Planetary Pictures & Models

Oy.. has anyone added planets to planets.bmp before? Does the game even use the index?

Re-saving everything in Paint is a pain... but I finished the first batch. Here is a link to a picture of the new planets for the index... feel free to critic them.

Planet Index

In case it isn't clear, the rows are Oxygen, None, Hydrogen, Carbon Dioxide, Methane... and the column sets are Rock, Rock, Ice, Ice. I left space on the right for two sets of Gas planets.

This was just the first terrain texture... and more work than I thought (I have a dozen more terrain textures and cloud sets all ready for processing). The clouds and the poles do not com across great in the portraits, but the amount of additional work to change that seemed too great.

Problems some people might have with the textures are:
The second Rock None set looks a little like Ice.
The Hydrogen sets look similar because the Oranges and Reds are so similar.

Nice, I'll try that with my next batch.

Got the StellarObjectTypes.txt and XFileClasses_Stellar.txt entries working, as well as the extended Planets.bmp. Now, I just need to make a quick map with all 100 planets to see if anything is fubarred.

Still not sure about Gas Planet models yet... I should do them next before I create more Rock and Ice, but I have a recipe for the Rock and Ice and not the Gas.

Any complaints about the color schemes in the pictures above, I will incorporate into the next batch... this batch is essentially put to bed.

The second set is a Rock Oxygen "desert"... with the oceans replaced with "sand". The idea for the second sets in each row was to have dry Rock planets.
Rock Oxygen Set 2
The CO2 worlds also have yellow clouds (the clouds on these minis are in the lower left). The minis are smaller than I was expecting when I made the textures... the liberties I took with Rock Oxygen colors (trying to get them to fit real world colors) seemed to work pretty well on the larger scales.

The shadows are actually a problem with the minis because the game uses black as the fill color... that will require some work.

Okay, I am planning to:

1) Get rid of the shadowing in the portraits.
2) Make the lighter color in second set of Rock None a darker gray.
3) Change the second set of Rock Oxygen and the first set of Rock Ice... but I need a second Oxygen color besides Blue, which is not a neutral color that can be confused with None
(Gray), and not White which is dedicated to Ice (and Oxygen Clouds). Should I just use light and dark blue?
4) Change the first set of Ice Methane (Cyan) which can can be confused with the second set of Ice Oxygen (Blue). Should I just use light and dark purple?

Or I can just trash the second set of Rock and the first sets of Ice.

Question: Should I just omit the polar ice on the portraits? (The main reason I am using polar ice at all is to cover the maping distortion on the models.)

Since I have to rethink everything (because, I have to redo everything because of the shadows)... I am up for trying at least one set with double the atmosphere types. However, I am going batty with the palettes.

Here are the two Methane Rocks from the first go:
Basic Methane

textured Methane

Does the texture in the second work? Would another texture work, just not that one (that's just a sponge effect)? A "moon" texture might work but generally wouldn't mesh with the land (half-craters and stuff). (Palette comments welcome too).

Anyway, back to the palettes...
The only way I see this working, within the limits of ROYGBIV, is to have single colors overlap but not pairs of colors. This is made harder by ICE, which is basically white with subtle tints, and st least in my attempts replaces one the (three) colors on my planets.

My planets are currently colored:
Atm_ Type Water_ Land__ Clouds
O2__ Rock Blue__ mixed_ White_
O2__ Ice_ White_ Blue__ White_
None Rock Gray__ Gray__ None__
None Ice_ White_ Gray__ None__
H2__ Rock Red___ Orange Red___
H2__ Ice_ White_ Red___ Red___
CO2_ Rock Green_ Green_ Yellow
CO2_ Ice_ White_ Green_ Yellow
CH4_ Rock Purple Cyan__ Purple
CH$_ Ice_ White_ Purple Purple

Now, for the Rock worlds, I've been trying to vary the darkness of the primary (water) color and also exchange the water and land color for variation. However, this creates problems (the methane pics above just change a pinkish purple for a deep purple). Problem: the deep purple cannot be used on Ice worlds because it looks too Blue next to white.

I've also tried to make Light and Dark water versions, with the dark water version have a second version varying land color. (Three versions instead of the original two). However, this creates the need for three tints for the Ice worlds using only the Rock-Water color.

Okay, now I've even confused myself... back to some thinking. At the moment, I am forgetting about Gas planets completely for this project... they are a whole different artistic endeavor. Right now, any thoughts on palettes would be greatly appreciated.

The extended atmosphere types are interesting, but the H20 palette has been essentially bogarted by O2.

Has a palette for these been proposed already?

[Edit] Actually, shouldn't H20 be an extended planet type instead of an atmosphere type... i.e. Liquid Planets?

Here is the complete set of Huge Portraits of the alpha batch... to make this thread clearer.

Rock_O2_0001_huge_lp
comments: This is the Base Terrain this set is made from... with clouds added.

Rock_O2_0002_huge_lp
Comments: This was an attempt at a desert world... hence all the Rock 0002's were made with the same texture for dryness.

Rock_None_0001_huge_lp

Rock_None_0002_huge_lp
Comments: 75% desaturation of the desert world above made this too much like an Ice Planet.

Rock_H2_0001_huge_lp

Rock_H2_0002_huge_lp

Rock_CO2_0001_huge_lp

Rock_CO2_0002_huge_lp

Rock_CH4_0001_huge_lp

Rock_CH4_0002_huge_lp

Ice_O2_0001_huge_lp
Comments: Using the original terrain here made this too close to an Ice CO2 planet.

Ice_O2_0002_huge_lp
Comments: This looks like one of the CH4 Ice planets because Cyan and Blue are similar.

Ice_None_0001_huge_lp

Ice_None_0002_huge_lp

Ice_H2_0001_huge_lp

Ice_H2_0002_huge_lp

Ice_CO2_0001_huge_lp

Ice_CO2_0002_huge_lp

Ice_CH4_0001_huge_lp

Ice_CH4_0002_huge_lp

The current four atmosphere types seem to be taken from both ends of the Carbon and Hydrogen Cycles. Which is rather ambiguous... eg CO2 and water is part of both cycles.

H2 breathes out CH4
CH4 breathes out H2
something like CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O
something like CH3COOH → CH4 + CO2

O2 breathes out CO2
CO2 breathes out O2
something like C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O
something like 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
I guess that makes half of them autotrophs.

I think the key would be to determine the assumed respiratory cycles for the other likely atmospheres... some of them might be paired.
1 Hydrogen Sulfide H2S might be paired with SO2.
2 Sulfur Dioxide SO2 might be a by product of another respiratory gas.
3 Ammonia NH3
4 Nitrous Oxide N2O probably paired with Ammonia
5 Phosphine PH3
6 Chlorine Cl2
7 Fluorine F2

I think if we find likely reactions for these, the 5 choices will be clear.

A problem with the alpha batch for that first model was the clouds were toward the edges. I've already moved the clouds so there is more cloud cover near the center. Centralizing cloud cover should allow different model groups to have varying degrees of cloud cover while still making the clouds prominent in the small portraits.

But with 10 atmosphere types... can be come up with 9 cloud colors?
Red - Hydrogen
Yellow - Carbon Dioxide
Purple (pinkish) - Methane
White - Oxygen
Gray -
Dark Green - ?Sulfur Dioxide (colorless)
Light Green - ?Chlorine (pale green)
Yellowish Brown - ?Fluorine (yellowish brown)
Dark Blue - ?Ammonia (colorless)
Light Blue - ?Phosphine (colorless)
Light Orange -

Dark Orange is too close to Red
Dark Purple is too close to Blue

[edit] if the cloud colors match the halos then oxygen is bogarting both blue and white... hrm.

I'd hate to change the Carbon Dioxide clouds to Dark Green... but I probably need to.

Chlorine Cl2 halo/clouds could be Light Green.
Sulfur (SO2 + H2S) halo/clouds could be Yellow.
Fluorine could be Dark Yellow/Brown.
Nitrogen compounds (NH3 + N2O) could be Dark Blue.
Phosphine PH3 could be ???

(Oxygen being Light Blue/White)
(Hydrogen being Red)
(Methane being Purple)

Then the halos and clouds would match, except for Oxygen. Would this work?

The main reason to include Fluorine (or any in the list) would be its appearance on scifi planets. With the piggybacking I think that is a total of 10 anyway.

Chlorine Gas is pale green according to wikipedia... Chlorine gets its name from that color. But anyway... realistic or not, there need to be 9 distinct halo colors. Most Yellows and Oranges are going to be hard to discern... anyone tested additional halo colors?
I can make the clouds match whatever halo colors people come up with... but I don't feel comfortable making that decision completely alone.

Here is my first attempt to sort the colors... but the colors could be too similar in halos. If one of the halos could be a smokey gray, that might make things easier.
Colors (link deleted)

[edit] Actually, I think matching the cloud color to the primary planet color isn't so good... and CO2 can keep its yellow clouds. I like the idea of Rock SO2 planets being sulfur yellow planets with dark gray clouds.

[edit again]
I was looking at a color wheel and noticed a pattern. The current planet colors were composed of alternating pairs on the wheel... All three colors I used for methane were alternating. So, I made this chart:
color palette

As the four atmospheres are currently laid out...
#12 is clearly Methane, and #1 is basically Oxygen.
#7 or #9 is Hydrogen, and #3 or #5 is Carbon Dioxide.

The B column is the primary/central color... which I usually use for oceans.
The A column is the secondary/precursor color... which I usually use for land.
The C column is the tertiary/following color... which I usually use for clouds.
The D column is just the color opposite B on the color wheel... which I am not currently using.

Anyway, there are twelve sets for me to work with here (modifying set #1 slightly to use generated terrain and white clouds). So, I am going to try to use all 12 sets reconstructing the first terrain models.

Feel free to say which ones you want named Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide. From scratch I would have called #7 Carbon Dioxide because it is the most Mars-like... but instead it is one of the main candidates for Hydrogen.
The rest I will just name by number unless the extended atmosphere types achieve a consensus.

This will take quite a while, just for this first terrain... so, that's the end of me spamming this thread for now.

I had to tweak the palette a bit to make it usable with HSB functions, as well as RGB. It is notable the Green and Indigo are just darker versions of Lime and Violet. I'll put this all in a readme.txt with the models.

H S B - R G B - Approx Name
300 100 100 - 255 000 255 - Ma:Magenta
280 100 100 - 170 000 255 - Vi:Violet
280 100 050 - 085 000 128 - In:Indigo
240 100 100 - 000 000 255 - Bl:Blue
180 100 100 - 000 255 255 - Cy:Cyan
120 100 050 - 000 128 000 - Gr:Green
120 100 100 - 000 255 000 - Li:Lime
060 100 100 - 255 255 000 - Ye:Yellow
045 100 100 - 255 191 000 - Sa:Saffron
030 100 100 - 255 127 000 - Or:Orange
015 100 100 - 255 064 000 - Ta:Tangerine
000 100 100 - 255 000 000 - Re:Red

I still don't have the secondary textures picked out (craters, ice, arid, etc). Both Gas and many Venus planets will require better weather/cloud formations, which will be another project.

I am planning 12 sets of three Rock and three Ice plus another two - one for None and one for the base Terrain (with a 'desert' color for arid, and a 'brown' color for moon). So that is 14 sets of 6... or 84 models in five sizes per terrain (long term project! ).

Currently I am hoping for three sets for each atmosphere: normal, arid/(?venus?) (water color replaced with cloud color and add 'desert' texture to ocean) and moon (water color replaced with land color and add crater texture to water-zone). Cloud and Land colors will remain constant.

For the three Ice versions, the water regions would be white tinted with the ?land? color and textured with an ice texture(cracks), or the arid, or the moon texture... then the land would be colored with the (primary) water color.

How is Stock really bad about randomly labeling things? In my alpha set, I ran out of space for the portrait names (the jpgs have a lot of suffix terms)... you can see how I ended up naming everything in the huge portrait links above.

Anyway, I need some ~984x984 textures for ice, arid and moon for overlaying the oceans.

I think photoshop complained about Mac name compatibility or something, and truncated my names to 31 characters.

In the name, planet_terr_hydrogen_0001_large_lp.jpg
"planet" seems superfluous to me... and I am not sure about grouping my designs into terr/ven/moon some of the time.

I think Rock_Arid_BlViRe_0001_large_lp.jpg is too confusing.

I am thinking of just calling #1-3 O2, #4-6 CO2, #7-9 H2, and #10-12 CH4, with some secondary descriptor.
maybe like:
Rock_O2_Blue_Arid_0001 for Color set #1 Arid
Rock_O2_Cyan_Norm_0001 for Color set #2 Normal
Rock_O2_Green_Moon_0001 for Color set #3 Moon
etc...
Then if an advanced modder decides H2_Orange (Row #7) is good for SO2, it will be a simple pattern in the data files. Of course, the O2 isn't strictly anything but a hint for usage.

Not even close to naming things yet... got to work out the coloring methods for the clouds and land (Hue conversions mess up the brightness)... and my attempt at Red-ifying some clouds looks a bit fluorescent. Not sure how exaggerated or muted I should allow the colors to get.

Okay
Planet_Rock_Blue_Normal_0001

Just how bad was the sponge texture?

Yeah, the two toned mess... honestly it is only a factor in the portraits, but it does look pretty weak.

I've realized I have a fractal generator plugin that does sand, water, metal, wood, etc... I think I can combine them to produce 3-4 textures that will work for overlaying the ocean regions. It will be a tiny bit of effort, that won't be noticeable in the system map or planet list, but I might enjoy it.

I don't know about making "sea floor" craters for the dry oceans... and how well I could apply them with the mapping distortions away from the equator, AND the partial craters that map under the land mass. I'll probably just forget about them unless someone has a suggestion.

I took one of the odd looking color sets (#11 seen in the upper left corner) and tried a Normal Rock Planet for color testing. The poles have not been corrected for this portrait, and the ocean hasn't been textured.

The question is about color balance (intensity/darkness)... especially the clouds.

What do do about cloud colors

If I can get the red clouds right, then the rest should be much easier.

Three versions of the Ice planets wasn't working... so I am back to four sets, 2xRock (normal [light water oceans] and arid [textured dark water oceans]) and 2xIce (normal [dark 'water' land] and arid [light 'water' land] for each color set.

I'll post some pictures by next Monday... with properly fudged polar ice for the portraits, and completely new clouds.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[edit] Test Planet Here
I am not completely happy with the poles... and not sure if the slight spherical shading helps or hurts or isn't enough.
Anyway, that is 'Rock Violet Normal'.

I've been slowly merging the elements... since I am naming everything by color, there is still a little time to change the color names.

The current color names are:
Red
Tangerine
Orange
Saffron
Yellow
Lime
Green
Cyan
Blue
Indigo
Violet
Magenta

People might especially want a name change for Tangerine (Red-Orange), Saffron (Orange-Yellow) and Lime (Light-Green). I am not using the word Purple anywhere because both Indigo and Magenta are generally considered purples.

@#$%&! Have to redo the Ice worlds... got the wrong land color on them all.
Luckily, I hadn't begun outputing the files.

Modding Question:
What is entailed in adding new Atmosphere types. I am already editing StellarObjectTypes and XFileClasses_Stellar... what other files would need to be modified?

These aren't the new colors... and I didn't shade them at all (and they are missing polar ice). However, you can see the simple non-ocean texture I settled on... it seemed a reasonable choice that didn't mess up any of the 12 color schemes.

The Three Rock Planets based on the original texture #1.

Planet Rock Terran Normal 0001

Planet Rock Terran Arid 0001

Planet Rock Terran Semiarid 0001

Anyway, unless there are comments on these... for the next couple weeks, I will probably just continue processing a significant number of planet textures... still only rock and ice for v1.0.

Okay, I have a question:

Should I leave the poles off the portraits (not the model textures)?

This is why I am wondering... here are the Arid and Semiarid Rock Red Planets, without poles:

Now, if I leave off the poles to the portraits, the color of the poles can easily be changed on the model textures to create a specific use planet type... in this case, adding black poles to the model texture, and these portraits could be re-used for molten/fire worlds.

So basically, I am thinking that the polar graphics on the *portraits* do not add enough to the planets' graphical presentation to outweigh the limiting effect they will have on the re-imagining of the model textures.

Agree? Disagree?

(also, I added subtle shading to these images, to more closely match the stock portraits... hope that worked out to your satisfaction. [edit] I think it may need to be slightly darker on the edge).

More on poles... here is Rock Blue 'Semiarid' 0010 (I am thinking of dumping the arid and semiarid descriptors and just numbering them 01_10 02_10 03_10):

Here it is in-game still without poles (not really what I was asking about in the previous post):

I like the look except in the tactical the graphics break down near the north pole.

Anyway, I don't know if people also want the pole-less versions with that glitchiness... and I don't know if people have a problem with the portraits not exactly matching the planets (I am not mapping the textures, just spherizing them for the portraits, so they don't really match).

Okay, I think I solved the glitchiness... I made a small island and polarized it, then added it to the model texture... and it maps back to a decent texture on the top of the world. I can do this with clouds and water as well (I've already been doing it with the ice caps)... and a mixture of them should make the poles work fine with or without ice caps. (the only creative problem is they have to overlay the current clouds, so the boundary where the clouds end must be attended to).

The Good News... the ~390 planets (~6.5 colors out of 14) I've already merged don't have to be scrapped.
The Bad News... I have to map new ice caps, polar continents, polar clouds and polar seas for every color and texture... plus this leaves me making iced and non-iced pole version for every color and texture.

So, I am definitely leaving the polar ice off the Portraits, sorry... and if anyone wants me to make portraits using a more "correct" method than "Spherizing with a spherical map correction" (that isn't rigorously correct for a square map - actually I should try it after squishing the texture to a 1:2 proportions), then suggest a do-able method in the next few days.

Now off to play SE5 for a few hours of break...

That sounds good... except I am still foggy on the proper "sequence of actions". I got that the game's planet mapping is close to taking the right half of the base texture and squishing to square, and then spherizing it... but that is just an approximation (which is probably good enough for the unpicky).

I need to find a good photoshop tutorial on scripts and stuff.

[edit] I also would like to automate the resizing of the base texture to 256... because to get the wraparound borders correct, I really need (AFAIK) to copy the layer and place the layers side=by-side and merge them before I resize the image... then take the merged edges from the middle and place them on the outer edged of half of it.

Version 1.0 (beta) of the Planet textures is finished... twelve atmosphere colors plus 'terran' and 'none'... in ten planet textures... and four variations, of both Rock and Ice worlds... for a total of 1120 models.

The Planets.bmp only include one planet texture for Rock and another for Ice... it wasn't practical to incorporate more.

The files total 361,578KB zipped... so I don't now where to upload it.

BTW, I haven't worked on the data files... and probably won't get a chance very soon... consequently, I haven't been able to test the new planets.

[edit] is there a good way of generating the 'Stellar' data entries? With 5600 entries, I can't see editing it manually.

There are a few good retail fractal map generators...

Anyway, I MegaUpload-ed it to Fyron, if that worked. I have a new non-SE5 project I have to start tomorrow, so that's the end of this for me for a while.

Yes, I tried it. The access violation on map creation seems to be due to the total number of planet types being too high. Even with the elimination of terrain 10, I am still crashing on map creation... I assume because I have less memory on my system (768MB).

The best option might be to try half the planets... not by terrain but by the variations (the first number), either select your favorites Rock and Ice from each line of the Planets.bmp OR just use 01_## and 04_## and skip 02_## and 03_##.

There might be a problem if the indexing in the Planets.bmp is too big, in that case we can remake the Planets.bmp without the space for the Gas planets (which could never be created&added without trimming even more planets from the Rock and Ice).

Yeah, I think the 01 and 04 half is the best, Except for the Terran and None... the best are:

Terran Rock 02 and 04
Terran Ice 02 and 03
None Rock 02 and 04 probably
None Ice 02 and 03

But anything you decide is fine... you can even renumber them.
I can also make a smaller Planets.bmp when you settle on which ones to keep.

[edit] I only had to delete 1/5 of the remaining planets to get it to generate a map... (I deleted Carbon Dioxide to see if I could get it to work).

I guess that is good news... assuming you can get some light shed on the issue. Good luck!

[edit] Interesting that I can completely circumvent the crash issue with RogerN's Genesis Map Editor.

Maybe there is just something simple going on like we are exceeding the maximum name length for the planets... 43 characters is rather long.

I've been toying with how to make Gas Planets, but so far the methods seem to preclude making as many types as with the Rock and Ice. However, a single set of the 12 colors might be possible, which at least would fill out the Planets.bmp.

However, I left space for Gas_None, when there isn't such a thing... perhaps there should be an analog Gas planet type... Gas_Plasma, sort of a sub-star that can be colonized and converted to another Gas Planet type. Perhaps, the game could even deal with it as a None, but the descriptions could all be Plasma.

*shrug* (especially, since the current textures don't seem to be working yet)

I like the effect, but the wrap around seam was completely botched... so my method was severely flawed.

Just finished 56 Gas planet models, and filled in the Planets.bmp.

Here are the Planet_Gas_Red_01 and 03

They've been available as a torrent for a while.
http://fqm5.spaceempires.net/dev.php

However, if you want to use all of these textures, then
you need to use an external map generator, because
the game errors out when it tries to generate a map.

Sorry, I've been away. The only difference between the portraits is the size of the sphere in the black field... so I agree it doesn't really matter much. Trim as you wish, especially if that means easier distribution.