Pioneer dev forum

Starting a new thread since this doesn't directly affect restructuring the system generator.

Ittiz wrote:Most of the code I've been looking at changing is the planet generation code itself. One thing I think this game needs, and should be easy to add, is rogue planets. Sure there are brown dwarfs, but there are ten times the number of planets free floating around in space. Not sure how easy they would be to add without messing everything else up though, but this game hasn't been released yet so I don't know how big of a deal that really is.

"Need" is a loaded term. We're not trying to create a realistic simulation of the universe. Everything we do still has to work in the context of a game. That said, it is worth trying if you have the inclination. Plenty of stuff in the game came from experiments and crazy ideas.

I think the main difficulty will come from the fairly strong distinction we have between "star" and "planet" right now. Its much less of an issue than it was since stars became terrain bodies. Probably the major problem will come from lighting - without a star, where is the light coming from? There's a protection in place that will trip right now (if no lights, add one) but that's currently only used for hyperspace. Not hard to overcome, I think.

The game will never be "released", though we're definitely working towards stability. What you're proposing will change the universe and so will invalidate old save files. We try not to do that unless we have to, but that's never a reason not to implement something, particularly as an experiment. I'm working on a new savefile format and supporting code to allow upgrading old savefiles, though I'm still not entirely sure a universe change is something it could survive. But yeah, for now just do whatever, we'll worry about that later.

Would rogue planets be visible on the star map, or would one have to have the exact coordinates for them to go there?

I'm thinking rogue planets could be useful for military missions, and/or some Lovecraftian expedition, but maybe not that central for game play from where I'm sitting. But who knows?

Asteroids, comets & an Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt would be of much greater impact (no pun intended!) on the game, we currently don't have any or a way of defining Asteroids except as small planets, and those have some serious issues.

A way of defining asteroid belts, and generating rogues, then picking composition so it's an asteroid or a comet would be good so that we can visit, mine them, instance military bases and small mining outposts/spaceports on them and integrate them into missions etc would add massively.

Rogue planets could be simulated by allowing for a type of star system with just planet(s) and no star or grav-point? Then you could flag them as such and show/hide them in the sector view on demand.

FluffyFreak wrote:Rogue planets could be simulated by allowing for a type of star system with just planet(s) and no star or grav-point? Then you could flag them as such and show/hide them in the sector view on demand.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. There's nothing particularly special about stars.

robn wrote: Probably the major problem will come from lighting - without a star, where is the light coming from? There's a protection in place that will trip right now (if no lights, add one) but that's currently only used for hyperspace. Not hard to overcome, I think.

The game will never be "released", though we're definitely working towards stability. What you're proposing will change the universe and so will invalidate old save files. We try not to do that unless we have to, but that's never a reason not to implement something, particularly as an experiment. I'm working on a new savefile format and supporting code to allow upgrading old savefiles, though I'm still not entirely sure a universe change is something it could survive. But yeah, for now just do whatever, we'll worry about that later.

Would it be possible to use omnidirectional lighting rather than point lighting?

I haven't looked at that part of the code yet, but maybe the planets could be "added" rather then messing with the whole code. Like a two step process: 1: generate stars systems, 2: generate planet systems.

FluffyFreak wrote:Asteroids, comets & an Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt would be of much greater impact (no pun intended!) on the game, we currently don't have any or a way of defining Asteroids except as small planets, and those have some serious issues.

A way of defining asteroid belts, and generating rogues, then picking composition so it's an asteroid or a comet would be good so that we can visit, mine them, instance military bases and small mining outposts/spaceports on them and integrate them into missions etc would add massively.

It would also be nice for small and far out bodies, if you could "hide" them in the system views and only if you fly close enough to them (I'm thinking AUs rather than kilometers here) or they are revealed to you by missions, they appear just like other bodies. So, not the system as a whole is explored or unexplored, but only parts are explored (larger planets, closer minor bodies). While most bodies of Sol might be known in 33th century, I would doubt so for Kuiper Belt Objects of any outskirt colony system.

System views would also have to be changed, if we had a lot of minor bodies (think asteroid belts), maybe a special "Minor Bodies" screen.