New starfields!

Well, I don't know about Ep4, but here, have some Freelancer-esque Space Disco screenshots:

(We are experimenting with the high-res cube-mapped nebula feature that Pedro showed in his video as a way to display better starfields... these are obviously nowhere close to being final screenshots, and Ep 4 might still use stock WCP starfields instead).

As far as an experiment goes, you just made me a beleiver! I *LOVE* how the game looks with those starfields.

Alright Eder, you've satisfied me for now. I agree with AD those starfields are AMAZING! It really adds a lot to the atmosphere.

Although what are you doing escort that poor Drakhri home?

Don't look at me - Pete sent me those shots last night.

The patch he sent me didn't seem to work on my nVidia card... I don't think we have tested this on nVidia yet. Still, I was very excited about our new gimmick and decided I just had to post about it anyway... but I still haven't seen it in action, just like the rest of you.

That's basically it. It lets us have thousands of stars, of varying sizes and brightness, that scale better between different resolutions... instead of a handful of tiny grey or orange blocky pixel-stars like in original WCP.

While the original starfields were single pixels (or small blocks) randomly scattered over space that we had no control on, the new starfields are texture maps, so we can do anything we want to them - the only limit now is the talent of this humble modder.

If you look very closely at the new shots, there are very subtle glows around the brighter stars, as well as a very subtle color variation between them. I did try to keep it as generic as possible so that we could make the same starfield fit all the different nebula / lighting colors in every system, that's why these features are barely noticeable.

Of course, I don't want them to detract from the actual gameplay as well... the version I've posted here ended up looking too bright in-game, but Pete tells me Pedro has fixed this already, by adjusting contrast on the texture maps used. As I said, I haven't seen this in action yet, so it's hard for me to tweak them right now. What happened is I had sent Pedro a totally untested cube map a few days ago so he could come up with this first test.

Should of have known...just like him to sneak up on his enemy before pouncing. Speaking of we need a bday rematch Pete, you handed Wedge and I our asses, need some payback soon.

Here are some newer shots with the brightness toned down... This is pretty close to what the final thing will probably look like, if no problems arise that require us to go back to standard WCP starfields. I'm open to feedback as always, though. I'm thinking I could increase the glow around brighter stars halfway back to what it was.

(I took these, meaning Pedro already got it to work on nVidia cards, so that's one problem found and fixed).

Those look great. I think I like the glowier ones near the top of the thread more, although it might just be the yellow space in the later batch of shots that puts me off. The yellowy-green was my least favorite nebula color.

Yeah, for whatever reason I like the first set of shots better too.

Hmm, I'll try to come up with a version that's halfway between the two posted here. The brighter one from the first shots really gets kind of distracting in combat for me.

Edit: Here we go... it's still a bit bright for me, but it has less tiny stars than the original. I guess I'll still end up dimming this a bit more.

Also pictured is the new Broadsword cockpit, but please, if you wanna comment on the cockpit, do it in this thread instead (I split them up because the starfields had kidnapped that cockpits thread in the first place, don't want the opposite to happen now ).

I like the new backgrounds. It improves the overall look of the game a lot.

These new effects are only possible because of Pedro's new openGL renderer, which should also give people better performance than the old Direct3D renderer, at least on most systems.