crazy idea: artificial planet ring

[Ironfist]

Looks good.
Larry Niven of course put his ring around a sun in Ringworld to provide the citizens with power, I also think I remember an episode of StarTrek which had something similar. I think a story line that started in G2 for the ring and pointed to G3 to try to find who built it would be good. A nice lead to further exploration.

Ironfist

[Cody]

I reckon that G4 could do with something out of the ordinary... such an odd sector, is G4.

[Disembodied]

Possible names?

The Annulus
Ourobouros (perhaps shortened to "The O")
The Steel Wheel
——'s Garter (depending on what planet it goes around)

Any other ideas?

[Smivs]

String of Pearls?

[Thargoid]

And when you want to do this perfect, I assume the ring must be over the planet equator. I think the planet rotates around the vectorUp axis so that should become the axis to align the ring around.

The quick demo has the ring around the systems X-Y axis (which isn't aligned to the planet's axis). I'll have a look at aligning it around the equator, but that might screw up the segment orientation coding (and the standard alignment scripting using the tangent didn't seem to work for some reason here).

[pagroove]

I reckon that G4 could do with something out of the ordinary... such an odd sector, is G4.

I agree. Any galaxy but I prefer to have the ring somewhat in the middle so that players have an incentive to proceed to the new galaxies.

[Thargoid]

http://www.box.net/shared/x9oj6csyun618xliux9h

OK, demo OXP is at the link above. I've updated the code so the ring is now around the planetary equator, and the orientation of the segments is also correct (it wasn't before, as you can see from the image I posted).

The scripting is free for anyone to use if they wish to make a "proper" OXP out of the idea - the demo will add its ring around the main planet of every system and is not really made for general gameplay usage. The ring segments are just white rectangles at the moment, but a better model and texture is left as an exercise to the OXP writer

Anyway, share and enjoy...

[Okti]

Very clever Thargoid as seen below:

[pagroove]

Great work Thargoid. Does this script place the ring about any planet or do you have to travel to a certain system. I have not yet downloaded the demo as I have to do some real life work tonight. I have also no time to make a serous OXP out of it but I hope other OXP makers can make a serous OXP out of it. But I would like contribute some texture work. Maybe we have to form a 'project team'.

Ring elements (maybe make slightly more varied models) (modelers needed)
Texturing (Texture people needed). Also to texture the planet beneath it.
Mission (mission oxp')
Someone who develops a good background story and decides where this ring is
Music
Backgounds?

Who knows?

Anyone good ideas?

[pagroove]

Very clever Thargoid as seen below:

Already Quite epic whiteout any texture

[Okti]

There are endless possibilities with that idea. Thanks Pagroove, all the ring items can be turned to stations with different TL level and economy to start with.

[pagroove]

There are endless possibilities with that idea. Thanks Pagroove, all the ring items can be turned to stations with different TL level and economy to start with.

That would be a 'lot' of stations

[Thargoid]

It would be a lot - somewhere in the region of 300+ stations...

Yes the demo OXP adds the ring around the main planet of each system just for simplicity. There is nothing to stop it being adjusted to specific planets, planet/system types or anything else as needed. I just made it universal given its demo nature.

The model in the demo is 1000x100x100, but any size can be used (although the script variables may need to be adjusted for orbital height and spacing if significantly different size is used). I would suggest to try and standardise at least roughly on a model size to prevent problems and things looking odd later. But there is certainly no reason why different shaped and textured models can't be used to make things more visually interesting.

[Okti]

Ooops

[Smivs]