Large Planets / Moons

[Azurite]

Starmade + I-Novae Engine

This needs to happen!

schema throw all your credits at I-Novae and get a license!

 

[NeonSturm]

i can't remember if it was limited by the size of a float(32 bit) or 32bit integer, but it has to do with the fact that he uses 32 bit data types

EDIT: and where are you getting this idea of a "dev-group", schema is the only person that writes code for the game

max. 32 bit value = 2^32 = 1024^3 *2^2 = 4'100'000'000+. Half of that if you need positive and negative.
That is enough to store a 1'000'000m sector and 1'000 sub-metres. in both negative, positive and 50% possible extra values.

I said dev-group, because some peoples talk to schema very often and might know what we don't know. Texture-dev, Java-dev ...

 

[Zedrackis]

Your putting too much thought into your power gens, or too few of them on the planet. I guess it really depends on your power needs but any base with factories is a power sink. The problem is once you hit 1 million regen you loose the efficiency curve and each block grants a flat 25 regen bonus. So its good to build one large reactor using tall vertical lines to get to 1 million then just lump in extras some where.

 

[Ghent96]

Can we reboot the planet discussion, with a community-wide debate and then a vote, that hopefully the devs will listen to; before the new planets are actually implemented?

I favor the old/current, flat planets. I'm pretty new to the game, so I'm not really biased towards the established lay of the game thus far, but I already forsee a number of problems with the "round-ish" planets:
1) no more racing
2) more complex math slowing down servers which already seem to have problems
3) smaller faces, thus less building area on each face
4) less contiguous area, tho perhaps there may be more total surface area
5) problems when buildings and ships cross-over faces of the planet

Some nice things about the current planets:
1) racing
2) large, single, mostly flat contiguous area for a large number & variety of buildings
3) large ships can dock on or off the edge
4) strip / space mining can be done easily on sides or bottom if one wishes to preserve interesting terrain
5) underground bunkers or underneath
6) moon constructions, as has been previously demonstrated
7) turrets can be constructed on top, sides, or bottom for complete coverage (same as new also, theoretically)

There just seems to be considerable friction in forum posts, and dialogue in chat on the servers, against the new planets. The rationale other than, "look, something new and cool looking" has never been clearly stated by the developers. In a voxel game like this, gameplay > graphics. Let's remember players and gameplay, and keep it simple, and ask the devs to hear our concerns.

 

[Lt_Duckweed]

Can we reboot the planet discussion, with a community-wide debate and then a vote, that hopefully the devs will listen to; before the new planets are actually implemented?

I favor the old/current, flat planets. I'm pretty new to the game, so I'm not really biased towards the established lay of the game thus far, but I already forsee a number of problems with the "round-ish" planets:
1) no more racing
2) more complex math slowing down servers which already seem to have problems
3) smaller faces, thus less building area on each face
4) less contiguous area, tho perhaps there may be more total surface area
5) problems when buildings and ships cross-over faces of the planet

Some nice things about the current planets:
1) racing
2) large, single, mostly flat contiguous area for a large number & variety of buildings
3) large ships can dock on or off the edge
4) strip / space mining can be done easily on sides or bottom if one wishes to preserve interesting terrain
5) underground bunkers or underneath
6) moon constructions, as has been previously demonstrated
7) turrets can be constructed on top, sides, or bottom for complete coverage (same as new also, theoretically)

There just seems to be considerable friction in forum posts, and dialogue in chat on the servers, against the new planets. The rationale other than, "look, something new and cool looking" has never been clearly stated by the developers. In a voxel game like this, gameplay > graphics. Let's remember players and gameplay, and keep it simple, and ask the devs to hear our concerns.

Bro, people have been campaigning for 3d planets since day 1. The DEV (there is only one) is just doing what we've been asking for.

 

[Ithirahad]

Can we reboot the planet discussion, with a community-wide debate and then a vote, that hopefully the devs will listen to; before the new planets are actually implemented?

I favor the old/current, flat planets. I'm pretty new to the game, so I'm not really biased towards the established lay of the game thus far, but I already forsee a number of problems with the "round-ish" planets:
1) no more racing

You can always have obstacle courses out in space, but I guess.

2) more complex math slowing down servers which already seem to have problems

If Schema thought that this would be an issue, he wouldn't've implemented these planets.

3) smaller faces, thus less building area on each face

I agree, however Schema has said multiple times that planet size will eb configurable, so the planets don't have to be tiny moons like they are now.

4) less contiguous area, tho perhaps there may be more total surface area

I agree. That's why we need bigger planets.

5) problems when buildings and ships cross-over faces of the planet

You shouldn't be landing massive ships on a planet anyway. Make an orbital dock or a massive tower or something. However, yeah, buildings are kinda limited now. Again, larger planets would help this a lot.

Some nice things about the current planets:
1) racing

Yeah; can't really argue with that.

2) large, single, mostly flat contiguous area for a large number & variety of buildings

Again, can't really argue with that.

3) large ships can dock on or off the edge

Yes, at the expense of immersion and logic...

4) strip / space mining can be done easily on sides or bottom if one wishes to preserve interesting terrain

If you want to mine, then that should be the price of doing so.

5) underground bunkers or underneath

You can still dig out a bunker underground, and it's still fairly effective... Just don't dig down to the mantle. :P

6) moon constructions, as has been previously demonstrated

Um, wat?

7) turrets can be constructed on top, sides, or bottom for complete coverage (same as new also, theoretically)

You can do that on the new planets as well, it's just a bit harder. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing)

There just seems to be considerable friction in forum posts, and dialogue in chat on the servers, against the new planets. The rationale other than, "look, something new and cool looking" has never been clearly stated by the developers. In a voxel game like this, gameplay > graphics. Let's remember players and gameplay, and keep it simple, and ask the devs to hear our concerns.

I haven't seen "considerable friction," personally. Schema wanted to keep flat planets originally (and make them double-sided) but we came up with the dodecahedrons, a bunch of people supported it, and now we have them. :D

 

[DigitalDemon]

What the devs can do is something a lot of other games do, to make planets larger the planets are different "dimensions" to reduce lag, also means the planets can look small up until you actually transport through the barrier ex: empyrion galactic survival
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What the devs can do is something a lot of other games do, to make planets larger the planets are different "dimensions" to reduce lag, also means the planets can look small up until you actually transport through the barrier ex: empyrion galactic survival

this would allow for MASSIVE planets and the lag caused by mass planet mining and planet generation would only affect those in the atmosphere the ones you see in space would be basically sprites

 

[DigitalDemon]

The way empyrean does it it would still boast no loading screen what happens is something that looks like a lag spike and then your in its almost instant

 

[NeonSturm]

If lag from block-count is that much of a problem, make some faces of a planet just flat water/lava/acid/snow/desert with no blocks on them.

In turn, you would get prettier faces elsewhere.
If you build on such faces, the buildings either sink into sand/acid, can submerge into or emerge from water as a station or you can mine fuel from these faces.

 

[Ithirahad]

The way empyrean does it it would still boast no loading screen what happens is something that looks like a lag spike and then your in its almost instant

...So they just load the data as they go, which is basically the way StarMade does sector changes, too. It'd essentially just be a new type of sector that acts differently. Difference with StarMade, I think, is that all the data wouldn't have to transfer at once if the atmosphere zone was large enough, so no lag spike is needed really, just maybe a little graphical 'bump' as the atmosphere/space graphics, physics stuff, and whatever else initializes, and probably a drop in FPS as stuff loads. :P