Well, thats great! How do you go about doing that though? Is galaxy forge that flexible?

I think to spice things up they should add random events, like the cataclysmic event of a rogue black hole clipping the system (for very large maps)

i had that idea of modding like 3 comets max, per system that would traverse each system on large eliptical orbits. but i was told it was stupid. i thought it would look cool and add even more of a sense of scale...

Wow touch luck man because most of space is empty and boring. So I'd have to say they did a 'realistic' representation on that part.

I don't care if it's realistic or not. Thats not the point. The point is the fact that I want to make my game like this regardless of what is realistic or not.

Those are some really awesome screenshots. I would love to figure out a way to do some similiar stuff.

i just read up on that game, never heard of it till now. does it run good with the patches and does it have widescreen resolutions?

fyi there's a new one coming out Q3 2008. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/x3terranconflict/index.html

I can't figure out how to create a large amount of particles without transperancy. I tried making the alpha channel non-existant for the plasma special effects but even then it's transparent...And the reason why I want to figure out how to get rid of it is because of this:



I think it is part of the engine which is causing this (one of the .fx files). Any ideas on how to make it so that the particles do not blend and rather have them be transparent only by their alpha channels?

Actually, I have a new idea for this. Is there a way so that the skybox changes whenever you enter a plasma storm?

Most of space is boring.

Theres several minor penalties/bonuses the appear up on planets such as porous core for decreased gravity well size, expert miners for bonus metal extraction, etc. If the same system was carried to the gravity well/tactical grid level that would be lots of fun and spice up space combat. For example an asteroid system could give fighter/bomber squads a big defensive boost since they can dart and weave between rocks and slow movement to bigger ships as they try to avoid getting hit. Just little things to change it up a bit.

Yeah, I have an idea of what I need to do. The effect of a super dense nebula/storm cannot be achieved really with -just- the plasma particle effects (which I tried doing in the pictures I posted). The reason why is because the sheer amount required slows down the game/does really weird things with the engine because it tries to blend all them since they are somewhat transparent, so the colors get blended until it's pure white.

My idea is this:
1) Make it so that plasma storms have their own skybox ( a super cloudy skybox )
2) Use static fog effects. If you look closely in gravity wells with planets, you can see clouds of fog/dust (either one but the texture is simply called 'fog'). If I can recolor that and make it so that plasma storms have tons of those it should give the effect we're looking for.

Of course, particle effects would still play a major part of the plasma storm to give it that interior 'swirling' look to it but the storm will not be made exclusively of particle effects.

Anyways, any idea how to go about doing this? Do I have to use some sort of 3D modeling tool to get the job done? I sent an email to Ironclad asking for some pointers and hopefully they will get back to me. I really want to get this done but I Just need some direction.

I did increase the size of those textures and I didn't really notice anything different unfortunately.