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Topic: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy (Read 49115 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #105 –
PovRay has some procedural texture generators. It's made from textures, but not bitmaps or pictures that I painted. I kind of programmed the procedural texture generators to produce something that looks like continents, sea and clouds. Since the last try the clouds got a bit more detailed, but they are very simple still - a highly random pattern of two shades of white, fading out at the borders.

I think the problem is that the clouds have no thickness, they are just flat.

Edit: Maybe clouds need shadows. I could map them on a bigger globe, and have them cast shadows. Must test and see :)

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #106 –
Hmhm... I think the clouds are unnaturally compact and opaque. As to shadows, these should be negligible since their usual altitudes don't really stand out compared to radius of Earth - it goes roughly like 50 << 3200.


My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #107 –
I see. I'll try more turbulence for the clouds, and give them more transparency in some places.

... the earth that you showed has a highlight. Is that real or just for the show? I kept the highlight settings very low for all planets.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #108 –
I don't really know, it's taken straight from flickr as first suitable find; I looked more for these clouds...

(I still use a somewhat uncommon monitor settings so I can't really comment on colours you see :( )

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #109 –
Making some progress ... moved the clouds higher up (2% of planet diameter), and this already improved the look. A second cloud layer of smaller clouds also helped. Finally I made the water somewhat reflective, that also seemed to help.

Working on it. Hoping to have something presentable later the day. Thanks for the hints :)

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #110 –
Double post, because it's the forum lounge and I don't trust the "show edit as new" feature. New planet, definitely a whole lot better than before :)


I'm now a bit clueless about further improvements, but this certainly was a big step. Thanks to all who helped with hints and suggestions!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #111 –
I want to land there! :)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #112 –
In relation to the pulsar image, I think you should add a beam of radiation on each side.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar

Quote
Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars which sweep out a beam of electromagnetic radiation like a light house.

Quote
There is general agreement that what we observe as a pulse is what happens when a beam of radiation points in our direction, once for every rotation of the neutron star. The origin of the beam is related to the misalignment of the rotation axis and the axis of the magnetic field of the star. The beam is emitted from the poles of the neutron star's magnetic field, which may be offset from the rotational poles by a wide angle. The source of the power of the beam is the rotational energy of the neutron star.

To understand what I mean, check this video of the Crab nebula pulsar.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #113 –
Quote from: VS – on
I want to land there! :)

And be welcomed by natives with flower wreaths ;)

Quote from: vilvoh – on
In relation to the pulsar image, I think you should add a beam of radiation on each side.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar

I'll look up how to do light effects in media with PovRay - I saw renders with very nice light-beam effects in dusty air, that would work well with such beams, too.

A bit like on this image (from the povray hall of fame, not mine):
http://hof.povray.org/images/bigthumb/famille_jour.jpg

Edit:

A new version that looks a little bit better than the former one again .. I hope.


I'm quite pleased with this one now. Thanks again to all who gave me inspiration, hints and advice! This is so much better now than the version from yesterday.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #114 –
Project is on halt currently because I've been busy with this:

[link lost]

I think in a while I'll pick up the space miner part again. Need to work on a space station UI and I'm pretty clueless about that - it's a real roadblock currently.

Basically it needs to server these 4 purposes:

- buy/sell goods
- upgrade ship equipment, buy new ship
- sell prospected information about resources to companies
- browse news, take missions (if there will be missions)

I guess I'll need a kind of generic "space station" screen that has icons or such to open the 4 detail screens.

Maybe a 5th is needed:

- Inspect ship

where you can access your own ship

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #115 –
Cool! It's like the Ishar's saga, but I still prefer the old Moria. Seems you've returned to the roguelike development... ;D

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #116 –
I hope I can do some more in this direction :) Lately I jump often between projects, but as long as I come back to them now and then it should be alright.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #117 –
A little bit of progress - I finally had some free time and worked on the so-long-not-getting-along-with projected space station UI. I finished an outline of the very first space station screen, the general information panel. It sure will be fleshed out over time, but well, this is how it looks right now:
[link lost]
I wonder how to make the portraits - there should be different races of aliens, and drawing portraits is really not a talent of mine.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #118 –
In another forum I got some suggestions for adding atmosphere and flavor by descriptive texts and I tried that. I've added a short "welcome" type text blurb under the headline, with a message from the station crew.

Also a bigger text area giving your own impression of the station.



Click for full size


(Ack, I think "pools" should rather be "puddles" there in the text. I thought I had changed that before taking the screenshot, but apparently I didn't.)

I think I'll change the "inhabitants" label to "population"?

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #119 –
Looks nice... both easy to find important information and rich in the "fluff" (?) that makes the universe seem real.

BTW, every time I see title of this thread, I read for some reason "gastronomy" ;)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #120 –
Quote from: VS – on
Looks nice... both easy to find important information and rich in the "fluff" (?) that makes the universe seem real.

BTW, every time I see title of this thread, I read for some reason "gastronomy" ;)

It makes hungry for more ;D

Maybe you should take a stop at this station then:

Quote
Not the most modern station, but a well maintained one.
This should be a good place to stay for a while and rest from
a longer journey. They offer a nice lounge, a herbarium and
even a sauna for visitors. Not to mention two dark bars and a
restaurant which serves actually edible food.

I'm trying to write more descriptions, got a few now and will try to write a few more as new ideas come up.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #121 –
I've put up an experimental release. It has a number of features which are unreliable, particularly the support for dual star systems can create wacky systems. The reason to put this up was the new space station panel, and it should be good enough for testing that.

I've been trying to write a number of welcome and station flavor messages, so be sure to click several stations to explore them all. Some combinations of welcome messages and station descriptions are .. hilarious or stupid, depending on how you want to see them ;)

- Experimental support for dual star systems. Sometimes it creates very wacky systems.
- New space station general panel with randomized welcome and station flavor messages. Just click a space station in the system explorer view to open it.
- Improved earthlike planet image included.
- Better random number generator used for solar system generation.
- Experimental Mac OS X UI bugfix added.

=> [link lost]

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #122 –
I found a small typo - search for "asauna" in station texts. Do the messages correlate in any way? Seeing as there is "no outlaw wanted" made me wonder if there is also a text for some kind of pirate haven... that would look funny with democratic regime :D

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #123 –
It remembers me to the famous (and funny) novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....a universe full of stars and systems to visit.   ;D

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #124 –
If I can give it such a feeling, it will be a great success :)

@VS: The messages are purely random currently. I want to add some logic later to choose more fitting messages, depending on the system. The whole politics and population background data is missing though at the moment.

I had been pondering about a pirate station. Currently I have decided against because I didn't want to go into fighting and such. But maybe I find a funny option, then it will be in for sure :)

"Capt'n Hook himself runs this station, the jolly roger on the transmission tower can be seen from half an au away. But the pirates have settled, and run this purely as a tourist attraction - occasional robbery and such included in the dark corridors. You know, realistic experience and all that is very important for successful tourism."

Edit: I'll fix the sauna typo. The "church of technogology" will stay though  ;D

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #125 –
It has a great feeling already; seeing whole systems on HD monitor makes you want to go there! No gastronomy in it though :( ...yet?

Quote from: an icon of technogology
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.
I think you have achieved that quality :)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #126 –
Quote from: VS – on
I think you have achieved that quality :)

Whee, thank you very much :)

A new question came up: The new space station panel shows government type and tech level. At the moment these are fixed values, just to have something to show. I'd like to include these values in the overall simulation algorithm, but I'm a bit clueless how to. I want to ask about the government type first.

If the stellar system generator produces a system, it's known how many inhabitable planets and moons are there, and how many space stations.

From these I can roughly calculate a total population of the system. A race can be randomly chosen, or chosen based on the planet types ... some races might prefer cold planets, others like hot planets, and there might be different needs for atmospheres, too. Different races could have different preferences for government types.

What government types would you suggest to include in the game? And given the above ideas, how would they be chosen for a particular system?

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #127 –
Quote
What government types would you suggest to include in the game? And given the above ideas, how would they be chosen for a particular system?
Not sure if you want to go down the route of including politics, it has the potential to open a can of worms...

That said I think these would be reasonable:
Anarchy
Feudal
Republic
Monarchy
Dictatorship
Theocracy

As always wikipedia has a lot to say on the issue... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #128 –
Hehe, had been researching wikipedia a bit earlier today, but didn't post here already again. Thanks for the link, though :)

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #129 –
I have sketched some races and species for the Solarex universe:

[link lost]

I want to keep the number or races/species low. Five looked good to me, this way it was fairly easy to make them distinct.

Feedback is welcome.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #130 –
My two cents. For some names, I just translated the english name to other languages and them I took the words that sound better to me.

  • Terraneans: erztikons, geosians or gaianoids.
  • Rockeaters: r'esser, rwytas, ramaour, rokkuje
  • The ones who float: rhai sy'n, khto którzy or ph'ngoui.
  • Poison breathers: brekers, dýkazhi, jahazerys, zehyrs
  • Clonkniks: keulons, klónons, klooni, kurōns

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #131 –
Thanks, there are a few nice names in there!

I particularly like the Rhai Sy'n, Zehyrs for the poison breathers looks good too. Ramaour for the rockeaters seems to fit also. I think I'll use those, thanks again for the help!

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #132 –
I've been working on government type and population calculations for the space stations and also for the planets.

Right now I think, I have the basics of population and government type calculations in place. There is some finetuning needed, the Clonkniks seem to be everywhere, while the other races inhabit only few planets. But basically it works:

[link lost]

It also has a new, species-specific naming scheme for the space stations which works nicely, I think. In a while I want to have a better planet naming scheme, too, but that looks tricky to me at the moment.

It's an experimental release again, because it definiely lacks some polish and might have a number of yet unknown bugs and problems.

There are "Rockeaters", "Poison breathers", "The ones who float", "Clonkniks" (with a typo that makes them Clonkniki) and "Terraneans" in this preview. I left the names as I had sketched them first - I hope "Poison breathers" is not too offensive, it seems worse in English than it appeared to me initially.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #133 –
Well, the Clonkniks are robotos, aren't they? therefore the range of planets they can inhabit should be wider than the rest of races. In fact, they actually don't need a planet to live, they might build space structures like dyson spheres or rings and live at the outer space.

Have you planned some kind of evolution algorithm for this universe? I mean, systems that dissapear due to the death of the star or gallaxies collapsing, or planets being born from clouds of gas.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #134 –
Deep space stations of the Clonkniks are on my list.

Evolution, I think I'll not try that. The game on top of the system generation algorithm will span at most the lifetime of a space prospector, and withing this timeframe the universe can be seen as mostly static I think.

I've been pondering though to have a less uniform distribution of inhabited systems, i.e. that each race has a center from which it spread, and even if one only sees a snapshot, it will show the results of this former growth of the civilizations.
 

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #135 –
You may be interested in using variations of Drake's equation to generate the amount of civillizations by galaxy and their spreading.

Quote
The Drake equation (sometimes called the "Green Bank equation", the "Green Bank Formula" or–erroneously–the "Sagan equation") is an equation to calculate the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is used in the fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

The Drake equation states that:


where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Probably, you will have to change some of the parameters, like ne, that would be different for each race therefore you must define first the life support conditions for each one.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #136 –
There are a number of resources like the name tables that depend on the number of species. Also I want to have portraits for them. Unless I can generate everything procedurally, these dependencies will limit the project to a fixed number of species. I think it will be alright to stick with 5, rather flesh them out some more with background stories, and detail information.

And then I need to search a portrait artist who can draw ~30 portraits for the different species. I must say though that photos of used vacuum tubes make great replacements for Clonknik heads ;D

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #137 –
I think I didn't explain the idea correctly. I suggested you to use that equation or a variation, to calculate the number of appereances for each race, not to calculate the total number of races.

In fact, most the values are fixed or known, like R*, fp, ne y fℓ. You can ignore L and the rest may vary depending on the universe that has been created for that game. One question, should we ****ume that all those races are intelligent?

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #138 –
Quote from: vilvoh – on
I think I didn't explain the idea correctly. I suggested you to use that equation or a variation, to calculate the number of appereances for each race, not to calculate the total number of races.

[...]

One question, should we ****ume that all those races are intelligent?

I see. I had been pondering about a bell-shaped (gaussian?) distribution for each race. So there would be one location where they are most frequent, and the farther away from this center the less frequent they'll be found. For the purpose of this game it's good that the distribution is nowhere zero.

The 5 races are intelligent, but the Clonkniks and The ones who float might be hard to understand for humans sometimes. I don't know if this will matter, maybe if there are missions or such involved that the player can accept.

Re: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy

Reply #139 –
Wow, 30 portraits... that might be indeed hard.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!