Planet pulse

One of my planets has a pulse of blue around its equater. Its not a ring, it is eminiating from withen the planet and leaking out.

BTW. I like the touch of the moons being shadowed when traveling behind the planet
7,567 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top
Upon further investigation, it could be a sign that a colony ship is on the way.
Reply #2 Top
"Moonshadowing" is easy with a 3D engine... it depends on where you set up your "light source"... now (I'm not at a computer with a GalCiv2 executatble loaded so I can check), the REAL TRICK is if it is shadowed based on the location of the Sun in the Solar System in question. But, I bet the GalCiv2 programmers aren't that sophisticated, because they would have trouble handling the case when there are mutiple light sources (suns) appearing on the screen at the same time - I bet they just set the light source to be somewhere off in infinity... "thataway".
Reply #3 Top
Nope, the stars are light sources.  We really are reasonably sophisticated..
Reply #4 Top

Click on this to make it larger. Look closely at the moons and planets. You can control the ambient light in the settings. Turn down ambient light and the only light on the planets comes from the stars. If the stars were closer, you would have conflicting sources of light.

Originally the ships were more affected by the stars but we found this to be hard to play even though it was "more realistic". So the ships are self-lit ala Star Trek/Star Wars.

Reply #5 Top
Is there any chance of having self-lit ships as an option we can tweak/disable? I personally prefer the darker look to the game than the glowing ships we have now. Just a personal bias of mine