Landing Pic Concept

Well, I was playing with LunarCell today, and I figured out how to save a flat map of the planet's surface, and a thought struck me. What if I combine the map and a normal landscape to make a fancy landing pic with not only a landscape, but a planet map? I thought it was a cool idea, so I stuck 'em together in Photoshop, and even added a "you are here" type thing to the map.

So yeah, I think it's cool.

EDIT: You could also add text to the bottom of the pic, giving location in the form of latitude and longitude, and a location name, like "mirror lake" or something.

This post has been edited by The CrimpMaster : 29 May 2006 - 12:06 AM

Especially useful for plugs that use Lunarcell to create new planet pictures, so the planet and planet map match.

Cool.

Wasn't there a guy working on multiple sobs on one planet? That could be really useful to him. It would make his plug look sweet.

It could, if I had the time to make the hundreds of separate landing shots. I decided to use none instead.

@rmx256, on May 29 2006, 07:48 AM, said in Landing Pic Concept:

It could, if I had the time to make the hundreds of separate landing shots. I decided to use none instead.

If the maps are consistently interesting enough, you could use them instead of traditional 3D landing shot landscapes. You might want to re-jigger the DITL to have a smaller image space and enhance the maps with location indicators and text as CrimpMaster suggests, but it could still be less time-consuming than rendering a large number of 3D scenes.

@dr--trowel, on May 29 2006, 10:27 AM, said in Landing Pic Concept:

If the maps are consistently interesting enough, you could use them instead of traditional 3D landing shot landscapes. You might want to re-jigger the DITL to have a smaller image space and enhance the maps with location indicators and text as CrimpMaster suggests, but it could still be less time-consuming than rendering a large number of 3D scenes.

Off topic: since that has come up, how exactly would one re-jigger the DITL?

@crusader-alpha, on May 29 2006, 12:17 PM, said in Landing Pic Concept:

Off topic: since that has come up, how exactly would one re-jigger the DITL?

Basically, you boot up ResEdit or MissionComputer, copy DITL 1000 from the Nova application into your plug-in, open it up, and start moving things around. If you resize it, you will also need to change DLOG 1000.

If you are using Windows, you will need to get a Mac user to modify the DITL for you, as EVNEW cannot edit them. I would recommend making a mock-up of the the way you want the window to look using your favorite image editor, and sending that to the Mac user.

Edwards

Of course, Windows users feeling really in a hacking mood can try and hack the DITL temselves in the file with an hex editor (hmm, though they'd have to copy it first to their plug, good point). Anyway, ResEdit has a graphical WYSIWYG DITL editor, and with the coming of Intel Macs MC just got one (I have yet to test it); EVONE could concievably be used with the DITL template to edit it (though you'll have a hard time extracting the DITL for the Nova app), and Rezilla (and Rezilla Custom) can also edit DITLs with the template.

Out of curiosity can the button position be changed? Could it be anyhing other then the stock? Some thing kinda like this?

I color coded the buttons so you could tell them apart.
Basicaly can it be some thing other than square buttons? Can they be in a different order?

This post has been edited by WonderBoy : 30 May 2006 - 06:53 PM

As I understand it, you're pretty much stuck with rectangular buttons----there are two "end of button" graphics, and one graphic which is a single vertical slice repeated by the engine to fill in the remaining space.

However, you should be able to move buttons around or change the rectangular aspect using DLOGs and DITLs.

(That's anywhere except the main menu. The main menu is entirely different.)

This post has been edited by Lindley : 30 May 2006 - 06:56 PM

I was referrering to the main menu. Would it be possible to make a slanted button? Or make the button have a sort of hole in it?

Cool, it's the pepper from GIMP!
(/spam)

This post has been edited by Mispeled : 30 May 2006 - 08:55 PM

Sho 'nuff! I started a thread about a good image edditing program that was free. GIMP was recommended and I like it so, well, me and GIMP are buddies so to speak. Also notice that AVON is NOVA spelled backwards. Ok enough of my offtopic adventures for now.

You can make menu buttons or dialog buttons whatever shape you like.

But it will be every button shaped thusly- you can't pick and choose, with the previously noted exception of the main menu buttons.

So each main menu button can be a different shape and they can be any shape? I need a yes or no answer, I can't think things I haven't experienced before thru very well.

In the loading screen, each button can be a different shape and location and are entirely unrelated (see pic).
In the rest of the game, the buttons may be different sizes and "shapes", as defined in the DITLs and others, but regardless of thier customized shapes and sizes, they will only be drawn from the same three button picts- the left, middle (tiled) and right, and will be stretched and deformed to fit, or may crash the engine. YMMV.

Attached File(s)

• main.jpg (56.27K)
  Number of downloads: 67

Ah thankyou for being so patient and precise with your answer. Sorry I am kinda slow, and if you had to repeate anything that I did not get the first time(which I'm sure you did).

Reading this, did I miss how to modify the main menu? I haven't tried myself but I'm relatively sure that it's not just through modifying the pict resources, or am I wrong? If I am, I'm surprised.

Good point....