A New Way to do Sectors and Planet Transitions

[Xello]

Hello, I am a huge fan of the game.

However the transitions between Sectors are not very smooth and jumpy (I know the devs0 are working on this). Also having the planets being a disk works but breaks the illusion of the game a bit.



My Idea is to have a gate system. Each system is it's own coordinate system (Very Large). Only popluate an area in the middle of it (someplace around 0,0,0). Then connet each area together with gates. Gates can be built using special gate blocks. When a new gate is built a new Sector is created (Randomly Generated) or maybe connect with another previously generated sector (I couldn't come up with a good solution to this). This allows for the user to create a new area if they want. Of course getting gate blocks would be difficult. When someone blows up a gate. There will be a space rift (the result of having once poked a hole in space. You can rebuild a gate next to it to reconnect with the system. My initial thought for new systems is that there would not be a return gate and one would have to be built or the player must suiside to get back.



My Idea for planets, is to have a diffrent coordinate system for planets. It would be a standard "Minecraft Like" surface with a depth that you could not go any deeper. Then wrap the x and y coordinates so that the surface appears to be continus like a planet. Then have some way to map system coordinates to planet coordintes so you appear to be entering the plannet and you can see structures that are not on the plannet from the plannet. Also at high altitudes you might be able to do some vertex shading to make the plannet appear to curve. You might be able to cashe the surface tiles and create a texture for showing chunks farther away from the player as they are desending or asending from or to the planet.



I understand that these are very large changes and I don't really expect to be impelmented, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to put it out there.



Thanks for the awsome game. It is giving me lots of fun times and ideas (I lost a night of sleep you bastard).

 

[Bannta]

Love the game!

As for the planet shape, I would suguest a cube shape(however keeping the sphere atmoshere effect) when appoaching. When entering the atmosphere you are placing into the \"planet area(like moving into a sector)\" at that point the you would transition to a flat world with edge wrap around(aka minecraft world style). You could do some flate to cube face math to determine the point where your left the flat world to re-transition to space again to prevent camping.

 

[Xello]

I imagine that the planet would be made out of cubes so it would look like sphere in the distance. However, when you flying around on the planet the it looks flat, but it loops around so it would feel like you are on a sphere. Then, like you said, just map the x/y of the planet to the sphere in the sector and, bam, you have your self a planet that looks and behaves close to a real one with out too much effort, oh and gravity on all sides



Orbiting may be too complex for some people though, but it would be soo cool :D

 

[Cboehme]

Also having the planets being a disk works but breaks the illusion of the game a bit.


Read some books, Discworld, and it\'s spiritual predesscesor by the same author.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

If I were writing this game I would\'ve wanted planets visible from space with no cut-scenes. I would\'ve tried to implement it, then realised I was wrong. Hindsight can be annoying.

The problem with planets is that they\'re too big. They cause too much lag (e.g. accidentally flying too close to one) and take too long to download and display in a \"seamless\" way. If you\'re in a ship looking down on one (and wait long enough) the game just gives up and leaves you with big chunks missing from the planet that you should be seeing but aren\'t..

The other problem with planets is that they\'re too small. There\'s no point exploring them because they\'re so thin that you can see almost everything by looking from above and below (e.g. too small to let you hide a base/factory on them); and too small for several different players to setup their own small countries (and have ground warfare, etc). They\'re so small that it\'s probably better to pretend they\'re just large asteroids that look strange.

We know from other games that \"infinite size\" worlds are entirely possible, and don\'t cause massive amounts of lag when you mostly only see them from ground level (total number of visible chunks = just those nearby). It\'s the \"looking from above\" that is the problem (total number of visible chunks = all of them).

What I suggest is that space ships are designed for space, and should burn up or fall apart when they get into a planet\'s atmosphere (e.g. huge fireball that destroys the ship); where people flying space ships can never see a planet\'s surface (and only see the planet\'s atmosphere from space). To get down to a planet, you\'d find (or create) an orbital space station, and use (or build) a \"space elevator\". You get into the space elevator, and there\'s a little cut-scene as you\'re travelling down to the planet in the elevator (to give the game a chance to load the planet\'s surface); and the same for travelling back up (small \"travelling\" cut-scene while game loads the orbital station and any space ships).

In this case, planets can be huge squares that wrap around (e.g. you move in any direction for long enough and you end up where you started). A planet could have a molten core that can\'t be destroyed/mined, and gravity will always be sane. Several players could have their own space stations (with space elevators attached to different locations on the planet\'s surface). To make planets more interesting, players might be able to setup automated mining operations and farms, where resources (ore, food, etc) are harvested by machines on the planet and sent up the space elevator to the attached space station. There could also be special vehicles for planets (buggies, hover-craft, boats, etc); and maybe players could build mono-rail systems that connect different player\'s cities. For ground warfare, perhaps you could maybe build small turrets, and robot soldiers, and tanks and missiles (and possibly defend your city from the planet\'s native inhabitants, and other players).

Technical note: Some people might be worried about the amount of data that huge planets would cause. By dynamically generating planet terrain the game would only need to remember the \"seed\" that was used to generate the terrain, and this \"seed\" could be derived from the planet\'s location in space. By generating chunks on demand the game would only need to store modified chunks, not all chunks, so the amount of data that needs to be stored (and transfered over network when a player goes down to a planet) would be minimal (probably less data and less network traffic than the existing tiny planets cause now).

 

[BraveSteelDragon]

Well, schema could always try to look up something with the creator of SpaceEngine.

http://en.spaceengine.org/

That simulator got a quite smooth transition between the different areas of space, and it\'s rather memory-efficient for it\'s kind.

A transition method somewhat similar to that one could help in the realization of more complex planet structures, besides almost removing the issues reported in the past with sector/system transition.

 

[Cboehme]

Wants a game without transitions or loading.