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Topic: A toy for people interested in space games and astronomy (Read 49198 times) previous topic - next topic

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

Reply #140 –
Quote from: VS – on
Wow, 30 portraits... that might be indeed hard.

I'll try to find someone ...

Next graphic on my list will be a Clonknik interspace station. I dream of something fractal ... wish I had more time.

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

Reply #141 –
Perhaps if you let each race have its own style of portraits, they could be made by different people...

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 #142 –
That could work :)

I've tried to make a level 3 clonktal. Not sure if this works as space station, but it's a cool structure anyways ;)

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

Reply #143 –
We may consider it as a cloud of machines (sizes from nano to mega) that are sticked together, like a single alive organism.

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

Reply #144 –
I've also found this formula to calculate the habitable zone (HZ) around a star, that may help you to calculate the distribution of each race, or at least the possible regions where life might appear in ideal conditions:

Code: [Select]
Distance(HZ, star) = [Luminosity(star) / Luminosity(sun)]0.5, in a.u.

If you want to calculate the max and min of the habitable zone, just multiply Distance(HZ,star) by these two factors 0.95 and 1.37.

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

Reply #145 –
So far I just used the surface temperatures and atmosphere for checking who might like the planet. Actually surface temperatures should follow a formular like yours; my code might not be that precise.

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

Reply #146 –
Quote from: VS – on
Perhaps if you let each race have its own style of portraits, they could be made by different people...

Quote from: Hajo – on
I wonder how to make the portraits - there should be different races of aliens, and drawing portraits is really not a talent of mine.

Since I could not come up with proper ideas, I decided to do at least something - something is better than nothing ... for the time being I try to paint them by myself.

Constructing portraits from parts was in Elite and Elite II I think, but it worked, and since I had no better idea, I started to work on portrait parts. The images below are a mix of parts from two base portraits:


It's not great but maybe something to work with until I have better ideas. I think I must work some more on the variation/individuality, as I must work on my overall portrait drawing skills, but it's a start.

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

Reply #148 –
Thanks for the feedback. With their gender, I'm not sure either 8) At the moment I'm just practising with an easy way to create a bigger number of portraits for the races. Most likely I'll give their skin a different hue finally. Not quite decided about violet or green hues ... these will be "poison breathers", who like hot, dense and mostly oxygene free atmospheres.

An updated version, with a stronger variation in the eye-ears part of the portraits:


Actually I never really figured how to distinguish male from female faces in portraits, but I ****ume for alien races this isn't so important. They are just different ...

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

Reply #149 –
Wait, those are generated as well?

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 #150 –
It's a great work, indeed! To distinguish male from female, I suggest to emphasize certain features for male individuals. For example, the ears might be bigger for males or the eyes might be smaller for females.

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

Reply #151 –
Quote from: VS – on
Wait, those are generated as well?

Not quite. I have drawn 6 portrait elements, which will be ****embled randomly. The line shows all possible permutations of the elements. With a few more elements, there could be quite a lot of permutations possible.

A test in standard martian, erm, venusian green:

Looks odd, but that is alright. The rockeaters will come in more vivid red-and-brown. The real skin tones I must reserve for the terraneans.

Edit: Portrait backgrounds won't be all grey finally, so I can choose colors and patterns that compliment the portraits.

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

Reply #152 –
Yes, that's what I meant when I said generated - of course not entirely, that wouldn't look so well :P

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 #153 –
A first test of rockeater portraits:

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

Reply #154 –
Perhaps I'm colorblind but in some of them, it looks like a mix between pigs and tomatoes!!  :D

I would use dark browns instead of reds.

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

Reply #155 –
Hehe ;D

I've quickly tried a darker brown, I'm not quite sure if it's better. But this is work in progress, so some changes will come for sure. More variation in color could be interesting. Also I think many of the polygons need more texture. Must try and see ;)
 

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

Reply #156 –
I've put a new version online, with a few changes - this is again a quite experimental release, and things may or may not work properly.

 => [link lost]

- It has got a new title screen with a credits list.
- I tried to fix a number of UI layout and redraw problems.
- Changed font to a bigger font in some places to improve readability.
- For the very curious, a work-in-progress version of the trade screen is included, but it doesn't show more than the list of available goods. Prices and quantities are just placeholders.

Under the hood there are more changes towards space ship data, cargo, and keeping track of the players position in space, but those aren't visible yet.

Also, the portraits are not included yet, because I'm not yet decided about the way to include them. Or just call me lazy :P

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

Reply #157 –
When you enter in the detailed view of the solar system with stars, planets and the rest of small elements, wouldn't be possible to use zoom levels instead of scroll ? sometimes the star is very large and it's annoying to move along the solar system.

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

Reply #158 –
Quote from: vilvoh – on
When you enter in the detailed view of the solar system with stars, planets and the rest of small elements, wouldn't be possible to use zoom levels instead of scroll ?

Yes that would be possible. But if a red giant star is zoomed to the size of an average star, the planets will only be points. Let's wait and see what the others think about the idea?

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

Reply #159 –
Another possible solution would be to show a small window with a minimap, similar to Simutrans minimap.

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

Reply #160 –
That's definitely more work than zooming.

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

Reply #161 –
The "Commody Exchange" button in the station menu is to small.
If you are on the Commody Exchange site you cannot get back to the station menu.

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

Reply #162 –
Too small? You mean, the text doesn't fit in? It does for me ...
Which OS do you use, and which java version do you have?

The "Commodities Exchance" screen is work in progress. I was pondering to leave it as a dead end, but then I noticed there is the "Open system explorer" button in the bottom panel, and you can get back to the tabular system view at least, so I decided I'm too lazy to do something about it now ...

But you are right, the screen flow needs more work until this can become a game. It bothers me though that the text doesn't fit in the button, since I can only test with Windows XP, and still want to produce UIs that look alright everywhere - there could now be a whole lot of things that look different than I had seen them on my screen, and this is something that disturbs me

Edit: Buttons in the station panel will be wider in the next version. Jonasbb if you can send me a screenshot of the problem I might be able to figure exactly how much wider they need to be.

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

Reply #163 –
Ubuntu 9.10 with Java 1.6.0_15

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

Reply #164 –
Thank you. It seems the font is a bit wider there on Ubuntu, but not much. I'll enlarge the buttons and it should be good next version.

If you spot more of such problems, please let me know :)

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

Reply #165 –
I'm working on the flight and traveling parts. So far one could instantly access planets and stations, just by clicking them.

Soon, one will have to actually fly there to find out the details.

I liked the "explore a galaxy on your desk" feature, which allowed instant access to all data. I think I'll try to keep it somehow, maybe as a sandbox mode or separate project. For the exploration and prospecting parts of the game it's important that data is not readily accessible, but must be discovered. Also the time factor involved in traveling seems to be necessary for a game.

Meanwhile I've started with a super simple stellar system navigation map. Planet orbits are shown as dotted circles, one can pan and zoom the view. The screenshots below show a little tour into a stellar system.

Rikon system overview. A white dwarf sun with some plants. Some of the planets have moons.
 
[link lost]
 

Closing in to Rikon 1, a ringed planet with several moons and space stations in orbit.
 
[link lost]
 

Finally a detail view of Outpost C****ini, orbiting the moon Rikon 1-3
[link lost]

I don't plan to implement a 3D space flight simulation. Travel will happen on this navigation map, in a more abstract fashion.

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

Reply #166 –
I noticed that the ordering of the moons was wrong often. You can see this problem in the screenshots above. This will be fixed in the forthcoming release.

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

Reply #167 –
I'm looking forward to play with it.. :)

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

Reply #168 –
I could polish a few details and a new release candidate should be ready soon. I don't know how busy tomorrow will be, so it might be good to have it out today, but I can't say yet for sure. Depends on how many bugs I discover in the next while ;D

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

Reply #169 –
I've put a new version online, with a few changes - this is again a quite experimental release, and things may or may not work properly.

[link lost]

- Added system navigation map.
- Improved naming for dual stars (alpha/beta).
- Extended goods list.

The biggest change is the new system navigation map. Well, navigation itself is still not included, but this is where you'll move your ship once the travel part of the game becomes more complete. At the moment you can see the planet and moon orbits, pan and zoom in and out. A new, more spatial view on the system data.

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

Reply #170 –
Imho, it's the perfect way of representing it. Is it going to have movement? let me suggest a few improvements. Sometimes, the representation of system distances at nav map doesn't allow you to view the whole system. The zoom option is great, but when you zoom out, some elements which are very close, are represented as a single point while others have an image of the object. Perhaps you might reduce distances by half, something like distance scale factor equal to 0.5.

The other suggestion related with nav map is the possibility of center the viewport on a particular element or on mouse pointer, specially when you're zooming in. You click on a planet, or press C key, and the program take it as the center of the zoom process.

Just one more thing. I know space is mostly empty and dark, but I would add a stars background image at nav map. After all, some regions of space are full of light and colors.. :)

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

Reply #171 –
I've also been pondering about drawing the objects bigger, but I must take care that the orbits aren't suddenly inside a planet.

The centering feature I've missed, too. It might be that key presses are hard to detect, so maybe it will be a double-click on the object to center it, but the feature will be included.

I'd like nice backgrounds, too, in several places. My first try to make my own failed. Also I'm a bit concerned about memory limitations. I keep this on my list, but must first get some nice free-to-use backgrounds and also find out how much additional memory I can safely use for decorations.