Maybe i figured out how to do it
to make mutiple landing sites on a planet, couldn't you just:
Make every planet a wormhole that links to a system with a green background or something, and make city sprites for the landing zones
this could also have planetary only ships that can't use the jumpgates (zeppelins and such i dunno)
http://s9.invisionfr...dex.php?act=idx
Scimitar Design Syndicate
EVNova Design Team
This post has been edited by Lord Wriath : 10 March 2005 - 06:30 PM
I thought of this too, but its better for gas giants (think like cloud city) since a matte im orange makes sense.
The problem is: How do you get back out?
Customs building?
/edit, yeah. thats a much more workable solution. Especially if the planet is jupiter sized.
This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 10 March 2005 - 07:09 PM
Lord Wriath, on Mar 10 2005, 11:06 PM, said:
to make mutiple landing sites on a planet, couldn't you just:
Make every planet a wormhole that links to a system with a green background or something, and make city sprites for the landing zones
this could also have planetary only ships that can't use the jumpgates (zeppelins and such i dunno)
http://s9.invisionfr...dex.php?act=idx
Scimitar Design Syndicate
EVNova Design Team
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Or you could just put three city sized spobs on top of a planet sized spob, thereby creating selectable landing sites.
Wait, you can change the background on a per-system basis? That would sure be useful for SW:N...
Thats a really good idea for that sort of thing. A tiny bit hacky/unwieldy, but still overall good.
Still use Martin's idea for most planets, though. That would be best.
The main problem with this idea is that it's not very easy to get anything other than a solid-color background, which will tend to look monotonous. Also, the system map loops when you cross both the vertical and horizontal boundaries, and I know of few planets of toroidal design 
I always did like the idea of sticking an inertialess outfit on your ship and sending you into the atmosphere for some deimos rising-style planetary dogfights, though. You could use planet-type weapons to make bombs for use against ground targets. This would also work well with the "wind" idea we kicked around a few weeks ago. Would there be any way to kill your ship if you fell below a certain airspeed, or would we just explain it as a VTOL sort of thing?
Regulus, on Mar 11 2005, 09:01 PM, said:
I always did like the idea of sticking an inertialess outfit on your ship and sending you into the atmosphere for some deimos rising-style planetary dogfights, though. You could use planet-type weapons to make bombs for use against ground targets. This would also work well with the "wind" idea we kicked around a few weeks ago. Would there be any way to kill your ship if you fell below a certain airspeed, or would we just explain it as a VTOL sort of thing?
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Make an invisible ship chase you so that if you slow down it'll catch up to you and kill you
problem with big planets is Nova REALLY hates them, uh, somebody else should implement this if they feel like it, my design team is currently on other projects, so we won't be able to do anything in it for a while, just give Scimitar Design Syndicate a mention in the readme
I had an idea, but I'm not sure if it's even possible as I've never messed with planetary sprites. If you took a large (i.e. screen filling) planet sprite and cut it into 4 or so sections with a bit of overlap, then aranged them onscreen as planets so that it looked like one BIG planet, would it work? Just set them to not be targetable, and throw some small "city" planets on top or behind it.
you cant set a planet to be untargetable
That would still take a damn large set of pictures, the screen redraw would put you at 15 fps on respectable machines, and thats just not cool.
Novas pixel copying graphics engine isnt designed for stuff like this -.-
rmx256, on Mar 18 2005, 05:08 AM, said:
Why not use black square sprites with no mask for cities The target scope thing outlines the sprite itself, not the mask, IIRC.
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...? wha
Guy, on Mar 18 2005, 07:40 AM, said:
What do you need a really large planet for anyway? A planet the size of jupiter is plenty big enough to throw a number of smaller "cities" on top of.
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Yeah, thats what I'm doing for my plugin. Seems to work plenty well. Technically, at that scale, cities should be the size of a pixel or two. Modern cities, at least.
As an added bonus, generally, the background planet is uninhabited, so you can just 'land your ship wherever, and they dont ccare', you just cant land it near cities. This might change, however.
Look, when you select a planet, it makes those little boundry things appear that look like glowing blue corners, right?
They surround the outside of the sprite, not the image that is inside the sprite, I think.
If you use for sprites empty squares of various sizes that have no mask, therefore: 0) Set up a planet base with your "City" spobs arranged on it. 1) they will have no visible screen display- you could select them, but no sprite will be displayed on the screen as they have no mask. 2) When they are selected in-game by pressing 1-4, they will be 'selected' by the glowing corner things, but nothing will be on-screen to represent them. It would appear as if you'd selected an area of the planet without actually selecting the planet itself. This would be easier and take less spob graphics than chopping your planet graphic into pieces for the different parts of the planet you can land on. You'd just need a selection of variously sized blank sprites w/o masks in addition to your base planet images.
This post has been edited by rmx256 : 18 March 2005 - 02:59 PM
SS did it first.
Yes, we have large planets with multiple spobs for different sections;for instance, Earth has North America, South Americsa, Africa, and Eurasia (I think).
I like the idea of a customs building. Mainly because you can land on it normally, which M/Nxxx's you to the customs building in the spob-syst. Then you land on the customs building, which offers a mission asking if you want to return (when you land on the planet the traditional way, there is no option, but it's identical otherwise sans the system).
NebuchadnezzaR, on Mar 17 2005, 10:45 PM, said:
Yes you can. Set it to a nav thingy > 4 and make in uninhabited. Boom. Done. You could also use this as a background instead of a background system color.
Umm, Regulus, it sends you back to the opposite side. So if you head straight right and wrap, it will send you to the far left, not the center. This is perfect: it gives the impression of a sphere.
This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 18 March 2005 - 05:03 PM
orcaloverbri9, on Mar 18 2005, 09:53 PM, said:
Umm, Regulus, it sends you back to the opposite side. So if you head straight right and wrap, it will send you to the far left, not the center. This is perfect: it gives the impression of a sphere.
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No it doesn't, as you end up directly opposite, the sphere effect isn't directly possible in 2D, and so this method is used instead. Think about it, if you're using a graphics program to texture a 3D toroid, you use a rectangle, so that side matches side, and all four corners join up when you bend it into a toroid.
Of course, it's perfectly fine and usable for a game, so it doesn't matter.
