Help With Planet Wells and Distances?

from Sins Forums

Hi,

           Sorry to ask, but i am stumped, my experience with planets and stars is rather limited, as in almost none. But i used the re-size tool to make the planets and stars (standard planets, no added or extra planets) about 10 times larger. I thought it would be very cool to run around a planet that was you know... very very large, haha, anyway the re-size went off well and then dropped them into the mesh folder and i thought, okie, now i need to probably set the distances farther apart from each other, but didnt know how to accomplish that other than to try GalaxyForge to make a copy of the map and give it a new name you know?  

So i did, then i started the game, and the gravity wells, were like gone. So i went into the entity files to resize them, about double what they were.

So now the planets are okie, but the stars are way too close (my planet was floating above the star, like not even half a jump to another planet, whooooaaaaa!!!! haha, well, it would be cool if i could get the star grav well right, and the far icon for it to show, somehow when i resized it, the faricon disappeared.

So i guess just three things then:

1.  How can i get the star grav well to fit properly around my times10 star, and 

2. How can i get the star farther from the planets

3. How can i get the star faricon to show properly

 

Sorry for the questions, i am looking at the entity files and the gameplay.constants file, but am apparently entering the wrong values.  :(

Thanks for the help, i appreciate it, i dont have much hair left to pull out, haha, i've pulled most of it out already, and when i run out of hair i dont know what im going to do!  haha, well, grow it back and pull it out again.  :)

Thanks again,

-Teal

 

 

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1,941 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

teal you might be able to get a hint to solve your difficulties by looking at the celestial bodies mod

hope this helps

harpo

 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

:)  Thank you Harpo!!!  Good idea!!! Perhaps i could ask TohKlidan for some advice, thank you Harpo!!

:)

-Teal

 

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Here are some tips about gravwells and planetsizes:

There are 2 parameters in the planet and Star entites moveAreaRadius and  hyperspaceExitRadius. The 3rd parameter is the BoundingRadius around the mesh you will find it in the mesh files.

The meshes bounding radius (BoundingRadius) is the inner movement border. if you have no mesh in use (such as for nebulae etc.) then only the center point is the border.

The moveAreaRadius is the outer movement border.

The hyperspaceExitRadius is where the ships enter and exit hyperspace. It's value is between the other 2 parameters.

So if a gravwell should work properly you have to keep in mind this formula:

BoundingRadius < hyperspaceExitRadius  < moveAreaRadius 

If gravwells are overlapping, this happens if you use large values and position the planets in the galaxyforge very close, ships are beginn to jump between both gravwell equators. One of the devs explained this behavior: the Gravity well is no sphere it is more like a cylinder with invinite high.

 

the star faricon:

each star entity has a parameter farIcon  this is a reference to a brush from the HUDIcon-Generic.brushes file. all starfaricons beginn with HUDICON_SOLARSYSTEM in the name. the brush reference which snip from a tga is used.

Here an example:

brush
    name "HUDICON_SOLARSYSTEM_WHITE"
    content "Simple"
    fileName "Icons_planetsSmall"
    pixelBox [ 0 , 100 , 69 , 69 ]

 

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

:)  Thank you TohKlidan, im not quite sure i understand everything you said about the brushes, i have not had much exposure to them at all, but the grav well information is enlightening. I didnt know about the BoundingRadius, thank you for the explanation, and will check those and reset them.

Take care,

-Teal

 

 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Harpo,

               Does the map size, small, medium, large or huge determine the zoom out range?  I know the maps are within a certain boundary, x to x, i think. My problems with the zoom out and the planet and star sizes and the jump weirdness (they are tracking toward the center of the planet or star, shimming up or down to clear the orbital body and then jumping) and the faricon disappearing makes me think it may be the size of the map i'm dealing with.

Since i'm committing a deal of energy to this aspect of the mod, i've decided to branch it out from the main mod, well... create a new mod with this main difference, and call it the HP mod (for Huge Planets). I know its silly, especially with the problems i've already encountered, but i've re-sized them again, twice as large as before, so now i've gone to twenty times as large as the originals. It looks "BEAUTIFUL"!!!   :)   Haha, but now the task of getting it to work.

If anyone wants to jump in and help you are most welcome, it will be a co-created mod, im not a leader or anything, all i can say is i get these off the wall ideas and want to see if i can get it to work.  :) 

I will be uploading HP Beta 0.1 tonight, with the 20x planets/stars if anyone wants a go. Of course since this project is still in its beta stage (too many problems to be considered workable at present) then of course a lot of people may want to bypass it. Whatever you feel.

But would appreciate anyone's assistance if they want to throw in with me.

I've noticed several things off the bat, especiallyl with the 20x version tonight, it takes quite a while to cover the distance around the planet to engage an enemy. But you know, its kinda cool.  :)  And i am getting to like that part of it. That of course and the sheer size of the planets and stars, haha, anyway, give me a holler if you would like to jump in. I dont know how close or far i am from actually getting this workable. The game plays, but there are anomolies, like the image breakup of the star image and the faricon disappearing and the jump weirdness and the jumbled stars for standard multi-system maps, but some i may be able to correct if i change the size of the map, and some i may be able to change with galaxyforge to re-space the planets and stars. I am hoping, but we will see.

Thanks for listening and hope someone would like to give it a go with me, take care,

-Teal

 

 

 

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

:)   Haha, some tentative success with the map resizing, i took a Huge map and took out all but 3 players, manually pulled out the planets from the immediate star well and re-sized the grav wells for the planets and stars. Just started a game, and faricon is back!!!! Yay!!!!!  So at least a little bit is getting there. Hope to get the rest under control, but we will see. I will keep you posted.  :)

-Teal

 

 

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Does the map size, small, medium, large or huge determine the zoom out range?

Indirectly yes. cause if you have a map with many stars it is zoomed out much more to fit your whole map in the screen.

 

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

:)  TY