Star System Scenery
It’s been several months since my last update. Instead of spending my limited free time on game improvements, I spent considerable time playing the original MoO2 game. This was because I was goofing off refreshed my memory about game mechanics and strategies.
Part of the delay/de-motivation for me has been due to not knowing how to approach the problem at hand: how should I model and import my star system view and “scenery”? I fixed the asteroid rendering problem, but was still unclear on how to fit even one asteroid into my star system popup view. So I started reading anything I could find which looked related to my goal.
I’ve concluded that I should mock up my star system view in Blender, including all elements of the star system popup window as they will appear in the game. I am not yet done, but what I have has already been hugely helpful for me. I have been able to see which considerations are most important, versus ones that I thought were important but turned out to be irrelevant. For example: I started to create a very detailed earth, but found that most of the intricate effects weren’t even visible due to the planet’s small size in the scene. The asteroid I started modelling also turns out to be too granular and detailed to be useful. Also, I can easily balance colors, animate planet rotations, test shading, and count vertices.
I’m still working on my Blender model, but I have completed enough to post various screenshots here. So my follow-on post (hopefully today) will be a gallery with more screenshots.
Update: the screenshots are online
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