Replacers for many of the things...

[scooterbaga]

Hello,

My apologies in advance for the longest most bestest post that ever awesomed...

Keep in mind, these replacers need to be loaded after their respective mods.

I've recently been putting together little fixes here and there for a couple mods and stuff. Someone suggested that instead of burying them in individual threads I should put them all in one.

It all started with this thumbtack of evil in the heel of an otherwise epic mod, Better Planets and Backgrounds:

What the @#%$ is that?

Part of me says to try and believe it's the silhouette of cities on a space moon. Another part says it looks like a bad wand selection in photoshop. Another says I should probably just do something about it, so the voices would have less to talk about. Who am I to argue?

So I made this from another image in BPaP:

Better Planets Techmoon Fix_Newish.ftl

This is smoothed version of the original:

Better Planets Techmoon Fix_Original.ftl

Now, some of you might say, "It doesn't have an atmosphere, it shouldn't be smooth." To that I only have one response, you must be fun at parties Mr/Ms. Pooper.


I also flexed my OCD muscles on Better Asteroids. No use in showing examples of this one... If you're not noticing any issue with the asteroids... These aren't the mods you're looking for, move along. The change here is to mitigate some of the alignment issues inherent from tiling. (i.e. Makes the asteroid field a little more randomy)

Betterer Asteroids.ftl

Another thing in the vein of "only crazy people notice things like that, you're crazy", are some of the old yellow Hubble backdrops. I left OP's shopped versions. I just "un-yellowed" the original nasa versions. (i.e. I hate Instagram.)

Better Planets Un-Yellowed Hubble Replacer.ftl

Another random BPaP replacer:

Better Planets Replacer More Transparent Rings on the Pink One.ftl

It wasn't long until some folks noticed crazy had photoshop and they started making requests. The top of the list were the PDS shot and the Pulsar.

PDS Shot Replacer v1.ftl
PDS Shot Replacer v2.ftl

I prefer v2 right up until you get shot with it. Then it looks like poo. So I use v1, it's pretty good.

Here are versions three and four. Four is just a squished version of three. I feel like they could be better, but they're pretty close. I quit working on three once I noticed it started to look... um... feminine. So I stopped for either all the wrong reasons... or the right ones. Not sure there. (i.e. These look like lady parts, and now they're my favorite.)

PDS Shot Replacer v3.ftl
PDS Shot Replacer v4.ftl

The Pulsar Replacer:

Pulsar Replacer v1.ftl
Pulsar Replacer v2.ftl

Vaguely interesting note on the pulsar image... It's not scaled like a lot of the other sprites. You can make that thing as big as you want...


The Captain's Edition has some... interesting backgrounds. (i.e. SPACE LIGHTNING MOTHER!@#$%&!!!11!1)

CE Resource Pack Replacer Ionic Hazard Backgrounds.ftl
-Original artwork for Ion Warning 3 provided by esk6a.



CE Resource Pack Replacer Better Icetroids Backgrounds.ftl



CE Resource Pack Replacer Techmoon Fix Newish Backgrounds.ftl

I'll probably be adding to/tweaking these in the future. I'll be sure to make any changes as vague and hard to find as possible.

tl;dr- Replacers for all of the things. (Free toy inside!)

Ain't Nobody Got Time For That Replacer Gift Pack (zip)

This has everything above in one .ftl using the v1 versions of things, and stuff.

Thanks. Let me know if there are any questions.

[Russian Rockman]

I like your sense of humor sir! Some people are so serious all the time on these forums.

OMG OMG OMG, you redid the CE hazard backgrounds and they look freaking awesome! I am so glad you re-did the ice field ones to use Better Planets and Backgrounds. Also, the pulsar looks amazing and the PDS shots look great! I will probably use the first version too, but I'm looking forward to version 3.


Thank you, you lovely OCD maniac! I'm going back into modding because of you! I've been on a bit of a break.

EDIT: Which pulsar do you like the most? I might use the original, though the "black hole" type on looks pretty awesome. It might be to easy to confused it with the CE black hole though. Also, perhaps for version 2 you could angle it slightly? It just seems strange to have it at a perfect 90 degree angle with the ship.

Any other plans for stuff and things in the future?

EDIT 2: Just a couple things I noticed, it may just be me, but...
In v1 of the PDS replacer preview picture it looks like the explosion is "cut off" at the bottom?
It also looks like the "Danger!" Warnings in the top right of every image are inconsistent. Some look very nice and others look at bit blurry. Maybe it's just the compression of the image.

ALSO, how DID you recreate the warnings with the mixture of red and black that they were changed to in AE.

[Sleeper Service]

Great work! I'd like to ask if it would be ok with you to reverse integrate some of these directly into the mod. You will be fully credited of course.

Also, do you have a source on the images you used? Did you make sure that they are free to use?

ALSO, how DID you recreate the warnings with the mixture of red and black that they were changed to in AE.

Probably by color-select copying them from the original images?

[scooterbaga]

EDIT 2: Just a couple things I noticed, it may just be me, but...
In v1 of the PDS replacer preview picture it looks like the explosion is "cut off" at the bottom?
It also looks like the "Danger!" Warnings in the top right of every image are inconsistent. Some look very nice and others look at bit blurry. Maybe it's just the compression of the image.

Each PDS preview image is a conglomerate of ingame shots. What you're seeing is the outer boundary of the copy/pasta for that "shell".

ALSO, how DID you recreate the warnings with the mixture of red and black that they were changed to in AE.

Of the time spent on the the CE backgronds, I'd say about half was spent on the icons. I pulled what I could from the vanilla versions, and the center icon from CE. The rest is a fiddlly, multi-layered fuster cluck to fill in the center. Thanks for noticing.

Any other plans for stuff and things in the future?

in general, I consider plans to be a thing that gets in the way of what one wants to do at the time... However, I've been eying the static backgrounds of the CE hazards. Namely the ones that have animated counter parts. Since "cousins" of those exist in an animated form... I have my suspicions that animated CE hazards shouldn't be that far off...

[scooterbaga]

Great work! I'd like to ask if it would be ok with you to reverse integrate some of these directly into the mod. You will be fully credited of course.

I'd be honored.

Also, do you have a source on the images you used? Did you make sure that they are free to use?

Well, I can say that most are either BPaP assets or nasa... (I'm thinking we should give nasa more props in general.) Seeing BPaP assets already in CE, assumptions were made there. However, a few of the original images were gathered using the "usage rights" filters in google image search... I have no idea how accurate that is...

...aaand now that I've gone through them again I'm seeing some of my google-fu went off course for a few images. I'm doing the legwork now. Anomaly 2, ion 1, ion 3 and ion 4 are questionable.

edit:Image used for ion 1 is impossible to track down, it's everywhere

Anamoly 2 is the same issue. I'm not sure it's possible to track it down. (Also everywhere)

I found ion 3. That person seems cool, waiting for response.

I think ion 4 is another lost cause. It's not quite as disseminated at the others, but no easier to track down.

For the images in question, every one of them can be found on multiple "free wallpaper" sites... It really bothers me to not credit folks appropriately. I know what goes into these images. I hate to be "that guy", but if there are usage/copyright issues in play here... they have bigger problems. I feel due diligence has been served.

[Sleeper Service]

Thanks for looking into that. I guess that is good enough for the most part, I'll wait for the reply for anomaly 4 before integrating that one. The stuff being free to use wallpapers is good enough for me.

in general, I consider plans to be a thing that gets in the way of what one wants to do at the time... However, I've been eying the static backgrounds of the CE hazards. Namely the ones that have animated counter parts. Since "cousins" of those exist in an animated form... I have my suspicions that animated CE hazards shouldn't be that far off...

I doubt that is possible. Animated backgrounds are tied to the vanilla hazards, and these are hardcoded and can't really be modified by xml editing. I don't know about any way to animate backgrounds via event commands or alike. Spawning preset backgrounds is pretty much all that is possible there, even removing or changing them midevent is not really possible. CEs hazards are actually just that: events with preset backgrounds. They imitate true hazards, but can't really do things like animated backgrounds or tooltips for hazard icons (as you already noticed the icons are just pasted on the background). I can share you my WIP file for the backgrounds if you ever need access to hazard icons directly again: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/722 ... gs_WIP.xcf

[dalolorn]

As far as credits go, the original source of the purple black hole thingy (new CE ion hazard image 1) is NASA. I recognize the image - the ring used to be orange rather than purple, but it's basically the same image.

If my wallpaper program's right, the original name is "Black Holes: Monsters in Space (Artist's Concept)" credited to NASA/JPL-Caltech.

[scooterbaga]

Version 3/4 of the PDS shot are ready for your shaming and disapproval. I think they look like irradiated vajayjays. YMMV.

PDS Shot Replacer v3.ftl
PDS Shot Replacer v4.ftl

[dalolorn]

I think you went a bit overboard on softening the projectile.

[Estel]

I'm pretty sure that Zoltan Wise Man's rift, icefield, pulsar 1 and randomized asteroids will get integrated straight into CE - they just rock.

As for anomaly, I would be a little sad, as I really like the one in CE (although, I would understand reasons, the new one is good, too). I'm not sure if lightning strike in space should be so literal - after all, it's ion barrier, so the one already in CE seems to fit, and are looking great, too.

I'm a little scarred by PDS 3 and 4. I don't know what it is, and I'm afraid they may come to earth at night, cause unexplained pregnancies, and wreak havoc. I'm also a little suspicious, that those might be, in fact, zoltan's propelled to higher speed spectrum, i.e. used as living ammo by those rebel racists. Summing it up, I preffer version 1/2

Overall - awesome work Thank you!

/Estel

//Edit

I think there's some sort of in-game color filter effects. I also noticed some planets/images eerily having the same color schemes at times. I think FTL overlays tones, which threw me a few times when images I know I'd replaced didn't seem to look the same in-game.

If you're above 20 hull, everything looks normal. Below 20 hull, everything gets yellow'ish (yellow alert, I presume), and below 10 hull, everything gets red-tinted (either red alert, or blood of boarders from your ship's walls).