Color and View Distance Questions

from Sins Forums

Hi again guys! sorry that I am not asking this in the question and answers thread because this question is quite lengthy.  I am wondering two questions for this week in editing.  the first is that I am trying to determine the "color code" of the color.color file.  I understand that ffffffff is white and 00000000 is black but I am uncertain to how other variables effect the color schemes such as:

playerColor:3 ff8FD81D
playerColor:4 ff007037
playerColor:5 ff0EADFF

Is there a key anywhere?

My second question is:

I have made a ton of icons now and I am looking to figure out how to have these icons always viewable no matter what distance the camera is at.  I have found that to do this I need to edit the gameplay.constaints file in the Gameinfo directory.  I need to edit this information:

VisibilityDistanceData
  capitalShipRadiusMultiplier 100
  entryVehicleRadiusMultiplier 50000
  frigateRadiusMultiplier 180
  planetRadiusMultiplier 130
  asteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
  resourceAsteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
  debrisRadiusMultiplier 600
  cannonShellRadiusMultiplier 600
  starRadiusMultiplier 60
  planetModuleRadiusMultiplier 60
  starBaseRadiusMultiplier 60
  spaceMineRadiusMultiplier 60
  fighterRadiusMultiplier 1000
  maxFighterMeshDistanceToCamera 4000
  mainViewIconChildrenPlanetRadiusMultiplier 130
  mainViewIconChildrenAsteroidRadiusMultiplier 200
  mainViewIconChildrenStarRadiusMultiplier 60
  veryDistantIconFadeNearThresholdDistance 100000
  veryDistantIconFadeFarThresholdDistance 10000000

Any ideas what to change?  I tried to play around with the Verydistanticonfadenearthresholddistance selection but have not had much luck changhing anything at all. For some reason when I put this file in my modded gameinfo folder the buy sell minerals/crystal blackmarket gets out of wack in terms of extreme negative values. Let me know if anything is unclear! Thank you in advance! 

modding
44,765 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html

I used this to get the colors I wanted for my mod...leave the first two characters in the file as "ff", then tack on the 6 character code for whatever color you want...please note that changing the color.color file will not change the "team number" icons (for teams 1-10, the button next to where you select your race)...those are actually images and would have to be changed manually in a graphics editor (the file you'd want to look at is "Buttons_Screens_Normal")...

Can't help you with the visibility stats, sorry...

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Thank you so much Seleuceia, that is perfect! 

Additionally, If anyone can help me with the icon visibility/distance stats I'll give yah some FREE Karma k1

:grin:

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

All I've done is change the view distance with individual entities, which have a line like "minZoomDistanceMult 1.500000". I don't think anyone has tried on a global scale. Really I don't see why you'd want to do that unless you want to have a game with icons only sort of like DEFCON.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
Additionally, If anyone can help me with the icon visibility/distance stats I'll give yah some FREE Karma

You'll need to find a resize tool and reduce the size of all of the meshes. The icons show or hide based on the zoom distance and size of the mesh.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks guys! will give it a try tomorrow.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 3
All I've done is change the view distance with individual entities, which have a line like "minZoomDistanceMult 1.500000". I don't think anyone has tried on a global scale. Really I don't see why you'd want to do that unless you want to have a game with icons only sort of like DEFCON.

ok Geofan, so with the minzoomdistancemult I was restricted to how close I could zoom in on one particular unit (hence the name minzoomdistance as I found out).  I am more interested to having free zoom control as usual but able to zoom in close with the icons still present.  Do you think that's possible? From what I can tell, the larger the unit the quicker the icon is removed from them as I zoomed in, could I trick the system to not do this?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Hartwich, reply 6
ok Geofan, so with the minzoomdistancemult I was restricted to how close I could zoom in on one particular unit (hence the name minzoomdistance as I found out). I am more interested to having free zoom control as usual but able to zoom in close with the icons still present. Do you think that's possible? From what I can tell, the larger the unit the quicker the icon is removed from them as I zoomed in, could I trick the system to not do this?

It would be easier if you explained exactly what you are trying to do. I don't know if you're doing the Defcon/War games kind of thing, want the icons and meshes to be viewable together or what. If you want to see the mesh with the icons still visible I don't know of any way to do that.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Yup GeoFan, I am trying to have it like Defcon/wargames where they are always on no matter what level of zoom...I guess that I am out of luck in this instance.  thanks for the help though!

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Hartwich, reply 8
Yup GeoFan, I am trying to have it like Defcon/wargames where they are always on no matter what level of zoom...I guess that I am out of luck in this instance. thanks for the help though!

Well hold on that maybe possible. If you don't care about the actualmesh, if you shrunk every mesh down to a very small size as Zombie suggested it may work. Also those values in the constants file may do this, did you try both very high and low values?

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

roger that GeoFan, Going to try to dispher the Gameplay constants file this afternoon.   The answer must be there or not at all. 

just need to figure out what some of these things mean like,

 veryDistantIconFadeNearThresholdDistance 100000
  veryDistantIconFadeFarThresholdDistance 10000000

capitalShipRadiusMultiplier 100
  entryVehicleRadiusMultiplier 50000
  frigateRadiusMultiplier 180

Will let you know what I come up with!

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

I would try

 veryDistantIconFadeNearThresholdDistance 0
  veryDistantIconFadeFarThresholdDistance 10000000

capitalShipRadiusMultiplier 0
  entryVehicleRadiusMultiplier 0
  frigateRadiusMultiplier 0

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Nice, That certainly works partly the way I want it! Thanks Tobi Kenobi/Geofan, I just wish now that I could figure out how to keep the mesh on with the icons. 

Here is what I am trying to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1B8Cj-kKvs  having icons like boxes to represent fleet ships but at the same time able to see the ships if desired.  At least I can have just the boxes now which is a big step forward thank you!

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

veryDistantIconFadeNearThresholdDistance - the distance the icons disappear when zooming in

veryDistantIconFadeFarThresholdDistance - the distance the icons disappear when zooming out

The multipliers are modifiers of that values.

 

As for always seeing the meshes, that's not very desirable because it would cost lots of GPU power. I'm not sure there is a possibility to do what you ask for, I'm at work atm so I can't skimm through the files ^_^'