Geoff the Medio wrote:The Silent One wrote:Maybe we could increase the nebula size in relation to galaxy size instead of increasing the number of nebulae.
Read my post above about how they can't be any bigger without being ridiculously large.
[/quote]
Silent, that's a good idea.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Also, at their current size, they're about as big as they'd need to be if they were going to have some gameplay effect (like limiting cloaking or similar)... we wouldn't want this sort of effect covering fifty stars or more.
If they are given a gameplay effect, they would probably need to be redone from the ground up-- possibly procedurally generated. I don't see how that "maybe" is relevant to what we do now.
The purpose of Nebulae
now, is to serve as "landmarks" in the galaxy, as well as make FO look cooler.
Geoff the Medio wrote:They're also currently much larger than nebulae in MOO3 or MOO1:
I don't see how that matters at all.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Regarding filling in space with *something* to give the galaxy more shape, from another pm:
I've already described (briefly) a way that would theoretically work. Why list a bunch of other ways which won't?
In regards to that, what would be the performance effects of adding 500 small (256x256 max), nebula-like blobs to a full size map?
And forget what i said about adding graphics only in the space enclosed by star-lanes... i think an equally good effect could be achieved by only placing the blobs at star coordinates.
The following example places a blob of blue at each star. The opacity increases closer to the center— this effect might need to be disabled for certain galaxy shapes. It works, but of course it might be too processor intensive.
EDIT: having connection problems and can't get the image attached.