RimWorld

RimWorld

Animated Background
Thundercraft 13 Jan, 2020 @ 4:59pm
Video edit which removes moons (video file + instructions)
Below is the background video which has the 2 background moons edited out (i.e., no moons):


To use this:
  1. Find RimWorld Workshop folder at: {Steam install location}\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100\
  2. Copy (or cut) the \869600389\ located above and paste it into your \Mods\ folder.
  3. Rename the copied \869600389\ folder to "Background". (Important: You can not rename it to "Animated Background" or similar because it will stop working if you do.)
  4. Download "AnimatedTitle.ogv" from the link above.
  5. Cut and paste "AnimatedTitle.ogv" into \Mods\Background\Textures\UI\ , overwriting the original when prompted.
  6. Optional: Edit the About.xml in the \About\ folder with Notepad (or similar), replacing "<targetVersion>1.0.0</targetVersion>" with "<supportedVersions><li>1.0</li></supportedVersions>". (This eliminates an annoying, but harmless yellow error message.)

Notes:

Keep in mind that your RimWorld \Mods\ folder depends on which version you play:
  • Steam: {install location}\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods\
  • nonDRM: {install location}\RimWorld2408Win64\Mods\

The video quality isn't great. However, by my eye, it is about the same quality as the original video, which was already blurry.

Why I did this edit:

It really bothered me to see the two moons in the background swiftly orbit the planet in weird, highly elliptical orbits. As fast as they seem to move, they must complete an orbit in less than 2 minutes. Absolutely, it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Granted, the planet itself seems to rotate more rapidly than it should. But then I remember that the game speeds up time to make it playable - such that 1 in-game hour passes in just 41 seconds and 1 in-game day passes in less than 17 real minutes.

Though, in my mind, the planet only seems to rotate that fast because the viewpoint is set to an artificial orbit above the crashed ship. BTW: Most artificial satellites are in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and take less than 2 hours to orbit, many of these taking less than 90 minutes.

Another thing that bothered me was how the orbits of the two moons were not in a single orbital plane, but skewed in relation to each other.

So, I played around with some sophisticated video editing software (the name escapes me) to edit out the two moons. This was relatively easy as all I had to do was use a still image created from a single frame and then create a 'mask' the size and shape of the planet to effectively 'cut 'n paste' the planet animation. Though, I had to allow extra room on the bottom of the planet for the animated Aurora Boralis effect.
Last edited by Thundercraft; 13 Jan, 2020 @ 5:10pm