Creating new star systems...

Yep, it's a simple fix. The fifth element in the command structure is the Rotation Around Parent. This must be 0 or the belt won't show up. Yours is set to 61 degrees. You don't need to do this, an asteroid belt extends all the way around a star (hey! like a belt! ).

*edit*
btw - be ready for some weird behaviour from the belt. See this post for an explanation: www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1593

What did you mean by almost no traffic? There shouldn't be any traffic. Unless you added a station I guess. I've never added one, so I'm not sure.

About the background nebula, did you read my tutorial on Lightwave scene geography? If not, go here: www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1439

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Hehe, I think I´ve seenthis belt behaviour before... When I flew close to the Santa Romera star and switched to external camera I was suddenly surrounded with asteroids... Spooky!
Anyways, the belt still doesn´t show up!
As for the traffic, I added some stations but I think these were wrong station types (research facilities, corp. HQ, gas mine, system admin. and stuff like this). After adding exotic metals processor some traffic showed up.
And yes, I *did* read your tutorial. Long time ago. Twice. Excellent job! What I can´t understand is how to get custom nebula texture to .pso file. Should I make a nebula textures my_nebula_#.iff and then make a copy of, for example SantaRomera_Nebula.PSO, rename it to my_system_nebula.pso and replace SantaRomera_Nebula_#.LBM with my_nebula_#.iff ? Or something like this?

"Fighter pilots make movies. Bomber pilots make history"

I just wanted to say thanks for finding that asteroid belt bug. I will change the geog tool to force a working value for orientation. Hmmm. I have tried to put a belt around a planet. I wonder if that works...

-Gtrout

Getting custom textures onto the background goes something like this:
(Since I haven't gotten around to this yet, you'll have to be the pioneer here.)

1. Pick a nebula background that you want to replace (you will have to retire one from service and replace it).

2. Extract all six nebula textures to PCX for viewing.

3. Using the extracted textures, calculate the image size the original background image needs to be. The 6 images are arranged on the model background sphere like this:



So the dimensions of the 6 images arranged this way will give you the image dimensions for your new background. It should be as easy as checking the width and height of any one of them and multiplying by 3. But make sure you cross-check them.

4. Create your new background image with these dimensions. I use a great program called Universe Image Creator, available here: www.diardsoftware.com/

5. Using a paint program, slice the large image into 6 smaller images similar to above. Obviously make sure each smaller image has the same dimensions as its original nebula counterpart. Save them as IFF.

6. Name the 6 new smaller images the same as the original ones you're replacing.

7. Make a mod that replaces the original nebula images with your own.

Finished.

Now the trick here, is that I haven't yet gotten around to checking the numbering sequence for the images. It could be; start at top left and go 1,2,3 across the top, or go 1,2 down, or start at bottom right and count left, or anything! This is where you'll have to do some experimenting and let us know what the sequence is.

Good luck! I can't wait to see your new nebula. [8D]


*edit*
Actually, I meant to say that this is one way of making new backgrounds. The other way is to just make and texture a new background sphere in Lightwave. That way, you get to add the new background and still keep the originals. However, since we don't know how big the original sphere is, you'll have to do some guessing there as well. I would start with a 1 meter radius sphere and go from there. A 1 meter radius is fairly typical of space sims, both because it makes re-scaling calculations easy and because, since these kinds of models are rendered last, a tiny sphere will look huge in a game. (Don't forget to flip the normals! )

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I used Santa Romera to figure out what the images order is, simply created 6 IFF images, all different in color. This was one colourful space! The image order is:

image#5
("up")

image#3 image#2 image#1 image#4
("left") ("front") ("right") ("back")

image#0
("down")

Probably it´s the same for all systems.

The belt still refuses to show up. And I don´t know what I should do about it. And one thing I noticed is that the asteroid belt in Santa Romera has got the rotation around parent walue other than zero,judging from the starmap some 330 degrees. And yet the belt shows up!. Same goes for every system in Badlands.

"Fighter pilots make movies. Bomber pilots make history"

Quick, someone write that down!

Nice, nice work on figuring out the image sequence. I didn't even think of a top and bottom image. Although it should've been obvious, because that's how you texture a sphere without stretching. Again, nice work, great thinking about using the colors. That's a really important piece of info. I'm sure it is the same for all backgrounds.

Not sure what the belt problem is. But belts have always been a bit touchy. Have you tried a rotation value of 330 degrees? Any new info you discover about belts will be quite valuable as well.

*edit*
Just in case you didn't know this already, 0 degrees of rotation starts at the 3 O'clock position. So be sure of your degree readings.

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