Cloud City OXP

[Dr Beeb]

Hello

my first OXP (bits stolen from Eric Walch and Thargoid) available here:

http://www.box.net/shared/exyinqm9me

will post to wiki one day when wiki working properly one day.

Bits from README:

CloudCity OXP by DrBeeb.

Some eye-candy showing Cloud cities at each main planet (eventually) destined for some future gas giants, Population of each one a few million.
It is possible to fly under a Cloud city without blowing up, but not easy. Also they are (fairly) easy to destroy (immoral but fun).
There is even a black-coloured Cloud city at each home planet to give a visual throw-back to how Cloud Cities could have looked like in original Elite.

Note: No docking nor landing capability exists, your ship will be destroyed if you approach too close!


---------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer, wish-list:

This is a work in progress with coding help needed (landing, docking etc.), or is its present state a 'feature' ...
"Cloud cities not visitable unless visitor registered" ?
Fix some issues like why subentities on cloud cities (flashers etc.) sometimes dont appear?
Improvements to textures, model, invited. The OXP models folder also contains the wings3D raw model file.
Atmosphere of main planets not thick enough to encapsulate whole city, but not really a problem.
Hope to have some exhaust plumes firing out of the bottom to levitate the city, but the 'craft' is not moving.
The craft are following a local lattitude & longitude placement scheme, but not rotating with planet yet.

[Thargoid]

My code's freely available to anyone who wants to use it or base work on it, so it's not nicking You (and anyone else) are more than welcome to it. Although most of what you've used is actually Eric's, it's the "visible locations" code that I ended up not using anyway.

But from a quick look through, you've got a lot of code in there that you don't actually need. If you want I can go through it and pull the excess out for you (as it may interfere a little with Planetfall itself).

Also the docking computers can quite happily dock with the Cloud City as it does have a dock sub-entity (albeit not one that's in the models appearance). But it may look nicer to use the proximity docking that I use in the later versions of PF. Again if you need help to add that, let me know.

[pagroove]

Cloud city's: Nice. I'm gonna try it.

[pagroove]

I tested it. I find them a bit big but the idea is very nice. Also I see more than one cloud city per planet but I assume this is a test setup.

Anyway I think they should be a bit smaller and in my opinion not directly beneath the station. It would be nice to fly a bit around the planet and then see such a city.

But keep at it. It's a great idea.

[Dr Beeb]

thanks for the inputs. Will get around to incorporating them when more time. Hope to include more models and improved textures next time as well.

[Eric Walch]

thanks for the inputs. Will get around to incorporating them when more time. Hope to include more models and improved textures next time as well.

I noticed you left a large amount of the original code in. Even mission specific code. e.g. One of the ships will change mission variables of UPS-courier and break missions there. Please remove them.

EDIT: Looking more closely I noticed you did not use the included script with the UPS variables, so loading the oxp will not do any harm. (But better remove those lines)

[Cholmondely]

Can't download this one. Is it any good? Does anybody have a copy of it?

[Redspear]

Can't download this one. Is it any good? Does anybody have a copy of it?

I should have a copy somewhere.

From what i remember it was simulataneously too big relative to the planet and too small relative to the player ship but then that's a fairly typical complaint from me, thus the (successful) rescaling experiment and so on.

Reading the first post, I think I only ever saw the 'black coloured' one and remember it as quite low-poly and blob-like but then it was a WIP and more of a proof of concept I think.

[cbr]

Interesting concept.

Perhaps combined with some habitat modules.

[Cholmondely]

Surely it sounds like just the thing for Zarece?

With a combination of Zero-G technology and modern balloons large orbital cities were created that float in the higher layers of the atmosphere. Zarece consists of superdense gasses not yet fully understood."

[Cholmondely]

Surely it sounds like just the thing for Zarece?

With a combination of Zero-G technology and modern balloons large orbital cities were created that float in the higher layers of the atmosphere. Zarece consists of superdense gasses not yet fully understood."

Would there be any chance of getting my grubby paws on a copy of this one?

Edit: Just managed it - Spara's tip of replacing http://www.box.net/ with http://app.box.net/ did the trick!

[Cholmondely]

New wiki page now shows screen shots of these.

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Cloud_City_OXP

No longer so convinced that they are "just the thing" for Zarece.

It has been argued by some of the savants of the University of Murraor that these superdense gases are not strictly gaseous, that they should rather be termed as plasma - that peculiar state which is liminal between gas and liquid and exists only at certain temperatures and pressures. No matter. What really counts is this: the ways in which the light of the sun is refracted through the lower levels is quite phenomenal - the nights on Zarece have to be seen to be believed. The shimmering coruscations of the colours, with sparkling motes and shimmering bands. The nightime cities with their tall, sparkling, slender towers and their lambent lower regions are legendarily spectacular. Rough Guide

[Cholmondely]

http://www.box.net/shared/exyinqm9me

CloudCity OXP by DrBeeb.

Some eye-candy showing Cloud cities at each main planet (eventually) destined for some future gas giants, Population of each one a few million.
It is possible to fly under a Cloud city without blowing up, but not easy. Also they are (fairly) easy to destroy (immoral but fun).
There is even a black-coloured Cloud city at each home planet to give a visual throw-back to how Cloud Cities could have looked like in original Elite.

Note: No docking nor landing capability exists, your ship will be destroyed if you approach too close!


---------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer, wish-list:

This is a work in progress with coding help needed (landing, docking etc.), or is its present state a 'feature' ... "Cloud cities not visitable unless visitor registered" ?

Fix some issues like why subentities on cloud cities (flashers etc.) sometimes don't appear?

Improvements to textures, model, invited. The OXP models folder also contains the wings3D raw model file.

Atmosphere of main planets not thick enough to encapsulate whole city, but not really a problem.

Hope to have some exhaust plumes firing out of the bottom to levitate the city, but the 'craft' is not moving.

The craft are following a local latitude & longitude placement scheme, but not rotating with planet yet.

Distribution of Cloud Cities

Question: is it possible to identify the cloud giant planets (I suspect that they are merely textures - or chunks of coding in the vanilla game) and thus restrict the appearance of the Cloud Cities to the cloud giants?

Otherwise, one would need to go through the vanilla game list (might G1 Oresri & G1 Rilace be gas giants?), the Povray Planets textures, the Extra Planets textures (separate oxp) and the Strangers World textures (separate oxp), producing different lists for each.

Unless, say, Galactic Almanac does something helping identify the planets, thus allowing a short cut.



And... one presumes that landing on a gas giant is indistinguishable from landing on a regular planet (too steep an angle and you smash into something hard).

[Nite Owl]

And... one presumes that landing on a gas giant is indistinguishable from landing on a regular planet (too steep an angle and you smash into something hard).

With Stations for Extra Planets and the Additional Planets Suite of OXZs (co-dependent) you cannot land on Gas Giants and are given a warning to that effect. Cannot comment on other similar OXZs having not extensively used them. You should not be able to land on Gas Giants in general as the possible rocky core that you would land on is buried far below the massive amount of Gas that surrounds it. The amount of pressure that the Gas creates would crush your ship long before it got near anything you could land on.

The Additional Planets SR Base OXZ does not allow Stations for Extra Planets to exist in orbit around Gas Giants. My copy has been TWEAKED to allow this as my desire to occasionally see the Gas Giant textures was just too great. See THIS POST for how to do this yourself. It is an easy TWEAK.

As to all of these new Station variations that keep cropping up my wish would be that Spara finds the time and desire to add them to his Stations for Extra Planets one of these days. Life always comes first but one can either continue to dream or take up the challenge one's self. Perhaps when full retirement hits me in the face a few years down the road the time will be found, finances allowing.

[Alnivel]

Distribution of Cloud Cities

Question: is it possible to identify the cloud giant planets (I suspect that they are merely textures - or chunks of coding in the vanilla game) and thus restrict the appearance of the Cloud Cities to the cloud giants?

Otherwise, one would need to go through the vanilla game list (might G1 Oresri & G1 Rilace be gas giants?), the Povray Planets textures, the Extra Planets textures (separate oxp) and the Strangers World textures (separate oxp), producing different lists for each.

First of all, doesn't the OXP intend to add these cities only to the main planet?

In Strangers World, if I'm not mistaken, the main planet cannot be a gas giant. However, additional planets-giants added by Planetary Systems should be easy to identify by texture name. The same should apply to all other planet retexture OXPs, which set a specific texture for the planet from the file.

In the case of some OXPs, you can use the non-standard properties they add.

As for those planets that have a dynamic texture (vanilla game planets, main planets in SW, maybe some others too), then it will not be so easy here. As far as I know, the core game doesn't implement gas giants in any way, it's just that planets happen to look like gas giants. Probably the only way would be to just make a list of such planets.

Also another note to SW: the first time it adds extra planets only when the player launches from the station. This shouldn't be hard to get around, but you'll probably have to sacrifice the ability to save in these cities.

Unless, say, Galactic Almanac does something helping identify the planets, thus allowing a short cut.

Galactic Almanac does identify gas giants (by beacon name in SW and via non-standard properties), but is it really justified to make it a dependency?
(If you suggest just stealing a piece of code or an idea from it that is responsible for gas giants identification, I'm sorry, I misunderstood your sentence.)