#HOMEWORLD BATTLESTAR GALACTICA MOD MOD#
#HOMEWORLD BATTLESTAR GALACTICA MOD SERIES#

There's a bunch of other things that could stem from this. I could also introduce modern PBR rendering shaders, replacing the relatively simplistic Blinn-Phong shading used by ShaderLib. The most obvious change would be to eliminate most of the ambient lighting that brings out the contrast on the sprites this would permit for realistic shadowing instead. Starsector's default shaders (and ShaderLib's default replacements) are good for making sprite art shine, but since I have no intention of producing any unique sprite art that's being wasted. Having said that, looking at ShaderLib I am have been considering breaking with one of the original design principles and switching from the current hybrid Starsector/CG art style to something more photo-realistic. Right now, all the focus remains on the campaign. Compared to all the campaign stuff there's really not much value in testing it yet. Not yet It was literally a morning's work. PBR or no, the question is whether to make that big switch in art style.

I'm not convinced that's the case yet, I'm essentially just thinking aloud. Even if I didn't even up creating a physically-based shader specifically, I think the critical aspect at this point is that the benefits would have to be worth significantly expanding the scope of the work. But if I were to make the decision to switch from the mod's current art style (which is tailored to minimise my art workflow as much as possible so I can focus on the gameplay) to something more realistic, I'd be obliged to make sure the fidelity level at least got over the 'uncanny valley' hump and would budget for a level of work appropriate to achieve that. I'm aware that the idea of achieving genuinely photo-realistic results with top-down 2d sprites is patently absurd. The common vernacular usage has long since departed from the technical description, but still influences the naming of things using those technical implementations.ДЄddendum: I should probably also clarify that when I say 'photo-realistic' I mean the real-time portion of the industry's definition of 'photo-realistic' which is to say that in five years it will look positively cartoonish. Sort of reminds me of the casual uses of HTML5 or OpenGL. As a general rule, I'd hope anyone talking about implementing their own PBR shaders would be aware of that!

I'm not one of those people who thinks PBR inherently makes things look nicer. Which is all a long-winded way of saying: I know exactly what you mean, but the pertinent issues of 'how you want to go about creating/baking maps' and 'metallic micro-surfaces' are exactly the questions I'd be looking to address if I went this direction. Indeed, the PBR shader I used above is as comfortable using specular/glossiness maps as metallic/reflectivity maps. This is implied as part of a physically-based rendering, even if it's not dependent on anything specific to do with microsurfaces. There are other benefits to physically-based shaders over Blinn-Phong, but these have more to do with the over-simplification inherent in the Blinn-Phong model than anything relating to micro-surfaces.

#HOMEWORLD BATTLESTAR GALACTICA MOD SERIES#

All the dynamic range of the art in the TV series is differing grades of paint-wear and metallic surfaces. If I'm going to bother to write a new shader with intent to move towards a photo-realistic approach for a bunch of metallic assets, then writing a 'PBR' shader (which I'm just using in the sense of the common short-hand for the sort of shader you described) seems entirely context-appropriate.

I agree that makes perfect sense with Starsector's default art pipeline, but if I wanted to take a new art direction to emulate the TV show, that would involve writing a custom shader anyway. On the other hand, if these contracts go well, there's also the possibility I might have a look at hiring some other folks in to help! Either way, expect things to be very quiet for the next month, but nothing's dead or scrapped if you don't hear from me.

#HOMEWORLD BATTLESTAR GALACTICA MOD MOD#

If it's not, I'll look at setting out a new design for an interim mod with a smaller scope I can squeeze in around stuff.

Since both my intel work and my games work are short-term contracts with the possibility of extension, I'll re-visit my priorities at the end of March to see if it's viable to pick this up again from where I left off. This doesn't leave much time for the BSG mod! (or, indeed, sleep.) This means my total working + study hours per week is currently ~80 hours. Although my original plan was to continue this work alongside my hacking/intelligence consultancy work and law degree sometime this month, I've picked up a 3D games contract on the side with a well established games studio (project is NDA'd so I'll keep quiet on the details).

Homeworld battlestar galactica mod