Oolite Bulletins

pagroove wrote:

An Ice and mountainplanet. With a city
CaptKev. Should I send you also these textures?

Hoopy wrote:

I've got cubic interpolation working now - much nicer! I've also knocked p the resolution to 512x256 and refactored the code so it's easy to change (to 1024x512) in the future.

This set of picture show the same landscape with a rising sea level. For comparison there's a linear interpolation image as well so you can see the nasty vertical/horizontal lines it tends to give:
sea level 70 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24657513@N04/2346299294/
sea level 90 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24657513@N04/2346297672/
sea level 120 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24657513@N04/2346298018/
sea level 140 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24657513@N04/2345470835/
linear interpolation sea level 90 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24657513@N04/2345470437/

My megalomanic idea came when I thought about what I wanted to see in Oolite so that it would be absolutely perfect for me, and I noticed that my ideas probably would be possible utilising methods which I have already seen employed in existing OXPs.

The "SolarSystems.oxp" would be the mother of all flavour OXPs, and add plenty of additional opportunities for trading (including meaningful in-system trading), missions and the like into that already great game. (Praise be to the Lords Giles & Ahruman !)

It would create complete solar systems in all the systems in Oolite, with:

1. 4-12 planets per system (~8 average)
2. Cities and stations with names where players and NPC`s can land on the surface (not really, but it would look like that, see below)
3. Meaningful in-system trading (like, outer dwarf planets being really cheap on resources like minerals, gold, etc., but really expensive and profitlike for food & textiles, gas planets really cheap on radioactives but very expensive for luxuries etc.) But, to reach an outer planet should take a real-life 20-30 minutes with witchdrive engines on ...
4. Planets that look like planets. And different. And medium (earthlikes plus the "standard planet" of the system), very large (gas giant) or small (dwarf world).

I have actually wasted a few thoughts on how to do this with existing oxp possibilities and without any changes to the core game. Here are my ideas (and, please, shoot them down in flames or even correct me if something is not possible the way I imagine it, I am guessing here via comparison to mods I have seen).

So, realisation of

@1.: I have seen in the lave.oxp that it is possible to script another planet into a system. And it seems to be possible to put it anywhere - so why not just script a number of planets into any system? If they have no real trajectories - who cares, if at least which planet is 1, 2, 3, or 12 stays constant? So, each system would have to designate a) number of planets, b) their distances to the sun, and c) their types and diameters.

@2.: OK, there are yet not city or even station mods for planets. But. I cant`t help noticing that with the "heat protection" equipment you can effectively reach (and shatter on ) the planet`s surface - just that there`s nothing there. And I can`t help noticing that if one took a bigger asteroid from, say, the "asteroid storm" setting and put it exactly ON or halfway INTO a planet`s surface it might reasonably look like a hill or small mountain. And if a basis, like, say a rock hermit or a biosphere with good entrance graphics was then again stuck into the big asteroid so that its entrance pointed mostly upwards it would look like a station - on a planet! And it would be possible to land in it, the same way as in any other station.

The wild guesswork I do on this one is if it is at all possible to generate the same asteroid(s) and the same station (s) in exactly the same position in relation to the respective planet in question. But someone is bound to know. Is it possible at all to do this?

(Add-on: If the planet`s turning away under the hill/station just switching the planet`s turning off should be a solution)

@3.: I have seen that the amount that specific trading goods and/or equipment cost in specific stations in the same system can be changed, obviously hardcoded and, I believe I read in one of the new navy - debates, that it`s also possible to make prices specifically higher or lower. So, make food more expensive the further away from the sun you get and make gold, gemstones and minerals cheaper at the same time.

@4.: If its possible to have a texture on a planet at all, its possible to have a more high-res texture. And it would not have to be 2000+ textures. Take 10 textures each for earthlike worlds, gasgiants and dwarfplanets and 30 textures are enough for all the 15000+ new and old planets alike. Without getting too repetitive.

Biggest problem: 15.000 planets? Perhaps 100.000 additional stations & cities? Who should create them, name them, etc.?

My solution: Do it like Braben & Bell did. The same way they generated 2000+ systems with 64kb, and later a galaxy with 200.000.000.000 (!) systems with x planets, cities, stations each in Elites 2 & 3: Use equations! Each system now has a number and a galaxy, and is thereby identified. It would be easy (I studied physics, and I know how to do this if I set my head to it!) to create a formula that takes this designation and generates numerically for each system:

* how many additional planets
* what kind of planets
* which textures are used
* how many/which kind of stations/cities (on that one, the tech level of a system could be used in its equation)
* the prices of trading goods/equipment on each station

And as the equation stays the same, even if the stations and planets and so on are newly generated every time a player jumps into a system, they stay the same, too. Lave would, from the SolarSystem.OXP, say, 5 planets, with a hundred stations, and would stay like that.

The planets could then just be designated "Lave 1", "Lave 2", etc. To make things easier, the standard planet could always be the "XXX 3" - planet, etc. The naming of stations etc. and such would be more difficult, but why not use a similar method like the one Braben & Bell used when they named the systems of the eight galaxies?

So, I hope some of the people who`s help I would need for a SolarSystems.OXP are still with me (readingwise9 and have read through my wishful fantasies.

SolarSystems.OXP Development: Proposed Versionnumbers

Every step would be done by procedure-generation and via seeding - only once outside the game and then plists are made from those procedure-generated lists. Why do the same thing twice or a 1000times if you only have to do it once?

0.05 (Concept Study)
Experimental version, adds one procedurally-generated additional planet (say, the innermost closest to the sun) per system, and two stargates between this innermost and the "original" planet for intra-system travel - just for testing the workability of the whole basic idea

0.1 (Planets)
Adds 3-9 planets to all 2048 solar systems (Avg. 7 ~ 14000 new planets)

0.15 (Moons)
Adds 0-3 moons (0-1 for dwarf planets, 0-2 for earthlike planets, 0-3 for gas giants) per planet. Moon radius: Asteroidal (use biggest asteroids?), small spherical or earthlike (only gasgiants). Use moons sparsely.

0.2 (Textured planets)
Adds textures to all old & new planets (10 earthlike, 10 gasgiant, 10 dwarf planet)

0.25 (Textured moons)
Adds textures to all moons (perhaps 5 per moon radius version)

0.3 (Standard named planets)
Adds standard names (Lave 1, Lave 2 etc. with the "original" planet generally labelled "3") to all old & new planets

0.35 (Standard named moons)
Adds standard names (Lave 3a etc.) to all moons

0.4 (Oxp conflicts resolved)
All potential conflicts with mods resolved (by collecting - from friendly informers on the oolite boards - all known systems in which mods might collide with SolarSystems.OXP and removing the additional planets etc. from them)

0.45 (Standard system object conflicts resolved)
All potential conflicts with standard space removed (by utilising the system geometry, I think. No idea if that`s possible at all) Like, planet 1 very near to the sun. Planet 2 on the other side of the sun than the original planet. Planet 4 between the witchjump-point and the original planet 3, but moved 90-150° away in relation to the original planet. Planets 5 to (max) 10 (far) beyond the witchjump-point. So, collision probability with existing objects minimised.

0.5 (Systemwide planetary orbital space stations and stargates)
Orbital space stations added to the new planets (0-5/planet) according to planet type & position & the system tech level and named with the help of appropriate seed names "planet name"`s "seed name" "specific station template names", for example "Lave 4`s Gorbachev Habitat" or "Riedquat 2`s Astromine Gulag" and sprinkle the solar systems with planetnumber/2 stargates to reduce travel time to acceptable

0.55 (Systemwide lunar orbital space stations)
Orbital space stations added to the new moons (0-2/moon) according to moon type & position & the system tech level and named with the help of appropriate seed names "moon name"`s "seed name" "specific station template names", for example "Lave 3a`s Hoopy Casino" or "Riedquat 5b`s Callisto Citadel"

0.6 (Planetary orbital space stations completed)
Planetary orbital space stations designated specific equipment and trading goods structures

0.65 (Lunar orbital space stations completed)
Lunar orbital space stations designated specific equipment and trading goods structures

0.7 (Systemwide planetary surface stations)
Planetary surface stations added to the original and new planets (0-5/planet) according to planet type & position & the system tech level and named with the help of appropriate seed names "planet name"`s "seed name" "specific station template names", for example "Lave 3`s Capitol City" or "Riedquat 1`s Hellhole Mine"

0.75 (Systemwide lunar surface stations)
Lunar surface stations added to the original and new planets (max 1/planet) according to moon type & position & the system tech level and named with the help of appropriate seed names "moon name"`s "seed name" "specific station template names", for example "Lave 1a`s Pirate Settlement" or "Riedquat 6c`s Ecosphere Dome"

0.8 (Planetary surface stations completed)
Planetary stations designated specific equipment and trading goods structures

0.85 (Lunar surface stations completed))
Lunar stations designated specific equipment and trading goods structures

0.9 (Solar system traffic completed)
Trading routes between all new stations, worlds, and stargates, in orbit and on-surface added

0.95 (F4/4 solar system map available in space stations)
Another megalomanic idea to finish it all off. Utilise the up-to-today unused key F4/4 in space stations for the depicition of solar system maps?

1.0 (F4/4 solar system map completed - Final Version!?)
You can see all, say, 7 planets and 6 moons of the Lave system, and all, say, 14 orbital stations (including the original and non-secret oxp ones) and all, say, 7 planetary and 1 lunar station(s). For example. You can do so in all systems, but only in stations by pressing F4/4.