I am playing around with Unity atm to get some Ideas for Games. I have an idea of a space-game and still working on my rpg idea and sort it out. But atm I am sitting on a space-idea.
I hammered together a few textures, a spaceship and some skyboxes which look like space, but it does not feel like space. http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/5937/notspace.jpg
Okay, the skybox is not perfect, but if anyone of you did something like this before, I would be really happy to have some generic input about how to build a proper space which feels good. And how would you add the feeling that you are actually moving? Okay, some Engine-Fire would be cool, but still this won’t be enough I think.
The best Space feeling I ever got is Eve Online. But not really an idea atm on how to achieve that feeling with unity.
Thanks in advance.
regards
Hmm. The skybox seems spacey enough, as do the planets, but the problem here is the Spaceship. It doesn’t have all that much detail and it comes of a slight bit cartoony.
Indeed on the spaceship. Also needs some kind of specular to make it seem like it’s painted. Also, for a better sky box, check out this free tool running bird released a few days ago. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/61321-SpaceScape-tool-for-creating-space-skyboxes-with-stars-and (Also, if you want to see an example of the skybox that program can create, in unity, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XluysG4c_6I This is what I made in a minute or two of testing the program. Probably could have done better with the green stripe thing that’s supposed to be nebula like, but it’s just to prove the ease of the program and what it can do.)
It’s semi-easy to pick up, and you can create some great skyboxes with it for space scenes. Also, your shadows aren’t black, they seem to be the default gray. In space you won’t hardly ever see the shadowed area of something because there is nothing on the other side to reflect the light back at the object, unless it just happens to be the side of the ship facing a reflective planet. (planet with light colors, as opposed to dark colors) I’d also mess with the levels of brightness and contrast for all of the textures except the skybox.
Hey thanks for your input. It looks a lot of better now with the program you linked me. I just used one of the predefined for now to get a quick result, but the tool looks awesome. Something to play with .
I once did a little space web thing in Unity. I ended up with photoshopping a few layers which worked pretty well. The only thing i don’t like are those skyboxes, i used spheres instead and combined those with particles, moving tiny stars and a few loose objects. Obviously no DX11 but it was spacey enough for me those days. :O)
My complete goal in life is space games and I’m sorry but IMO, Unity’s skybox totally fails when it comes to clean looking star fields that create a sense of vastness typically seen in other spacers.
There needs to be a way to composite either a skybox or sphere behind everything else that >doesn’t go though the camera< system!
A nice, clean star field image, mapped to a sky box just comes out totally blurry and magnified similar to the image above!
Don’t worry about the spaceship, would you want your game to have a star field that looks like that???
Typically when the FOV is left at 60, it comes out like that, if you bump it up to 70, it starts to look a bit better but then you start getting what I call the cylinder effect where it looks like your sky is rolling around on a tube or cylinder.
At FOV 80+ you start to see corners in the background - totally no joy.
I really wish UT would help us Spacers out just a bit by seeing if they could say in a man-week, implement something a bit better for displaying star fields that we can move around in.
OR perhaps they can release a best practices tutorial that shows how to get a nice looking space scene going with a really clear star field.
My last attempt at getting a clean start field in Unity will be either something using maybe SpriteManager or to point a camera straight at a plane mapped with a star field image and see if i can animate the UVs or something to move the image around on the plane based on the main camera’s orientation…
I mean the real fun in those space games starts after you get drunk, ignore you mission goals, laugh and discuss quantum mechanics and Albert’s great formula, oh and of course good music as well. That’s what space games are for!
Btw i recently read that Ian Bell is writing a new video game.
I think the main problem is that you have ambient light. In in space there is so little of the stuff it’s irrelevant. If there is ambient light, it makes your scene feel as though there is a light reflector just off screen reflecting light onto the shadowed side of your objects.
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