I love glow maps!

But we need more of them. I think around half of the ships in game, at least, should have some kind of glow map. If you have any skillz with Photoshop at all, then you can help.

Here's what you do:

Find a ship in the game that doesn't have a glow map, but you think would look good with one. Find the texture of that ship by looking in \Content\Default\Textures\Ships.


Make a new texture for the glow map based on the existing texture map, but make it black where you don't want a glow and non-black where you do want a glow. In general, I like to open the texture in photoshop, make two new layers above it, one completely black, and another where I'll select parts of the original texture with the magic wand or lasso and then fill in the top layer with a glow color. Then I'll adjust the opacity on the glow layer to adjust the glow strength.

Rag glow and original texture attached at bottom.

Figure out that ships index, either by looking up the name of the texture in ships.xml or looking at the list here at the bottom of the page here: http://wiki.starsonata.com/index.php/C2_Ship_Problems

Edit ships.xml in /Content/Default/game_data/ships.xml or to do it properly, create your own custom "skin" following the instructions here: http://wiki.starsonata.com/index.php/Cl ... a_New_Skin

In ships.xml, find the entry corresponding to the ship you want to add the glowmap to, and add your new glowmap texture to it. You should get something that looks like this:



Then you can just play Star Sonata 2 and see your glow map. Adjust it and keep trying until it gets perfect, and then post it here for me to add. Also you can include a shot of how it looks in the game if you want everyone else to see your awesomeness.

if the glow map you are refering to is like fouind on the psionic flare wattage will o wisp exct... then yesi agree they add a spectical affect to any in game ship even those that have no real place or purpose.


id liek to see something added to the UZ ships say a engine mounted particle stream or a shield resonance..


also to earthforce ships frigate - dreadnaught given a sort of aircraft locater affect much like the green and red lights u would see on most planes.


another suggestion would be ships such as the blue family not the lesser version but say the gamma and beta to have the same as the UZ ships a reverse particle projection much like a engine graphic but set to the ship disregarding the actual engine in place.

Glow maps are simply sections of the ship that glow on their own without needing light from a sun. Psionic flares and such are using particle emitters, and that's a separate thing.

All EF and RP ships have glows already.

Is there any way to preview it in-game beta, considering we're all low level and *probably* won't have the ship? I was thinking an external ship viewer application, which just opens the model. However, that might take a bit too long.

Alpha is still running, so alpha testers will have looked at most of the higher end ships.

Add glow maps to loot due to them being invisible if you're too far away from the sun.

Boxes and coins should have light properties imo, as in casting light when you fly near them as well as being naturally iridescent.

I have added glow maps to debris. They'll go in for the next client patch.