Making Environments

Ok, i know how to make terrain but how do you make the skies. if you dont understand, look at eclipse or hellfire

Making environments is a little tougher at the moment than it usually is, because Tia's evironment editor isn't compatible with 1.3. She is working on a new version of it (and all her other tools). Knowing her it will be available very quickly indeed, and do most everything for you AND make you a cup of tea afterwards[:p]

But right now you have to edit the environment file manualy. If you look in the environments folder you will see lots of .env files. These can be opened in notepad, or any other text editor.

I can't really help you much with all the variables and how to edit them (I always used Tia's tool), but the main ones you need are the ones for specifying a 'skybox':

sim.skyboxfront.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)
sim.skyboxback.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)
sim.skyboxleft.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)
sim.skyboxright.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)
sim.skyboxup.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)
sim.skyboxdown.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)

and for the ground texture:

sim.ground.texture.path=Environments\filename.jpg (or.tga)

There are all kinds of others for station textures, trees, etc, and for changing the color of the lighting, the position of the sun (sim.sun.pos.alpha= and sim.sun.pos.beta= ), which is a pretty important one for your skybox, I've no idea how to get the correct posistion other than trial and error[:p]

Now your probably wondering how to make the images for this 'skybox' I keep mentioning. That one is pretty easy[;)]
A skybox is six images which are mapped onto the inside of a giant cube to create the 'sky' you see in the game. To make one you need two things:

Terragen: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ A free utility for making images of landscapes.

Tia's skybox script for Terragen: http://d1jlserver.dnsalias.net/CCDev2/pub_fileinfo.cfm?fid=12 Which will make terragen render the correct images for your skybox. You will also need a basic graphics program to convert the images to the correct format. Skybox images (and most other NL textures) must be either 256x256 or 512x512 resolution.

So you create your scene in terragen, then use Tia's script, (make sure terragen is set to render at high detail and at 512x512 image size) which will render six images (I think they come out as .bmp files). You then need to convert these to .jpg or.tga and give them filenames that match your environments name. Make sure you number them.
Then put the files in your environments folder, and add the correct filenames to the skybox varibles in the .env file I mentioned earlier. It is probably best to edit a file that is already there than try to make one from scratch. It will probably take some trial and error to get the images in the correct order. You will likely need to fiddle with the sim.sun.pos variables to get the sun position to match that of your skybox. (Unless you didn't make the sun visible in terragen, I think thats possible)

As I said, this will all be much easier once Tia's new environment tool is out.

If you don't want to have to make your own environments, there a quite a lot of them available for all to use at http://www.coastercandy.com Just make sure you give credit to whoever made the environment in your track description[;)]

Hope this helps ya[:)]

wow. Thats too complicated for me[:p]

I don't know how to make that program work in the simulator. It won't show up[:(]

Guess my coaster isn't gonna have a skybox till Tia's program comes out.

use someone elses skybox. at this point there are many good ones included with many good coasters. just ask them first and then give them credit for their work.