hey folks,
I thought id add some "light" so to speak on the skybox modding, at least the stuff ive discovered. (hopefully not upsetting the old post stuff)
If you look at the STAR_BLUE.entity file, it references several skybox mesh names. I changed the blue file to list only one mesh file reference.
numSkyboxMeshNames 1
meshName "SkyboxBackdrop2"
it seems they blend multiple mesh files to make the backgrounds. So by simplifying it down to one mesh, then we can go into the other file SkyBoxProperties.skyboxbackdropdata (eesh what a filename.) There you can change several things color wise, for instance i made the ambient light/dark colors to read 000000 (prob should be 8 chars but hey its the same value). That fixed what i consider the typical game look (eg: WAAAAYYY too much light all over the place from ONE sun)
After that i swapped/copied/etc SkyboxBackdrop7.dds from the texture directory, and renamed it SkyboxBackdrop2.dds, (allways make backup files) Then pasted it in, overwriting the orginal. Im pretty happy with the results, ya get a decent background, and better lighting conditions (for me anyhow i like the one source light)
Ill have to get photoshop up and running and toy around with the texture files. Whats cool is that even in the beta 2 this has so much potential. I hope to see them adding animated backgrounds like they have on the suns surface. If your truly in a nebula environment, there should be some sort of light show going on in the background. (example: HW:CA)
