Okay, I got the idea to make a TC based on just our solar system. No other stars anywhere. But since a game with only system would be boring I decided to put each of the planets and some of its moons in a system, for a total of 10(9planets + the sun). But this wasn't enough, so I thought that by using a lot of crons and visbits, I could use a lot of copies of each of the planet-systems to give the illusion that they were orbiting the central sun-system. Well, I quickly set up a test of 19 mercury-systems each 5 degrees apart, for a total of a 90 degree arc. I set up the visbits and crons but realized that each system can only connect to 16 other systems. So I thought for a minute and realized, I don't have to connect the sun to everything else, just everything else to the sun, and Nova would be smart enought to assume the link went both ways. Well, this allmost works, Nova assumes all 19 systems connect to the sun, it says so in the debug log, but it only uses the first 16. Even if only 17 is set to be visible, it just assumes connections to 1-16 and just doesn't show them because their visbits tell them to be off.

I've thought about this for a day now, and I'm completely out of hope to get my planet-systems orbiting the sun. So, I ask the rest of the dev community to rack their brains and think of ANY possible workarounds. Please post any idea you have, even you instanly realize it won't work, b/c your idea might spark someone else to improve or change it into the solution. I don't expect this to be possible, but it's too cool and idea for me to let it die without a fight.

Thanks for your help!

P.S. I know I used bold and caps, and that most people would say its rude, but I needed more emphasis than just bold. Also, please don't post just to say it's not possible, even with a good explanation why. I know that it's impossible and I know why, I want people to propose work-arounds, ways to abuse the engine to make it possible, ways to exploit a bug, anything that would let me pull of the effect.

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I like long walks, especially those taken by people who annoy me.

Use 16/15/14 sytems instead. Or whatever number that has good maths.365/10 is 36.5.

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You just proved theories worked.

Or just do orbital concentric circles around the Sun as planned but only link each orbit circle to the two surrounding it. There was an EVO TC that did this, and I remember thinking that this would be a perfect application of the crön resource and visbits when the former was announced for Nova.

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Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
**Or just do orbital concentric circles around the Sun as planned but only link each orbit circle to the two surrounding it. There was an EVO TC that did this, and I remember thinking that this would be a perfect application of the crön resource and visbits when the former was announced for Nova.

**

That was Galaxy's Edge, I believe. A plugin with so many good, realistic concepts that was spoiled by trying too hard - it was infuriating to go anywhere or do anything due to the realism.

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(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
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Thanks for the ideas. The problem with using only 16 systems is that with all 9 of the planets, 7 of them would only have 2 orbit points and the other 2 would only have 1 orbit point. So while that would work, it'd be crappy. And I tried to find Galaxy's Edge, to see what you meant about it b/c it was a little unclear, but I didn't see it anywhere on the EVO addons pages. Anyway, thanks for the help, like I said, I'm not expecting this to ever work but maybe someone will come up with some solution.

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I like long walks, especially those taken by people who annoy me.

Quote

Originally posted by Ernimtir:
Thanks for the ideas. The problem with using only 16 systems is that with all 9 of the planets, 7 of them would only have 2 orbit points and the other 2 would only have 1 orbit point. So while that would work, it'd be crappy. And I tried to find Galaxy's Edge, to see what you meant about it b/c it was a little unclear, but I didn't see it anywhere on the EVO addons pages. Anyway, thanks for the help, like I said, I'm not expecting this to ever work but maybe someone will come up with some solution.

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I think what he meant was that, instead of having everything linked to the Sun, have Pluto linked to Neptune, Neptune linked to Pluto and Uranus, Uranus linked to Neptune and Saturn, Saturn linked to Uranus and Jupiter, etc. etc.. Of course, it'd look a bit wierd if you followed the correct orbital trajectories of the planets, so you would have to link the planets to which ever one looked closest at the given date, not what order the planets' distances are from the sun. It also wouldn't let you have the Sun be a system that you can jump into from every rotation, but you probably shouldn't be able to do that anyway.

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• MadFax7 (url="http://"mailto:MadFax7@hotmail.com")mailto:MadFax7@hotmail.com(/url)MadFax7@hotmail.com

Quote

Originally posted by Ernimtir:
**I've thought about this for a day now, and I'm completely out of hope to get my planet-systems orbiting the sun. So, I ask the rest of the dev community to rack their brains and think of ANY possible workarounds. Please post any idea you have, even you instanly realize it won't work, b/c your idea might spark someone else to improve or change it into the solution. I don't expect this to be possible, but it's too cool and idea for me to let it die without a fight.
**

Hmm, I just thought of a possible solution just a second ago. Why only have one Sun-system? Admittedly it makes the orbital periods more inflexible, but have the Sun actually represented by, say, 10 different systems that are all in the same place? Use crons and visbits to make only one available at the time, and then coordinate it so that at a given point in time, all the planets do connect to the current Sun-system. When the cron next cycles and the planets move, they can then connect to a new Sun-System that looks the same but is different as far as Nova is concerned. That way you could have the Sun connected to 160 different orbit points instead of 16. It would be tricky to coordinate, but I'm sure it would be possible. I hope I have made this explanation intelligible...

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(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
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Why don't you just have 16 positions for the orbit?

Beyond that, the only thing I could think of would be to have multiple Sun s˙sts, each depending on the orbit of Mercury.

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Human logic, though beguilingly simple, is seldom complete.

Thanks everyone! It looks like I'll have to try and see if using multiple suns will work. I did some rough estimates on that and may have to make some sacrifices here and there to keep it under 2048(the max) systems. I'll download Galaxy's Edge while I'm sleeping because I don't want to waste precious surfing time downloading 11 megs on my dialup. This will probably die just because I'm lazy but if I can get it to work good I just might make something of it. Thanks for the help, but don't hold your breath waiting for a release of it.

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I like long walks, especially those taken by people who annoy me.

Quote

Originally posted by Mazca:
**Hmm, I just thought of a possible solution just a second ago. Why only have one Sun-system? Admittedly it makes the orbital periods more inflexible, but have the Sun actually represented by, say, 10 different systems that are all in the same place?
**

That is a clever solution. I like it.

I was thinking about gravity wells, though. It depends on the physics of your universe. Something I've been playing with is the idea of 'hubs'. One near the sun, and the other near Jupiter. That way the entire system is divided into 2 regions: inner and outer planets. One would jump to the 'sun' (which would actually be a point near mercury), then use a gate to get to the inner planets and their moons. To get to the outer systems, jump from sun to Jupiter and go from there.

You could justify this method in a story line as such: the hyperspace engines home in on the largest gravity well in the direction of flight. Normal planets are too small, but mini brown dwarfs and suns collapse the hyperspace field. To get to planets, one would then need to use gates.

This justification opens up all kinds of interesting missions. Like, what happens if you miss Jupiter? The ship would just tearass through space until it got close enough to a gravity well that would collapge the field. Sort of a 'lost in space' mission, I guess.

I'm just blathering now.

-STH

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"Create enigmas, not explanations." -Robert Smithson

I love this idea. My input on the idea:
A galaxy consisting only of our solar system would indicate weak "jump" engines, or conventional propulsion. Getting out to an orbit is what takes energy- you can orbit the sun for free more or less. In other, commercial scenarios such as this, travel between orbits is done one of a few ways:
1. By gravity wells and slingshots.
2. Slowly under thrust with reaction mass engines
3. Via some hypergate system (Ala Cowboy Bebop, my next project if I finish Robotech)
Why not set up a series of concentric rings, that link to eachother, forming an orbit, with travel between the orbits via hypergates? Each ring could have more and more systems forming it, with the distance between the systems as more or less constant. The hypergates could move with the planets or independantly. If you did it bebop style, charge a fee to use the hypergates.

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~Charlie

One possibility, inspired by Masamune's post, is to set the hypergates in permanent position in the orbits, at set distances. Say, 4 for Mercury's orbit, but 10 for Jupiter, due to the larger orbit. You could use these stationary hypergates to reach any orbit, and from the gate you jump to the planet in question. Only the closest hypergates are actually linked to the planet, and, even better, all the hypergates in the orbit that are not linked get replaced by inactive ones if they are not currently linked. This would simulate using the hypergate tech to enter traverse large distances, but due to instability of hyperspace near large gravity sources, they cannot be placed in orbit of the world. The fuel of the actual jump then simulates the actual fuel use travel around the system.

Hell, I may use a variant of that in plug I'm considering starting. Not the solar system orbit idea, that's too much work and too many systs, but a slight change on what I just said. Feel free to use it in yours, since mine hasn't begun yet, its based off Masamune's idea (ie not my IP), and my plug will likely never get released

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