HAX StarPaint

Works for NMS Beyond

Adds the ability for stars to be a range of colors instead of just the typical 4 colors in vanilla NMS.

Background stars in system space are also colored, instead of being just white, though they are very hard to see.
To see the background stars you will need a mod like Lo2k's Black Space that removes the cloudy space debris.
No Space Dust and No Space Plasma are also recommended.

For a clear galaxy map, get Lo2k's Black Map mod.

HaxStarPaint includes Lo2k's ColorfulStarfields. You do NOT need a separate mod for it.

This mod is made primarily as a resource for other modders to make their own colormaps.
You will need this mod to use those colormaps. There is a wide variety of colormap possibilities.

It does come with 4 optional vanilla colormaps in the downloads section that you can choose from
to add some subtle color variety to the stars while maintaining the vanilla style.

Note: the Blackbody (bottom-left) and Skittles colormaps (top-right) shown in the screenshot are
NOT INCLUDED in this mod. They are separate mods on nexus. See: BlackbodyStars and StarSkittles
Top-left is the Vanilla-Gradient colormap.
Bottom-right is the Vanilla-Gradient-Vibrant colormap.


REQUIREMENTS:
- No Man's Sky v2.0+ (BEYOND)

MODIFIED ASSETS:
- SHADERS\PSTREAM.SHADER.BIN


INSTALLATION:

You must install the zHaxStarPaint-vX.X.pak into your MODS directory.
This pak contains the core shader code needed for the color maps to work.

You must also install ONE colormap paks from the COLORMAPS directory in the zip or
find other StarPaint colormaps on Nexus.

The shipped mod paks are named appropriately so that they load in the correct order therefore you shouldn't
need to do anything, however it's important to note that the colormap must be loaded before the zHaxStarPaint pak.
This is different from what is typically expected for overrides and addons. If you have problems, make sure that
the colormap pak is being loaded before the main pak.


OPTIONAL COLORMAP PAKS:

There are 2 base styles provided:
- Solid (4-color only). Similar to vanilla NMS.
- Gradient (4 colors, using a gradient blend to allow a range of color)

Each style has 2 variations available:
- Natural (default, more subtle/natural colors)
- Vibrant (colors are more saturated, stars will be much less white)

- Vanilla:
Should be the same as in the vanilla game. You will see no difference.
Only the 4 vanilla colors are used with no additional color range.

- Vanilla-Vibrant:
Like the 'Vanilla' colormap. Only the 4 vanilla colors are used with no additional color range.
The vibrant stars are more saturated.

- Vanilla-Gradient:
Same 4 colors as in vanilla NMS but using gradient ranges so star colors will vary.

- Vanilla-Gradient-Vibrant:
Vibrant version of 'Vanilla-Gradient'


TROUBLESHOOTING:

- No stars appear in the game at all. Neither in the loading scene, in system space/the sky or in the galaxy map.
Along with the zHaxStarPaint pak, you must install a colormap pak. There are some colormap paks in the optional downloads.

- Stars are visible in the galaxy map but the loading scene just has white streaks.
The zHaxStarPaint pak must be loaded after any colormap paks. Make sure that zHaxStarPaint is loaded last.

- Stars are visible in the galaxy map and in the loading scene but there are no background stars in space.
This is expected.
In vanilla NMS, there is too much dust and nebulae to see many stars in the background.
If you want to see the background stars when flying in space, you will need the mods mentioned in the
description at the top of this page.