Beyond the Worlds
Brought to you by the creators of Mass Effect: Beyond the Relays, Beyond the Worlds is a standalone release of the planet class overhaul that has been completed as part of the upcoming 1.0 release of ME:BtR. BtW is heavily inspired by the planetary overhaul mods that have come before, and as development on ME:BtR progressed it became apparent that in order for us to fully present the Mass Effect Galaxy in the way we wished, we could not rely wholly on just integrating other mods that have come before, and from this realization Beyond the Worlds was born.
Functionally, Beyond the Worlds follows the approach of Real Space: New Frontiers – and in fact the majority of Real Space 3.8, as well as some smaller parts of New Frontiers are included in Beyond the Worlds, primarily graphical assets to supplement our own. For those of you unfamiliar with Real Space: New Frontiers, it is quite simple – instead of adding a slew of new and unique planet classes, New Frontiers and Beyond the Worlds rely on unique planetary modifiers referred to as subclasses. These subclass modifiers control everything from habitability to the planets actual look.
Anyone familiar with Mass Effect most likely will be familiar with the lore surrounding turian and quarian biology, where they are based on dextro-amino acids instead of levo. In order to properly present this, every base planet class now has a dextro-variant, and to also better represent that some species may prefer higher gravity worlds instead of them just being a negative modifier, worlds that are larger than 20 at galaxy generation now spawn as a high gravity variant of that class, allowing more flexibility in species habitability and preferences.
These few adjustments are accompanied by an extensive graphical overhaul of a planet’s graphics – each planet class now contains at least 3 surface texture variations, and factoring in that each subclass includes an additional 3 looks with 4 potential subclasses per base class, and you’re looking at 15 unique textures for one planet class. But on top of this, we have also implemented and expanded on a unique method to render a more realistic atmosphere developed by Lex Peregrine. Each habitable world has 4 different atmospheric colors that can be applied, for a total of 60 unique looks per planet class. All of Sol’s planets and moons now also have unique and accurate (wherever possible) textures as well.
Every planetary subclass has a unique building available for it, to allow for better utilization/development of that world. Additionally, there are a few new planet classes created as well, as we have added a Swamp class, and expanded Gas Giants into Hot Giants and Ice Giants as well. For a look at the subclasses we have added, please look through the uploaded photos here on the workshop.
A HUGE thanks goes out to Annatar for his work on Real Space and allowing us to integrate various parts of Real Space into both ME:BtR and BtW. Beyond the Worlds does NOT contain the entirety of Real Space or of New Frontiers, so this is not intended as a replacement for those mods, although out of necessity both of those mods are considered incompatible with BtW.
A huge thanks to Gatekeeper and Lex Peregrine from Planetary Diversity – PD was the initial inspiration for us to consider undertaking our own planetary overhaul, and we have a ton of respect for PD and its series of submods. ME:BtR used Planetary Diversity has it’s underlying planetary system, but as we progressed in development for ME:BtR, it became clear that for us to fully realize our vision, we had to build a system up to scratch in a way that was flexible enough to account for each class to be created in multiple variants. As such the decision to remove PD from ME:BtR isn’t one we made lightly and is due to no lack of respect for their work. No assets or content from Planetary Diversity is included in BtW (outside of just inspiration and ideas of various planet classes.)
Additional thanks to the following:
– Astra Planetshine on DeviantArt
– Dwayne – Creator of the Immersive Galaxy texture mod here on the workshop (Molten and Frozen World textures use assets from it, permission is provided on one of his mod’s discussions.
Development on BtW will be sporadic and take a backseat to overall development on ME:BtR. As we finished the design of our planetary overhaul, we wanted to share a bit with you what we’ve been working on and are excited for any feedback you all have for us on the approach taken here. With that said, there are a few things we’d like to someday revisit with BtW if we get the chance –
– Further integration of Real Space and Real Space: New Frontiers
– Additional Planetary Buildings / Decisions
– Tidally-Locked Worlds
– Compatibility/Integration of Real Space: Planetary Stations
As stated above, Beyond the Worlds is NOT compatible with the following:
– Real Space (or any of its addons)
– Planetary Diversity (or any of its addons)
– Mass Effect: Beyond the Relays – Beta (or any future release, as it will be packaged and custom tweaked for the full release of ME:BtR)
– Other Total Conversions
Interested in our other mods or want to follow development of Beyond the Worlds or Mass Effect: Beyond the Relays? Join us on our Discord![discord.com]
