Spherical Planets made out of unbend blocks

[Cool3303]

Yeah it perfectly describes the only \"problem\"

And I hope it explains Riftmaster what I mean and why anyone issuing that cores are somehow dangerous how wrong they are

Still Imagine how Awesome those planets would look from space and the things you could infact build on them. Skyscrapers would look pretty awesome (even though it would be heavy to build them in the correct angle.

You could do a space-Lift which breaks the atmosphere (you can´t really do that since the atmosphere on the flat planets is multiple hundred blocks high but it would be rather thin on the spherical ones

You could carve a secret base into the planets core and so on.

 

[Alexander Prime]

I think you\'ve somehow managed to miss the point of my drawings. They were meant to illustrate that the two methods described in this thread (the former yours, I think?) introduce a lot of complexity for what is essentially no reward. Neither addresses planetary cores (???), and both are clearly against spherifying planets.

I can\'t tell if you\'re setting up a strawman here, or if you actually don\'t understand why people are saying this is a bad idea.

 

[Riftmaster]

He agrees with me.

Just in a far more simplified way, which is something I have issues with - since as I know well, if something is simple, I must complicate it.



Like explaining the same thing multiple times, as I just did

 

[sagethe13th]

They show how not awesome these planets would look.

In this first drawing We have a round planet with some basic terrain. The blue lines represent the angle the player would stand at do to the effects of radial gravity. Keep in mind that up close the ground would be jagged around the diagonals. Over all not to bad, right?





Now let\'s add some trees.



Uh oh, what happened here? Well, keep in mind that plants in Starmade including trees can only point in six directions. Meaning that would be impossible to place them in anyway that looks natural.

Also, let\'s see what happens when players starts building stuff. The terrain doesn\'t offer much flat ground to build on so in the picture below the player has shaved off the top of the planet and built a city. See any problems? Keep in mind that those blue line show player orientation.



If you stand in the center of town things looks fine. But, as you start to move towards the edge the your character begins to lean with respect to the city. This means that there are only a few places on the whole entire planet that you could build something without things getting weird. And this is a big problem since that\'s the way the gravity is supposed to work.

 

[Zaflis]

cube planets have least issues. No transition phases and no unique behavior based on point of view. The way gravity can work, is pulling from the weight point, or core of ship. So big or small, works just fine in diagonal sections of the cube. Astronaut walking across the cube corner? He could be slowly and smoothly turned so that legs point towards the gravity direction. Reduces greatly confusion player might get of instant turning.

Also the way you can calculate ships weight point, is take coordinates of all blocks of ship, and average it. For example:
If i have ship made of 2 blocks at coords (2, 0, 0) and (3, 0, 0). Then weight point is at:
((2+3)/2, (0+0)/2, (0+0)/2)
= (2.5, 0, 0) And that would be what planet gravity pulls towards, and it could even be rotational point when ship is turning.

 

[Alexander Prime]

does. You\'ve just gotten rid of the jagged floor and replaced it with a 45-degree mountain of equally useless terrain.

 

[Alexander Prime]

direct links out of the Dropbox file list? That only allows you to see them; try clicking the \"link\" icon and using the URL from the Download button on that page.

 

[sagethe13th]

Also, thanks for the help.

 

[paxile2k]

I think the actual appearance of a spherical planet may be a stretch but would be awesome, BUT i do have a suggestion as a alternative.

The planets can be coded to be a cubified spere of course and filled. The balance to this is that it will have to ruduce the amount of planets generated in a sector to compensate for the planets generated. which may have to be calculated by the total mass of planetary objects to prevent severe lag issues.

At the center of the planet is the core, its a 5x5x5 cubed sphere, which consists of inner core blocks and a planet core block.

The inner core blocks would be for the planet core blocks protection. It would be the most durrable block in the game and extremely time consuming to mine. and could be in a lava mantle (planet specific of course)

The planet core block is main feature of the core of the planet. The block would generate maximum gavity well of 750 blocks in diameter in all directions. The maximum gravitational force generated would be as follows:
Based on distance from the planet core block - This table is just an example of a planet with radius of 376 blocks ( not taking into account features like mountains, rivers, caves, etc)
1-75 = 6x gravity
76-150 = 5x gravity
151-225 = 4x gravity
226-300 = 3x gravity
301-375 = 2x gravity
376-450 = 1x gravity
451-525 = 3/4 gravity
526-600 = 1/2 gravity
601-675 = 1/5 gravity
676-750 = 1/8 gravity

This could vary based of the planets size, smaller planets less gravity due to less mass. Also factors can be based on planets block composition. But the planets gravity well is still a 750 block radius.

A possibility for a fun factor for the planety core block, that if it is explosed after removing the inner core blocks, it would start a timer, that once it completes it explodes

 

[Cooler_sk]

Have you even read the thread above?

People explained why it wont work.

 

[Alexander Prime]

I hadn\'t even thought of the trees. :P

 

[Nootau]

Do you think they care if everyone says it won\'t work or that they are wrong?

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Maybe this is why the devs are focusing on the ships and battles, because coding gravity is just too damn hard...

 

[Chosen Mimes]

these cookie-planets! gimme gimme!:D

 

[aPonyWhoLikesToMeow]

Reply to Schema:

It seems that everyone who I show this game is super duper buper bummed out when they see the planets are not spheres. It hampers the popularity.



My suggestion liketwise is to force the player be aligned vertically from each block they step on on a spherical block-planet with spherical gravity. This system is implemented either in tandem with a system that has a force pull to the center of the planet or a different kind of system that pulls to the block-face underneath the player relative to the center of the planet. The alternative system will be laggy but it will work.



Either way Star Made needs sphereical planets.

 

[Dequire]

What made you think that you know better than the game developers on gravity? Don\'t you think that if they could have done it without breaking the game, they would have? The gravity field would have to change for nearly every step you take in order to keep you properly lodged to the ground, and how exactly do you plan to make a spherical planet out of square blocks without them phasing into echother or having large gaps in between blocks that make building/mining near impossible?

 

[Nootau]

Either way Star Made needs sphereical planets.

It does not. Flat planets FTW!

 

[sagethe13th]

One that system won\'t work a well as you think it will. Not only will it make the game laggy as Dequire pointed out, but it will also make navigating terrain difficult in places especially where the gravity is mostly diagonal to the blocks you are standing on. The player will suffer from constant and jarring shifts in gravity as the game tries to figure out whether they are standing closer to top of the world or the side, because in certain places that distinction becomes hazy.

Second, it doesn\'t solve the tree issue that I pointed out in my earlier post.

If you want spherical planets the best way to do it is the parallel worlds method. Where planet surfaces are there own separate worlds and the planets you see in normal space are are gateways to them. I\'m not sure how bad the lag would be but if you keep the surface worlds a reasonable size there might not be that much of an issue. I\'ve managed to think of a way around most of the problems with doing things this way.

Still, it\'s not like they would be easy to code or anything. The parallel worlds model would require extensive changes to the engine. It\'s all a matter of cost vs benefit. And in all honestly, that\'s Schema\'s call.

I am however, sick of seeing people say that Starmade needs spherical planets. Where do you people get off deciding what Starmade needs? Did you ever stop to think that there are also a lot of people would rather have cube planets (such as myself) or Oreo planets (like my brother). Besides, it\'s these kind of quirks that can become endearing after awhile.

 

[Cool3303]

@Sagether I stole your picture =p

The trees are no issue the system can build them angled.The plants could stand angled too and with some halfblocks it wouldn´t even look awfull

And here is how You could build things without standing in a ridiculous angle with a gravity block....



Also the gravity could be split to an polygon accepting the gravity transition problem to return.But since the multiple surface it would be rather small transitions



I made the grid on the second completely wrong just use it as rudimentary idea of how it would be like

 

[sagethe13th]

Nonunderstanders? I think I understood just fine. Which is why I was able to illustrate the concept and point out various flaws with it.

On the subject of trees. I think you are going to have to do better than just ignoring the issue. Even if Schema changed it so that trees could be made out of wedges, that would still only be eight directions they could face if you were looking at the planet from the side. With how round the planet would be, do to it\'s size, this would still end up look unnatural. And if you had something else in mind you need to do a better job explaining it.

Now on to gravity. In your first picture it would seem to me that your are suggesting overriding the gravity for the whole planet with a gravity block. Really? Now players can fall off the sides like you can with the current planets and the sides and bottom are more or less useless now. Also, what kind of sense does it make to have to throw down a gravity block when the planet is already supposed to be providing the gravity?

The simpler gravity model is sort of an interesting idea. But if you are going to do that, why not just go with a far more reasonable and natural shape for Starmade, the humble cube. Cube planets FTW!