Hi, this is something I have been thinking for a long time. Every time I see a photo posted in astrophotography (see for example https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/ collection, or https://images.nasa.gov/search?q=nebula&page=1&media=image,video,audio&yearStart=1920&yearEnd=2026) I keep thinking about how amazing it would be, if I could play RotP on that "map".

This is an amazing example (not my photo):

https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/1w2lnvm/horsehead_n_flame/#lightbox

While I am listing this as a P4, from this simple idea, many strategy and mods to the original game come to mind. Not going into detail on this now.

I can describe a possible algorithm that could handle this gracefully, while keeping the game mechanics intact.

First of all, there could be an algorithm generating "maps" that look like that, or it could be a file provided by the player (more difficult, but doable). Another possibility is for the game to ship with a collection of such source images.

The algorithm would have to recognize which stars should be part of the foreground (i.e. part of the game) and which should be erased or part of the background. Assigning star color, resources, homeworlds, etc, should be trivial, maybe (or maybe not) with added safeguards for a game that respects the difficulty levels chosen.

Now obviously as the user zooms in, the nebula colors should be faded away more and more, and the look replaced more or less with what it is today. In other words, the zoom level defines how the game shows the galaxy, while the nebula dynamics are in play respecting the shape of the nebula in the actual image, whether faded away or not.

(The photo uploaded in this post is taken by me. Another interesting one, also mine: https://flic.kr/p/2svDvst. This last one is interesting, because it shows how an algorithm can extract a "galactic map" from almost any random photo https://flic.kr/p/2svFw9d <- https://flic.kr/p/2svyzoL, almost philosophically, lol)

Let me know your thoughts.