Chocolate flavoured galaxy

[TonySpike]

ross 128 has merlin as an ice world orbiting a gas giantpluto could go down as an ice planetbut it depends on weather your doing them hoth style or polis massa style (snowy as well as icy) or just having pluto as rocky with a cold temperaturepersonaly tho merlin like planets should have a frozen sea as well as snowy land and the description should mention the atmosphere (how thick it is) i mean their must be reasons how snowy planets come aboutas i mentioned in my ideas post i like tatooine style worlds or worlds made up of just one thing but for these to work they would have to be in orbit around a A class hot white star or have 3 suns like tatooine itself or just be like venus and have a thick atmosphereother possibilitys could be jungle/forest planets (like altairs biggs colony)perhaps not all of them have to be planets .............but instead they could be moons of gas giants (like yavin 4 or the forest moon of endor or ross 128 merlin) maybe a gas giant could have more than moon like this (it would create incredable planetrises in some systems where the orbits are close together and the moons are big enough) ya see one of my fave places to visit in frontier was wolf 630 with the 6 suns (including a white dwarf and a brown dwarf in binary orbit of one another)

[s2odan]

Well I've seperated ice and water worlds now, so that there will be no more ice above freezing and no more liquid water below freezing.Liquid water worlds now have thick atmosphere and are in the 0 - 100C temp range.Ice worlds have a very thin atmosphere and are below 0C.
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personaly tho merlin like planets should have a frozen sea as well as snowy land and the description should mention the atmosphere
Thats what I've tried to do, some planets will have mainly frozen water others mainly snowy mountains, its all up to how the game places the planets randomly so there should be plenty of variation. But the description is the same for all ice worlds at the moment, I didn't think to seperate them out. Its a good idea I'll do that.In this pic you can see both mountains and glaciers:[attachment=269:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 06-55-34-98.jpg]another ice world[attachment=270:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 07-06-03-33.jpg]water world with possibility of small islands for fun [attachment=271:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 07-06-21-81.jpg]Those pics are taken without shaders so they should look even better with them on.

[TonySpike]

wowzers they look cool

[s2odan]

Cheers. Gonna have a try at some other planet types when I get back on monday.

[s2odan]

Heres how my attempt at desert/dead worlds is coming along:[attachment=274:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-59-36-56.jpg]Dried out ocean/river:[attachment=275:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-50-18-84.jpg]Sand dunes (This is random I havent yet figured out how to force sand-dunes for every desert world, although there should at least be more than on life-bearing worlds):[attachment=276:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-48-22-96.jpg]The strong red and yellow colours are actually chosen by the game randomly, it seems to like bright objects.You can set colours yourself but it removes a random element from the planetary generation.

[KingHaggis]

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!

[tomm]

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).

[s2odan]

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....
KingHaggis wrote:
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!
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]

[TonySpike]

tomm wrote:
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).
i will say this once again were assuming that every race is human and that every star is inhabited by uswhats stopping the empire coming from some other planetwere not the only beings in the galaxy surlyand we humans are too imperfect to not have someone want to spoil the partyim not being argumentative tomm im just arguing the casenice 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

[Geraldine]

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

[s2odan]

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

[Geraldine]

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

[Marcel]

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

[s2odan]

Thanks Marcel

[s2odan]

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.[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet[/url] 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.

[Marcel]

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.

[KingHaggis]

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?

[Marcel]

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.

[s2odan]

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

[s2odan]

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.