[RELEASE] Povray Planets 1.0

[submersible]

That is a literal edge case - there are some comments in the planettool code for Cubes about that. What do you see with cubex in passthru ie: planettool -i cubex input.png -o cubex output.png --size <as-per-input>
There is probably a special case for cube to cubex and the reverse transform where rotation is 0,0,0 ; this could be done pixel perfect rather than with a sampler.

[cbr]

cubex 2 cubex size 512

All cubesides are shifted

[Cholmondely]

If I may be so bold, what is the current state of play of this project?

Does it take full advantage of a_c_'s work on Oolite v1.88? And on v1.90?

Edited to add: Note on Seams & Cloud cover in newer versions of Oolite.

See the posts here for details and fixes for 3 of the Galaxy 1 planets - and also for unwanted cloud cover on gas giants.

[Cholmondely]

Just to announce that a rejig of the original Famous Planets textures by Stranger is available through Roolite.

The link is here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... BSfkdTwMmQ (the discovery of this owes much to Alnivel!)

Stranger has created/amassed some 100-odd highly detailed planetary textures roughly corresponding to the original Famous Planets.


Notes:

1) The Expansion Manager's FPO Zaonce & FPO Lave are newer versions of the textures in these OXPs (with normal maps added, and Zaonce being different)

2) They seem to override the textures in Povray Planets (which themselves seem to override the textures in his Planetary Systems oxp's) so you can end up with a superb-looking Galaxy 1!

3) PAGroove's missing music pack is here too!

4) See comparison chart on Guide to Ambience OXPs for more detail!

5) Stranger's 2020 notes on the future for his project are here: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Plane ... ture_Plans


Famous Planets Overhaul: Bemaera


Famous Planets Overhaul: Vetitice

[hiran]

This addon plus maybe the planetfall (is that the one allowing to land on planets) might be a nice combination.
But it would just make it possible to go down on a planet, which in closeup just looks like docking a space station. You enter a glidepath, after that you can trade and launch again.

Old Starflight had some more thrills when landing on different star's planets, and somehow that model might get included in a future version of Oolite (if there ever is a future version). Are there some Starflight pilots out there?

[Cholmondely]

This addon plus maybe the planetfall (is that the one allowing to land on planets) might be a nice combination.
But it would just make it possible to go down on a planet, which in closeup just looks like docking a space station. You enter a glidepath, after that you can trade and launch again.

Old Starflight had some more thrills when landing on different star's planets, and somehow that model might get included in a future version of Oolite (if there ever is a future version). Are there some Starflight pilots out there?

Which elements would you wish to include?

I had a stab: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Starflight_1986 - but spent forever equipping my ship/crew!

[hiran]

Which elements would you wish to include?

I had a stab: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Starflight_1986 - but spent forever equipping my ship/crew!

When you landed on a planet, you could choose the coordinates to visit. The game would not only have unique planets and positions, it would even remember that you landed/scavenged an area. And you would see even a wrecked rover where you ran out of energy on a previous trip.
Do not ask me where all that data was stored - the game just came on 720 kB.

Also the different encounters in space had so much more conversation with alien races. Despite the primitive graphics the plot was a lot more complex than simple shoot to kill.

Yep, these two elements would be a nice addon for Oolite.

[Cholmondely]

Which elements would you wish to include?

I had a stab: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Starflight_1986 - but spent forever equipping my ship/crew!

When you landed on a planet, you could choose the coordinates to visit. The game would not only have unique planets and positions, it would even remember that you landed/scavenged an area. And you would see even a wrecked rover where you ran out of energy on a previous trip.
Do not ask me where all that data was stored - the game just came on 720 kB.

Also the different encounters in space had so much more conversation with alien races. Despite the primitive graphics the plot was a lot more complex than simple shoot to kill.

Yep, these two elements would be a nice addon for Oolite.

The first, planet landing, sounds like something for the additional planets in a system, then. Not the inhabited main planet.

With the way that the Oolite planet textures work, I wonder if it is possible, and if it were, how realistic it would be (just flat 2D OXP'ed textures - all the additional planets have these 2D OXP'ed textures, and they often seem to "flop" detail-wise when up too close). From what I saw on the YouTube (my own game never got far enough) there were no impassable rivers or mountains or anything like that. Do the lakes work as barriers? Cody was telling me that the vanilla game (procedural) main planets have 3D texture elements, but I've never tried landing on one.

At the moment, I doubt that what we have would look much good. And I think that when you touch the planet surface, you explode. If I am correct, Thargoid's PlanetFall OXP solves this by creating an invisible space-station dock just above the planet surface which you dock inside. And then transfers you magically into low orbit when you launch. So this might need tweaking the Vanilla game code to prevent the explosion and allow one to roam over the surface. But it would also need a heck of a lot of work to produce a workable planet surface.

So there would be at least three elements needing work: Vanilla game code, the OXP itself, and a functioning planet texture.

Why not try it yourself? Install PlanetFall and experiment with each of the texture packs varieties and try landing/flying close up on a vanilla game planet, an "Additional planet", a "Povray Planet" and a "FPO Planet". (If you've not tried, you need a gentle angle and a speed of 100km or just under when you get close to the surface (5km?)). You can then see if anything of what we have might do the job!



The second, aliens, sounds much easier to oxp, personally speaking (but I've not seen what happens in Starflight yet). But! Since neither of us are exactly Javascript experts, we would need to bamboozle somebody else into doing all the hard work. Unless you are desperate to start on a new career

By the way, Hiran, did you come across this: https://bravearmy.com/starflight/2019/0 ... ships-log/

[hiran]

When you landed on a planet, you could choose the coordinates to visit. The game would not only have unique planets and positions, it would even remember that you landed/scavenged an area. And you would see even a wrecked rover where you ran out of energy on a previous trip.
Do not ask me where all that data was stored - the game just came on 720 kB.

Also the different encounters in space had so much more conversation with alien races. Despite the primitive graphics the plot was a lot more complex than simple shoot to kill.

Yep, these two elements would be a nice addon for Oolite.

The first, planet landing, sounds like something for the additional planets in a system, then. Not the inhabited main planet.

With the way that the Oolite planet textures work, I wonder if it is possible, and if it were, how realistic it would be (just flat 2D OXP'ed textures - all the additional planets have these 2D OXP'ed textures, and they often seem to "flop" detail-wise when up too close). From what I saw on the YouTube (my own game never got far enough) there were no impassable rivers or mountains or anything like that. Do the lakes work as barriers? Cody was telling me that the vanilla game (procedural) main planets have 3D texture elements, but I've never tried landing on one.

At the moment, I doubt that what we have would look much good. And I think that when you touch the planet surface, you explode. If I am correct, Thargoid's PlanetFall OXP solves this by creating an invisible space-station dock just above the planet surface which you dock inside. And then transfers you magically into low orbit when you launch. So this might need tweaking the Vanilla game code to prevent the explosion and allow one to roam over the surface. But it would also need a heck of a lot of work to produce a workable planet surface.

So there would be at least three elements needing work: Vanilla game code, the OXP itself, and a functioning planet texture.

This might be done slightly different:
While in normal OXP mode, you can at most approach the planet. As soon as you enter the atmosphere (or let's say some planet-specific radius) the view switches to landing mode. Here the game could completely switch the UI and let the user choose coordinates where to land. Then the auto-pilot controlled descent would take you down to the planet surface. Oh wonder, there is not space station. But again the view changes, and you would see some map view with the ship in the center and a rover to roam about.

For the space and planet approach we have sufficient graphics and code. For the descent some of the planet's graphics could be used as voxels to render a zooming surface (interpolation in saved or procedural or whatever fashion).

Finally, when on the surface, a completely different window might take over the show, hiding that Oolite now handed over to some yet to program game extension. This one would need detail information on the planet - at least for repeating visitors.

Why not try it yourself? Install PlanetFall and experiment with each of the texture packs varieties and try landing/flying close up on a vanilla game planet, an "Additional planet", a "Povray Planet" and a "FPO Planet". (If you've not tried, you need a gentle angle and a speed of 100km or just under when you get close to the surface (5km?)). You can then see if anything of what we have might do the job!

Having looked at a free clone of Starflight it might even be feasible to make the two projects work together. Oolite for interstellar travel while Starflight for planetary EVAs. In that case just interface code would have to be created and the projects could benefit from each other.

The second, aliens, sounds much easier to oxp, personally speaking (but I've not seen what happens in Starflight yet). But! Since neither of us are exactly Javascript experts, we would need to bamboozle somebody else into doing all the hard work. Unless you are desperate to start on a new career

By the way, Hiran, did you come across this: https://bravearmy.com/starflight/2019/0 ... ships-log/

I came across that page. Have a look at the video in the bottom - it gives you a glimpse of what conversations with aliens might be looking like.
Basically you'd open a comms channel, and tell your comms officer what to talk about. It is all about selecting from prepared phrases. Sometimes you'd just have to run a question often enough to get a different answer.

The flight log this guy implemented is a gigantic leapfrog ahead since at that time you'd had to have pen and paper ready - even a starmap to draw allt he wormholes into was very helpful. Oh yes, that was the time when a year had more than enough days...

[cbr]

For the space and planet approach we have sufficient graphics and code. For the descent some of the planet's graphics could be used as voxels to render a zooming surface (interpolation in saved or procedural or whatever fashion).

I believe the library.oxp contains a demo in which planets/moon/ships can be manipulated to perform scripted movements...