well start with the sky refered to as the sky box many games use simuliar sky boxes to render the sky. A sky box is exactly that a box thus 6 sides the top, the bottom, the left side, the right side, the backside and the front right side see the below pic:
When folded into a box shape it needs to be seemless, a starry nite is ideal for this (easy to make seamless).
ok now that you have a sky you need to seperate it nto its six parts each being 256x256 pixels in size.
Here's an example using my InNebula sky box these pics are not to scale each side of the sky box needs to be 256x256
Save each side of the sky box into a folder you create inside your tribes2\gamedata\base\textures\ folder as a 256x256 *.png I named my folder tokrzskys
ie:
innebula_v6_FR.png (the front side)(FR = the front side, etc)
innebula_v6_RT.png (the right side)
innebula_v6_BK.png (the backs side)
innebula_v6_LF.png (the left side)
innebula_v6_UP.png (the top)
innebula_v6_DN.png (the bottom)
Now you need to make your cloud layers if you want to have clouds that is. You can have up to 4 layers maybe more i havent tried more than four and none of the sky's shipped with the game contain more than four. Here's my nebula cloud layers, I just modified a few I extracted out of a vl2 so im not sure about alpha layers.
ok save your clouds to the same place as your sky box pics again 256x256 *png's I used
innebula_move1.png
innebula_move2.png
innebula_move3.png
innebula_move4.png
There is one more pic in a sky that you need to have. It is the emap. The emap is the reflection/texture map the game uses on reflective objects I dont unerstand it completly myself. Here's the emap I modified like I did with the clouds.
save it to the same place as the others again as a 256x256 *png, I used
innebula_v6_emap.png
OK were almost there the last thing u need is a DML file so that tribes knows how to place the pics and which emap to use. With a text editer create a file and save it to your
tribes\gamedata\base\textures folder. Hers what my innebula sky dml looks like:
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_FR (FR = the front side and so on)
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_RT
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_BK
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_LF
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_UP
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_DN
tokrzskys/innebula_v6_emap
tokrzskys/innebula_move1
tokrzskys/innebula_move2
tokrzskysinnebula_move3
tokrzskys/innebula_move4
"replace tokrzskys with the name of the folder you saved your sky box pics to"
I'll repeat myself here and say again the dml gets saved to
tribes\gamedata\base\textures folder as a *.dml I used innebula.dml
To test your from within the tribes2 editor change the sky dml in the inspecter to the name u saved your skie's dml and hit apply. Make sure the sky is unlocked first.
** Note: if you dont see your sky make sure you have full sky enabled. I couldnt see mine at first
Well a little more than a quick tip more like a full blown tutorial. "Njoy"
-- TokrZ
Mappers Extreme http:\\[url]www.planettribes.com\extreme[/url]
MeAdmin@tokrz.com
