*Beaten to death topic* Spherical Planets

[Deadphyre]

I know the topic has been beaten to death and it's solely because of this game and the idea of a voxel universe that I got into programming. Although, I'm not doing a java based game and instead went with C#. Personal preference. I have been able to go through the notion of doing a space oriented voxel game and the first thing I absolutely wanted to tackle was a modifiable planet (spherical even).



I've found that the best way to make a real size planet was to normalize everything and chunk out the terrain. Now, it's definitely a ton of work but in the end it would be more appealing than the oreo style here.



Maybe some time down the road the idea could be revisited and it's just an idea but having a spherical planet would without a doubt make this game super appealing. Like the creater, I am tired of having an infinite terrain and the major appeal I have to this game is the creation and design of space ships with partial planet integration.



I still would like to see spherical worlds but I know that there is a lot of the dev's plate and I know this topic has been beaten with death...over and over and over again but if there is a logical and efficient way to do, why not put it on a possible to-do list.

 

[NeonSturm]

But then I realized how weird it would be if you stay at a block at 45° (or PI/4 rad).

You would stay on an edge of a block!



Java is Cross-Platform. That is the biggest advantage of it.

 

[Deadphyre]

There is a way around having a roundish planet using blocks. If he\'s using marching cubes in this it becomes easier but there is a way to normalize a planet to that it looks round by essentially relocation all the vertices based on the randomly generated radius. Only load faces that are on the surface so that you don\'t chew up all the memory. Each block would reduce in size the closer to the core you got and it could be programmed that only blocks within the planets atmosphere are affected by this.



For example I would have a maximum depth they could dig before hitting the liquid mantle which is essentially a thick space with a redish overlay and in the center would be a solid core which can\'t be deformed. But, if the crust was chunked out to be something like 16x16x16 it could be possible. The main problem I had when trying to do this myself was that the north and south poles wouldn\'t be blocks but triangle shaped and there is an ugly pinching with the UV\'s and textures.



That\'s why I switched to using an isohadron or icosphere, going from square blocks to triangle blocks (not a 4 sided triangle but 5 sides). I did run across another person attempting to stick with the cube blocks and generate a spherical planet but things are harder to calculate the poles. It\'s possible though.

 

[NeonSturm]

Would have choosen it myself...

For the core problem, there is a simple solution:

• The crust and core are separated by \"fluid\" lava.
• The separation does not allow to place blocks inside which are not ships - core and crust have no friction!
• Ships get crunched by the planet\'s core.

This allows the core to be some kind of cube with no own gravity (or very very low)



For the separation, I would not do it with blocks. I would let it only store a number of blocks and salvaging/addingBlocks only changes the density of it (density is used for linear dampening, pressure, etc). Once it has below certain density (

 

[Doggydog08]

I think instead of a spherical world, why not have a cool cube world, I think it would look great!

 

[jzimmerman4]

 

[CyberStone]

Not more spherical planets! You end up with the most messed up landing ships EVER!



Can we just have one thread for this? Please?

 

[NeonSturm]

If you post pictures 5 times a page\'s height, I am sure everybody will hear you :P

Click http://star-made.org/comment/91728/edit or ttp://star-made.org/comment/91729/edit, go to \"[]Source\" (top left of your editor) and replace \"

 

[jzimmerman4]

It\'s a suggestion thread... We are suppose to share ideas. And the picture I shared creates a round planet without distorting blocks or having weird gravity. It creates a round look to make people who want round planets happy while being possible to implement with out breaking the game.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

If any of you idiots post the \'enter an atmostphere and enter a world like Minecraft\' thing them I\'m gonna go on an active shooter spree. Just saying.



That being said, planets need work. Putting aside the obvious fact that the game is focusing on bugs (good) I still think larger, deeper and more detailed/varied oreos are good.

 

[ProzackPH7]

Large round planets are a great idea, oreos are a cool too, so are cube and round planets, but why stop there?

We should have Cube planets with 6 gravity directions, an oreo planet with 2 sided gravity, round planets with 1 gravity layer... cube Planets with cube moons, round moons, oreo moons...

Star made is a universe with the potential to have andything and everything in the imagination, so why not giant planets, weird alien planets, weird cube planets, inside out planets (Like a geode), gas giants with a liquid core (Atmosphere desintegrates light/normal hull), floating island \"planets\" (Like a cloud of land mass in an atmosphere), planets with rings (Small belt of asteroid type bodies)...

I would like to say that the idea of walking on the corner of a spherical planet with a constnat \'down\' gravity is kinda lame, breaks the \'universe\' if you will...

I personally dont believe that any one type is correct and would love to have a massive veriaty of different planetary bodies... think of how it would change the strategy, different ships could be more effective on a cube planet vs an island cloud planet, or a large ship with high armor could sit in the atmosphere of a gas giant but would be very limited in mobility trying to fight in the atmosphere of a geode planet (they\'d be too big and have to blow a hole into the planet to get to the rest of the planet). Something else that can come of multiple types of planets means some are rare, have rare items, unique items/blocks... what if you could harvest the core of a cube planet and on the extraction of the final cube it counts down to explode or implode or something... What if on island cloud planets you have an ore that lowers the mass of the blocks around it, taking it away makes it fall out of synch with the rest of the islands (maybe fall into space), removing the liquid core of gas giants removes the planet\'s gravity and is just a spherical cloud in space (like a spherical nebula).

I could go all day about the different ideas for planets and how it can effect game play.
So thats all I have to say about that.

 

[jzimmerman4]

That\'s a neat idea but cube planets have the problem of how gravity shifts around corners and edges. Perhaps the other types could be added through a mod later on in the game.

 

[25hz]

Regardless of the planet shape, irregular shaped gravity can be accomplished by forming the planet out of a series of cone or pyramid shapes. The dimensions of the \"base\" can be adjusted to fit whatever planet shape or size you want to build. The gravity code pulls towards the tip of the pyramid or cone, regardless of the location or orientation. A square planet is just 6 pyramids with their points touching. Each face can have it\'s own gravity and they all pull towards the centre. You cross a corner and the gravity now pulls 90 degrees to the last plane you were on. Spheres are no different with many times more cones/pyramids. The larger the planet, the harder the gravity code pulls towards the point. The pyramids/cones can be made of whatever block type you want. Water, lava, rock, etc when it\'s spawned. The end result is the same. Disc-world style planets can have top and bottom gravity by splitting the gravity plane mid planet with very little mechanical difference than there is now.

The important thing to remember is that this IS a game, and there\'s no reason to not have any planet shape we like, regardless of \"reality\".