plannets.oxp - is it still working?

CaptKev · Post by **CaptKev** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:05 pm

Nice one, Commander Mysenses.

Post by **Kaks** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:08 pm

Textures, give us the raw textures!

@CaptKev, fair enough! 1 out of 3 is 1 more than I thought myself!

I'll see if I can figure out a more industrially planet texture, and I should be able to send a couple more desert planets...

CaptKev · Post by **CaptKev** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:55 pm

@Kaks, I've just tweaked it slightly and here's what it looks like in-game.

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:20 pm

There's some really awesome planet textures being created here! Amazing work guys, love it!

Will these textures work with the Mac as well as the PC? The earlier attempts never were fully available to we poor Mac users, which is a bit sad for a game that originally started out as only Mac...

CaptKev · Post by **CaptKev** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:27 pm

@Star Gazer, it will be just a standard OXP, so should work on all platforms.

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:38 pm

That skyscraper thing looks just like a trumble furball!

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:54 pm

CaptKev wrote:
@Star Gazer, it will be just a standard OXP, so should work on all platforms.

...even better!! That will be nice...

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 8:09 am

Here's an in-game screenshot of my two planets (the gas giant being in the background). Note: The clouds on the Earth-like planet are produced through Oolite's cloud-routine with percent_cloud = 30:

And this is what it looks like to fly over the planet with my Imperial Courier:

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:28 am

Unfortunately there is still a problem with planetary orientation for textured planets.

In versions pre 1.70, whatever orientation = "w x y z"; (quaternion) you defined in planetinfo.plist, the planet always rotated in the same direction (around one of the internal axes, I think). The only thing that changed was the orientation in which the texture was wrapped around the planet.

The result of this was that the rotational poles of the planet were never the poles (= upper and lower edge) of the texture. The closest I ever got to having a planet rotate around its actual poles was with orientation = "0.9659 0.2588 0 0";. The values represent cosine and sine of 15 degrees, meaning that there is a rotational offset of 30 degrees around the x-axis. These were the only values producing a rotation actually around the planetary poles. You couldn't change these values without producing a planet rotating in a ridiculous way. Not a great variability for a scripter.

In 1.70 Ahruman has fixed part of this. Now the orientation-key actually changes the orientation of rotation, not only the orientation of the texture. But the offset is still there.

This means that in 1.70 it has become impossible to have a planet rotate around the poles which are defined by its texture (the upper and lower edges).

Here's a small sample-planetinfo.plist, demonstrating the problem (my test-pilot is currently in Bixein in Galaxy 3, represented by the "2 22" in the first line; please substitute with your own current whereabouts):

Code: Select all

{
    "2 22" = {
        "ambient_level" = "1.0"; 
        "script_actions" = (
            "addMoon: testplanet_A", 
            "addMoon: testplanet_B", 
            "addMoon: testplanet_C", 
            "addMoon: testplanet_D"
        ); 
    }; 
    "testplanet_A" = {
        orientation = "1 0 0 0"; 
        "polar_color_factor" = "2.5"; 
        position = "50000 0 300000"; 
        radius = 2000; 
        "rotational_velocity" = "12.0"; 
        texture = "grid.png"; 
    }; 
    "testplanet_B" = {
        orientation = "1 1 0 0"; 
        "polar_color_factor" = "2.5"; 
        position = "100000 0 300000"; 
        radius = 2000; 
        "rotational_velocity" = "12.0"; 
        texture = "grid.png"; 
    }; 
    "testplanet_C" = {
        orientation = "1 0 1 0"; 
        "polar_color_factor" = "2.5"; 
        position = "150000 0 300000"; 
        radius = 2000; 
        "rotational_velocity" = "12.0"; 
        texture = "grid.png"; 
    }; 
    "testplanet_D" = {
        orientation = "1 0 0 1"; 
        "polar_color_factor" = "2.5"; 
        position = "200000 0 300000"; 
        radius = 2000; 
        "rotational_velocity" = "12.0"; 
        texture = "grid.png"; 
    }; 
}

The rotational_velocity is really high, so the "rotation-pole" becomes immediatly visible. Here's the sample-texture belonging to this. Just move it to your desktop and name it grid.png:

You will notice that all the planets rotate in a different direction, but their rotational axis goes through the two points marked with "x", not through the points that are north- and south-pole texture-wise.

This is a major issue for any realistically rotating textured planet. So I hope some of you "people with magic powers who actually look into the code"

can solve it. Preferably by understanding where this roughly-30-degrees rotational offset comes from and fixing it. Or, alternative B: make it scriptable by transforming the default offset into a rotational_offset-key, because sometimes this kind of an offset could be useful. But generally one would expect a planet to rotate around its poles, and one would expect the poles to be represented by the upper and lower edge of its texture.

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:12 am

Hera are some more tesxtures for you to play with

http://www.renfield-imaging.50megs.com/

pagroove · Post by **pagroove** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:51 pm

My attempt at a city planet. CaptKev: I can send you a PM with the texture as an attachment or if you pm me I can send it to your e-mail address. Do with it what you like (even if you have to tweak it a little)

[/img]

This is of course a resized image

ovvldc · Post by **ovvldc** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:54 pm

Sweet, that would work beautifully for a rich industrial world.

But it could do with one of these new-fangled texture things that turn the lights on at the night-side. Can't imagine a eucemenopolis without streetlights..

Keep up the good work!

-Oscar

pagroove · Post by **pagroove** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:31 pm

I agree,

But I don't know how to do it. It's up to the creators of the OXP. They have permission to tweak the texture as they like

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:19 am

Hm, I think this texture would do it for a poor to average industrial world.

I am pretty sure that the rich inhabitants of a rich industrial world would prefer to live not in a giant industrial area, but somewhere where there is at least a little green. Don't you think so?

CaptKev · Post by **CaptKev** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:01 am

Hi pagroove, I received the texture and here it is in-game

Another great texture!, only six more to go

Here's the list so far:

0 Earth
1 Wet Mars
2 Earth with more land to sea ratio
3 Earth with craters
4 Earth with lots of mountains (from Kaks)
5 Mars
6 Mars 2
7 Mars with vegetation
8 Mars with veins
9 Industrial world (from pagroove)
A Sea world with just a small island
B
C
D
E
F

Should I assign each planet type to the appropriate system manually or just generate a random number from 0-F and put that in the array?

If it's the earlier option then I might need some help deciding what planets goes where.