I've created a ZIP of Paul's Earth bathymetry textures along with an AltSurface .ssc and placed it on shatters.net as an example of how to create an alternate surface add-on. You can download it here:
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/files/earth-bathymetry.zip
Here are the contents of the .ssc file:
Code: Select all
AltSurface "bathymetry" "Sol/Earth"
{
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
Texture "Earth-Bathymetry.dds"
BumpMap "Earth-Bump.png"
BumpHeight 4.0
}
The directory structure I used (and the one that I recommend for
all Celestia add-ons) looks like this:
Code: Select all
bathymetry/
earth-bathymetry.ssc
textures/
medres/
Earth-Bump.png
Earth-Bathymetry.dds
This way, all that a user has to do to install the add-on is to unzip it in their extras folder.
Let me suggest an alternate method of implementing Frank's tectonic Earth add-on. It would be very easy to combine it with the bathymetry add-on by using Celestia's new OverlayTexture feature. Rather than creating an entirely new texture with the Ring of Fire painted over the Earth bathymetry texture, make a texture which just contains the Ring of Fire and transparent areas where the underlying texture should show through. Then, add another AltSurface to the .ssc:
Code: Select all
AltSurface "tectonic" "Sol/Earth"
{
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
Texture "Earth-Bathymetry.dds"
BumpMap "Earth-Bump.png"
BumpHeight 4.0
OverlayTexture "ring-of-fire.png"
}
OverlayTexture was added mostly to implement the limit of knowledge masks, but as you can see there are other uses as well. A political map overlay for Earth is another possibility.
--Chris