AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!Space Engeneers have better planets!

[SkylordLuke]

if we get LOD (level of details: decreasing the complexity of a 3D object representation as it moves away from the viewer)
so you can have the same planets we have now (dodecahedrons)
but with LOD they could be 100,000 m wide in all directions

 

[Master_Artificer]

i dont expect starmade to have space engineer planets. that is not what starmade is. Space engineers and starmade are very different games, with different objectives and focuses.

If you play space engineers for the PvP or even PvE, i pitty you.

 

[Colt556]

I think starmade would benefit IMMENSELY from having SE style planets. One of SM's best features is it's scale. If you wanna make grand space ships you can and it doesn't even have that bad of a performance hit. SE doesn't allow that. Now imagine planets as large as SE's, where they have actual ground where land vehicles are actually viable. Now imagine that much room to play with with SM sized structures. It would be absolutely glorious.

It may not happen, but goddamn if we could get actual honest to god planets like SE it'd be one of the best editions to SM ever.

 

[BrotherLazarus]

I think starmade would benefit IMMENSELY from having SE style planets. One of SM's best features is it's scale. If you wanna make grand space ships you can and it doesn't even have that bad of a performance hit. SE doesn't allow that. Now imagine planets as large as SE's, where they have actual ground where land vehicles are actually viable. Now imagine that much room to play with with SM sized structures. It would be absolutely glorious.

It may not happen, but goddamn if we could get actual honest to god planets like SE it'd be one of the best editions to SM ever.

Ground vehicles aren't actually viable on most of the landmass of the SE planets... the stock planets are too bumpy for the most part (IE, your wheels will just fly off for no reason), so you're still stuck using either low-altitude skimmers or multi-role support craft (hydrogen powered surface to orbit craft). I'd put together a mobile factory crawler while waiting for planets specifically to make use of vehicles, and I have yet to find a chunk of land where it'll even fit.

Though I will admit to a bit of "what the fuck" when I landed a corvette on a planet in StarMade and... the front and back hung off the edges of the continent.

That said, much of SE's performance hit doesn't come from the voxel terrain as much as the deformable voxel terrain. No Man's Sky has been referenced in this thread--but you can't actually deform any of that terrain, so it's just a set-piece model; at least in what little promotional content has been released.

I can't see that working as well when accounting for destructible terrain (which they'd "need" as a feature of the planets "because reasons"), as planet rendering is already buggy as sin, and then something with destructible voxels would... probably end up with even more of a performance hit.

That being said, if it could be done right and work? I'd be -all- over that. I love building planetary bases in SE (as buggy as it is), and with the options of certain types of doors and other features that won't explode when I use them remotely? Even better.

 

[Ithirahad]

StarMade doesn't have (working) collision damage, and physics has never really been a big selling point for the game, so I'd not worry about that. As far as changing the landscape, just as long as we get the ability to edit terrain using some form of terrain build mode, and planets can be mined (BY HAND ONLY, for the sake of all things good) for resources, I'll be happy.

 

[Blodge]

(BY HAND ONLY, for the sake of all things good)

Do you mean you don't like the idea of allowing automated mining (say, with a Bobby AI Turret)? Or do you mean mining from orbit with a massive Salvage array?

 

[Mariux]

People give a surprising amount of shit when it comes to planets in a SPACE game.

 

[Comr4de]

I have a base crawler in SE that I use for mining and wreckage retrieval operations, I have to use 5x5 wheels and intense suspension to keep it from bouncing off the planet. I think the fastest I can move without everything blowing up is 15m/s?

 

[Ithirahad]

Do you mean you don't like the idea of allowing automated mining (say, with a Bobby AI Turret)? Or do you mean mining from orbit with a massive Salvage array?

I mean that I don't like the idea of kilometer-wide salvage titans just eating everything from orbit and crashing servers, because with these planet sizes that is inevitably what is going to happen. A drill for small extractor hoverships would be good, but having multiples should have exponential power calculation or something to avoid drill blankets that would also crash servers from all the voxelmap updates.

 

[Blodge]

People give a surprising amount of shit when it comes to planets in a SPACE game.

Empty infinite voids might be full of endless fun but, sometimes, it's nice to take a breather
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I mean that I don't like the idea of kilometer-wide salvage titans just eating everything from orbit and crashing servers, because with these planet sizes that is inevitably what is going to happen. A drill for small extractor hoverships would be good, but having multiples should have exponential power calculation or something to avoid drill blankets that would also crash servers from all the voxelmap updates.

I'd say the crashing was a game-related technical issue which should try to be addressed. What if I want to blow a planet up Deathstar-style? I'd like to have the option without taking the whole quadrant down with me too

 

[BrotherLazarus]

I have a base crawler in SE that I use for mining and wreckage retrieval operations, I have to use 5x5 wheels and intense suspension to keep it from bouncing off the planet. I think the fastest I can move without everything blowing up is 15m/s?

My base crawler is something like 120 meters tall and almost 300 meters long and 80 wide. It doesn't fit anywhere. I was operating under the assumption we'd have flat terrain like several of the teaser videos had when I built it, each suspension base has 10 5x5 wheels and it's got the legs to keep going forever... except it can't, because I can't fit it anywhere. Which sucks, since it has SSTO launch pads and parasite landing pads on it.

 

[Ithirahad]

I'd say the crashing was a game-related technical issue which should try to be addressed. What if I want to blow a planet up Deathstar-style? I'd like to have the option without taking the whole quadrant down with me too

You have to remember that every single... every point, every little bit of land, is a point of data. Suddenly changing hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of those, all at once, without causing problems, may be a bit too much to ask.

 

[Comr4de]

My base crawler is something like 120 meters tall and almost 300 meters long and 80 wide. It doesn't fit anywhere. I was operating under the assumption we'd have flat terrain like several of the teaser videos had when I built it, each suspension base has 10 5x5 wheels and it's got the legs to keep going forever... except it can't, because I can't fit it anywhere. Which sucks, since it has SSTO launch pads and parasite landing pads on it.

I use the base crawler for ice mining. I have a lake about 10 klicks from my bunker and I leave that thing driving back and forth across the lake, getting ice to fuel my shuttles while I build my interplanetary ship in orbit.

Edit: I did a flyover using a (fucking huge) probe of mars, it looks like there's flat terrain for most of the planet there.

 

[Byamarro]

if we get LOD (level of details: decreasing the complexity of a 3D object representation as it moves away from the viewer)
so you can have the same planets we have now (dodecahedrons)
but with LOD they could be 100,000 m wide in all directions

LOD works well with predefined shapes. Not sure about planets where u would need to create LODs in real time.

But we need new planets. Current one are odd especially with the terrible gravity we have now...

 

[Ithirahad]

LOD works well with predefined shapes. Not sure about planets where u would need to create LODs in real time.

But we need new planets. Current one are odd especially with the terrible gravity we have now...

Convert the elevations of the highest blocks(or highest voxel points, in the case of SE planets) to a heightmap, scale down the resolution on the heightmap to create your LoDs. I think this is how SE does it, actually.

 

[Blodge]

You have to remember that every single... every point, every little bit of land, is a point of data. Suddenly changing hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of those, all at once, without causing problems, may be a bit too much to ask.

Can't blow something big up without even bigger consequences. Gotcha

 

[Ithirahad]

Can't blow something big up without even bigger consequences. Gotcha

Pretty much. Current planets dodge the issue by being made out of ready-made separate pieces, just waiting to be moved away from one another by some intrepid adventurer with a big gun... But the second you smush everything into one file it becomes, uh, problematic to just slice it up instantly like that.

 

[Byamarro]

Convert the elevations of the highest blocks(or highest voxel points, in the case of SE planets) to a heightmap, scale down the resolution on the heightmap to create your LoDs. I think this is how SE does it, actually.

That's still a lot of computations and u'll need to sometimes do it every few seconds as there are few levels of LODs.

 

[Ithirahad]

That's still a lot of computations and u'll need to sometimes do it every few seconds as there are few levels of LODs.

Honestly I would not update it unless:
A) Someone goes close enough to load the full planet.
B) Someone fires a gigantic missile at the planet/the planet takes a certain amount of explosion damage.

There is probably at least one unforeseen issue with that.

 

[Minsc]

My thoughts on round planets. They'd be cool to have in some way but not a necessity. At this stage of the game we are getting closer and closer to the point for features to get locked in and polished. I'm fine with round planets being a feature for StarMade 2 (if there ever is such a thing).