[REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

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MisterBenn
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:55 am

[REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by MisterBenn »

Hi there, I grew tired of the default galaxy backdrop file so started looking for something new. Some of the ones on this site are beautiful to look at but I found them hard to play with as the detail and contrast would make seeing the finest game details tricky for me. I put together a few of my own, adjusted to my personal taste (lowered brightness and saturation and gently blurred) and it seemed polite to share them. I made an effort with several of these to make the playing area "zoned" in that you might start in a mainly blue area but once you progress across the map you might reach orange or yellow zones or the like... just trying to give the galaxy a bit of texture and personality.

I created them at 5000x5000 pixels as that seems to make a big difference in avoiding jaggies when you zoom in and out in game. The individual files are a bit bigger than the default at ~2MB apiece, but on my PC with a 2 year old processor I haven't noticed any difference in performance at all. If someone is running on slower hardware and sees a difference and cares enough, I could make a reduced version.

As usual, rename your selected image to galaxy_backdrop.jpg and put it in the images\environment\galaxybackdrops directory, and backup the original file first. There are 7 backgrounds, hopefully someone will get some use out of these.

Download (14MB)

Preview is attached:
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tjhkkr
Posts: 2430
Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 11:15 pm
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RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by tjhkkr »

Thank you.
I have most of these images, but it is a help to have them like this is a plus.
Thank you!
Remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love -- Olga Romanov.
myros
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RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by myros »

Not sure why but these will not work for me. When i try to start a new game it just gives an error pop-up "Cannot start game".
Going back to standard and the game works fine again - any ideas?
MisterBenn
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:55 am

RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by MisterBenn »

Hmmm that's interesting myros... I don't know for sure what would cause that. I've been using these with Legends 1.7.0.14 and .15 with no trouble. Have you tried other people's replacement galaxies from here with success? If so the most likely candidate would seem to be that the larger image size ups the memory requirements in game... do you play on a system with a modest amount of RAM? These images are ~ 2MB compared to ~ 800k originally, in game I would expect the difference to scale up since I've seen the 5000x5000 images retain more smoothness in game when you zoom in. If none of that helps I will post one of the files resized down a bit to see if that helps. I've got a distant worlds game running at the moment so I am coming here most days at the moment... :)
unclean
Posts: 163
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:27 am

RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by unclean »

ORIGINAL: myros

Not sure why but these will not work for me. When i try to start a new game it just gives an error pop-up "Cannot start game".
Going back to standard and the game works fine again - any ideas?

Yeah same, game just popped up an error even though I have 4GB ram.

I lowered the jpg quality from ~97 to 90 on all of them though and they work fine, here's the download if anyone else is having trouble:
http://www.4shared.com/zip/evwr_u15/galaxybackdrops_lq.html
MisterBenn
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:55 am

RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by MisterBenn »

Nice one unclean. I did save most of the images at > 95 jpeg quality, I had no idea it would make that much difference. My system's 4 years old so I figured if I could use these then everyone could... although I do have 8GB of RAM.
unclean
Posts: 163
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:27 am

RE: [REL] Low contrast galaxy backgrounds

Post by unclean »

Think I might try to cut them down some more, not sure of it happens for you but they make the game stutter a little every 20 seconds and make zooming a less smooth. Not a big deal but kind of annoying.

But good work on these, the default background isn't bad but it's nice to have something different.
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