Default Suns
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 9:52 pm
I was trying to understand what determines the Oolite default Sun size and colours, is the following correct?
Sun radius is *2 the planet radius
Sun hue is random upon each visit to that system?
No connection between radius and hue?
Sun to planet distance is 20* planet radius?
For BBC retro Elite-B I looked into the system seeds and found w2's high byte to be the most interesting/unused![[EliteWiki]](/images/elitewikismall.png)
random number. Its lower 4 bits are used to set (most of) the planet radius in Classic. So I used the upper 4 bits to determine the Sun radius (actually in Elite-B the Suns are all the same size, the thing that is affected is how close you have to get to the star for fuel scooping to work. Fuel scooping at large stars is not possible due to the cabin temperature vs the whole disc of a red dwarf still being visible as the fuel scoop starts, which gives the illusion of star size).
The text description on Elite-B's charts uses the following scheme based on the highest nibble of w2:
Note the above is not a complete list of star categories, nor probability distribution of occurrence, the distribution is my guess as to what is most likely to be habitable by Elite's species.
And of course I had to satisfy canon. I found Lave orbiting an Orange Dwarf which reduced how many Red Dwarfs are present in GalCop in the above scheme as Lave had a value of
Some stars of interest ended up as follows:
which gives a value between 5 and 9 for the distance
Sun radius is *2 the planet radius
Sun hue is random upon each visit to that system?
No connection between radius and hue?
Sun to planet distance is 20* planet radius?
For BBC retro Elite-B I looked into the system seeds and found w2's high byte to be the most interesting/unused
random number. Its lower 4 bits are used to set (most of) the planet radius in Classic. So I used the upper 4 bits to determine the Sun radius (actually in Elite-B the Suns are all the same size, the thing that is affected is how close you have to get to the star for fuel scooping to work. Fuel scooping at large stars is not possible due to the cabin temperature vs the whole disc of a red dwarf still being visible as the fuel scoop starts, which gives the illusion of star size).The text description on Elite-B's charts uses the following scheme based on the highest nibble of w2:
0x0Red Dwarf
0x1Orange Dwarf
0x2Orange Dwarf
0x3Orange Dwarf
0x4Orange Dwarf
0x5Yellow Dwarf
0x6Yellow Dwarf
0x7Yellow Dwarf
0x8Yellow Dwarf
0x9Yellow-white
0xAYellow-white
0xBBlue-white
0xCBlue-white
0xDRed Giant
0xERed Giant
0xFBlue Giant
Note the above is not a complete list of star categories, nor probability distribution of occurrence, the distribution is my guess as to what is most likely to be habitable by Elite's species.
And of course I had to satisfy canon. I found Lave orbiting an Orange Dwarf which reduced how many Red Dwarfs are present in GalCop in the above scheme as Lave had a value of
0x1. Whether Red Dwarfs are inhabitable is a topic of debate anyway regarding X-ray flares and tidal locking. Going through Rob Holdstock's The Dark Wheel, it mentions Xezaor is close to a dying, dim red star. I guess it is in a Red Giant phase which can last a billion years so I figured ok to use that for 0xE. This scheme also left Tionisla as a Red Giant, at 0xD, which may conflict with other canon but sounds appropriate for the Graveyard.Some stars of interest ended up as follows:
- Diso Yellow Dwarf
0x8
Lave Orange Dwarf0x1
Leesti Orange Dwarf0x4
Reidquat Blue-white0xB
Tionisla Red Giant0xD
Zaonce Yellow-white0xA
Code: Select all
LDA W2H: LSR A: LSR A: LSR A: LSR A
LSR A: LSR A: ADC #5: STA stop
stop, but Oolite probably needs different scaling.