Planet Textures

[MasterChiToes]

One thing to consider is keeping only three colors of the 12, plus Terran for Oxygen and, of course, None.
Red for Hydrogen, Indigo for Methane, and maybe Green for Carbon Dioxide. Messing with the brightness for the CO2 choice might improve it.

In fact, if there are only three color sets, I would consider remaking some of them with community selected colors. Carbon Dioxide is definitely the weakest of the group.

[Fyron]

Doing that would remove the ability to expand into new atmosphere types, though. Nothing requires using every color, but having them available is definitely a plus.

I kind of like the yellow/green/orange sets for the carbon dioxide planets, actually. Really reminds me of LA sunsets (plus green)...

[Santiago]

I recall LA sunsets as being brown like the smog. Although with your colors it is probably predominantly CO2.

[Fyron]

There are all sorts of unnaturally vivid oranges and pinks and violets, with a little brown. The green in the image is just a bonus.

[MasterChiToes]

Is Atmospheric Conversion completely hardcoded? It would be nice to have the resulting planet be based on certain factors, like the original planet's terrain, or other data. So that ringed planets could stay ringed planets, etc.

[Fyron]

Probably... It may well be possible to code your own system though, using a dummy ability, in the Events script. Sadly, Aaron didn't go so far as to make this sort of stuff done via the scripts by default. Maybe SE6 can be more like Civ4 in this regard?

[AstralWanderer]

One idea has just occured to me after looking at the screenshots. Some of the textures include cloud cover so might it be feasible to use different coloured clouds to indicate atmosphere type along with (or instead of) the current glow?

Also, could a (partially transparent) cloud cover texture be placed over a planet texture? This could allow for more variety by mixing textures, randomising cloud cover or even rotating the cloud texture at a different speed from the planet to simulate weather.

[MasterChiToes]

The cloud colors don't match the glow, but they are different for the different atmosphere types... currently, there are like there cloud colors per type.

Separate Cloud Textures would be great, but currently, SE5 allows only one override texture bitmap per planet.

[MasterChiToes]

Fyron said:
Probably... It may well be possible to code your own system though, using a dummy ability, in the Events script. Sadly, Aaron didn't go so far as to make this sort of stuff done via the scripts by default. Maybe SE6 can be more like Civ4 in this regard?

What I managed to do was create a new planet size, and link that exclusively to my orbiting bitmap moons, to replace tiny planets.
However, SE5 map generation seems to undo my changes, while the Genesis editor actually implements them.
There are no Tiny planets in my SystemTypes.txt... and yet SE5 turns my "moon" sized planets (which have no models, and just bitmap effects) back into tiny models without my bitmap effects.

[MasterChiToes]

eyecandy moons