WOW! Most exciting addon so far, new terrain to explore! Can't wait to visit those planets. Seriously, you can't imagine how happy I feel after after seeing those screenshots. You've made my day s20dan, deserts and snow, whoohoo!

s20dan, those planets look great. I think I will merge your branch into my repository for the next alpha. The only thing I don't like is the addition of the empire, which I think is anachronistic and unlikely to exist in the far future, but I guess it adds flavour, and who knows what the future might hold. Some day I will add an anarchist faction, to please my friends in the UK anarchist federation 😉

Also, I will have to remove the unnamed starports since they will break missions as they stand currently (they will get picked as mission destinations and you won't know where to go).

Thanks Tom, glad you like 'em.

Im not too fussed about the Empire, although I will admit to having a certain fascination with the slave trade 🙂

Your right it doesnt make sense to have an Empirical super-power (Especially how we are supposed to learn from the mistakes of our past..), however I could easily see minor state empires made of a handful of starsystems, but I dont know how to make a faction without them appearing galaxy wide. Or even if its possible... is it?

I hadn't actually considered missions when I added the starports, oops :). What did you think of the idea though? I mean is it do-able...having a dynamically changing name for a base?

Something like (warning bad code hehe) :

If (playership_get_arg(8) > 0) name = some random name;

else name = 'name hidden from view' or 'the hidden base of XX system'; or something....

Cheers. I was 'umming' and 'ahhhing' over whether to add the desert worlds as strictly speaking they probably aren't very realistic, but Im glad I did now 😉

Little update:

Desert worlds are quite similar to the ice worlds now, they range from rocky mountainous wasteland to flat dune covered dried out oceans. And you will of course get many in between which will produce Arrakis like worlds, with the dunes and occasional mountain.:

[attachment=277:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 05-36-44-02.jpg]

The 'dune sea' from orbit:

[attachment=278:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 06-26-55-82.jpg]

random volcanic world, needs a little work as I think they look too similar to dead worlds now:

[attachment=279:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 06-43-55-12.jpg]

i will say this once again were assuming that every race is human and that every star is inhabited by us

whats stopping the empire coming from some other planet

were not the only beings in the galaxy surly

and we humans are too imperfect to not have someone want to spoil the party

im not being argumentative tomm im just arguing the case

nice planets tho man now try some jungle/forest ones and we have a winner im off to dream up some more ideas for stuff i will get back to ya with some more information system wise

@ S20Dan, Arrakis from Dune or what! Beautiful work S20Dan 😎

@ Geraldine :

[attachment=280:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 18-23-15-65.jpg]

If only 😉

OMG 😯 Quick! Distract it with a thumper or a nuke, a stick even!

Yes!, Yes! A 1000 times Yes! it must be! Giant Sand Worms in Pioneer!..........like you said S20Dan, if only 🙄

Thought I'd post a quick ditto to all the positive comments on your work s20dan. Magnificent! 😀

Thanks Marcel 😉

I'm open to any ideas if anyone wants a particular type of world in the game.

I was thinking of adding carbon/diamond worlds, could give a very interesting kind of world if I can figure out the correct settings for more jagged rocks and landscapes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet

Anyone who has played noctis should remember carbon planets and quartz planets 🙂

Someone mentioned forest planets, but there aren't any trees in the game. So a forest planet would just look identical to a normal world, not much point in adding them in unless someone makes some trees and adds them in.

I remember Noctis, landing in that catnip ball on a string. One time I left off the game on a beach. When I returned to the game there were a couple of animals on the shore in front of me. When I stood up they were startled and jumped into the ocean. As a feline, I had to pursue them. I caught up with one, but nothing happened when I did. Still, it was fun. Quartz planets would be cool.

Noctis was cool, spent many days playing it. The way you could operate your ships computers was awesome. I just love 3D cockpits and ship interiors. I remember dimming the lights on your ship and let a nearby star illuminate your bridge.

Yeah, carbon/diamond worlds are the best I can come up with too. Would be very nice to explore those!

Also, if overcasts were possible, it would be nice to have real dark spooky planets with lightning flashes every now and then. Maybe in the future? 😀

I think this is for s20dan. I'm not quite sure, but the new stuff in the Sol system is largely yours, right? Anyway I'm sightseeing around the system. Mars looks good. I landed at Olympus Mons and took off without being rotated like a pig on a spit. Pity that there's no Olympus Mons there. There's an Orbiter mesh for it, I wonder if that could be placed next to the base, but the real reason for this post is that I went from there to Deimos and at first it appeared as a starlike object as usual, then resolved itself into a planetoid but as I got closer it disappeared. Only the buildings were visible. As I neared it , it reappeared. I looked at the base but didn't try to land, going to Mars High instead. I left Mars High for Phobos and It worked as it should, remaining visible until I entered a medium orbit. Then it also disappeared except when I looked at it from an outside side view from my ship. I noticed that neither base was listed in the system list. When I approached the base and was directly over landing pad 1 I got a CTD before I could ask for landing clearance.

I'll look into this as I already have an idea what is causing the disappearing asteroid.

I am pretty sure that the 2 asteroids orbiting mars are just too small for the pioneer engine at its current settings, especially deimos.

Currently they use real world data, so their size, mass and orbit are all realistic. That will probably have to be changed so they dont disappear.

As for the CTD, that shouldnt be related to the new bases but rather just a normal CTD that you get sometimes. Save often is all I can say to that. But I will look into it anyway just incase there is something odd going on there.

As for mars, like every planet it is totally random and I cant give it certain features without altering every other similar planet too. However, I do happen to have a Height-map for mars, a very good one too. But I have been having trouble getting it into Pioneer. I also have a high quality heightmaps for the moon and Earth, these are actually from Orbiter or more specifically, Artlav's Orulex plugin for Orbiter.

Anyway if we can figure out how to get the heightmaps in, we can also start making a few of our own for some very interesting alien worlds.

Thanks for letting me know about those issues, I don't always have the time to test that all out.

Hell YES! 😉

Here was an attempt to change the earth heightmap :

[attachment=288:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-11 16-22-16-98.jpg]

Edit//

I've managed to get my hands on a 86400 x 43200 pixel heightmap from Nasa 🙂 A poor looking Earth would never again be a problem if I can somehow get this into the game, after it has been slightly reduced 🙂

I was also thinking that with a heightmap you could probably make a planet-wide city. The textures would be wrong but the shape would be correct, an entire world made of cubes, rectangles and triangles split up into 'blocks' with streets seperating them....

You used to be able to catch birds in that game 🙂 A nod to the feline component hehe

Unfortunately that pic is still about the best I have managed with regards to the heightmaps 🙄

I can't find a program to export to a format that pioneer recognises.

According to the wiki it has to be a binary format, but the binary heightmap I created was unable to be read...

Anyone have any ideas?

@ Marcel. I haven't been able to replicate the bugs you mentioned to do with Deimos and Phobos. I was able to fly around the asteroids and land at the bases. Odd.

Well, the disappearing asteroids may be due to my video card. As you may have read, it has its limitations and the CTD is probably a random alpha related crash. I'll try landing there again later and let you know.

Edit;

Ok, I loaded my save game near Deimos and left it paused while I made dinner. After a while the game crashed again. I loaded it again and landed without incident. I'm going to see if they have a room for rent 'cause it's time for me to go to bed.

I think that because the asteroids are so small, that too much of the asteroid is being loaded at the same time. Normally on a large planet/planetoid only the parts that are close to you are loaded up in higher quality, the close you get the higher the quality of the terrain.

But perhaps because the asteroid is so small then all of it is loaded up as high quality as you are close to every part when you reach the surface, even the terrain on the other side is close enough to load in higher quality.

Its just an idea but it would explain why those 2 asteroids slow the game down on my setup, and might explain why they disappear on your setup.

My Sol tour has taken me to the Jupiter "system". Io looks nice. I really enjoyed landing at Dante's Base in the crater. I bought potsmoke66's Toscan fighter there 'cause it looks cool. Then I docked at Clarke's Station. I was thinking, how about naming a base or station after Tom Morton? Morton Station or Tom's Folly or something like that? He deserves it! There's a couple of unnamed bases around Mars, you know. 😉

edit:

When I got to Saturn I was dismayed to find out that it's lost its rings. I don't know if this is a tomm or s20dan issue, but they were there before. Now I'm heading for Uranus, which always sounds embarrassing. 🙄

another edit:

Ok, I found a ring around Uranus. 😳

For now Saturn with no rings is just how it is. I dont know exactly why but I have ideas, all I know is that no-one has actually changed saturn.

I think its the game that now places saturn with no rings due to the random nature of planet and system placement.

EG saturn is classed simply as a medium gas giant, those types of planets in the game have a chance of having rings, but it is not guaranteed.

Its possible that the addition of new bases and moons in the system has changed the seed for Saturn, but to be honest I really don't know how that works(seed selection).

'Tom's folly' sounds better as there are lots of 'Morton starports' around.

I'll let you get back to flying round uranus ring. 😉

By the time you replied I'd left Uranus. (sigh) No wonder nobody built any bases there. 🙄 There's a ring around Neptune too, but Neptune's the wrong color. Perhaps Saturn's ring was also a victim of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Oh Oh, Spaghetti Os! I docked at Poseidon station and I'm going to go down and explore Triton for a bit. Your icy moons look cool! (pun intended)

edit:

You know, I think Triton looks more like the Moon than the Moon. Much better color and craters. Made it to Pluto Reasearh Base, goodnight. 😉

Yeah uranus is a dirty place, no-one wants to live up there.

Ok this is getting silly hehe.

For the next alpha I was going to redo all of the other worlds that have been missed. so that would include the moon, pluto venus ect ect. IE Rocky world, Rocky Cratered world, Rocky world with thick co2 atmosphere ect.. Even better would be if I could just use one of the moon heightmaps that I have, then it would be exactly like the moon.

Maybe even have a go at making some new gas giant types too, plus a gas giant that is like saturn and guaranteed to have rings to solve that little problem.

And providing that Tom's ok with it, I will go ahead and add in most of the other bodies in our solar system, as there are only about half of them in at the moment.

Imagine a conversation at the spacebar.

"Where are you from, stranger?"

"I come from Uranus"

A fight'll break out every every time! 😆

Ok, time to get Sirius...

hehe, hey your avatar now looks like Russel Brand 😆

oh dear. 🙄 This is all Greak to me... I should be taken out and shot for that one hehe.

Greak -3,4

This evening, I browsed through this thread and for the first time I saw those screenshots of Io. Can't believe I've missed those! I immediately fired up Pioneer again (haven't had the chance to play it much lately) and visited Io. WOW! That moon looks real now from space. I think this is my favourite terrain yet. The standard terrain Io had before is one of the most boring terraintypes in the game but now it looks fantastic. I've been exploring Io the whole evening now 😀 . Fantastic job!

I still haven't come across snowy planets by the way. Does anyone have a location for a snow planet?

I see what you mean about Triton, Marcel. Must be that spaghetti monster again playing pranks, swapping our moon with triton.

@ Kinghaggis, Europa is a rocky ice world, a bit like a snowy world at the moment. But it will probably change in the future once Ice worlds have been fixed. You will see the problem with ice worlds if you go to Europa.

Or for an alternate kind of ice world you can find a cold terraformed world(check the planets surface temperature), which will be mostly ice, the marginal worlds are the most likely candidate for that. Nice and easy to find as they have their own graphic in the system view.

Im glad you like IO, its great your having as much fun exploring it as I had making them 🙂

But of course the real credit goes to Tom, as its all his code. I just copy, paste then modify 😆