Oolite Bulletins

Sorry,
Just a crazy idea

Is it possible to have THE tourist attraction of the Ooniverse. An artificial planetary ring (modular).
Consisting of modules?

Something like this?



Each module is one vast city. Maby you could have a racetrack in it. Racing it would look like one big Deathstar Trench run. But I imagine we must keep it simple because of the collision detection.
Probably the tunnel has to be as wide as a Superhub tube.

It would look like the entrance tunnel of a salvage gang only much bigger with race gates?

There would be only 1 such object in the Ooniverse. Probably around a tech 15 planet.



Or am I crazy ?
Answer: YES

I'm guessing you'd have to build it out of subents and therefore the drawing would get screwed up as the distance from the main ent determines when the subents are drawn/culled. (and where would you put the main ent? (in the centre of the planet with an infinite power recharge rate?)

However, I really like it as an idea and it's more workable than the Dyson sphere discussed a few years ago.

It's very Iain M. Banks/Culture...

It would be some sort of proof of concept project

The nearest thing I can think of is some of ADCK's more recent work. This might be a good project for someone with that experience already.

If it turns out to be acheivable to make a model this big as a ring around a planet and have race courses built into its structure then perhaps something similar to the swoop race tracks in Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords would be worth looking at. Particularily the one that takes place underneath the city and partly in the giant sewer system on Nar Shaddaa. This idea could be adapted to race ships through different parts of the ring city modules and on the surface(both inner and outer) for much of it.
This would be a monumental amount of work. If it was done, would it slow down slower computers too much? Proof of concept indeed!

Perhaps a smaller test station could be made to troubleshoot this idea with less than 10% of the work to make the planet ring station. Various ideas for how to put it together and lay out the course in some sort of modular fashion could be tested before making a commitment.

Would be very cool to see and I would race on it!

sounds a bit like the ring that circled the Moon in Starship Troopers. Be canny if you could pull it off but i think to me personally it would just emphasise the silly titchiness of the planets.

I'll put it in Finis if you can get it to work. Love the idea.

Cheers,

Drew.

Well problem is that I don't know how to make it work. How big is the average diameter from the center of a planet in Oolite (20/30 km?) I also don't know if it is possible to have the center in the middle of the planet. Like CommonSenseOTB says it is maybe an idea to make a smaller version of this. Maybe an artificial ring around an artificial planet. I know that the Generation ships are 30 km in length so it should be possible to make quite big objects.

But This message was just to fuel the creative fire. I'm not that good in modeling. I would love to texture though. The idea was that I like the entrance tunnel for the Salvage Gang. So I thought if this could be longer you could race in it (only time trail because I think that it is impossible or difficult to hold the AI on course).

But further ideas are welcome. And Mods. Maybe this should be in the Suggestion Box. I posted it here to look if it is possible at all.

What about putting a ring around the sun? Not totally solid, necessarily, but great big slabs forming a dotted line like – – – – (only circular, and round the sun). There could be generous gaps between them, and each slab could have its own dock in the back, and different terrain on the sun side. Then you could have a smaller inner ring of shadow slabs, to produce day and night cycles as per Larry Niven's Ringword ...

drew wrote:

I'll put it in Finis if you can get it to work. Love the idea.

Cheers,

Drew.

Do it anyway!! It's too cool an idea not to.

pagroove wrote:

Well problem is that I don't know how to make it work. How big is the average diameter from the center of a planet in Oolite (20/30 km?)

i'd say it's simple (!) maths. the pieces are supposed to be modular so you do it as a set of however-many subents, each of which is a module. maths will gave you the radius and the stepped angle for each and quaternions will turn them the required angle.

Killer Wolf wrote:

pagroove wrote:

Well problem is that I don't know how to make it work. How big is the average diameter from the center of a planet in Oolite (20/30 km?)

i'd say it's simple (!) maths. the pieces are supposed to be modular so you do it as a set of however-many subents, each of which is a module. maths will gave you the radius and the stepped angle for each and quaternions will turn them the required angle.

I'm no good @ maths. So probably not a project for me then. Thanx for the help anyway

I love visiting this board. Just when you think that everything that can be done with Oolite has been done, along comes an idea like this.

Fantastic work.

Yeah, but this should really be done by someone who can model and a small prototype to test the concepts would be the way to start this idea so as to figure how to do it or to throw it out the window as not practical.

The starting point for this would be to construct the inside of the race course for one module, say max 2 to 5 km long section. This would be for the part of the race course which is inside the module. It would generally go in a straight line with only very slight deviations. Subents would be built for some of the few obstacles that would be along the sides of the tunnel walls making placement and adjustment possible and hitting those might only take out half a shield or something.

Then go into the racing rings oxp for the AI's and the rings and jury rig a course through the new module racecourse interior and experiment and play with it to see what can be done with this idea.

Ideas for racing have been put forth throughout the years and not much has been done. Perhaps in the next year or so everything will be in place gamewise to really allow the concept to blossom. I'm sure there will be someone who feels enough passion for the idea eventually to get it all together over the course of a year or two, but until then little bits and pieces of concepts and ideas should be tested by those that want to and at the very least determine what IS needed to do this and IF any core game changes would be needed for the concept to work.

I personally believe a racing concept can work but will require a lot of effort...and will be worth it in the end.

What command would be best to precisely position and orient the ring pieces?
I need that to place/position other things in my OXPs...

pagroove wrote:

Sorry,
Just a crazy idea

Is it possible to have THE tourist attraction of the Ooniverse. An artificial planetary ring (modular).
Consisting of modules?

Something like this?



Each module is one vast city. Maby you could have a racetrack in it. Racing it would look like one big Deathstar Trench run. But I imagine we must keep it simple because of the collision detection.
Probably the tunnel has to be as wide as a Superhub tube.

It would look like the entrance tunnel of a salvage gang only much bigger with race gates?

There would be only 1 such object in the Ooniverse. Probably around a tech 15 planet.



Or am I crazy ?
Answer: YES

Nope Not crazy!
Seen it on telly.. must be true.

Just how to..
Is the fun for bods that can.

If it's not fun, you'r doing it wrong!