FREESPACE 2 BACKGROUND GENERATION UTILITY
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Contents:

I)   Introduction
II)  Installation
III) Usage
IV)  Contact Details
V)   Legal

I)   Introduction

The FS2BGU is a utility that will allow you to generate attractive, semi-organised backdrops for freespace 2 missions.  The utility will only create backdrops using the standard FS2 background bitmaps, although I may get around to incorporating the stars.tbl file into the program eventually.
The utility can either generate a blank mission with the background or it can create the background into a mission you have already created.

***WARNING***

Although I have tested the editor, it is still in beta stages.  I STRONGLY recommend that you backup your mission files before attempting to ue the existing mission feature.

II)  Installation

Simply place the FS2BGU.exe file into your Freespace2/data/missions folder and you're good to go.

III) Usage

First of all, you need to decide if you want to create a new file or edit the background of an existing mission.  Select either 'existing' for an existing mission or 'blank' to create a new mission.  Once selected, press the file open button ('...') or double-click on the file name box to select a filename.  Once you have your file selected, you are ready to set the variables that geenrate the background.

All the options are presented to you on the main screen.  For general instructions, click on the'?' button in the lower right of the screen.
Below are explanations of the different options:

Dark Nebula Amount:

This sets the number of dark nebula bitmaps that will be placed on the background.

Ordinary Nebula Amount:

This sets the amount of normal nebula bitmaps that will be placed on the background.

Planets Amount:

This sets the number of planet bitmaps that will be polaced on the background.

Dark Nebula Grouping:

This sets the restrictions on the dark nebula grouping.  The higher the percentage, the tighter the groups.

Ordinary Nebula Grouping:

This sets the restrictions on the normal nebula grouping.  The higher the percentage, the tighter the groups.

Amount of stars:

This is the same as the 'Number of stars' setting in the FRED2 background editor.

Average Bitmap Size:

This sets the average scale of the background bitmaps.  The bitmaps will typically vary about 2 'sizes' from this.  EG, if you have an average setting of 4, the range will be from 2.0 to 6.0, with the most common size being 4.0

Universal Grouping:

Universal Grouping is a special value that affects two things.  Firstly, it has an overall grouping effect on the dark and ordinary nebulae.  On top of this, the uniiversal grouping percentage is used to determine how many groups or 'clusters' of nebulae there will be.

Once everything is in place, click generate to create the file.  If you are using the existing file option, a backup of the original file will be created called <filename.bgu>.  If something goes wrong, you should be able to restore this file by renaming the .bgu extension to .fs2

IV)  Contact Details

Please, if you find any bugs, or have any suggestions, mail me at:
	dave88@ntlworld.com

V)   Legal

You may NOT distribute this software without my consent. Nor may you claim credit for any part of this production.  This is the sole work of D. Hodgson and as such, any attempt at claiming credit for this work is infringement of copyright.

Copyright @2000.