, but game pastes different blur at different zooms in different spots and they're not in HD yet. Maybe by tomorrow I'll have something you can try out.

[manchou]

I like this background  

[dobdriver]

Thanks Manchou,

I'm working on a few textures compliment the background to go along with this.

Cheers
dobdriver

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

Today I have some new textures as promised and you can get your's HERE.

This is to convert the drab grey region view to a HD star filled background.

Here's a peek.


Thanks for looking and have a great day

Cheers
dobdriver

[thingfishs]

nice one Dobs My game looks better than it used to.

That's alright for you city folk, but us country mice, well we like a little brightness in the sky

Ouch! I've never been referred to as city folk before... don't like it much I gotta say. I retract my former statement. (I've only been in the city for 5 years )

[adroman]

Fantastic work, dob... it looks like the view at night here! All I can say is, keep is up 

I must say, it is very rural-looking... So, it suits me 

Adrian.

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

Over the past couple of months I have been slowly working on a small mod to change the game background from Maxis gluggy grey to a sparkling HD night sky vista. And as such several parts of this mod have already been released. Upon the suggestion from Things to remove also the tile borders I began to look into it so to speak. After locating the textures that needed to be replaced, I dicovered Maxis paints a shadow over these textures and further investigation lead to it's removal. This complicated the matter as the exemplar used was also used by a lot of terrain mods, notably Cycledoggs and Heblems.

I posed several queries to Ripplejet whom afforded me the unfavourable reply I was expecting due to my testing all sorts of things, that partial exemplars could not be loaded. I then changed tack and made instead patches for all the terrain mods I could find that used the exemplar. This now affords total compatibility between my mod and all terrain mods I know of.

So today I present The Magic Carpet Mod aka The Himalayan Astral Hanky


First up lets have a gander at that rug


No hint of the shadowing remains.


Through careful matching of the textures, seamless transitions from the tile edge into the background is achieved


The whole effect is carried over into the region view


Rigorous testing was performed to ensure full compatibility with terrain mods incuding SimMars



A point to mention not all terrain mods require a patch, only those that have modded the exemplar properties. And as such, this mod carries no textures from any terrain mod.
Height plugins for rendering 8bit greyscale maps such as Moganites or MallowtheClouds will continue to function normally due to the naming convention I have used but must be removed after the render or this mod will not display correctly.

Well that about wraps it up.
Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Cheers
dobdriver

[thingfishs]

Well I've been using this mod for a while now and love it, I could go on & on extolling it's many virtues but those pictures paint a thousand words... plus I know it's not for everyone. Good on you Dobs for making a speccy new option for people, as well  as overcoming the many obstacles you had to along the way. My hat off to you sir...

[MOREOPTIONS]

Hello,  I have the black, and am about to replace it i think with the stars. or back to the old one.  but i have to ask. is anyone getting a blue changing in it at times.  it will be blue and black or all blue or all black.  keeps changing.  and when you run a road or something into the area to connect. it changes Also...  Looking good everyone.  keep up the great work...  God Bless

[dobdriver]

And Things, thanks old mate to you and your band of testers for your invaluable help in getting this together and allowing me to clutter your computer with a sackful of files and what not. Thankyou.

MOREOPTIONS, the blue occurs when you have removed all the background images and not replaced them with another set, and thanks mate.

[adroman]

I don't know if my last PM got through to you, dob... my connection has been buggy lately... but yes, everything worked just fine.

I must say, dob's pictures look excellent... but seeing it yourself ingame, is even better! 

Great work,
Adrian.

[jmyers2043]

hello dob

I like the rug. It's a cool looking picuter. .  Good Luck with your mod.

Jim

[dobdriver]

Thanks Adrian for your testing, no unfortunately your pm didn't find it way to side of the woods so send it again if you like, thanks mate


Thanks Jim, Now all we have to do is wait for it to emerge from the dark and dusty dungeons of the scrutineers workshop.

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees'

After several communications with ObladiOblada, who mentioned he was using Orange's Pyrenean Terrain Mod.

I have put together a  small addon pack of patch files, these include three patches that will cover all of Orange's seven mod versions split into: beaches, no beaches and full snow. Also included is one for Heblem's Californian terrain Mod, which I forgot to include in the initial release.

I do hope one finds these useful as it will allow compatibility with even more terrain mods. It is available on the LEX

Unfortunately there are no pics as exemplars are not very photogenic, but one can see a slightly hacked version of Oranges Pyrenean terrain mod (high snow version) rendered with starbackgrounds on my latest map, Le Locle.

Thanks for looking and have a great day

Cheers
dobdriver

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

Streuth, I haven't been in here for ages!
So what do we have? Why water mods, in HD of course.

Anyhow I have been getting the readmes sorted out for my water mods. As one may or may not be aware I have released 18 of my water mods on the stex, The most recent set were designed to suit Lowkee's Appalachian Terrain Mod. As one probably already knows due to the Tex Tiling all older water mods look plain ghastly.

And without further ado.

Set 1

Tropical greens and blues.

Some closeups from the top.

Dark Blue.


Dark Tropix.


Light Blue.


Algae.


Light Tropix.


Mid Tropix


Set 2

Temperate blues and greys.

I had located the two fish files that control the side colour now.

Blue 1


Blue 2


Blue 5


Grey


Grey1


Grey3


Set 3

Tropical, temperate and polluted.

After Lowkee released his mod I found my originals looked bloody awful due to the tex tiling factor. Some new water was called for. Taking a cue from Lowkee where he found water colour can be controlled by the side colour I made a new set along this principal.

Moody


Muddy


Polluted


Steel


Tropical


Tropical Storm

This will probably be all the water mods I produce.
Credits go out to all those who have been before and some after.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.


Cheers
dobs

[vortext]

Yey, more HD stuff, great work! 

The third set in particular looks gorgeous, I'm going to try those for sure!