mod project 3

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Since the discovery of the non-reproducing thing, I'm thinking about temporarily halting (planned) work on the wanderer project.

What would I be doing instead? Stellarchaos/mirror universe.

Stellar chaos is similar to FQM in principle, tweak the map generation to make things interesting. Not particularly complex, and small scale.

Mirror universe though... That will be set up to almost completely remove random planet generation, why? Planets won't be the same SHAPES/SIZES. That right there gives us a nice reason to not do it that way. But it'll take a lot of work to make interesting maps that use it. Especially when you want to add variety.

Yes I feel like adding natural sphere/ring worlds. Why? because I think it'd be fun. This is part of where the deterministic stuff comes in. Randomly generated sphereworlds make for very awkward maps. needless to say they'll be special cases that are in special solar systems of their own.

I'm also gonna make it so the game has 6 planet types, and 6 atmosphere types, but they'll be assigned to each other. That is simple and easy. Except for the part where I make models for them, that's gonna get complicated. I still need a program for making.x files. Current list: Crystal, Quantum matter, Hyperspace fold, planetary nebula, Biomechanical, and brown dwarf(not colonizable).

This leads me to a few questions.

1: cloaking, can you make it not affect people whose homeworld type is "crystal"? That or their atmosphere?

2: blackholes, can you make their effect not affect people whose homeworld type is "quantum matter"?

3: random movement/damage, ditto...

4: I wanna make a system and or component type that opens/closes warp points at random. Can I?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

1-3: Hmm... I guess you can't make a scope setting that checks by homeworld type?

4: I figured as much. But I lack the knowledge to do it myself.

PS anybody know wher I can get a model making utility? I wanna make my own models for some things. Is there a tutorial for this?

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Alright I looked up my notes, and typoe 5 is scheduled as "biomechanical". It got tossed in as a sort of tribute to SE2. In SE2 player homeworlds had a special planet type called "machine planet". Razz

they even looked vaguely similar to Cybertron. And now I'm gonna make n actual planet type to correspond to them.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

alright planets and their atmospheres and abilities:

Quantum Filament
Quantum Haze

mainly occur around black holes

Crystal Planet
Ionized Dust

built in cloaking

Machine Planet
Argon/Oxygen

boost to facility construction

Spacial Rift
N-Space

occur on top of warp points, also spawn in a special system type that acts as an unstable warp point nexus.

Cohesive Nebula
Plasma Haze

Mainly occur in nebula systems, sometimes as a system wide object. Have the properties of natural storms.

Brown Dwarf
Near Corona

Uninhabitable, but can be used for resource extraction nearly indefinately, maybe give them an ability that naturally restores their stats.

So? Any comments?

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

On planet types I have two inspired by MODs

1. Water and Volcanic worlds. Water Planets MOD
2. Wanderers make a homeworld in asteroids. Asteroid Habitats MOD

This would require the techs for water and asteroids colonization.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

I'm not planning on changing the types of planets. Razz

Sorry, I guess I was unclear. I'm wanting commentary on my choices of names. Quantum Filament looks weird in the tiny ingame text box. I already decided on what to have for planet types.

In other news: I made an early prototype last night! And it works! Now to finish work on it. The game follows the Atmosphere settings quite carefully. Smile

I also retested what happens when you try to use "Planet colonize type 6". It gives you an error saying that colonize ability doesn't exist.

My initial testing shops that having "Brown Dwarf" as a planet type isn't going to work as I hoped. I'm gonna have to change it to a type of "asteroid" object to use it the way I wanted to. The game seems to like spawning Neutrals with that planet type.

As another small addendum, I might release a new version of Asteroid Mod. Why? to fix ground combat. It doesn't crash, but you fight in an empty void.

As for "Alternate reality", Next phase is rearranging the solar systems to spawn correctly. Then to change the art used to depict the planets. (need help here)

Questions:
1: do asteroid type objects always have to say "asteroids"? Can you name them anything?

2: do special planet sizes work correctly? My work on asteroids seems to suggest this. In that mod, I never encountered an error related to the lack of "hab1" sized gas giants.

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

I would make Quantum Filament to Quantum Nebula so nebula = haze.

On 1 I would think so as long as the tag is correct.

No idea on 2.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Well I'll probably start testing(1/2) later today. Smile

Quantum Nebula? Is that the atmosphere? That could work, for some strange reason the atmosphere text box is way larger than the one for planet type. But my problem is that "Quantum Filament" is very difficult to read in the text box. It's so small it's barely legible.

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

For size you could call it the "Q" Effect

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Maybe "Q Filament"?