I can counter everything listed above, and logically explain why it isn\'t a problem.
Now, let\'s use our imaginations, shall we?
However, what about planetary bombardments?
Rest assured projectiles could be sent to a different map just like players. Too many projectiles to handle? Combine them into one object, calculate one big impact, but draw a shell shower.
What says that planets will not provide passive minerals and ore if you set up a \'mining station\' on the planet,
Who said anything about anything PASSIVE ? I\'m thinking about building a giant drill and actively drilling a hole. Maybe one of those mobile tunneling devices. Hell, a mole tank. Plus, as long as you can do beam mining from space, NOTHING else is worth the time and effort.
This is a Space game ._. empathesis on \"Space\"
Have you seen many disc planets in space lately? It\'s. Just. Silly. Even if you never intend to land - keep in mind, someone else might enjoy to do so (oh god, others have opinions...) - proper planets are an integral part of a proper space game, as backgrounds, obstacles, or scenery if nothing more.
But, to humor myself I ask this; How do you \"Land\"? and How do you \"take off\"
Is it that difficult to imagine? Once you get close enough to the planet, your relative location is saved into a variable which you take with yourself to the planet level.
This number is then used to determine your location on the planet\'s flat map. You\'re still far up in the sky, still descending. After that, you land like you land now, or fly around. As the OP wrote, the map\'s edges are linked back to each other, so it\'ll truly feel like flying around a globe.
Taking off is the same in reverse.
respect his decision. Afterall, it is HIS Game o -o
Is he also the entire target demographic, or would he like other people to play the game too?
Heck, from what I see, I don\'t even think he plays SM, or, in fact, likes games too much. Looks more like he\'s interested in trying his luck in the videogame businnes.
There\'s nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind, success comes from giving the crowd what they want. (Or fooling them into believing they want garbage... )
We\'d like to avoid any in game loading screens
Is seeing a planet disc build itself up chunk by chunk truly better? Anyway, loading screens are a part of gaming, and it would not be too bothersome gameplay wise.
Spacial distortions can get pretty severe moving ships/weapons fire between a spherical border (the fake planet orb) and a flat grid layout (your desired world).
No. Described a few quotes above. Location calculated from ship\'s center\'s position, relative to fake planet orb\'s center\'s position. Easily translated to location on a flat grid. Doesn\'t even have to be pinpoint accurate. (ex; you\'re between this and that coordinates, you\'ll appear in this zone.)
Ship size can become an issue based on atmospheric depth on the flat world (which imposes a hard limit on ship size, = against our design goal of no hard limits) Also imposes a height limit on structures (nobody could build a space elevator)
You can ban ships over a certain size from entering the atmosphere. Few of the true leviathans in any sci-fi ever written are capable of atmospheric flight.
You could also have a very high ceiling. Unlike minecraft however, you shouldn\'t have \"air\" blocks. Just true empty space, to make sure there\'s no excess data to handle.
Furthermore, you could have a \"space elevator loading point\" block, which, when placed on a geostationary station above a planet, would link to the nearest ceiling level elevator on the planet.
suppose you have destroyers near the poles and you leave atmosphere. They will become much closer together and cause a bunch of collision issues.
The game should check if there\'s enough room before loading in the ship. If not, check a few hundred blocks further away. In fact, it already does that with more or less success. Just try buying a bunch of ships from the catalogue while staying still.
Also, with this system, destroyers over the pole are like two grains of salt on a kitchen table. Plenty of room between them.
Also a second world would not benifit anwhere on server memory because if there was someone on the world and people on planets then the poor RAM is having to calculate everything the game does several times over,
Most online games have separate maps. Players tend to hang out on several such maps at once, be it an instance, an overworld zone, or some kind of closed match.
Somehow it works just fine.
If you think about it, this wouldn\'t really change anything for the server. Just as before, it\'d have to handle all the data it\'s players are surrounded with. What difference does it make if it\'s a separate map\'s chunks, or chunks floating in space? There\'s still a player limit to keep it safe.
Plus, the whole idea is a major performance saver.
even worse what happens when a big ship hits a planet?
Like I wrote above; You may deny atmospheric entry from too big ships. They\'ll just crash and burn if they fly into the planet too fast, or get a warning message and gently bounce off if they approach carefully. Start to burn up if they sit around too long.
If they do enter the planet\'s map, it\'ll actually be better than now; Below them, the ground is a static, solid thing, not a drifting object in space. Less calculations to handle.
and here is what schema said about it
http://star-made.org/content/starmade-dev-update-why-spherical-planets-dont-fit-block-world
There\'s no mention of the method discussed in this topic. He had one almost good idea, two very bad ones, and as usual decided to stubbornly hang onto the worst.
There. If I left out anything, feel free to ask. I can confidently say, there\'s no drawbacks to having separate planet maps, save for unexpected complications that can (and do) appear when something new is done.
Now, can anyone logically explain to me, why is it preferrable to have a tiny, flat, single, or double sided disk posing as a planet?