Yet another planet thread

[wafflepie]

So, I know what most of you will be thinking: "oh great, another suggestion for round and/or flat planets, even though it's been shown again and again that they don't work, and it isn't what most of the community wants". Well, I've found a couple of block-based space games that have uniquely shaped planets that I think are interesting, and I'd like to show them to you.

First of all, there's Planets3 (or "planets cubed").
Concept art:


Screenshots:


As you can see, the planets here are cube-shaped. (cubed? planets-cubed? get it? no? ok.) Also, objects get less detailed the farther away you get from them, which would definitely (maybe) solve much of Starmade's lag problem if that feature were added. Other than that, though, Planets3's cube-shaped planets wouldn't add much to Starmade in terms of realism, but it might be an interesting gimmick considering everything else in this game is cube-shaped (including, unfortunately, many players' ships). It might also allow constructions that span more than one planetary segment, due to each segment's blocks being aligned at 90 degrees to each other.

The other, and, arguably more interesting game is Galaxy55.





Yes, that's right. You just saw that. ROUND planets. As in, Legitimately round planets, with a capital "L". They actually use non-Euclidian geometry to create the illusion of round planets. The wiki explains how it works:

"On planet creation, you are presented with a view of a round planet. Not only is that planet NOT the planet you end with, even the shape is fake.
The planet have internal coordinate system. You can view your current coordinates if you press F. Before Alpha 2, this coordinates always have X from 0 to 255, Y from 0 to 255 and Z from 0 (or 1) to 127. The Z is height: you can't go to Z=0 because there are unminable blocks there and you can't go higher than 127 because you can't build block on z=127. The other two coordinates are cyclic: for every x coordinates [x,0] and [x,255] are next to each other and the same is true for Y.
In Alpha 3, some planets can be bigger, for example 384 x 384, but with same shape.
There is one shape which behaves like this: toroid (think doughnut, with hole). But on toroid, there would be places where you would see the other side of planet above you, which never happens in Galaxy55. Instead, the block around you looks curved as if you would be on a round planet, but on round planets any two (non-parallel) straight lines would intersect twice. You can check by yourself that they only intersect once.
Therefore, the shape of the planet is fake: there is NO 3D object which would look as your planet. Enjoy your non-euclidean world. "

Needless to say, I have NO idea whether or not this could even work in Starmade, or in the Schine engine, for that matter. I guess that's for schema and Calbiri to figure out.

Any thoughts?

 

[Valiant70]

In the bottom of the OP in this thread http://starmadedock.net/threads/another-planet-thread.7334/ I explained one possibility for illusory round planets with no block distortion. In fact, my idea includes no bending of blocks at all. By the time blocks on the surface load, everthing appears flat around the player.

People keep claiming round planets cannot be done, and that is simply not true. Schema made one attempt at it quite some time ago and it didn't work. That doesn't mean it's impossible. That means it's not a simple project. It's a matter of the dev team deciding whether or not to do it, and I'm still waiting to hear from them on that other thread. If it does happen it probably won't be soon as a lot of ship-related things need to be coded at the moment (most immanently the HP and shipyard updates).

 

[wafflepie]

In the bottom of the OP in this thread http://starmadedock.net/threads/another-planet-thread.7334/ I explained one possibility for illusory round planets with no block distortion. In fact, my idea includes no bending of blocks at all. By the time blocks on the surface load, everthing appears flat around the player.

People keep claiming round planets cannot be done, and that is simply not true. Schema made one attempt at it quite some time ago and it didn't work. That doesn't mean it's impossible. That means it's not a simple project. It's a matter of the dev team deciding whether or not to do it, and I'm still waiting to hear from them on that other thread. If it does happen it probably won't be soon as a lot of ship-related things need to be coded at the moment (most immanently the HP and shipyard updates).

Even better! I didn't like that block distortion anyway... and you pointed out something else I feel is important: surface segments shouldn't load until you enter the planet's atmosphere! Not only does it cause unnecessary lag, but it makes planets look ugly too, with all the missing sections and exposed cores and whatnot. Instead, the planet's atmosphere should have a texture that actually looks like a planet, and when you enter the atmosphere, only then does it load the surface terrain, and in a manner similar to the one you described above.

 

[Egils3]

Why round planets are impossible?

 

[SapioiT]

Why round planets are impossible?

They are NOT impossible, just the difficuly of achieving them is... not small... let's just stop at that, alright?

Even better! I didn't like that block distortion anyway... and you pointed out something else I feel is important: surface segments shouldn't load until you enter the planet's atmosphere! Not only does it cause unnecessary lag, but it makes planets look ugly too, with all the missing sections and exposed cores and whatnot. Instead, the planet's atmosphere should have a texture that actually looks like a planet, and when you enter the atmosphere, only then does it load the surface terrain, and in a manner similar to the one you described above.

That's actually a verry good idea! Only that maybe the loading would start before you get past the atmospherical texture, so there is something for you to see (besides the core) when you get to the planet. Maybe a start the rendering 300-500m from the atmospherical texture, so the things don't get too wierd when you get into the sphere. Apart from that, I have nothing else to say.

 

[wafflepie]

They are NOT impossible, just the difficuly of achieving them is... not small... let's just stop at that, alright?
That's actually a verry good idea! Only that maybe the loading would start before you get past the atmospherical texture, so there is something for you to see (besides the core) when you get to the planet. Maybe a start the rendering 300-500m from the atmospherical texture, so the things don't get too wierd when you get into the sphere. Apart from that, I have nothing else to say.

That is a good idea too,

They are NOT impossible, just the difficuly of achieving them is... not small... let's just stop at that, alright?
That's actually a verry good idea! Only that maybe the loading would start before you get past the atmospherical texture, so there is something for you to see (besides the core) when you get to the planet. Maybe a start the rendering 300-500m from the atmospherical texture, so the things don't get too wierd when you get into the sphere. Apart from that, I have nothing else to say.

I meant that nothing inside the planet would be loaded until you enter the atmosphere, including the core, so you don't see anything until you go inside it. This completely removes the ugly exposed planet cores that we've all come to know and hate.

I agree with your statement that it is no small task to make round planets work in a block-based game, but as I and Valiant70 have shown, it is possible. The problem, as you've stated rather accurately, is figuring out how to make it work, and then actually making it work.

But it can be done!
Can we do it?

 

[Valiant70]

I don't think it's a question of "can it be done" but rather a question of "is it worth spending a year on this?" because it most likely would take a year or more to make a complicated system work. It's also a question of "how do we do it and which tradeoffs do we accept" because every method for mapping voxels to a sphere has some downside and some are worse than others.

 

[SapioiT]

I don't think it's a question of "can it be done" but rather a question of "is it worth spending a year on this?" because it most likely would take a year or more to make a complicated system work. It's also a question of "how do we do it and which tradeoffs do we accept" because every method for mapping voxels to a sphere has some downside and some are worse than others.

If you ask me, I'd rather have a cube planet, so there would be less friction between the planetary plates. But I don't think we should spend time on rounding the planet, but we should spend time of making the planet sizes dufferent than they are today, and by that I mean that having only few layers of blocks untill reaching the core is not a good idea. Why not have the whole planet but one "asteroid" entity "locked" in place by the gravity "cube" (as it would become) and upon losing it, the entity would "fracturate" into multiple "parts" which would start moving as asteroid entities, or "planet fragments", through space? They could start moving at the maximum speed of the server, including overdrive, and slow down... eventually... and, maybe, that planet fragments, if thy have past a certain ammount of cubes, would "develop" a gravity cube of their own. One that would work like the planet's gravity and could be placed on the ships as well, having it's gravitational attraction being the number of cubes / the number of gravity cubes (for the ships or entities with more cubes). Also, maybe besides the planet fragments, the destruction of a planet's core would "spawn" few gravity cubes, which would be invulnerable and stuck in space. untill they're mined (but not after they're placed again), that being the only way to get them, since they won't be on the shops (due to the huge risks involved).

 

[CME2]

I'm not a big fan of the current planets either. The thing I liked about the disk planets is they were good to build on, the flatter surface meant you had more space to do stuff. I was wondering if you could keep the flat surface but make the under side rounder. It could either be a sphere or a rougher shape with interesting protrusions and formations. This may even allow for cave networks like the old planets. Although I'm not sure this would work with a planet core. (sorry for the basic pictures, didn't have much time)

 

[jorgekorke]

The current planets are bad to build due to the optimization problems. We were hoping for each plate to carry a slightly bigger size of the disks, but that didn't happen. And when we find big planets, the FPS go boom.

 

[wagfeliz]

Why people care so much about this planets ? I normally dont even go ever on planets, there is no point, you can do everything and better in space stations. I am very fine with the current planets, and dont see why devs should care about making planets bether, they have no or little part on this spaceship game.

 

[wafflepie]

I don't think it's a question of "can it be done" but rather a question of "is it worth spending a year on this?" because it most likely would take a year or more to make a complicated system work. It's also a question of "how do we do it and which tradeoffs do we accept" because every method for mapping voxels to a sphere has some downside and some are worse than others.

You're right, it would take a long time and it would be complicated, but in the end I believe it would be worth it. Now that Starmade has rails, it has pretty much everything space engineers has to offer, and more. One of Starmade's biggest potential advantages is planets. Unfortunately, at the moment, not only are they laggy, but they are also unrealistically small and relatively useless, unless you happen to have a mining ship big enough to harvest the whole thing.

Why people care so much about this planets ? I normally dont even go ever on planets, there is no point, you can do everything and better in space stations. I am very fine with the current planets, and dont see why devs should care about making planets bether, they have no or little part on this spaceship game.

If you watch the trailers for No Man's Sky, you will notice that most of the gameplay footage shown takes place on the surface of planets, whereas most space sim trailers take place mostly or entirely in space, because that is reflective of the gameplay. No Man's Sky is just one of many in-develoment space sims, and it is developed by a team of just 10 people, but it's the one people are most excited about! Despite being just an indie game, it has the full support of Sony and rivals the multi-million dollar mmo Star Citizen in terms of anticipation hype, even though we know almost nothing about it.
I don't think this is a coincidence. I think that the thing people want most out of space Sims, other than cool-looking ships, is cool-looking planets. And in Starmade, we already have lots and lots of cool-looking ships. So why not add cool-looking planets as well? Who knows? It could be the very thing that propels this game into worldwide popularity! Right now, exploration in this game doesn't amount to much, with just 5 different types of planets to discover, which are unrealistically small, have almost no use, have very little, if any, variation in the terrain and plant life, and have no wildlife at all. In a space game, that's basically the equivalent of having an open-world survival sandbox rpg that has completely flat, monotonous terrain, with just a few villages and no unique biomes. And do you really think that minecraft would have become the most popular game of the decade if the only world type was "superflat"?
So yes, I do believe that it would be worth it to code more interesting planets, even if it does take a long time, because the end result would probably be amazing.

 

[wagfeliz]

I could agree only if the game changes and add content for you to do on planets, today there is no need of planets, you can start the game and evolve with out to never go to any planet, actually, if you dont go you will evolve faster. I made a suggestion a time a go about this, like planets could be mined only by astronauts, they could have more minerals and bigger bonus, and regeneration, so a faction could make it home and hire new players to mine and sell it to the faction. But I dont know, even with new stuff to do on planets, I am happy with the way plannets are now...

 

[Lecic]

Schema tried round planets. They don't work in Starmade. Dodecahedron planets are fine.

 

[SpartanMandalor(111)]

The options in my opinion are limited for voting. I believe there is an option that has not been considered.
Worlds should be more like mine-craft but in order for that to work ships should have to go through a loading process to enter a world. This would allow larger more to scale world to ship to person ratio. Also the currant world sizes would make grate moons for this new world system. So what players will see is a round planet with minimal detail. When they enter the world they must select a North, South, East, West, Midway one or Midway two. So what the captain selects is one of six planes of a cube then the ship is loaded into the sky above the plane. This also allows for new game play were massive ships that don't fit in the space above the plane to use smaller ships in their hanger to land. By having flat loaded worlds you can have clouds, day and night cycles, no lag in gravity and cooler land structures.
I am open to input but would like my option to be considered.
[DOUBLEPOST=1432821229,1432820850][/DOUBLEPOST]

You're right, it would take a long time and it would be complicated, but in the end I believe it would be worth it. Now that Starmade has rails, it has pretty much everything space engineers has to offer, and more. One of Starmade's biggest potential advantages is planets. Unfortunately, at the moment, not only are they laggy, but they are also unrealistically small and relatively useless, unless you happen to have a mining ship big enough to harvest the whole thing.

If you watch the trailers for No Man's Sky, you will notice that most of the gameplay footage shown takes place on the surface of planets, whereas most space sim trailers take place mostly or entirely in space, because that is reflective of the gameplay. No Man's Sky is just one of many in-develoment space sims, and it is developed by a team of just 10 people, but it's the one people are most excited about! Despite being just an indie game, it has the full support of Sony and rivals the multi-million dollar mmo Star Citizen in terms of anticipation hype, even though we know almost nothing about it.
I don't think this is a coincidence. I think that the thing people want most out of space Sims, other than cool-looking ships, is cool-looking planets. And in Starmade, we already have lots and lots of cool-looking ships. So why not add cool-looking planets as well? Who knows? It could be the very thing that propels this game into worldwide popularity! Right now, exploration in this game doesn't amount to much, with just 5 different types of planets to discover, which are unrealistically small, have almost no use, have very little, if any, variation in the terrain and plant life, and have no wildlife at all. In a space game, that's basically the equivalent of having an open-world survival sandbox rpg that has completely flat, monotonous terrain, with just a few villages and no unique biomes. And do you really think that minecraft would have become the most popular game of the decade if the only world type was "superflat"?
So yes, I do believe that it would be worth it to code more interesting planets, even if it does take a long time, because the end result would probably be amazing.

I agree that is why I replied with another option of planet design below.
[DOUBLEPOST=1432821563][/DOUBLEPOST]

If you ask me, I'd rather have a cube planet, so there would be less friction between the planetary plates. But I don't think we should spend time on rounding the planet, but we should spend time of making the planet sizes dufferent than they are today, and by that I mean that having only few layers of blocks untill reaching the core is not a good idea. Why not have the whole planet but one "asteroid" entity "locked" in place by the gravity "cube" (as it would become) and upon losing it, the entity would "fracturate" into multiple "parts" which would start moving as asteroid entities, or "planet fragments", through space? They could start moving at the maximum speed of the server, including overdrive, and slow down... eventually... and, maybe, that planet fragments, if thy have past a certain ammount of cubes, would "develop" a gravity cube of their own. One that would work like the planet's gravity and could be placed on the ships as well, having it's gravitational attraction being the number of cubes / the number of gravity cubes (for the ships or entities with more cubes). Also, maybe besides the planet fragments, the destruction of a planet's core would "spawn" few gravity cubes, which would be invulnerable and stuck in space. untill they're mined (but not after they're placed again), that being the only way to get them, since they won't be on the shops (due to the huge risks involved).

I think you have a good constructive idea and that it could work very well on moons with the resulting dibry field becoming an asteroid belt

 

[Megacrafter127]

Worlds should be more like mine-craft but in order for that to work ships should have to go through a loading process to enter a world.

Schema himself stated he was against such a solution, as a loading screen breaks immersion.

 

[Valiant70]

Schema tried round planets. They don't work in Starmade. Dodecahedron planets are fine.

He tried once with a very, very poor method. There are a lot of other things to try, and I described one decent one in the planet thread in my signature. (Read the second theory with the parallelogram map; the square map one sucks).

Schema himself stated he was against such a solution, as a loading screen breaks immersion.

I agree. The only way to put a planet in non-euclidean space is to form a sort of special relativity around the planet so that ships enter the planet as if it were nothing more than a sector transition, but the planet is actually a flat map. The planet thread in my signature describes such a solution to some extent, but the theory would need to be refined considerably to work in practice and would take a long time to develop and code into the game.

At the very least we need bigger planets. The current performance-limited planet sizes just aren't acceptable beyond an early alpha implementation. The edges will always be weird and bothersome, but would be livable if the plates were as big or bigger than the old cookie planets. (My personal preference would be a plate with an inradius of 1km or more.)

 

[SpartanMandalor(111)]

Schema himself stated he was against such a solution, as a loading screen breaks immersion.

Yes a loading screen can brake immersion but it would be worth it because it would allow larger worlds to build on without lagging in the middle of combat or movement. Also the loading screen could be better than just a blank screen with a loading bar. It could have a video of your ship entering the atmosphere like in the second battle front for PSP.
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He tried once with a very, very poor method. There are a lot of other things to try, and I described one decent one in the planet thread in my signature. (Read the second theory with the parallelogram map; the square map one sucks).


The only way to put a planet in non-euclidean space is to form a sort of special relativity around the planet so that ships enter the planet as if it were nothing more than a sector transition, but the planet is actually a flat map. The planet thread in my signature describes such a solution to some extent, but the theory would need to be refined considerably to work in practice and would take a long time to develop and code into the game.

At the very least we need bigger planets. The current performance-limited planet sizes just aren't acceptable beyond an early alpha implementation. The edges will always be weird and bothersome, but would be livable if the plates were as big or bigger than the old cookie planets. (My personal preference would be a plate with an inradius of 1km or more.)

You seem to have given it a lot of thought and my idea was only a suggestion. I agree that large more to scale planets would be a very good temporary solution to the planet sized problem.

 

[Lecic]

Yes a loading screen can brake immersion but it would be worth it because it would allow larger worlds to build on without lagging in the middle of combat or movement. Also the loading screen could be better than just a blank screen with a loading bar. It could have a video of your ship entering the atmosphere like in the second battle front for PSP.

Schema said he's not adding it. Don't push for it.

 

[SpartanMandalor(111)]

Schema said he's not adding it. Don't push for it.

That was my last word on the matter three is pushing it but thank you for your advice.