Space backgrounds

[george moromisato]

I've been working on adding some nice space backgrounds to the game:
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/file.he ... pImage.jpg

[Xephyr]

This looks really impressive, I'm looking forward to seeing this implemented.

[JohnBWatson]

Cool. I like how light is blocked by the asteroids, will this also occur with stations?

[NMS]

Cool. I like how light is blocked by the asteroids, will this also occur with stations?

I don't. What are they casting shadows on? For there to be less light coming from those regions, the light coming from the brighter areas would have to be reflected light from the local star. But it's not - it's light from other, far away stars. I approve of objects such as asteroids, planets, and ships being dynamically lit on the side facing the star, and ships passing behind planets and asteroids being shadowed, but not of casting shadows on the background, making it look like a flat surface.

[george moromisato]

Cool. I like how light is blocked by the asteroids, will this also occur with stations?

I don't. What are they casting shadows on? For there to be less light coming from those regions, the light coming from the brighter areas would have to be reflected light from the local star. But it's not - it's light from other, far away stars. I approve of objects such as asteroids, planets, and ships being dynamically lit on the side facing the star, and ships passing behind planets and asteroids being shadowed, but not of casting shadows on the background, making it look like a flat surface.

This is just a very exaggerated version of zodiacal light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light)

The shadow is not on the background nebulae--in fact you should be able to see the background more clearly in the shadow of a planet or moon. Instead, the light from the star illuminates the dust on the ecliptic. This washes out the background just like light pollution washes out the sky.

But I've still got to work on the second part of your comment: since the planets are currently pre-rendered, I can't change the lighting based on the sun angle. I've got to do a different change to the engine to support that, but that's in the plan.

[george moromisato]

Cool. I like how light is blocked by the asteroids, will this also occur with stations?

Thanks!

I'm not going to do shadows on stations (or ships) for several reasons:

1. Stations are (obviously) out of scale relative to planets. They are too small to cast much of a shadow on the very tenuous space dust.
2. I like the visual separation between the background and the foreground.
3. The shadow is somewhat expensive (computationally) so I pre-render it for efficiency. I can't do that for moving objects.

[bzm3r]

This is beautiful.

Can we have more pictures?

[Song]

Very nice work. Looking forward to seeing it ingame.

[PM]

If an object is destroyed, does its shadow disappear?

[george moromisato]

If an object is destroyed, does its shadow disappear?

Currently no, unfortunately, which is another reason for only adding it to immutable planets and asteroids.

But it wouldn't be too hard to add code to handle that case if it becomes a problem. Also, I could add code to add a shadow when an object is created.

Moving shadows (i.e., shadows on moving objects) would be harder.

[pixelfck]

Wow, looks great!

Would this be compatible with parallax worlds?

~Brigand

[george moromisato]

Wow, looks great!

Would this be compatible with parallax worlds?

~Brigand

No, unfortunately. I can't move the shadows yet because they are pre-computed. I need to add code to exclude shadows from any object with parallax.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

This is great! Will you be addressing the shade stepping issue near stars? Right now it seems like bands of colors are produced that are alternately slightly redder or greener, creating an exaggerated stripe pattern.

[PM]

I have a mod that destroys ore-bearing asteroids after they have been mined, which was why I asked the question of object destruction. I have also considered a mod that adds a planet-killer like the Death Star, either as an enemy (you need to stop it before it destroys planets) or a godmod (because blowing up planets is fun).

[george moromisato]

This is great! Will you be addressing the shade stepping issue near stars? Right now it seems like bands of colors are produced that are alternately slightly redder or greener, creating an exaggerated stripe pattern.

Yes--this is addressed by implementing 24-bit color. There's still a tiny bit of banding, but there are no more color artifacts.