Looking for ways to replace the starfield in certain systems.

Hello, I've recently been considering an idea...

The ability to land on planets, flying to various cities, colonies,manufacturing and mining centers....

The basic Idea makes use of wormholes with planet graphics, the player is then taken to another system with spobs modeled as ground buildings, mines, factories and the like....

To allow for use of ground based units, one would make use of the planetary weapon flag, allowing for only certain types of weapons to attack these structures and ground vehicles(ships with the planetary weapon only flag)... This allows for small, slow moving vehicles, sich as tanks, trucks, missile launchers, and the like, to patrol the system.

The one thing I see getting in the way of this is the starfield. It needs to be replaced with a planetary ground texture...

Basically, short of using a ship or planet with a very large image to act as the background, is there any way to do this?

Also, a side question... the images mask... is this used to determine hit detection? If so, it may be possible to have a large image that cannot be hit by planetary weapons, meaning a spob may be useful for the image, not interphereing with the combat...

Any ideas?

QUOTE (Nogitsune @ Jul 14 2009, 04:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hello, I've recently been considering an idea...

The ability to land on planets, flying to various cities, colonies,manufacturing and mining centers....

The basic Idea makes use of wormholes with planet graphics, the player is then taken to another system with spobs modeled as ground buildings, mines, factories and the like....

To allow for use of ground based units, one would make use of the planetary weapon flag, allowing for only certain types of weapons to attack these structures and ground vehicles(ships with the planetary weapon only flag)... This allows for small, slow moving vehicles, sich as tanks, trucks, missile launchers, and the like, to patrol the system.

The one thing I see getting in the way of this is the starfield. It needs to be replaced with a planetary ground texture...

Basically, short of using a ship or planet with a very large image to act as the background, is there any way to do this?

Also, a side question... the images mask... is this used to determine hit detection? If so, it may be possible to have a large image that cannot be hit by planetary weapons, meaning a spob may be useful for the image, not interphereing with the combat...

Any ideas?

i had this idea too!
what if you assumed the planet was on the side away from the star(thus being very dark)
and have really high murk levels...
then all the cities would just blinking lights of the landing strips.

a problem would be a logical way of getting off the planet, which could be something like a gigantic railgun (call it a spacerail) that charges a "landing fee" (even though it's actually a "launching fee")

QUOTE (BigCrate @ Jul 15 2009, 01:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i had this idea too!
what if you assumed the planet was on the side away from the star(thus being very dark)
and have really high murk levels...
then all the cities would just blinking lights of the landing strips.

a problem would be a logical way of getting off the planet, which could be something like a gigantic railgun (call it a spacerail) that charges a "landing fee" (even though it's actually a "launching fee")

I've considered this a bit myself... The problem with using a wormhole or hypergate to enter a planet is that there is a choke point on the other side.

For developed worlds, where in there are many cities or contenents (ie, earth) The best way to handle this may be to use a hypergate on both sides... In space, it would be a planet graphic... on planet, it would be a spaceport, or air trafic control type thing... Hailing the gate could offer a mission..... .essentually, for a modest fee, for one day, you can use the gate to leave/enter the planet. Since it is a hypergate, there could be several systems that are connected, IE, specific contenents of earth.. .each with their own cities, bases, and factions...

Although, that is a bit complicated, and doesn;t explain why you can go in a strait line and see the same land over and over again XD Perhaps just have it to one system then.

For lower tech and uninhabited worlds... may just allow a one way jump out of the system via hyperspace, although the rail launcher system is tempting... it would explain the lack of fuel requirements to leave a planets gravitational pull.

Does anyone know the size of a system? I e, pixels by pixels? I'dd like some idea as to how big the picture would need to be to cover the whole system.

This post has been edited by Nogitsune : 15 July 2009 - 04:51 AM

Way too big for a picture to be an option... It would slow things down so much as to be barely functional if at all.

what if you used several overlapping pictures instead of one big one?

QUOTE (yamfries @ Jul 16 2009, 01:38 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

what if you used several overlapping pictures instead of one big one?

Not an option... Each image would be anchored by an object... be it a ship or a steller... In either case, it cuts into the systems resources, limiting what could be done in the system.

An example of the problem... a simple 3 by 3 grid... it would require 9 objects... Now, I don;t recall how many stellers can be in a system, be it 8, 12, or some such... but 9 is alot...

I'll try creating a steller with a huge immage, see the performance results for myself.

The maximum number of stellars you can have in a system is 16, which is good for a 4x4 grid and all, but won't give you any landing points.

Murk seems the easiest way to go. If any stars shine through, they're city lights... or something...

Although, I would like to know the maximum size of a planet graphic...

Hey, system looping makes sense now!

QUOTE (n64mon @ Jul 18 2009, 07:53 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Murk seems the easiest way to go. If any stars shine through, they're city lights... or something...

my curiosity levels have gone up.
can the starfield be adjusted? eg. increasing the # of stars?

Isn't EVN, at least partially, doing it old-school and going though software? (Maybe not in 1.0.10?)

I'm pretty sure the star-field is hard-coded. That's just my intuition, though.

Quoting the bible...

QUOTE

The murkiness of the system (0-100). Zero will cause everything to appear normally - 100 will cause the player to question their current glasses prescription. A value less than zero is equivalent to zero murk but also hides the starfield.

Nick Anderson once made some extremely large planets. I mean, very very large. On modern hardware I will attest that screen-filling planets are possible but could be better.

QUOTE (BigCrate @ Jul 19 2009, 09:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

my curiosity levels have gone up.
can the starfield be adjusted? eg. increasing the # of stars?

QUOTE (n64mon @ Jul 21 2009, 12:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm pretty sure the star-field is hard-coded. That's just my intuition, though.

It can be adjusted but it would be universal there is only one resource for the stars so regardless whether your on a planet or not you would get the same images everywhere.

The system murkiness modifier would serve to decrease the visibility of stars, however...

Well I don't know about you but on my computer a murk count of 15 or higher and the stars are fully visible again.

Well, you could just make the stars invisible for "normal" spaceflight and then create a new rleD+spin (700, see NG2)

QUOTE (Sp3cies @ Jul 21 2009, 05:19 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It can be adjusted but it would be universal there is only one resource for the stars so regardless whether your on a planet or not you would get the same images everywhere.

so that means you could make make space completely star-less with a -1 murk level, then use the "star" resource as your planet surface, right?

Should work.

QUOTE (Nonconventionally Creative @ Jul 21 2009, 04:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, you could just make the stars invisible for "normal" spaceflight and then create a new rleD+spin (700, see NG2)

Bah, curse you! I just stumbled across the resource, and was feeling very proud of myself, when you posted it a week earlier!

QUOTE (Sp3cies @ Jul 21 2009, 09:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well I don't know about you but on my computer a murk count of 15 or higher and the stars are fully visible again.

No no, see, Matt Burch wrote "a value of -100 will make the player question their glasses prescription" because it causes stars to disappear without adding and system murk. The reason said players will question their glasses prescription is that they'll see a black field under their ship, and it'll seem like the ship isn't moving at all until it comes up against another ship, asteroids, or a planet. System murk (positive values) causes objects on the edge of the screen to fade in and out of vision, while star field murkiness (negative values) does not, if I recall correctly.