Topic: Teasers for the next Generations At War..

[atheorhaven]

This is more of a sum up.
Yes you can use coloured light maps, I have known this for some time as well, and have used them on occasion. Coloured light maps do not port well to other games though, and if you use them it will give conversion ppl grief. Also the main disadvantage to them is size they are the same size as the detail maps if not done in gray scale. example:
a 512 x 512 coloured map is 768 k
a 512 x 512 grayscale map is 256 k (or less)
also,
a 512 x 512 coloured map with a 256 x 256 light map cause the windows and other glow areas to have a glow around them because of the mismatched sizes.

Just going to ask because I may be missing something.. but doesn't having a glow around the windows and other lit areas kind of look better anyways?  And converting into/out of SFC isn't really the point in this case.. the thread was originally about some of the new ships going into Generations At War, or some of the rework being done on ships already in it.  And to be totally frank.. if someone is having a problem converting over the ships in G@W to other platforms right now... good.   

Let them stew on it until the SFC 2 versions are released.. then Nannerslug will have exclusivity on them ingame until then.  I have no problems with that at all.. it means that SFC'ers keep the ships for ourselves longer before they're ripped to other platforms.

Sorry if I come off as snarky or whathaveyou.. but honestly, if people are having troubles converting over SFC colored illuminations to other games.. well..wah.  Let them deal with it, as I'll have to deal with it helping to convert over SFC ships to BC when G@W does that conversion.  In the meatime, we can take advantage of the engine in SFC to have ships appear like in no other game.  Because we can have colored illumination maps.  Neener neener.  >

(and if you check the G@W download after you download it, you'll see what Nanner does to fix the larger file size anyways.. it's really not an issue.)

[Starforce2]

converting colored lightmaps is not any big deal. it automaticly  goes grey when you paste to alpha channel in a tga.

As for the different size lightmaps...that is annoying, you should see how bad a suacer spotlight looks when someone sticks a 256 on a 1024 texture and I end up needing to upsizze the lightmap..lol. Usualy thy'll do ok going one size up just not 2.

[Rat Boy]

Enough arguing.  More screenshots!   

[Starforce2]

LOL

[atheorhaven]

converting colored lightmaps is not any big deal. it automatically  goes grey when you paste to alpha channel in a TGA.

Exactly what I've seen.. so I didn't see that as an issue at all really.. the only place where it may be may be where the color doesn't translate well doing a greyscale and you get little to no illumination.  I've seen that with some blues playing around with trying to convert over ships from SFC to other platforms myself..

As for the different size lightmaps...that is annoying, you should see how bad a saucer spotlight looks when someone sticks a 256 on a 1024 texture and I end up needing to upsizze the lightmap..lol. Usualy thy'll do ok going one size up just not 2.

There are ways to do it.. but it's usually a lot more work than just starting off with the right sized lightmap in the first place.  But personally, I'm a fan of a window or nacelle having a glow so sometimes I may add different sized lightmaps to get that, or else manually add a glow.. even though I know in space, you have hard light and no glows at all because it's a vacuum.  But it does look better to our eyes because we're used to looking at things through atmosphere.. so a glow is expected around lit things.  Just like space isn't completely full of nebulas, but when we see a space show these days, we always see nebulas in the background.  Why?  Because black space (which is pretty well what you'd see looking at a bright object like a white ship in space) is dull for TV viewers, so you get pretty nebulas for the same reason why you get cheerleaders in football.  Just makes things look more visually interesting.  ;)