Been working some more on improving sky domes and spheres.

Animated clouds for terrain domes and star fields with swirling nebula for enclosed space scene spheres. Fixed orbit geometry planets and moons built in with their own rotations.

Screenshots:







Space is vast!
Using built in geometry for planets and moons which are distant means they can never be reached, in the following video an entity moon nearby could be landed on or crashed into but the giant planet can't be reached any time soon.

Video:
View full screen and set HD for complete experience

what can i say... wow... that is really awesome..
great atmosphere

at the beginning of the video,things pop upin my mind like: " Space the final frontier"

very cool

Harry

Consider these bought! Absolutely mesmerizing to behold.

Thanks

I have around seven of these ready to go, some are for terra and some for space with others in mind. I have another shader idea I could implement for skydomes and will be looking at that next.

I really love these, I have always loved space and the idea of traveling in it. Now I can do it from the safety of my chair through GG.

Amazing stuff - you have you're own 'space engine' emerging here

Your other 'terrestrial' sky dome demos looked great too, wish the engine supported a bit more of this kind of thing natively.

It's been said a few times here already but i'll say it again, that looks awesome!

Breath-taking Rolfy! BTW what is the background music you are using?

That's really phenomenal - I'm truly impressed. The quality of the end result looks way higher than what you can achieve with regular ol skies.

Reworking a couple of the older spheres, just have to take the old battle cruiser for a spin.

Event Horizon.

@Rolfy - ermmm WOW !!

Reliquia....

Very relaxing to watch,nice work rolfy

So cool rolfy, would of been great just at the end to see a ship warp in and start shooting at you while you try and warp out or am I just thinking of eve-online lol

Great vid tho.

Eve Online is going (kind of) free to play next month

@Belidos

Cool will check this out.

Yeah, basically they're creating two clone status', alpha and beta, when you're unsubscribed you're alpha, when you're subscribed you're beta, alpha clones are limited to tier 1 skills and ships, can train up to 500m SP etc, beta clones can do everything.

So really it's kind of an endless trial, but you can activate and deactivate your sub whenever you like, the way i would use it is to use my character as an alpha clone farming for isk, then you could activate beta status whenever you have enough ISK for PLEX, that way you still get gameplay even when you find you can't afford to sub

brilliant work

Why does Game-Guru use Skyboxes by default? None of the other engines do this and with Skyboxes you can actually see the corners. We need to move forward with Skydomes.

This thread is proof of why

Thanks

No video for this one, I think you all get the idea it is animated and a simple screenshot will suffice.

Asteroid belt.

Asteroid belt 2.

Awesome skydomes and very nice space travel!
Just waiting for the pack.

3com

Sky sphere with rolling clouds and additional animated God rays to supplement the default light rays.

There needs to be a pre-order link for this pack

Outstanding quality, as always! Excited for when this is released.

It may be a while before these are available in the store, it is all dependent on a new function to allow different paths for sky shader fx which are currently hard coded to point to sky_basic.fx only. Lee assured me this would be in v1.14 which I didn't realise was going to be some ways off going by recent events. It may go into one of the smaller updates sooner, particularly as one of these is an important part of the new media being released soon but I can't say with any authority.

If however you were happy to drop skyboxes altogether and go only with domes till update is forthcoming you could over write the default sky_basic.fx shader and never look back

I can convert all the current skyboxes to sphere textures for use with this shader as it is as much about the wrapped texture as it is the uv mapping to get it working with no errors in the scroll etc. This would mean all current skyboxes aren't lost in transition and they would then be domes/spheres without the horrible corners and distortions you get with boxes.

I will do a little demo of one of the default skyboxes to show how it looks as an example when converted and post it up here. There should be no reason not to change over to skydomes other than maybe not all artists will be able to produce the wrapped textures required, unless converting to geospheres which use same mapping. It is easier to create skybox textures than full wrapped spheres with an extra step needed but I have the pipeline set up pretty well now

I could sell these myself if it looks like any update is going to take forever and simply sidestep the store if it comes to it.

Hey Rolfy, firstly. This is real eye candy! Beautiful work!

Secondly, are the planets just entities which you've placed around the scene?

Thirdly, are the "domes" just large spheres which are manually placed in the center of the level with a shader applied?

Skydomes and spheres are actually alternatives to skyboxes and selected in the 'Tab/Tab' menus same as default. Mostly the planets in these are geometry built into the skydome and a scrolling texture shader is used to animate these, the trick in built in geometry is how to keep the 'shadow' on say, a planet rotating in a direction which appears as static while the planet itself rotates beneath this layer
So they are all exactly same as skyboxes which you never reach the horizon etc and move with the player view, except they are...umm..... spheres or domes without any of the issues you get with a box.

Yo can see the effect a little with the spaceship video where the camera is moved in on the craft, although it appears the ship is moving it is in fact static and it is all a trick of the eye with camera movement. But as you can see the ship gets closer as I move in and further as I move out but the skysphere keeps a constant distance....hope that makes sense

Mostly there a few sphere layers with alpha transparency overlaying and flipped uv's so they rotate in different directions across each other to get more movement in the animations. The speed of animation and distances of, for example, asteroids from each other is completely unrealistic in real terms but for the sake of game 'Art' it is completely acceptable to take liberties in this case

The real bonus here is a fully enclosed scene which would require a minimum of entities to flesh out a level, without hitting fps or memory limits you practically have an entire environment right off the bat, These could also be used as simple skies for terrain levels, to me the really nice thing is being animated as theyy are they create a nice dynamic background which blows skyscroll out of the picture entirely. I had a hand in getting skyscroll into GG way back but would be quite happy to see it dropped in favour of this method, looks a lot better. There is always room for improvement.

Planetary ring system.

Again all geometry is built into the skysphere.





Showcasing the new Galaxy Seed assets.

Very nice Rolfy. Great stuff.

This is absolutely amazing. I know I've said that many times before, but I've just gotta say it again! I am in awe!

Quickly hacked up gameplay.

Very cool,and that's just looking on my phone.CAnt wait to have a look on my pic.

Dave

GOOGLE TRADUCTOR SAYS: excellent work!!! When I read some time ago about your experiments with skydomes ... I said ... that's going to be great! And it really exceeded all expectations !!! I already see the future with day / night ... we will have to collect a few dollars for the store ... ha ha ha !!! A big hug from a stranger !!!! And congratulations again: A GREAT JOB !!!

ORIGINAL IDIOM: excelente trabajo!!! Cuando hace un tiempo leí por allí sobre tus experimentos con skydomes... me dije... eso va a ser genial! Y realmente superó todas las expectativas!!! Ya veo el futuro con dia/noche... habrá que juntar unos dolares para la tienda... ja ja ja!!! Un gran abrazo de parte de un desconocido!!!! Y felicitaciones nuevamente: UN GRAN TRABAJO!!!

Thanks warlock12, I will be releasing a few of these sometime next week now that there is an official release with the function to point to alternative sky shaders

Will these be making an appearance in the store now that the sky shader option is out?

I want that ship!!!!!!! lol and the skydomes!!!!!!! yummy yummy sweet as Rolfy.

Yeah, like everyone else said, and also - How did you do that???

Great work Rolfy

Reliquia....

Spectacular work Rolfy, these domes are a must for anyone who wants to create a space level.

Rolfy? Rolfy! Rolfy!!!!! oops i blame the Malt where you at with these m8 im dribbling lol we need spheres not boxes planets that move over the map, asteroid fields that move...........oh im dreaming about them now wheres the Rolfy pack for me to chuck mi pennies at?

My apologies, been tied up lately, will get on it soon

Rolfy: I hate you !!!! Hahaha!!! (It's in a joke). I was struggling with your galaxy seed spheres to recreate auroras in an Antarctic sky and I had a 5% success rate buaaaa !!! I know I could do it, but I still do not get it ... if I succeed and I can share it in the community ... My problem is the trasnparencias .... mmm ...

Rolfy: Te odio!!!! Ja ja ja!!! (es en chiste). Estuve luchando con tus esferas del galaxy seed para recrear auroras en un cielo antártico y tuve un grado de éxito del 5% buaaaa!!! sé que se pude hacer, pero todavía no me sale... si lo logro y se puede lo comparto en la comunidad...