Ummm... wow.

Lots of wow effects. Eye candy. Shinies. Hot damn.

I'm watching this thread carefully, in case anybody does know how to do some of those effects... sorry I'm not any help.

ya indeed it just so cool and perfect but how do they know the outer space look like this ?

sry again i cant help :D

Quote:Original post by henchster
ya indeed it just so cool and perfect but how do they know the outer space look like this ?

sry again i cant help :D

You have never seen any images from Hubble telescope or NASA ? They`re pretty much like the images in the above game.
Besides, who cares if it actually looks like this in reality ? It`s unimportant during game-play if the eye-candy is sufficiently pretty, which is the case with this game.

Quote:Original post by Wyrframe
in case anybody does know how to do some of those effects...

Well, they all seem to me like dynamically generated particles by some function (some combination of Perlin with other stuff) and then cleverly laid out in a level editor. Maybe some postprocessing in Photoshop&filters is used too to enhance the foggy&blurry look of the particles.
True, it must take some time to find good parameters into such functions, but then again, the end result is worthy some experimentation, right ? Then just don`t spoil it by projecting them onto a SkyCube, but rather some nice sphere.

But, it`s still just static, boring background. Planets are where the game-play fun can begin !

- Regarding the planet rendering, IMO the atmosphere could be done through multitexturing. Atmosphere would be just second trasparent texture. And if you transform its coordinates over time, voila you have a moving atmosphere with moving clouds over the planet!
- As for the glow around the planet, well, you could first render scaled (bigger) planet (without texture) with transparency fading away from the center of the planet (or some other point - experimenting is needed).
- Then you could add some third texture stage with some transparent animated storm texture, and you get a flashing storms around your planet !
- And if that isn`t enough, place vulcans (just a regular 3d objects on top of the planet) all over the planet and assign particles to it. With some good textures, the result must be astonishing to see vulcan explosions under transparent parts of storm texture. Also tornados could be incorporated in same way.
- Should you make the planet like a heightmap (a bit tough compared to regular 2D heightmap), you could achieve great effects, like if the planet partly hides the sun behind it, and some highest planet mountain is right in the view, you could actually see the mountain over the planet blocking parts of the sun, therefore empowering the feeling that the planet is really 3D and not just a simple sphere. I`ve seen that already in some Space pictures and it was absolutely awesome to see the mountains making the surface look rough and not just plain sphere.
- This way you could experiment with terraforming, i.e. fire a nuke, or two into the planet, change the heights of unhappy mountains and you can dig a crater into the planet. Put some cranks around the epicenter as fourth texture stage and you got your nice terraformed planet!
- Surely, if the player would be able to descend into low orbit, some detail into the heightmap would have to be computed on-fly (maybe some perlin noise, or some other ways of making detail over the mountains - search net for more info on this) to make it look detailed still.

Quote:Original post by sBibi
I'd be interested in seeing any picture where such a thing is noticeable. if yo take earth as an example, the ratio between the highest mountain and the planet diameter is ridiculous, and you wouldn't notice anything but a round sphere unless you come close enough (real close), and moreover, there is the atmosphere on top of that, that looks like a tiny hyper thin layer compared to the whole planet. and it's still much higher than mt everest.
even if you consider other planets, I really doubt you will see any really noticeable montain popping out the surface of the planet.

Well, who said, it`s gotta be realistic and who said it`s gotta be on planet Earth ? I`ve mentioned it in my post that reality isn`t THAT important in such a case, but you`ve probably haven`t read it all - but then why do you nag at it ?
As long as it looks good, it`s suitable for games. I really saw some picture like this long time ago, though have no idea, what space body has it been. Maybe it even wasn`t a planet, who cares ? The effect was however great and that was my point.
If you REALLY have to nag at reality, Asteroids HAVE this issue visible, so at the very least, if you wanted to have your game realistic, they could use this effect.

Quote:Original post by sBibi
do you actually have an idea on what terraforming is?

OK OK, I might have misspelled the words a bit, I`m not an English Native, and I forgot that this forum is frequently flooded by philologists. I meant terramorphing, but you get the idea - change the surface of the planet.