Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Fri Jul 04, 2008 4:57 pm**

I come here and want to tell you how things are done - without even acknowlegding what you have already achieved. Hmm, this is my fifth post - I think it's about time now. Sorry!

The System Redux as it is now is a great OXP. In the "pwm "coordinate system it's not really obvious that the orbits are in one plane, and it's pretty difficult to figure out without knowing a point in that plane. IMO the spu makes it easier. I did not change the orbits of the moons.

@Commander McLane:

I think that the calculation of planet positions does not need any resources at all, even if you would do it for 100 planets in real or accelarated time. Painting a single object takes up more time. You are right, at normal speed you will not notice the effect. However, with fixed vectors there is not much variation in different systems.

@Frame:

My suggested function is not very clever. It would be better to multiply prime numbers: sys_info *= prime[sysnam-'A']. Otherwise the lower bits of sys_info will be 0.

Posted: **Sat Jul 05, 2008 9:58 am**

Ebi wrote:
The System Redux as it is now is a great OXP. In the "pwm "coordinate system it's not really obvious that the orbits are in one plane, and it's pretty difficult to figure out without knowing a point in that plane. IMO the spu makes it easier. I did not change the orbits of the moons.

I've read the wiki description again. No matter what coordinate system you use the x and z axes are always on the plane formed by sun, witchpoint, and planet. The y axis is always normal to this plane. Thus setting for instance the y coordinate off all planets to the same value makes their orbits coplanar. The difference is the center of rotation.

I tried to rotate a planet around the sun with a JS script. In a plist the coordinate system is defined by the header of a vector. I do not know what is used within a script when a quaternion rotation is applied. What's the origin?

What happens here?

Code: Select all

    system.addPlanet("planet1"); // Uses "spu"
//    let q = new Quaternion (1,0,0,0);
//    let pi = 3.14159;
//    q = q.rotateY(pi/2);

    let q = new Quaternion (0.7071067811,0,0.7071067811,0);
    system.planets[1].setPosition(system.planets[1].position.rotateBy(q));

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:05 am**

Are there um...any more textures I could do?

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:26 am**

Whoops, I kinda got carried away.

Well, I made this thing, first in a (prettier) seamed version:

And now I've de-seamed it and it should be ready for use!

I'm disappointed to see it lost some quality in it's PNG-fication process.
What do you guys think? is there room for another (or more if you want) texture?

Only textures used was a photo of the moon and a bunch of default brushes set in different opacities. Yay for Photoshop Elements!

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:49 am**

That's pretty damned good, like the snow capped poles, reminds me of home.

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:02 am**

@Stromboli - it's a lovely texture.

Am I right in thinking that for a planetary/moon texture the textures need to align on the left and right edges?

If yes, how is this best achieved? Unfortunately I don't have Photoshop as an Ubuntu user I've got GIMP and I'm pretty new to that - but if anybody can help that would be much appreciated.

I've got a lovely texture that I'd like to use for a moon - but because it's derived from a real photograph I took it obviously doesn't align at its edges!

Cheers

DH

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:06 am**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
@Stromboli - it's a lovely texture.

Am I right in thinking that for a planetary/moon texture the textures need to align on the left and right edges?

If yes, how is this best achieved? Unfortunately I don't have Photoshop as an Ubuntu user I've got GIMP and I'm pretty new to that - but if anybody can help that would be much appreciated.

I've got a lovely texture that I'd like to use for a moon - but because it's derived from a real photograph I took it obviously doesn't align at its edges!

Cheers

DH

No idea of the proper way to do it, but the way I would go about bodging something like this is to cut the picture in two down the middle and swap their locations (drag the left half over the right half and over to the other side) so the former centre is now at the split and makes up the left and right hand sides (and so match up perfectly) and then Id re jig the new centre line with a clone brush and blur tool to make that look half decent. - far easier than trying to match up two edges which are far apart

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:09 am**

Thanks!

Griff wrote:
Commander McLane's right, painting out the seam makes a whole world of difference (no pun intended) to the finished planet texture. It's quite easy to do, just swap the left & right positions of the two halves of your texture map so the seam now runs down the middle of the image. now just grab your painting tools and paint it out!

This pretty much sums it up. It should be pretty easy in GIMP, I imagine.

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:12 am**

Stromboli wrote:
Thanks!
Griff wrote:
Commander McLane's right, painting out the seam makes a whole world of difference (no pun intended) to the finished planet texture. It's quite easy to do, just swap the left & right positions of the two halves of your texture map so the seam now runs down the middle of the image. now just grab your painting tools and paint it out!

This pretty much sums it up. It should be pretty easy in GIMP, I imagine.

So my off the cuff "bodge" idea is actually the recommended way of doing things

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:13 am**

I know it's what I did!

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:22 am**

Stromboli wrote:
Are there um...any more textures I could do?

Great work Stromboli, keep 'em coming when we have another 10, I'll extend System Redux to include them.

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:59 am**

Can do!

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:56 pm**

Stromboli wrote:
I'm disappointed to see it lost some quality in it's PNG-fication process.

Really? That should not be the case, unless you told it to save with 256 colours or some such. PNG is a lossless format.

Posted: **Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:58 pm**

Meh, I think I was just used to seeing it up close.

Posted: **Sun Jul 20, 2008 4:47 pm**

Alright, here's my next texture, once again for a wet, possibly agricultural world. I originally had it with only a few lakes and rivers, but they, uh, seem to have grown.

I also tried to do something new, and now I need you guys' input on which color would be best, so that I can flatten the image and de-seam it. Any other input would be great.

Standard green.

A sort of dark purple, after reading an article about alien plants I figured that green is no longer the only color that FlOora should come in.

A fungal red, anyone who played Alpha Centauri should no what I'm trying to get at.

So, what do you guys think?

Oolite Bulletins

plannets.oxp - is it still working?