A Solar Systems OXP - @Frame

[Lestradae]

1. Do you actually mean 'city textures' with 'station textures' ?

Yes, exactly.

Because, as you said, we already have all sorts of orbital station models and textures, just a question of adding them in. What is needed are groundbased models.

But I could also imagine as ground-based stations on which players can land "Industrial plants of all sorts, Prisons, Shipyards (Griff and I planned a Coriolis factory at Vetice), Cruise liners stations (With big Cruise liners that cannot dock)".

Also "Gas mining at the Gas giants" could perhaps have some stations well above ground but still in the atmosphere like this Star Wars cloud city?

But I first want to know what sort of stations we are going to add. I advice at fist to keep it just basic with normal Coriolis/ Dodo and ICO. And city's. To make sure the basics of the OXP work. Then you can start to add special stuff.

Agree completely.

4. Well with our Standard Station Textures 1.2. just around the corner you can add a whole selections of stations.

Very cool - can`t wait to see them. I think it`s just more fascinating also with the orbital stations for players who have come the long way to see something more than "just" a usual dodec station ...

(By the way, I find the "but it`s ten minutes journey" vaguely amusing - I can remember, by reading very old forum debates from 2005 or 2006, that newbies were told "Oolite is a slower game" and "it just takes ten minutes to the station" - that was, obviously, before the advent of quasi-standard fuel injectors. How times change *g*)

5. More needed then are city textures and models ( who wants to model the city's and bases) and textures for landing platforms.

As said above, I think those are (together with detailed textures for gas giants & brown dwarfs) nearly the only models & textures that we don`t already have or can borrow.

I suggested you to take on the stations/cities and CaptKev the gas giants and brown dwarfs, but, I mean, whatever you offer to contribute is very fine with me

6. Why first just add a few multi-planets as a test? Don't get me wrong I like many multi- planet systems. But we first must have some concepts. Then let the public evaluate these concepts. Then we can start adding more.

No, we completely agree on that one. Create ONE big concept study of all of it working in tandem first is my idea also.

The question I was raising was the question for the end concept where this OXP is heading. Because if we have one working system, we can just make five versions of every detail of it with nested "condition" thingies and let the mutations of the one basic version populate all eight galaxies.

And if we want a "slider" from "everywhere" to "a very few", we just set different conditions for different slider settings.

Is it understandable how I suggest solving this, in the long run?

For the moment, just the one big test case it is, complete consensus with me!

Thanks for all the contributions, people, by the way, great - keep it coming

[pagroove]

I can make textures but I'm not a modeller . So we need an experienced modeller to make the city's. So we need more teammembers

[Frame]

i have modeled for alot of things

For reference i was on the Galactic Conquest Team, that was a Battlefield 1942 star wars modification( couldnt call it star wars cause of copyright)

i made the waveskimmer+textures, E-Fighter + cockpit textures, textures for some imperial Cruiser(the name iiludes me atm)...

i did model the T95 Headhunter, but it was never used...

Add to that alot of fixing of other peoples Defect models (mostly the collision model, taht was used in bf 1942)

So i can give it a Crack, at the city... my only concern is..

What will citys look like in Oolites timeline...

Should there be different themes, like in Firefly and Star Wars Tatooine(dersert like buildings) and Coruscant(super skyscraper city)

[Lestradae]

@pagroove:

Textures it is then!

@Frame:

Contributions concerning models would be very welcome! What you`ve already done sounds impressive!

Concerning of how cities and ground stations would look like - the only precedents we could look into is how they did look/will look in Frontier and FFE!

Otherwise, phantasies are free ...

But, perhaps think of the following: Most cities, prisons, archeological digs, trading hubs, mining stations etc. etc. will be in an environment that does not allow life without a dome, or plants, trees etc. under open sky.

This will be possible on most main planets, and sometimes on the second or fourth planet of a system, but be more unusual.

Also, a gas giant suborbit station would have to have some kind of balloon above it.

Last but not least, the scope of models for any ground structures should not let the faked distances become visible, i.e. a tree that is one-hundredth of the whole planet`s diameter - that wouldn`t look believable.

Just a few ideas tossed around again.

In a few day`s time when I find more time again for this I will sit down and propose a test solar system concept which will incorporate the ideas created here. When this is done, we can start modifying it and putting in stuff and look how this works in tandem.

When - in the further future - we are ready for the full attempt we could then easily put loads of conditions and the "how many" slider in until its something that can be played ... or so would be my plan.

Good night for now

[nijineko]

so, is there a place to get the latest to test it? or is the link in the first post the right one?

[Lestradae]

so, is there a place to get the latest to test it? or is the link in the first post the right one?

Please note that this is not yet an oxp by any means! It`s just a concept test.

Yes, the link on the first page is it, and it is dependent on the System Redux and Far Sun OXPs. And you have to change one thing in Far Sun by hand (please, read the first page for that)

Welcome to this thread

L

[Commander McLane]

I could start with a few textures for gas giants but shouldn't they be 1024 x 512?

If I remember correctly, Oolite doesn't like textures that aren't the same length and breadth. Hence it likes 512x512, 1024x1024 but not 1024x512 or 1024x90.

Not true. What Oolite doesn't like too much is non-power-of-two sizes. So 1024x90 is indeed not advisable.

But any texture for a sphere (which of course includes planets, moons and suns) should be (2^n)x(2^(n-1)), because the sphere - if projected to the plane - is double as wide as it is high. So in order to save memory, the texture's proportions should reflect that.

[CaptKev]

@Commander McLane, Thanks for the clarification.

Here's a few textures from non-copyright sources;
Gas Giant
Jupiter
Saturn
Brown Dwarf

[Lestradae]

Nice textures,

perhaps in a week or so I`ll attempt a concept study of a test case solar system with all the above suggestions in ...

[JensAyton]

I could start with a few textures for gas giants but shouldn't they be 1024 x 512?

If I remember correctly, Oolite doesn't like textures that aren't the same length and breadth. Hence it likes 512x512, 1024x1024 but not 1024x512 or 1024x90.

Not true. What Oolite doesn't like too much is non-power-of-two sizes. So 1024x90 is indeed not advisable.

Correct.

But any texture for a sphere (which of course includes planets, moons and suns) should be (2^n)x(2^(n-1)), because the sphere - if projected to the plane - is double as wide as it is high. So in order to save memory, the texture's proportions should reflect that.

…depending, of course, on the projection – there are infinitely many, and they’re all wrong. But yes, for the projection Oolite uses, twice as wide as high is the least bad option.

[pagroove]

@Captkev

Nice textures indeed, but Jupiter is too familiar. The others are ok to use? or to edit

[Disembodied]

There's a free-to-use (with acknowledgement) texture of Neptune here, and another one with wrinkly clouds from the JPL here (not sure about the copyright on this last one, but you could always ask them...). JPL have a stormy Saturn, too.

Edit: according to JPL's copyright page, it looks like you could use their textures if you put an acknowledgement in the ReadMe.

[FSOneblin]

Any way I could help out with this project? I just found out how to work gimp, and I got jedit. I have a prettey cool picture that I made, at first I was jokingly going to put it as a brown dwarf, but it kind of looks like a gas giant... but it's not vary good... at all...


... Don't panic: FSOneblin...

[Lestradae]

Hi people,

I have (again) underestimated the amount of time I have to invest into Oolite to create an oxp. I am not giving up the solar systems idea, but am going to repair a few issues with my Realistic Shipyards oxp first, before doing something here again.

If someone wants to take the idea up from me or wants to create a test version in the mould of what we have ironed out already (i.e. a test case solar system with six or seven planets of all types with orbital & ground stations etc.) feel free to do so and continue this thread without asking me.

Thanks to all contributers so far again,

L

[Commander McLane]

@Captkev

Nice textures indeed, but Jupiter is too familiar. The others are ok to use? or to edit

You could perhaps try to mess with the colours, to make it less familiar. Run it through an inverting filter or so.