Cube Shaped Planets

[Sivert3]

The current discworld has some rather ugly properties. Firstly it's the gravity well that these worlds have, makes no sense. Falling off the edge or through the bottom of the world simply leaves you floating in space! You can leave the gravity well of a planet by walking. There is no point in making a ship capable of escaping the gravity of the planet, you'd simply dig a hole and let the ship fall into space. There are so many physical properties that are broken beyond repair with discworlds, that they might as well be called magic worlds.

So instead I propose making planets into cubes, with orthogonal gravitational fields. Having orthogonal aligned gravity fields means that right up to the edge of the cube, gravity will pull you in a direction perpendicular to the surface. This will create 6 flat surfaces perfect for building Minecraft style on it, while still making the shaped resemble more of a planet. And why stop there. Stars and moons could also be cubes. And we will have a blocky style space. Asteroids however is just a pile of fused rock, and should not have a cube shape.

With cubical planets, the difficulty of escaping the gravity well actually makes sense. If you end up on a planet without a ship or the resources to build it you'll be stranded on it. This will certainly make planets have more respect. In addition, large ships should be too heavy to escape the gravity well, no matter how many engines they have. This will make the mechanics of exploring planets more interesting. In addition to separating ships in to two classes. Space only ships, and ships that can land on planets. Imagine pushing your enemy's space only ship into the gravity well of a planet, and watch as it's engines lose the battle with gravity.

Inn addition these planets can have a molten core in the centre. This will act as a barrier, and makes it possible to have a kilometer large planet without having to address a 1000 million blocks. With a magma core, the surface only need to be in the order of 50 blocks thick and the rest of the volume could be a single large magma cube.

A reasonable size for this kind of planet would be around 1000 blocks in diameter. This will leave you with 6 square kilometers of land, or 6 times the world size in Minecraft Xbox Live Arcade. With the added property of being able to walk around the planet and end up at the same point that you started on.

 

[Bill2401]

I like it

 

[Danzarlo]

Personally i love the Disc worlds it makes me feel like im in a terry pratchet book until i come to the edge :3

 

[Firask]

what about those of us who have already made ships longer then the new planet size? When we get knocked into the gravity well, with our engines still in space along with 50% of the ship, are we still unable to leave?

Also, abadoned star ports and outposts on the planets would be cool too

 

[Dasneko]

Basically the idea of having tiers of minerals at different depths make little sense if you can just fly around and the physics of a cube world would be super fun :3

That said the disc worlds are also interesting in their own way.

 

[Elmerfudddied]

The problem I see with a cube world in the way you described is that if a player terraforms it, the gravity could be skewed to do all sorts of weird things. How would it decide which side is down if I turned the cube into a sphere?

 

[MrNo]

\"you\'d simply dig a hole and let the ship fall into space\"

Okay guys, we\'re leaving the planet. Prepare for dropoff! *Falls through Planet, Laughs like a child*

 

[Sivert3]

@Firask: At that size I would imagine the ship collapsing upon its own weight and turning into a gigantic pile of rubble as soon as it hit the surface. Should also be notet the the current planet size is about half of what I propose.

@Elmerfudddied: Down is the axis aligned to the planets voxel grid, that is closest to going straight to the centre of the planet. If you terraform the planet into a sphere, you will in effect make 6 gigantic mountains on the surface. Which is still a cube.

@MrNo: The physics behind this is not difficult to do at all. You\'d take the compoment with the hightest absolute value in the vector from the object to the planet you\'re calculating the gravity for. This compoment is the direction of gravity. And it\'s simple uniform gravity, much like the disc worlds of today after that.

I\'m still currious as to what level of physics will be implemented in the game.

 

[darth]

Mayby the current discworlds are just for testing, and in future the planets will be 100% spheres.

If no, +1 for the cube planets, the current ones are, hm, argh... Good for mining from space cuz U can see the ores on the bottom of the disc? xD

 

[OSTN]

Cube planets the way you have described them would fit the game perfectly

 

[Raok]

The only problem I see with cube worlds or any world with gravity pulling from multiple direction is..... what happens if you\'re at the center?

EDIT: Clearly I should have read the OP a bit better. He suggests a molten center so I guess the answer to my question is \"you melt.\"

On that note I think it should be possible to damage this large magma cube enough to destroy it, at which point the planet would \"die\" and gravity would stop. Bonus points for having the planet fall apart when \"dead.\"

 

[Sivert3]

Making large spheres out of cubes, in a way that is efficient enough for it to be possible to play with, is hard. Given that a tiny planet is 1 km in diameter, and that is in the order of 100\'s of millions of blocks, there will be no way that could work. But more of a problem is that If all the cubes are aligned, then the surface will be a continious incline, causing the flat surface that a cube creates when they are placed next to each other to be an incline as well.

When it comes to destroying a planet. I don\'t quite see where you\'re going to get the energy required to scatter 1000 million blocks. You could turn the planet into a lava planet, but actually removing it? No. Also gravity is a property of stuff. Unless you destroy or scatter said stuff, gravity will still be there. There is no place for the remains of a planet to \"fall apart\". Gravity holds the planet together, and unless you remove the planet, gravity will still be there to hold the planet together. And lastly, if your ship posses the power to destroy a planet, it is not a ship anymore. It\'s a death star. And with a death star you\'ve pretty much broken the game, as any enemy, no matter how great, can be destroyed in one shot with your death star.