Planets!

[Daniel L.]

Heres an idea.... just use more and smaller plates! by doing that you can increase the poly count of a planet making it more detailed

 

[Lecic]

Heres an idea.... just use more and smaller plates! by doing that you can increase the poly count of a planet making it more detailed

No. More entities causes more lag- it's better for performance if everything is on one entity. Spawn 10,000 cores vs 1 10,000 block ship to see what I mean.

 

[Daniel L.]

No. More entities causes more lag- it's better for performance if everything is on one entity. Spawn 10,000 cores vs 1 10,000 block ship to see what I mean.

Then how about using actual block spheres and making a spherical gravity system.

 

[Lecic]

Then how about using actual block spheres and making a spherical gravity system.

That would either require spherical coordinates for planets, which Schema has already said he's not doing after he tested it and didn't like it.

 

[Daniel L.]

That would either require spherical coordinates for planets, which Schema has already said he's not doing after he tested it and didn't like it.

Or maybe planets shouldnt even be spherical: how about a cube? it is a blocky game after all. and the number of plates would be reduced to 4.

 

[Lecic]

Or maybe planets shouldnt even be spherical: how about a cube? it is a blocky game after all. and the number of plates would be reduced to 4.

The gravity transitions would be too sharp.

 

[Daniel L.]

The gravity transitions would be too sharp.

How about just reverting to flat... they actually were pretty cool, And would be easy to make seamless biomes. Plus it was pretty awesome to carve hangers in the sides.

 

[kupu]

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.

Not really. You can make it as large as you like, but you still warp the same coordinates by the same degree into 2 poles at each end of the sphere. Any orbital to surface interaction suffers as a consequence.

 

[Ithirahad]

Not really. You can make it as large as you like, but you still warp the same coordinates by the same degree into 2 poles at each end of the sphere. Any orbital to surface interaction suffers as a consequence.

...And by interaction you mean shooting? Because shooting planets from orbit is kind of OP anyway.

 

[SilverAgeFan]

...And by interaction you mean shooting? Because shooting planets from orbit is kind of OP anyway.

Question that might be more important from a memory, lag, and gameplay perspective is what is meant here by "suffers"?

Would a little tweaking and fudging be required? Are we talking crazy immersion breaking distortion that requires processing melting workarounds to bury?

 

[kupu]

what is meant here by "suffers"?

I couldn't speak for the code side of it. It might even work. However as a player, would i want it? Nope. This is my limited knowledge on why i think gameplay would suffer.

From what i am interpreting from the ideas here, a plane would be mapped to a sphere. Let's image our plane as a grid and each section is 1000 blocks.

A) Let's say we fire a shot, launch an object or come in to land on a planet in a small craft.
Our target location is the blue dot. But woops, we miscalculated a little...

If the target is on the "equator" then no big deal. We walk a couple hundred blocks.
On the pole? Better pack a snack and trek a couple 1000 blocks.

Spoiler: Example A

B) We want to walk in a line from one segment to another.
We start in the green box, our surrounding boxes are blue and our target is red. No problem if we start near the equator or run along the longitude. The map wraps we could run around infinitely without a single seam.

Until we reach a pole. The points here converge. The map either doesn't warp and you hit a wall, or you warp. You skip over the pole and suddenly find yourself thousands of blocks left or right of your original position?

Spoiler: Example B

I might of misunderstood the idea, or perhaps even of gotten this wrong. I'm no math wizard. But i've not seen a solution to these ^ on the forums without breaking the grid and plane into... well...not a plane or grid.

 

[HolyCookie]

I couldn't speak for the code side of it. It might even work. However as a player, would i want it? Nope. This is my limited knowledge on why i think gameplay would suffer.

From what i am interpreting from the ideas here, a plane would be mapped to a sphere. Let's image our plane as a grid and each section is 1000 blocks.

A) Let's say we fire a shot, launch an object or come in to land on a planet in a small craft.
Our target location is the blue dot. But woops, we miscalculated a little...

If the target is on the "equator" then no big deal. We walk a couple hundred blocks.
On the pole? Better pack a snack and trek a couple 1000 blocks.

Spoiler: Example A

B) We want to walk in a line from one segment to another.
We start in the green box, our surrounding boxes are blue and our target is red. No problem if we start near the equator or run along the longitude. The map wraps we could run around infinitely without a single seam.

Until we reach a pole. The points here converge. The map either doesn't warp and you hit a wall, or you warp. You skip over the pole and suddenly find yourself thousands of blocks left or right of your original position?

Spoiler: Example B

I might of misunderstood the idea, or perhaps even of gotten this wrong. I'm no math wizard. But i've not seen a solution to these ^ on the forums without breaking the grid and plane into... well...not a plane or grid.

why would we go for a round planet anyways, yea sure, it's realistic and stuff but why not go sci-fi creative and go for a whole different shape (if you really want to change planets, im kinda ok with the planets right now, though planet bases aren't safe at all)

 

[Crimson-Artist]

just as everyone else has said schema has tried spherical planets before they didnt work out. I found this on the old site.

and square planets too

He detailed why these wont work in this article: http://oldsite.star-made.org/content/starmade-dev-update-why-spherical-planets-dont-fit-block-world

my opinion? Even though i would like bigger planets I would much rather have small planets that have more points of interest on them. Right now every planet just feels boring. If a planet had say a minecraft style stronghold that was procedural generated then yeah i'd prioritize landing and exploring it on foot. Hell if i saw a crashed ship on a planet's surface id stop by and check it out which would be pretty cool and very doable

 

[Olxinos]

While reading Kupu's last post, I thought of a funny way to map a square grid on a sphere which shouldn't have this kind of aberration at the poles. However, there might be other aberrations, probably weirdly stretched squares, and it might be a nightmare to turn into actual equations. It must not be practical, but I found it funny.
Here's a quick schema of what I was thinking (it's not very formal, just a rough idea):

I don't remember having seen this way of mapping a grid on a sphere before, so it must not have good properties otherwise it would have been used. But I'm wondering how the the grid would look on the sphere, anyone knows/has an image of someone who tried?

Edit: ah that might be a variant of the method he used in that old post, i think the aberrations would be roughly the same, i have my answer about how that would look then o/

 

[SilverAgeFan]

<SNIP>

Thanks Kapu for that in depth explanation. Really helped clarify things for me.

 

[Daniel L.]

C'mon guys just revert to flat. The flat planets worked flawlessly and the current dodecahedrons are really cheesy looking, after all when you go from one plate to another the gravity swap is so steep you cant possibly ignore it, Plus there is always a deep crevice between plates, It is better just to use flat since they are easier.

EDIT: Rather than rate funny... How about a comment?

 

[Lone_Puppy]

This sounds like a neat idea. The planets already have a kind of atmosphere cover that perhaps could be more dense to improve performance. Dense to alter the viewing distance to prevent slow generation. Or perhaps use a low res perspective based textures at a certain distance.

I like the current implantation of the dodecahedron. Sure it is a laggy nightmare sometimes, and the surface generation can take a little longer than I would like, but it's fun to have a direct connection between my space activities and the planet.

I love that I can build a crazy tower from the surface that reaches into space. And that I can dock ships to it to have them reside in perfect geosynchronous orbit above whatever structures I have on the surface. I also like having a fake orbiting station or ring that directly connects to the surface and uses the gravity from the planet. Which is what I wish would happen on every ship with gravity modules. It's a pain turning it on either manually or with logic.

Sorry Cactuspungente if this is not in line with your view.

 

[Wolverines527]

How about making something on the planets that can prevent the block count till you penetrate the atmosphere and as you get closer the blocks load up procedurally could that be done maybe it could cut the lag from when you are flying in space

 

[Planr]

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

Well said, lmao.

 

[RavenWT]

Guys my thoughts were from dodecahedron.... not from spherical planets.... you can map and unwrap coordinate just like texture's UVW mapping... maybe i'll make a picture to explain my thoughts it could be easier to understand... I think my idea isn't bad.... i'll try to explain this soon

kupu: i know about sphere problems. I'm CG artist and i know about pole's problems on maps That's why i'm ok with dodecahedron it's really better to map Stay tuned for my picture, that will be quite the same than your's huhu