Interesting Physics of Extra Large Planet and Star Bodies... :)

In between my rather limited time this last week to get things ready for school coming up and sleeping, haha, i have found a little time to sit down and play a game or half, :)  depending on the size of the map of course, and i have lately been basing all my mods on the oversize planets.

It was an idea started i think by Cybdevil and continued beautifully by TohKlidan, others have it too i am guessing, but i havent played those so i am not familiar with them.

But what has been striking me lately, so very much, is the pure "physics" of the extra large planets and stars.  :)

I remade my own planets, resized the meshes and dropped them into the game because i wanted BIG normal planets, haha. I had to resize the grav wells as well, and that i had to do carefully, because the last time i had attempted this, the grav wells were so big that the game speed sank like a rock. So i adjusted them in small degrees. With the result being now that i have grav wells that cover the grid of the planet and dont look funny, and they are much smaller than normal.

But even though the game speed now is still the same, thank goodness!!! the physics have changed.

And what has struck me, over and over lately, is the take off of ships from the wells, they aren't quite so quick off the planet, sometimes due to having to either spin up over the planet for clearance to jump out, or down out of the well for the same reason.

This has led to ships fighting battles suspended over the top of the planets, or underneath, or in many cases half way out of the well in open space. Some jumps by scouts and other ships also has led to leaving out far from the grav well edge, sometimes almost half way to the other planet before they jump.

In addition there is the high and low of the planets scattered around the system. Used to be i would play and they all seemed on the same flat plain, maybe im wrong, but it seemed that way. And now they are like hills and valleys and spread out and close like a jumble of crackers stuffed into a jar at all angles.  :)

Anyway, it makes for a visually interesting game, even when i have no other modifications going on, haha, which i sometimes like, and sometimes want to fill in with modified abilities or ships or whatever.  :)  But just from the point of view of the planets and stars and everything else the same, it is very very cool! 

Now i dont want to sound like im just tooting my own horn here, claiming how wonderful ive made something, that is not the case, im a file tweaker with no skill in modeling and little at code, other than figuring out what value i want to change and by how much.  :)  And Dehranik's converter and Newbeorg's resize tool get all the credit for what i've been able to pull off being a complete noob.  :)  But i am just in awe of what a difference my happenstance reworking has done, not that im cool or anything, but far from it, but what the devs put into this game that has made it so very very cool!!  :)

Anyway, just blabbing away, got to catch some sleep, but just wanted to tell everyone, its cool, i reallly like going half way out of a well to jump, or fighting the Vasari underneath the belly of a Gas Giant.  :)  Anyway, everyone take care and keep modding!!!!

Night,

-Teal

 

 

2,620 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I had an old mod called Planetary Mod which mixed the real size planets from Cybdevil with new planet types that you see in Mad Scientist and had to update that for Entrenchment (because it was so cool). I then took the Real Capitals mod and resized each Capital to twice it's size (I thought that the current size of Capitals didn't make them seem significant), with the Capital Carriers to 3x (I thought they should be the biggest) and the Starbases to twice the size to play on the new Planetary mod. It just looks amazing/ epic. I also realised that because Gas and especially Stars took too long to navigate for any ship, I created an ability called Gravity Speed boost (idea being that their greater gravity could be taken advantage of by ships to increase their speed, like a sling shot) which essentially gave a speed boost to all ships entering the gravity well, something like atleast 300% Acceleration and 300% Top speed and it worked out really well. Add to all this classical ochestral music (think space odyssey 2001) and it felt like a proper space game :)

I've never modded any games before, but with Sins it becomes a given because it really encourages you to do so. Unlike many games in the past, you don't have to jump over so many hurdles. The engine has it's limits but I think future space games will just have to be made in the same way (Sins 2?), to allow people to mod to their hearts content.

Reply #2 Top

:)  Your mod sounds very very interesting zRazor, what is it?  I would love to give it a try.  :)

-Teal

 

 

Reply #3 Top

Thanks Teal. I would upload but I would need permission from the people who did the original Planetary Mod. People like Cybdevil don't post here anymore. But I like to think never, say never. ^_^