Its a cool idea, but the problem with adding in more descriptions at the moment is that the galaxy is still in a 'state of flux' during the creation process, so systems are changing a lot over the development process.

In one alpha you may have said starsystem, but in another alpha it would have changed characteristics.

It was not fun repeatably trying out different settings (the seed) for Alioth and Epsilon Eridani so that they would keep their terran type worlds to fit the descriptions with each alpha. 😉

But Tom has been working on some new galaxy generation code which should mean that the galaxy stops changing with every alpha. So once thats added, I think that would be the best time to really start adding in the descriptions.

The new system generation code is a dead-end. I broke an unwritten rule of pioneer development: never simulate something when faking it works just fine. The climate mini-simulation was going to take too much CPU. They could be generated async but frankly that is a waste of time and a huge code churn when we should be making the game playable and not breaking it.

Probably it is best to fix the remaining issues with the current one:

Crucially:

* Moons are always generated as accretion disks. Instead 3 types should be generated (dependent on primary mass): captured asteroids, collision-derived (earth moon) and accretion disk

* Human habitation out at 500ly is maybe too far...

* Need to take care with system age. Only main-sequence systems should be considered for life.

* Brown dwarfs orbiting primaries (generated as planets) incorrectly get planet surface temperature (like -100C)

Less importantly:

* Need to add giant and supergiant stars

* Orbit circularization (or leave for v2.0)

* Rotational period and orbital period synchronisation (or leave for v2.0)

Remember that system generation can't be touched once it is v1.0. Terrain height and color fractals can still be changed and added though.

As for what generated systems should look like, planet types etc, this is largely an informed guess + personal taste as this stuff isn't really understood yet. I'd like the systems to remain 'plausible', but the real world is so routinely implausible that again this is a matter of taste.

I'm not coding anything right now because I have courses coming up, and I'm sick of coding anyway. I'm trying to get some coders I know interested, but usually people with the range of skills have other projects, or even (god forbid) jobs. However I'm sure we can reach v1.0 if we stay focused on missions, bugs, rough edges.

Its a shame about that Tom I was quite looking forward to the massively in-depth system as I very much like that sort of thing, but like you said If you can fake it and get the same effect then I suppose thats how it has to be.

But who knows, maybe something for the future...?

I would just say drastically reduce the percentage chance of life in other places, don't remove the chance entirely, as we don't know whats out there 🙂

Plus red and blue giants are cool and its nice to have another reason to visit them 😆

I remember there were some very in-depth discussions on the Infinity forums about plant and animal life evolving in unusual circumstances and IIRC theres no reason that Plant life couldn't evolve with nearly any star providing that the conditions were acceptable, temp CO2 O2 ect. But who can say there aren't other types of plants that can work using other chemical reactions?

Animal life is obviously different and requires more stringent conditions to evolve as far as we know.

So in order to simulate the plant life evolving around unusual stars, we would need more colours for the terran terrains with orange or purple grass instead of green ect 🙂

Theres a chart somewhere that I have been trying to find on plant colour to star colour, the most efficient colour for a plant for the given star colour and atmospheric colour.

Well good luck with your courses Tom and I hope they don't keep you from us for too long hehe

i think supergiant stars are something that can be flushed out easily enough