New Editor Backgrounds mod (Updated: 4/12/19)

[I-am-THEdragon]

This mod has been a long time in the making. Truthfully I had mostly finished it a few months ago then got distracted and forgot about it. Better late than never, here it is, my mod which adds various new test drive backgrounds to the creature editor. These backgrounds are made of a mixture of existing Spore assets and some of my own original assets.

Vaporwave- Based on the 'vaporwave' aesthetic. Skybox and water textures made by me.

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Room- A basic house room with some furniture, modeled by me with a mixture of edited Spore textures and some of my own.

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Night- The default creature editor background, but at night. Textures found unused in the game's files.

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Snow- A snowy landscape. Skybox texture made by me.

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Desert- A sandy desert landscape from the land vehicle editor background.

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Deep Sea- The bottom of the ocean, from the sea vehicle editor with spore plant textures added.

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Imaginatorium- A childlike but ominous scenery based on my adventure 'Jolly G. Willakers' Imaginatorium.

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Beta-style- Based on the test drive background shown in Beta versions of Spore, minus the hills. Requested by Darhagonable.

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Crystal- A cave made entirely of pale crystals.

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Space Dome- A glass dome platform in space, surrounded by planets. Technically suggested by VanillaCold, but I think I deviated from what they wanted.

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Metaphysical Realm- A dark, shadowy version of the default background. Requested by Liskomato; based on a concept from his adventures

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Solum Cave- Requested by Liskomato; based on a location from some of his adventures. Made using multiple screenshots edited together.

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Barren Moon City- Requested by Liskomato; based on a location from some of his adventures.

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Island- An island in the ocean, inspired by an unused and unfinished Boat Editor background texture in the game's files, which I polished up.

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Cloud- A cloud in the sky, using the Air Vehicle Editor's background. The cloud platform itself is imperfect but will be correct in the future.

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Nebulae- A comet platform surrounded by galaxies and nebulae. Made using Spore assets and CC0-license images. Requested by Paranoid-Modder.

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Cell Editor (Blue)- The blue version of the Cell Editor background. Requested by Tubbybloxian.

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Cell Editor (Gradient)- The blue and red-ish version of the Cell Editor background.

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Cell Editor (Burgundy)- The burgundy version of the Cell Editor background. Requested by Tubbybloxian.

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Cell Editor (Green)- An unused green variant of the Cell Editor background, found in the Creature Creator Trial files. Thank you Rob55rod for telling me about this one!

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Cell Editor (Beta)- The 'beta' version of the Cell Editor background, as seen in the 'hidden' cell editor. Requested by Tubbybloxian.

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Ghost Town- A ghost town, found also in the files for the Creature Creator Trial. The floor textures have been modified slightly for appearance.

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City- A city-style background, made from modified Spore textures and renders of a Spore-made building object. Requested by Liskomato.

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Cozy- A cozy living room with a fireplace. Made from various Spore building models with modified CC0 materials.

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Sketch- A world with the appearance of drawings on paper. Drawn by me.

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Creatures Nest- A nest from the game Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS. Textures taken from that game and modified by me. Requested by Pinapporaptor

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Candyland- A landscape of desserts and confectionery. Background loop drawn by me, the rest are modified CC0 images.

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Fern Prairie- A fern prairie biome from the game Saurian. Made from plant models, panoramic screenshots, and textures from Spore, and an image from the Saurian wiki to create the metallic-looking platform rim. Requested by TheRublixCube.

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There is also a plain greenscreen texture for chroma-keying purposes, but I may remove it from future versions of this mod as Rob55rod recently released a mod with of the same feature.

For those wondering why I have not made additional backgrounds for the outfitters or if I will in the future, I did try but unfortunately I faced some difficulties. The floor planes for each outfitter have a different collision mesh which I would have to account for, and for some reason certain background meshes would not load and unload properly. For now it doesn't seem like new backgrounds for the outfitters will be implemented unless I find a solution to this error. That said, the creature editor should be enough. Dark Injection offers the availability of all outfitter parts in the creature editor, and a properly-executed glitch in the adventure editor allows outfitted creatures to be loaded into the creature editor.

Download it the latest version (4/12/19) here. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1n3NpU ... 1gY3IHiXXi

[vanillacold]

Wow, this looks cool! It's perfect for taking screenshots of creatures in their natural enviroment!
Could you possibly add the early creature creator background and the space background?

I've included a few screenshots I took below:

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[I-am-THEdragon]

Rob55Rod already made an early creature creator background mod; otherwise I would've included it
As for the space background, that is very doable. Not sure what sort of ground plane to give it though, maybe a space dome thing? Yeah, that'd be pretty cool actually.

[Darhagonable]

This mod is really cool! Would you take suggestions for more backgrounds?

[I-am-THEdragon]

I do take suggestions! Though I can't quite guarantee I will be able to fulfill them all, or the quality at which I will do so. That said, I will at least try my best!

[Darhagonable]

I do take suggestions! Though I can't quite guarantee I will be able to fulfill them all, or the quality at which I will do so. That said, I will at least try my best!

I was thinking the editor backgrounds from the beta versions of spore. like the one shown here:
https://youtu.be/8PXiNNXUUF8?t=220
https://youtu.be/VFP9YXPSPC0?t=327
https://youtu.be/RVY7Rj2ucx8?t=153

What is special about this testdrive background is that it isn't flat and boring. it has small rocks and the ground goes up and down a little.

[I-am-THEdragon]

I could recreate that fairly easily, I think, except I have so far been unable to change the collision mesh for test drive so I don't know if I could create the uneven surface shown in those videos. Interestingly, though, the gradient background seems to be the same as the one for the beta vehicle editor, which I have actually found the file for. So that should give me a bit of a head start.

[rob55rod]

I could recreate that fairly easily, I think, except I have so far been unable to change the collision mesh for test drive so I don't know if I could create the uneven surface shown in those videos. Interestingly, though, the gradient background seems to be the same as the one for the beta vehicle editor, which I have actually found the file for. So that should give me a bit of a head start.

IMO you'd be better off using the beta Cell Editor background as a base tbh

[I-am-THEdragon]

Ah, I'd almost forgotten about the beta Cell Editor; thanks for the tip rob55rod! I ended up using that as a base instead but I used the skybox from the beta Vehicle Editor, as the Cell Editor (being viewed only from above) has only a sort of half-skybox. Below is what I have done. It isn't perfectly like the one in the videos (Like I said, I haven't figured out the collision mesh thing yet) but I am fairly happy with the result.

This is just a Blender render, but once I bake the shadows on the ground and rocks I'll export it all into Spore and it should look about the same.

[Darhagonable]

Awesome!

[I-am-THEdragon]

I'm glad you like it! Here it is in action.

It did indeed end up looking the same in game as it did in my render. I need to figure out how to get shadows working, however. Early in the development of this mod my vaporwave background had working shadows, but later it did not. I'm not entirely sure what makes the shadows work, but I hope to find out before my next release.

[paranoid_modder]

AAAAH i just love this mod sooo much! And those new backgrounds are just bangin! I am so excited to try them out.

Say...do you take requests?

[Tubbybloxian]

Maybe you could add the cell editor backgrounds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htDQZ5hfJxM&t=29s The first one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgeJsxup10k The second one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_w37OPTTc The last one.

The first one is the default cell editor.

The second one is the hidden cell editor.

I'm not sure if the last one is in the game files of Spore, since I haven't seen it appear ingame without mods.

Just some suggestions, keep in mind that they may have a black box surrounding them like the first one, although you could try to hide the black box and replace it with the texture of the ground for the cell editor background.

[I-am-THEdragon]

AAAAH i just love this mod sooo much! And those new backgrounds are just bangin! I am so excited to try them out.

Say...do you take requests?

Thanks! And yes, I do take requests!

Maybe you could add the cell editor backgrounds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htDQZ5hfJxM&t=29s The first one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgeJsxup10k The second one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_w37OPTTc The last one.

The first one is the default cell editor.

The second one is the hidden cell editor.

I'm not sure if the last one is in the game files of Spore, since I haven't seen it appear ingame without mods.

Just some suggestions, keep in mind that they may have a black box surrounding them like the first one, although you could try to hide the black box and replace it with the texture of the ground for the cell editor background.

I'm fairly certain I can do these; I'll give 'em a go! And that last one just looks like a hue-shifted version of the first one, so I could replicate it easily if it doesn't exist in the game's files.

[paranoid_modder]

Oh cool! because i was wondering if you could implement some sort of nebula like space galaxy BG. perhaps the platform the creature stands on could be a icy crystalized one? or a comet? or a metallic platform?

here are some incredibly fantastically made mockups of what i mean. 6800 hours in ms paint:

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I know you just added the space dome BG, but it would be so cool to see a bright, sparkly and colorful nebula BG, like a creature walking on a moon with no atmosphere.. something like that. im just trowing out ideas

[I-am-THEdragon]

I am pretty sure I can do that; a lot of nebula-like textures exist in the game's files and I could probably combine them all together into something like your example. I could even throw in the main screen galaxy texture for good measure, hehe.

Also, Tubbybloxian, I think I managed to make what you requested fairly on-point, what do you reckon? It was fairly quick to do because it required only existing textures (except the burgundy one which I recoloured) and no 3D details. I am currently a little bothered with the noticeable seam where the floor meets the wall in the second two so I might change the background mesh to the curved one the Early Creature Editor uses, but maybe it's alright as it is.

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[Sporefanatic0]

Wow very nice for taking screenshots of my captains and get news wallpapers!! Thanks and PLEASE!! keep Spore fresh!!

[Hightlyze]

how to uninstall the current background of modapi dark injections?

[I-am-THEdragon]

Paranoid_Modder, I've started experimenting with your request, but right now my texture isn't looking even half as majestic as your examples

Maybe it's because I'm using image files from Spore, and a lot of them are very, very low-res. But I'll keep at it, and hopefully make something that doesn't look like a bunch of thrown-together assets.

how to uninstall the current background of modapi dark injections?

ModAPI's easy uninstaller should be allow you to select which components of that mod to enable or disable. Either way, the DI creature creator background replaces the default one and shouldn't interfere with this mod AFAIK. I'm not really the person to ask, as DI isn't my mod. I think you'd be better off asking over in the DI thread.

[Hightlyze]

wait can i actually do it on the editor itself?