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Newcomers DBPro Corner / Space Simulation

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crazy clown
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Joined: 21st Jul 2004
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 07:09
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Hi I am looking to write a space simulation game, and I'm working on the coding part of it but I would like to use better graphics than the green cube that is supposed to be the alien ship and the dark black void that is supposed to be space. what programs can i use for creating an actual ship and how can I create "Space" with stars, galaxies, etc. and then put it into my game? Which programs should I use? I am looking at 3dcanvas and Cartographer shop 4 but i'm not sure these will get the job done. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
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zircher
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Joined: 27th Dec 2002
Location: Oklahoma
Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 07:41 Edited at: 22nd Jul 2004 07:44
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Universe (shareware), Starbits (cheap shareware), assorted Photoshhop plugins ($$$), or POV Ray with the galaxy include file (free) are all solutions to making space backgrounds.

DoGA CGA (free/shareware) really excels at making mecha like starships and fighters. It can also export to .X format. See the sticky post at the top of the 3d chat board (http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=25468&b=3) for more write ups and links to 3D modelling programs.
--
TAZ

http://www.povray.org
http://www.doga.co.jp/english

[edit for clarity]

History did not begin with PONG. -- Greg Costikyan

Game Beavers
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DLS
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Joined: 6th Jul 2004
Location: Wet And Windy Britain
Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 07:48
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I'm not much of an expert on this sort of thing but....

Find a good picture of a space scene and use it in a sky box that stays in the background and tile it so u can rotate and it'll look like u have done.

milkshape3D is the best 3D editor if ya on a tight budget as it does all u need it to.

Personally i got the 3D games maker program that comes with a model editor and i made a space ship using it. u can freely use it if u want but u'll need to skin it first and i'm useless at that .

just let us know if ya want to have a look at it and were to send it.

P.S. Any1 know of a good skinning program that can skin X models or MDL models?

Hope that helps u out
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zircher
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 10:57
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Lith unwrap 1.3 or its bigger brother Ultimate Unwrap come to mind.

I happen to like painting faces with Metasequoia LE.
--
TAZ

History did not begin with PONG. -- Greg Costikyan

Game Beavers
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crazy clown
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 14:01
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Thanks guys for all your help. Right now, I'm having the problem of tring to figure out how I can use the galaxy file for POV ray in Darkbasic. It exports a BMP? what command do I use in darkbasic. do i need a sphere to texture? Thanks any help is apreciated!
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zircher
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 14:15
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POV Ray works with a number of formats. Inside of DBP, I prefer PNGs. What I do for sky spheres is use a inverted 3D sphere that has the UV texture coordiates mapped cylindrically. It has some distortion at the poles, but space is forgiving since you can make the polar regions plain old black. For the image itself, I like to render them at a ratio of 2:1. Something like a 512x256 image works well for most video cards.
--
TAZ

History did not begin with PONG. -- Greg Costikyan

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crazy clown
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 14:35
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what are PNGs? I have to use Darkbasic... and I'm not sure how to create an inverted sphere. Thanks
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Peter H
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Location: Witness Protection Program
Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 23:27
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Quote: "I happen to like painting faces with Metasequoia LE."

hows that work?


Formerly known as "DarkWing Duck"
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zircher
21
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Location: Oklahoma
Posted: 22nd Jul 2004 23:46 Edited at: 23rd Jul 2004 00:08
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PNGs are a graphic format halfway between GIFs and JPGs. They are lossless like GIFs and bitmaps, but they do not have the licensing problems that GIFs do. They do not compress as well as JPGs, but then they don't mangle an image either. Most graphical utilities support the PNG format, heck even MS Paint (under WinXP) supports it.

In Metasequoia LE you can create materials and from there you can go in and click on individual polygons and assign them the current material. Imagine having a palette of materials and painting an object like a coloring book. Materials can have the usual properties (RGB/HSV, alpha, diffuse, emmision*, specular/power, & ambient) as well as texture/alpha/bump mapping*. You can also select/edit the projected UVs down to the individual polygon level if need be.

BTW, I use Meta LE since it's a freebie and trying to register the newer versions is difficult due to language/currency barriers.
--
TAZ

Metasequoia: http://www21.ocn.ne.jp/~mizno/main_e.html

* While Metasequoia can support this, DBP's ability to read and use some of these features is still lacking.

History did not begin with PONG. -- Greg Costikyan

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