Greetings! Since this is a new year I will start working on a new and improved version of all my planets. Or more accurately I will be scrapping all the textures and redoing them from scratch. In the intent of large and long games I will be bumping down the size of the textures back to rebellion standard of 2k/1k. This will allow me to make many, many more planets than before. I will also be rebalancing them as there will be many many more types.
Now for questions I asked:
Why 4k textures?
I used 4k texture cause I wanted planets to be, well, beautiful. But that comes with a trade off, thay are 5mb each. Around 10mb per planet type. And that is just color. I never included a shine or bump map. I decided to slash the texture size down to 2k to allow for more planet types. As a 4k set would be around 20mb a 2k set would be 5mb which is the difference between 10 and 40 planet types for 200mb.
Will there be moons and double planets this time?
Yes. I planet to build a massive catalog of moon types and planet types. And lots of combinations each will.be slightly different. They will be released with each planet type.
So 40 planet types this time?
Actually no. There will.be more. My mod was around 280mb last time. So 60 types are not out of the question. And keep in mind that is the low end. I am not sure how the engine uses bumpmaps but I will find out. Some planets won't have any shine to them and will use a single tiny black texture. That will cut into the size. Certain planets may reuse textures. Or lack a texture according to the look I want.
Last time your planets looked.like shiny marbles.
Yes, that was my fault. I wanted to shut that off and I didn't know a lot about the way the engine does shine. Thus I had no texture and it defaulted to a pure white. Giving the planet a massive shine all over so it looked buffed. That won't happen again.
Last time your planets looked odd at the poles.
Yes, again my fault. I used satellite textures which I modded. This I thought would make for better planet textures. They didn't quite live up.to my expectations. As well as the engine not doing spheremaps correctly which is fixed in rebellion and the planet dlc.
So you are going to do proper planet texture this time?
Yes. I have a program that creates excellent planet maps, Fractal Terrains, which I have been playing and learning with for the past few years. I also know a lot more about planetology, climatology, and astronomy. Thus I can now create good planet maps of every type.
So estimated amount of planet types when done?
40-60 base types, 7 size types, around 250 single planet bases, literal hundreds if not thousands of moon, multiple planet configurations.
All in all, a planet mod where you literally may not run into the same planet twice in a few games. Moons will affect how a planet operates.
