Flora Improvement Project image - Rise of the Mandalorians mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
The Empire has fallen and a New Republic is born out of the conflict. But in the ashes of civil war, yet another life stirs...
Flora Improvement Project
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Almost forgot... The tree trunks currently use an alpha shader. This will be changed when the models are updated so that normal mapping can be applied and so that they will pick up any cast shadows. This applies to trunks only, obviously. Leaves will still need to use alpha shaders.
Lastly, is it wrong that I was listening to The Trees by Rush while working on this?
Yes, the universe can only handle so much punnitude before it reaches critical mass
puns have to grow slowly, dude
I really like that there is atleast someone in the community who's bothering to touch up all the ambient art assets that nobody else touches. Downside: Once the mod comes out, you'll have like 15 modders a day asking for permission to use it all.
That's why this **** is getting free-released once the mod is done. Lol. I can't take that kind of email volume...
Oh nice, u have the same ideas like me, i also changed enviromental assets. We should talk about to combine our work :) if u are interested.
Looks glorious Farseer.
Are you also planning on adding more creatures to planetary maps? Since the Star Wars animal diversity is pretty big, but not much of it is seen ingame
Time permitting, yes. Since planets like Dxun will be involved here I really want to bring back some of the fauna from the KotOR games.
I wouldn't mind if you took abit longer for the mod if it would mean more diversity in even minor things like the local wildlife!
You bringing in Terantateks too? (my favorite "wildlife" from Star Wars!)
Oh no they were long since extinct now. They were almost completely extinct by KotOR 1, let alone post civil war.
I never thought I would be so excited over flora... Great job. Loving the additional styles of trees and looking forward to seeing future updates for these.
I didn't realize how much the flora really enhances a level... The first test-match I loaded after redoing many of the textures just blew me away. The stock textures are only 124x124 (or smaller) and that's lower resolution than even most mobile games today. With better textures and better models to come, I feel like a giddy digital botanist!
Ambience ambience ambience. Even vanilla old *** empire at war can look semi good in a space match where you delete the nebula, introduce a high resolution starfield and deminish the maps lighting severely. Ambience can perform miracles.
Not lower the light so much as just USE the light tools that the developers made...and they themselves didn't use. lol. Darken shadows, then use color to make convincing ambient light rather than just everything set to white. Then yes, a few nice textures and you've got a nice little scene.
It is almost as if the map "artists" did not have any clue as to how an actual "artist" would use light to construct a half-decent picture. EAW can create some pretty good scenery, but it is as if Petro plucked some random guy from the streets, briefly explained how to use the map editor, and then paid him to make all the maps.
Honestly, I think Petroglyph just doesn't have strong direction. The quality of their products is all over the map. And the individual products themselves are likewise inconsistent in their quality. Some parts are great while others, like the maps, are rather poor. It's like the project manager had some super good days but then came in to work drunk the rest of the time...
^ this
Trunks and shadow maps for canopies!
As a map maker, I can't even express how much I love you right now.
Yet I'm the one presenting beautiful flowers. Lol
Really though, I'm glad you're excited. It's going to be lots of work to get it all done but I can already see the results and it's glorious.