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Zerraspace — Sierra System Planet - Cloud Texture
Published: 2013-03-24 07:28:39 +0000 UTC; Views: 5587; Favourites: 9; Downloads: 100
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Description
This was made as part of an exchange between SARGY001 and myself; SARGY001 offered his talents to improve my working cover for Voice of the Virtual Phantom, so I offered to re-envision his planets for the One Planet at a Time project. This is the flat map used to create the texture for the forest planet ( [link] ), allowing it to be displayed from any angle. In truth, it's not entirely forest; the vegetation grows sparser as you move towards the poles, resulting in some bogs and tundra, and there is a desert in Saharan latitudes on the western continent.Related content
Comments: 12
I'm not sure if you still frequent this site, but do you have links to the individual maps? After running Celestia, I've learned that the planetary surface and the cloud textures are two separate layers. I'm interested in obtaining a copy of the cloud layer for some of my own planet alterations.
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Nowadays I've been caught between university and game development, so work's more or less whenever I both have free time and am not tired enough to procrastinate thereafter. The cloud map isn't my resource, I obtained it from a NASA website. For the most part I just reuse it by rotating and clipping it so the same clouds don't show from a given perspective. I can't find the original 8k file, but somebody saved a 4k version here: www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/… . As for 8k textures, a number have since been collected here: www.shadedrelief.com/natural3/… .
Regarding the surface map, let's just say Google Earth in obscure locations can give you great terrain textures, if you're willing to sit down and mix and match them, or better, desaturate and recolor them. Here's the surface map without cloud cover: zerraspace.deviantart.com/art/… . Getting one for Zainter will take a little longer since the cloudless surface requires me to mess with the psd file, and I don't have photoshop anymore, but I can fix that within the week. Hope it works out for you! I'd like to see your Celestia menagerie.
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Hi Zerraspace. I was wondering if I could please use this texture on a sphere in Second life?
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Since I made this for another member's use, SARGY001 (here sargy001.deviantart.com/ ), you'll have to ask him about it as well. If he gives you the green light, I have no qualms about you using this, though I'd like it if you could somehow reference me.
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Yes absolutely would reference you in my credits section. Wonderful stuff you do.
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Where did you get the cloud map, and can I have a copy of it?
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It's pretty huge, but you're welcome to try it out: [link]
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I love how you have the clouds overlayed on top. Seeing the landmass to the right somehow brings me back to my old Alpha Centauri days when I was building things in the Monsoon Jungle. Well done
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I always preferred building on the Garland Crater, Borehole Cluster and Sunny Mesa, and seemed to wind up with the Great Dunes, Sargasso Ocean and UNS Unity crash site on my maps more often than not. This place has landmarks of its own too, though I'm not sure there are names attached to them yet ( [link] ).
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Ah, you must have not played with the Morgan Industries faction very much. My first colony pod landed there all the time. Which one did you prefer? The University?
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I played the Cybernetic Consciousness and University of Planet almost exclusively, the former more than the latter; the boosts in research (and in the case of the former, efficiency) allowed me to quickly put all the other factions in the dust so long as I had my frontier colonies branching out, and by the time I'd invaded another player it was already time for the endgame (I'd have so many resources at my disposal my research and economy would take off by leaps and bounds; I'd hit singularity tech just before the others reached fusion). The only other factions that worked out for me to any extent were Gaia's Stepdaughters and the alien factions; my economy and research tended to fall behind with everybody else (the Hive fell the worst, but this would happen even for Morgan Industries; their colonies simply aren't big enough to keep up with their bonuses).
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So I did guess correctly! There must really be a correlation between personality and faction choice then
I also played Gaia's Stepdaughters but that only worked well for me when I used the modified maps that were heavy on xenofungus. The Spartans were also fun, but their economy was a pain. I enjoyed fighting the Hive and the Lord's Believers, but I didn't have the patience to play as them. The Peacekeepers probably required some kind of skill to play that I didn't really have at the time, and I enjoyed using probe teams way too much to play as the University.
I liked the idea behind the Data Angels, but they were way too vulnerable to conquest and a lot of times it was easier just to research the tech myself. The Free Drones would have been cool if any of the other factions had actually experienced revolutions. Now that I think of it I liked the original game way more than the Alien Crossfire expansion.
The thing I liked about Morgan Industries was that they generated energy so quickly that you could rush buy a lot of the base facilities and units. The support cost didn't really bother me, because I preferred a few devastating toys over a Zerg-like army anyway. They were also great for stealing technology because my probe teams could actually afford to to do stuff!
One of my favorite tactics was to make a probe team foil and go after coastal cities. A lot of times the opponent didn't have any foils over their own around, so their bases were like sitting ducks! Another thing I did a lot was to make these really cheap needle jets with the basic laser gun and just stream-roll wherever the conflict was. Sure, they would blow up after a few attacks, but you could make them so quickly it didn't really matter.
One thing I was really disappointed in though was the fact that I never had a chance to fight another opponent with hover tanks. I must have had the difficulty setting too low or something, but by the time I got around to hover tanks it was usually close to when I would win the game anyway and the other factions would be way behind in tech.
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