Planet Shape

[ShadowHunter12]

Im pretty sure schema already decided on how planet shape would be, and it would be basically like an oreo, 2 crustal areas with opposite orientations with a single planet core in the middle. Though a problem I see with this is determining when and how gravity changes for the other side, and theres always people who build off the side of the planet so they can dock on it without worrying about its gravity.

I also agree with planets needing to be bigger, I wish they would properly fill up a whole sector or get much closer to it, ideally they should be so monolithic that its nearly impossible to completely mine them up so all thats left is an empty atmosphere to disappoint travellers.

 

[MrNo]

I assume the gravity will just flip at the center block. Doesn\'t seem like it should be too hard. And yes, Schema seems to have descided on the oreo design. If people want to build off the side for easy docking, then let them. Makes it easy to tell they\'re there, it can look pretty cool, and they\'ll have all hell to deal with every time they accidentaly enter the planet\'s gravity field. But really, think how cool it would look to have a city built around the edge of a planet. I don\'t see it as a problem.

 

[csreid]

If the planets were cylindrical, and large enough that it\'s not possible to see the edge of the planets, it might be possible to artificially simulate a sphere by just copying terrain and blocks from the opposite edge of the world when needed.



That is, if you start at 0,0 (ignoring the 3rd dimension for the sake of clarity) on a world that stretches from -100, 100 to 100, 100, with everything in a 5 block radius visible, and walked in the positive X direction, the game would show you first a block 6 units away, then 7, et cetera until you hit the 100th block, after which it would roll over and show you block 0 again. Once you walk back to 0, you will have successfully circumnavigated that planet.

Regarding the third dimension, you could just put a hard limit on the depth of the planet, after which players will encounter only lava. That lets a big cruiser blow a hole in a planet, too. To keep people from just perpetually digging deeper, you could make ships take exponentially more block damage as they dig deeper past the depth limit until no ship could survive.



When you enter a planet\'s sphere of influence, your angle with respect to the planet could be used to determine where on the flat map you should be, and load the planet beneath you.

 

[Zaflis]

It is possible to make illusion of spherical planet, using a cube-like planet. Bottom of the cube would represent planet core, and impossible to go below it, lets say there\'s Minecraft-like \"bedrock\" after few layers of hot lava. When you travel on the surface in X or Z directions, you wrap around, so you could walk in same direction endless amount of time, and appear on spot where you started it.

But interesting part of this illusion, is how it\'s represented to the player. From outer space it could show visuals of a generic \"planet\", but it would fade into the top surface of the cube, no matter where you approach it from. Position on the cube surface can be given by angles of player towards planet core.

• Angle around Y-axis represents cube X-coordinate, mapped 360 degrees to cube width.
• Angle around spinning (tangent towards player) XZ-axis represents cube Z-coordinate, mapped 180 degrees to cube depth.
• Distance from cube bottom is naturally distance from player to planet core.

 

[OnyxStone]

csreid, Zafis, you are both thinking EXACTLY the same way I am on this matter (see above post). Good to know I\'m not the only one! :D
All the other solutions just don\'t cut it for me...


Wafer Solution: I\'m tired of travelling to a planet only to be seeing it\'s backside. :P
The \'Oreo\' Solution: It\'s okay but there\'s the question of how deep the thing would be, I mean, would you have to fly to get to the other side of the planet? Ridiculous...
The Cube Solution: By-far I could get used to this the most but still isn\'t exactly optimal. The thought of what would happen at the corners makes me shudder.
Simulated Roundness Solution: Or the, \'tread-mill solution\' if you will. THIS in my opinion has the most potential, the planet could have decent depth, no funky gravity conundrums to solve, and would be the most aesthetically pleasing out of all of them.

Please, reply to this post and voice your opinion on which solution is best so we can let the devs know what we want. I really think this feature is an important step for the game and I\'d hate for the devs to make a choice that ultimately doesn\'t turn out to be the best solution. I\'m planning on emailing them to increase the odds that they see this.

 

[the killer of 007]

see post #17 \"i see what you did there\"

but to put some thing a long the lines of the thread the SRS way seems best

 

[Puck]

there should be overally much less planets throughought the universe, maybe cut the amount of planets that spawn down to 1/5 of what it actually is now, maybe even far less

and make the planets somewhat bigger, yeah, oreo shaped planets wouldn\'t be a bad idea as long as the issues with gravity get solved,

but it\'s kind of double edged sword for players with low end computers

 

[zavdan62]

you can do a cub to make it smaller it can have same numer of blocks and have grav all over the planet

 

[me2005]

Pytheas *right now* has round cube-based planets.

How?

The planet is rendered as a sphere from space/orbit. The sphere\'s texture is generated from a map (like a minecraft map) of the surface, which is projected onto the sphere. When you get close enough to enter the atmosphere (an effect that happens now with planets), you transition to planet-space, where the planet is actually exactly like a flat minecraft map, except that it teleports you from any edge to the oppisite edge when you cross.

 

[planeofsuck]

What about oreos beveled to 1 block thick at the edge? When you get to the edge you flip 180. That would make the planets roundish and continious