Now that looks boss, i love every bit of that image. The background is especially immense, as is Qs.. What would be great is if there were more varied backgrounds in normal galaxys and special ones too, instead of the unusual black and stars. If you don't have time to do it yourself, i'm sure some players will make backgrounds for you, i honestly believe the background is incredibly important, it makes everything else look better.

I think the background looks great, but I'm not sure I would want it all the time. I would feel like I'm going through Fog or something. Maybe with a bit more transparency? Will this make it difficult to see when we are in an actual cloud of something?

Thanks for the great work. It is going to make this uber game even better.

Yeah, for the occasional galaxy that would look great. But like i said, a good amount of backgrounds would be awesome.

If they make the texture a play lightmap they can add different hues as they please... all I did was change the hue and tint just a little bit.

The plan is the have the background affected by the sun color.

S'good

Just don't use the default color of the suns cause it will look unnatural and probably rather ugly in some cases. Only part of the spectrum that reflects off the dust is in fact visible...

Nice O.O

Kanga

Oh my gawd!

That background is fecking AWESOME!!

For a second i thought i was looking at a 2D EVE Online.

Only other thing i would do is make the Star Bases bigger.

They don't look right at that size, maybe 2-3x the size would give a sense of massiveness.

I agree that bases could be a bit bigger, especially since we'll probably allow some zoom out level, so that they won't take up the whole screen.

Honestly that back ground makes a huge difference. Really looks like it a serious game and not something throw together for a demo.

Well as for the suns, can't remember who said it but the regular ones need another layer with some rays coming out or something. The old dark sun looks better than the new one. Would rather have it look more like the old one.

That nebula background look beautiful, both of them.

Maybe you could even hijack some more nebula and galaxy images from google earth and add them in random systems to make it more spiffy.

Best C2 screenshot so far ^^

Yeah I was just taking some inspiration from Freelancer and Homeworld 2 screenshots:

(NOTE: These are from Freelancer and Homeworld 2, not SS!)





About tinting the color, that is definately possible, I may even get around to making a procedural generator for these kinds of background by combining different kinds of noises, etc.

The background color will be affected by the background star color assigned to each galaxy, not by the actual suns in it, this will give each galaxy it's own unique look. I might play around with doing something with the sun colors, I don't know if there will be "scattering" as such, but I do plan to add space dust to create the sensation of movement in an empty area, it makes more sense then the background stars moving around when you move (With realistic proportions taken into account that's unlikely!).

About the sun rays, I did consider it, and I may add more and improve them, but I think the rays will look a little overkill once particle effects for the ship thrusters, plasmas etc are added, you'll have so many things shining around I doubt you will appreciate the crepuscular rays in your eyes when you're in a big fight.

Cheers

The C2 screenshot you posted has raised my hopes tremendously.

BlindSide, those look nice, but they will never compete with the sheer levels of awesome contained within FreeSpace 2. Here are a few pictures from it, maybe they will give you some nebula ideas (tried to avoid the open-space pics). Also, they show how sexy constant-beam weapons are, compared to the current wimpy little pulse-laser. Ok, the last one is just the picture of the original box, I added that to show how cool the constant beams are. It was amazing, the beams would last several seconds and either swipe across the enemy's ship and carve a line of destruction, or concentrate on one spot to destroy certian parts of the ship. I can haz continious ray of destruction?

[fanboyrant] Really, try FreeSpace 2 if you can find a copy, it is a brilliant game, I would play it today if I could find a copy even though it is 8 or 10 years old now. It is the game that got me interested in video games, words cannot justly describe the epic nature of this game. [/fanboyrant]

(P.S. The company that made FreeSpace 2 went under a while ago, and released FS2 as abandonware. However, I cannot find a single trustworty FREE download anywhere, there used to be a lot but the ones I knew are dead, if anyone gives me a working download I will shower you in love and cookies).