Planets!

[CactusPungente]

The first thing that came at my eye in this game was actually how planets have changed. They were flat circles at start, and now they became dodecahedrons. So why don't change them? Why don't make them bigger and more "realistic"? The lag they create is a lot so a little idea to make bigger and less laggy planets came in my mind.
Premising that one of the best things of this game is the lack of loading screens, my idea was to create "false" round planets. In space they will seem like a normal planet (with textured atmosphere and surface) but as coming close to it and entering in the atmosphere our ship will enter in the actual planet, huge by dimension, and with procedurally loaded surface. What I mean by that? That normally the planet will look like a normal planet in space would look (without causing lag upon going too close to it), and if you want to go on the surface you may enter in it's atmosphere and, after a little animation (like the exterior hull heating up because of the atmosphere) you may stay with your ship on the actual surface (flat and huge, so it may seem spherical) with the sky above you actually rotating as you move (or time passes).

The benefits of this new concept of planets may be many

-More resources
-Aliens wandering on the surface of the planet without glitching trough gravity wells
-Less Lag (maybe)
-Bigger planets
-Good looking realistic planets

and so on.

Also gravity may be progressively strong depending on the distance from the planet surface.


What do you think about that? It's a good or bad idea?

Spoiler

I'm sorry for my bad grammar, English is not my first language :P

 

[Master1398]

I do think it has been said several times that planets won't get a seperate world. And that's basically your suggestion.

 

[Blaza612]

The first thing that came at my eye in this game was actually how planets have changed. They were flat circles at start, and now they became dodecahedrons. So why don't change them? Why don't make them bigger and more "realistic"? The lag they create is a lot so a little idea to make bigger and less laggy planets came in my mind.
Premising that one of the best things of this game is the lack of loading screens, my idea was to create "false" round planets. In space they will seem like a normal planet (with textured atmosphere and surface) but as coming close to it and entering in the atmosphere our ship will enter in the actual planet, huge by dimension, and with procedurally loaded surface. What I mean by that? That normally the planet will look like a normal planet in space would look (without causing lag upon going too close to it), and if you want to go on the surface you may enter in it's atmosphere and, after a little animation (like the exterior hull heating up because of the atmosphere) you may stay with your ship on the actual surface (flat and huge, so it may seem spherical) with the sky above you actually rotating as you move (or time passes).

The benefits of this new concept of planets may be many

-More resources
-Aliens wandering on the surface of the planet without glitching trough gravity wells
-Less Lag (maybe)
-Bigger planets
-Good looking realistic planets

and so on.

Also gravity may be progressively strong depending on the distance from the planet surface.


What do you think about that? It's a good or bad idea?

Spoiler

I'm sorry for my bad grammar, English is not my first language :p

I'm pretty sure the idea of an illusion creating the planet has already been suggested multiple times before, and maybe even attempted at some point. As you may be able to tell, it didn't work well.

If you are suggesting a sort of dimension style thing (which sounds like you are with the animation transition part) then HERESY! No loading screens is a massive strong-point for this game, an animation that loads the planet is effectively the same, and will take away from the overall experience. While better planets would be nice, adding a loading animation is not worth having better planets.

 

[CactusPungente]

Why not? As they are now planets are bad for life sustaining (mobs and also NPC) and are very small (if you make their size bigger lag will obliterate any of yours prospects).

So why not making them this way?

Edit:

Still no loading screens, i don't want to kill a dogma of this game :p
just a short animation like jumping animation to enter above the surface, as it's short, fits the gap between deep space and atmospherical space, and doesn't ruin the immersion.


The most similar thing I saw, to explain better my idea, was in this video (about No Man's Sky)

Spoiler: That video

At 3:17 we see how the ship descends on the surface of the planet. It doesn't have any loading screen of any sort

 

[kiraen]

It sounds like a good idea, until you think about all the disk space and memory it's going to eat up. For every single planet.

 

[CactusPungente]

It sounds like a good idea, until you think about all the disk space and memory it's going to eat up. For every single planet.

The games already does something like that with old planets, the only way to make it better is a complex packing algorithm (helped with procedurally generation)

 

[Criss]

Why not? As they are now planets are bad for life sustaining (mobs and also NPC) and are very small (if you make their size bigger lag will obliterate any of yours prospects).

So why not making them this way?

A few things. First there is no life. There is no fauna so questioning whether they can sustain life yet is kind of irrelevant. When fauna is put in the devs will make sure it works.

Second, you're suggestion does not really solve the problem for lag. All you are doing is delaying when the lag arrives, which would be after crossing a threshold.

Schema has stated this before. StarMade is about space. Separating planets from space is not intended and any sort of instancing, loading, or crossing a boundary is not really desired. It should remain as simple as seeing the planet and it's features and landing on it instantly.

Planets may not seem big, but personally I find you can explore them for a quite a while on foot. It's a matter of perspective.

 

[Ithirahad]

Planets may not seem big, but personally I find you can explore them for a quite a while on foot. It's a matter of perspective.

Sure, but this game is about spaceships, and most people spend most of their time in spaceships, and I don't see that changing any time soon, so planets have to look the right size relative to, well... spaceships.

 

[Criss]

Sure, but this game is about spaceships, and most people spend most of their time in spaceships, and I don't see that changing any time soon, so planets have to look the right size relative to, well... spaceships.

The unfortunate thing is it's practically impossible. Or we have yet to discover a genuine solution that doesn't cheat us out of immersion.

 

[Ithirahad]

The unfortunate thing is it's practically impossible. Or we have yet to discover a genuine solution that doesn't cheat us out of immersion.

There are ways to 'hide' it, I think, and alternatives to an instanced planet in general, but even a genuine loading screen between outer space and going down to planets wouldn't ruin immersion for me as much as the planets being tiny dodecahedrons with weird jagged edges.

 

[MeRobo]

If planets were instanced, wouldn't they be immune to fire from space?

 

[Lecic]

Planets may not seem big, but personally I find you can explore them for a quite a while on foot. It's a matter of perspective.

Exactly. Any time someone says that planets are too small, I ask myself... has this person actually explored a planet on foot before? Even a small one can take quite some time to explore all the plates. All we really need is a reason to actually explore on said plates besides a little bit of ore. Creatures are a step in the right direction.

 

[Ithirahad]

Exactly. Any time someone says that planets are too small, I ask myself... has this person actually explored a planet on foot before? Even a small one can take quite some time to explore all the plates. All we really need is a reason to actually explore on said plates besides a little bit of ore. Creatures are a step in the right direction.

I've explored a lot of them on foot, actually... And while they're 'big' as far as surface area goes, with the majority of (larger) planets it seems that you come to the edge of a plate within a minute of arriving on it, even if you go the longest way across, and that big edge definitely breaks immersion and makes the planet feel smaller. Besides, as I said to Vanhelzing, this is primarily a spaceship game, the scale has to work according to spaceships, not according to astronauts.

If planets were instanced, wouldn't they be immune to fire from space?

Yes, and this would make for a pretty good reason to be on them. Personally, I've never set up a meaningfully-sized station beyond my homebase because I know someone's just going to nuke it, likewise with planet bases... If it changed so you actually had to send a fighter down to attack a planet, people wouldn't come in with giant ships and just wipe out your settlement in one shot any more. Likewise, laggy planet mining would basically go away too, since there could be no more 'planet eaters' hitting multiple entities at once... etc. Of course, you could use funky sphere-to-plane mapping to find where a shot would hit the surface map and just teleport it into the planet instance in that corresponding point (Or at least, save the location in the dimension data so that it'll 'fire' when someone loads that area), but I feel like that's too much effort for a feature that would actually detract from the main advantage of being on a planet IMO.

 

[Criss]

the scale has to work according to spaceships, not according to astronauts.

Except any ship you plan on landing on a planet is likely to be small. Landing a capital ship on a planet is fps suicide. Planet interaction is mainly through astronauts and will be more so when there are creatures and NPC's to discover on them and it should scale accordingly with that in mind. Bigger planets is fine. Landing anything larger than a hundred meters is not necessary and should not be the reason planets change.

people wouldn't come in with giant ships and just wipe out your settlement in one shot any more

You are underestimating the length people will got to destroy another persons stuff here. Just ask the odium pact people.

 

[RavenWT]

Even with instantiate planets you can have space/ground interaction. Simple grid with value of the planet's surface from orbit and from ground and report these value to the other one... something like : Ship laser hit on "A1" from space, so report the effect on "A1" on planet's gound. But i think it can lag so much :s

Maybe we could do spherical planets from space and flatten planets from ground ... Sorry for my bad English ^^

Edit: I was just wondering how to do transition between space and ground view... Just switch as soon you cross the astmosphere .... and maybe, instead of instance, just change chunks projection from planet shape to plane : each chunk as an ID, just keep them side by side with logic when player goes on them! And it won't change anything from space It's still a "spherical" planet. Oh and to reduce lags, maybe show less blocks from space maybe 10 first from ship or something like that.

And landing capital ships on planets should quite destroy them.... Look for Sci-fi stories, and you'll see that most of space ships cannot land on planets...

 

[kupu]

something like : Ship laser hit on "A1" from space, so report the effect on "A1" on planet's gound. But i think it can lag so much :s
Maybe we could do spherical planets from space and flatten planets from ground ... Sorry for my bad English ^^

You end up warping co-ordinates around the sphere's poles which would cause navigation / projectile problems.
Sphere planets, made from cubes, is most likely not going to happen.

edit; Necro? :O

 

[RavenWT]

Sphere planets, made from cubes, is most likely not going to happen.

My thoughts were with current in game planets (dodecahedron?) i just didn't remember the name of geometry, so i said "spherical" ^^

Edit : sorry indeed old topic... sorry for that... i'm just new to starmade :D

 

[Ithirahad]

You end up warping co-ordinates around the sphere's poles which would cause navigation / projectile problems.
Sphere planets, made from cubes, is most likely not going to happen.

edit; Necro? :O

Warping on a sphere that transitions into a plane could become a lot less perceptible with a large enough planet... Particularly with the LoD system I tend to blabber on about a lot. By the time you saw the blocks, you'd be on a flat plane and it wouldn't even be warped.

 

[SilverAgeFan]

Warping on a sphere that transitions into a plane could become a lot less perceptible with a large enough planet... Particularly with the LoD system I tend to blabber on about a lot. By the time you saw the blocks, you'd be on a flat plane and it wouldn't even be warped.

Inspired me to see if anyone has done much experimenting with non Euclidean geometry and voxels. Don't think this one involves voxels, but was one of the first links I came across that seemed semi relevant.

 

[HolyCookie]

You are underestimating the length people will got to destroy another persons stuff here. Just ask the odium pact people.

yea...eum... about that.... will the villages and structures of fauna have some kind of protection? space ships patrolling around, turret mounted up or something like that? or do I need to make it a challenge by going in as astronaut or, make it that you can only get loot if you go in as astronaut, if you break any important stuff (which you will do shooting from a ship) you won't be able to get the loot.