FQM Star Brightness |
After some testing, it appears that the starglow texture brightness level does not have an effect on the central part of the star model. Overbrightness seems to come from the corona. I've made a series of screenshots to determine what a good level of brightness would be.
For reference, this is a stock star:
stock
Each of these is labeled with the pixel level brightness of the star glow:
200
180
160
140
120
Note that I did not try to capture all images with the solar flares on the same animation frame. I might have to increase the star glow effect size a little for the lower brightness levels, if I go with one of them.
The question is, what level do you prefer? What is too bright? Just right?
Re: FQM Star Brightness
All of your stars are brighter than stock but I cant personaly see that much diference betean the options from the screen shots
Re: FQM Star Brightness
In those screenshots, the star itself is not actually brighter than stock; it uses the same texture, at the same brightness level. What is brighter is the corona (the star glow texture). The white stars are larger than stock though, so there might be an optical illusion resulting from more surface area..
In the process of remaking all of the star textures, I made the white star model a little dimmer. Here is a new star demo screenshot to see. There is more of the contrast color, for more of a sense of churning plasmas, which also has the effect of dimming it down a tad.
Re: FQM Star Brightness
I seem to have omitted the word "appear" from my last post but stand by what I said with that edit. Moving on to the new images I really like those and would like to see what they actually look like in play as I don’t find a screen shot is always truly representative of that.
I appreciate what you have done but had to comment after I gave the last version of BM with FQM6 a go and felt the need to hunt out my sunglasses whenever I saw a white star.
Re: FQM Star Brightness
how would you go about editing the stock game to get rid of the suns corona totaly? or atleast minimize it as much as possable, they are stars , they glow, i get the picture but it doesnt really have to obscure 3/4 of the system view 
i really liked the stars in the last ballance mod. they were just about perfect for my old eyes. i just couldnt get used to the changes in the tech tree, and the other visuals so i removed it. but id like to still have my stars in the stock game look the same.
any help would be great, thanks
Re: FQM Star Brightness
I highly recommend not editing stock files. You can treat the "Standard SE5" Game Type folder as a mod, copying any files you edit into it first.
1) Go into Game Types\Standard SE5.
2) Create a Pictures folder.
3) Create an Effects folder in that Pictures folder.
4) Copy the SE5\Pictures\Effects\StarGlow.bmp file into the SE5\Game Types\Standard SE5\Pictures\Effects folder.
5) Edit the copy under the game types folder.
5a) To make stars have no glow, make that image all black.
5b) To reduce the glow, simply reduce the size of the grey image. Try to keep the overall picture size the same, with pure black filling in the extra area.
I made a half size glow texture a while back, which used to be what FQM used before Kwok made the solar flares. You can download it here to try it out. Just extract it into that Standard SE5 effects folder mentioned above, then load up a game (or make a new one).
Re: FQM Star Brightness
outstanding, works like a charm thanks a bunch. i may even use the crystol tree now that i can stand looking at more than one sun
Re: FQM Star Brightness
It's hard to say, with just the white stars. The white ones are naturally bright.
But I do think I'm going to have to go with max glow, 200.
Although I would be interested to see 2 colors of stars, so I can judge better.
~Myrath