To start the SSG got to folder: steamapps\common\Empyrion - Galactic Survival And start: SolarSystemGenerator.exe ——- What is the Solar System Generator (SSG) used for? The SSG’s layout has two main functions: Visualisation and generating a playfield. It is not a full-fledged terrain editor, but can use premade heightmap terrains to visualize and alter the terrain shape. To sum it up, the SSG currently ... ....can alter premade playfields based on SEED (Seed = same seed as used ingame = same result as in SSG) ..can alter premade playfields based on a range of settings (see Doku) ..can visualize POI, Ore and NPC spawn areas locations and positions on planets and in space ..can visualize planet and orbital playfields ..can visualize the solar system (Sector) ..can create a new random scenario with a button click ..cannot place or remove POI, Ore and NPC spawns (yet) ..cannot create multi-solar system (yet) ..cannot create new animals or modify AI routines Please find attached the documentation as a PDF (vAlpha8.0.0). All Screenshots were taken from the current production version, but might change in the course of the coming months. --- Documentation Preview ---- TABLE OF CONTENTS Preamble A. Introduction B. Heightmaps and Stamps C. You need a .yaml editing software D. Quick overview of the new game files E. How the game starts a new game F. Global SSG Workflow The Solar System Generator (SSG) How To Start the SSG GUI Overview - Planetary Playfield ( 2D < > 3D ) GUI Overview - Orbital Playfield GUI Overview - Sector Playfield Global SSG Handling Notes Working with the SSG Loading a playfield Customize and Export a playfield 1. Create TEST playfield 2. Modify STAMPS 3. Load TEST in the SSG & export Playtest your work A. Preparation: B.1 Method A: Overwrite an existing planet (easier) B.2 Method B: Define a custom named planet C. Troubleshooting THREE GOLDEN RULES NEVER MODIFY AND THEN OVERWRITE DEFAULT GAME FILES Any file that is added to the installation via update, is likely to be overwritten with each update! Any progress is lost if an update kicks in or you use the “verify files” steam feature. NEVER SAVE ANY OF YOUR WORK IN THE CONTENT ROOT FOLDERS OR A DEFAULT SCENARIO Adding new files is not a problem, but modifying original files is a risk. See Rule 1. ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK in your OWN SCENARIO Scenarios you create are NOT removed or overwritten by any update!
NOTE FOR BUILDERS: 1. For all the new playfield settings and how to use them, check the fully commented versions of playfield_static.yaml playfield_dynamic.yaml in the folders +ExampleSpace +ExamplePlanet over here > ...\Empyrion - Galactic Survival\Content\Playfields
Patch notes on Steam say it'll be shipped to users automatically. Where do I find it? It's nether in the Tools nor Software categories? Is it maybe just not out yet?
I tested the new Box SECTOR CUSTOMIZATION and I really enjoyed it! But one thing missing: defining an Ice Planet as a neighbor. I tried with several seeds and every kind of neighbor happened, except Ice ...
I am not sure if this is the right place to comment on this, but I wanted to give feedback on the randomization process in general (whether done in the SSG or with the random scenario). Larger planets suffer from a feeling of "sameness" as you explore the planet. This can actually be seen right on the SSG screenshot in Hummel's second post in this thread. You see lots of little patches of land, and lakes. Biomes are randomly scattered, the temperature is influenced by latitude so if you fly due west, you will see mostly similar biomes. What is missing are what I would call "macro" features, like large continents, large oceans, large patches of desert. Those aren't appropriate for moons and tiny planets where there may have never been plate tectonics. But on mid and larger size planets you'd really expect to see large land masses, and oceans (or at least basins on dry planets). Without these major features, honestly all temperate worlds kind of look the same, all barren worlds feel the same, etc. The biomes are not influenced by the terrain that much. Yes, swamps and beaches are close to water, but what is missing is the effect of weather patterns - typically one side of mountains would be dryer, and one would be wetter, and this generally depends on latitude. There is no true ocean planet like the old Oscotune. You'll never see a random scenario give you something like that. In the SSG you can crank up the humidity and sea level, and get huge oceans, but what is left are a few islands randomly distributed all over the world, rather than getting big oceans and a few smaller land masses. It just doesn't feel right. I do not think "planets" and "moons" should be separate. I think the moon templates are basically just small planets and all of them should be available for planets that are less than class 3. Not all small worlds have atmospheres (see Mercury, Pluto). I think the default random solar system generation should have a UI for it instead of just a config file. As far as I could tell, every random scenario had 7 planets and even though they were "random" they all felt sort of the same except the names changed. At the very least people should be able to choose whether the system will be big or small.
For some reason since the update, the SSG does not work at all. Following the steps provided in the manual, the same steps I did just 72 hours ago, does nothing but spit out this same error over and over and over and over for any non-orbit playfield.
First > plz always report bugs to bug thread Second > Refresh the playfields directory using the '...' button next to the Template field and see if that clears it up
Apologies, thought for some reason that this was the bug thread. And that didn't help either. I clicked on every button on the entire program (except the export YAML and export Scenario buttons) in order to attempt to get it to work to no avail. I have submitted a report in the bug thread.
WORKING MODE: Right after Start Reproducibility: Always Severity: Major Type: NullReferenceException Summary: NullReferenceException on Start Description: When i start, i get a nullReferenceException and i only see a white screen. No matter what i click, it changes nothing. Steps to Reproduce: Just start it. Screenshots:
The SSG lets us load custom terrain into the planet playfield editor thing, but we can't configure a custom terrain for our actual playfields...? If this is possible, how is it done? If it isn't, why is it an included feature on the SSG?
I'm not finding this information, at least not with the searches I have run. How do I use a custom playfield? I have generated a custom playfield, now how can I use it in a game? This is probably a basic question, but for some reason I can't find the answer. Any help would be appreciated!
TBH i think we should have a level beryon the system (which should be the real sector). Each system should be 1 star with a certain number of planets or space POIs. One can use SV hyperdrive to travel inside a system but if you want to reach another system you need a CV hyperdrive. You have then the sector where each system is linked to the others, this should allow a much cleaner approach (because i find a single system with 20+ planets be a little wierd). It should also allow to add a % of enemy control over systems (which will decide how much of the system space is occupied by enemies)
Still looking through the code but so far this is a great tool Right now my only concern is the default settings in playfields that create Radiated biomes. The problem is the biome has a very diffrent colour palette which does not blend into others. So it possible to look into it but not out of such a biome for example. The graphics mix just does not work. If we tie in atmospheric graphics to a biome. Every planet will become the same one. The only long term solution that I can see is to have more biomes grouped by planet type. So if a planet can never have a Radiated Biome in the middle of a temperate forest. Whilst on planets types that do have Radiated Biome. It domainates the atmospheric graphics everywhere (Radiated Fog over everything). With no possiblily of finding normal looking blue sky areas regardless of other conditions.
In order to remove this biome from the planets, in particular the temperate ones - because in my opinion they are not all that they should have, I replicated the "temperate" folder and named it "temperateNoRad" and in the "playfield_dynamic" file I did the following: # - Name: Radiated # Weather: BmFogRadiationGreen # AmbientSound: BarrenFog # Texture: [2.9, 0.8, 11.11, 0.2] # UndergroundLayers: # - [0, 2] # - [12, 4] # - [11, -1] # - [10, 1] # Color: [0.6, 0, 0.6] # Temperature: 30 # Radiation: 4 # StampForcesBiome: true # StampTries: 15 # StampForcesBiomeType: OverlapOff # Stamps: # - DunesSea_01 # Decorations: # - [AkuaPlant2, 0.08] # - [BallFlower01, 0.04] # - [BallFlower02, 0.02] # - [BallFlower03, 0.02] # - [Mushroom02, 0.003] # - [AridRock01, 0.001] # - [AridRock02, 0.01] # - [AridRock03, 0.02] # - [SkeletonDragonTorso, 0.003] # - [SkeletonMammothHead, 0.005] # - [SkeletonMammothTorso, 0.008] # - [RockGrey01Large, 0.001] # - [RockGrey02Large, 0.001] # - [RealRock1Dark, 0.05] # - [RealRock2Dark, 0.001] # - [RealRock3Dark, 0.01] # - [RealRock4Dark, 0.01] # - [RealRock8Dark, 0.01] # # Harvestables: # - [CrystalStraight, 0.001, Free] # # Rock Resources: # - [RockResourceCobalt, 0.001, Free] # - [RockResourceSilicon, 0.001, Free] # - [RockResourcePromethium, 0.0005, Free] # Grass: # - Name: GrassBrown04a # Density: 1 # Preset: GrassDense # - Name: GrassBrown02d # Density: 0.25 # Preset: GrassDense # - Name: FlowerBlue01 # Density: 0.008 # Preset: GrassDense # - Name: Plant01a # Density: 0.05 # Preset: GrassDense Then I added the necessary parameters to the file "SectorTypeDefaults" so that it is generated randomly. To remove the radioactive fog I edited the file "playfield_static".
That was kind of you to post code. Thumbs up for trying to help. However the point I was trying to make is, I am not sure that the current default settings should be used outside of an experimental build. I know how to edit the biomes out. The point is should they still be there in default playfield in the first place ? For testing purposes I am all for having a sandbox playfield. However in the default game new players are going to be seeing a poor graphic transition between biomes that should not be on the same map. Taking out biomes with local atmospheric effects seems the best policy for now. Longer term this highlights a possible bigger problem. In regard to the generator and graphics rendering. I am thinking that having an atmospheric effect tied into biomes is going to be quite a limit. I would rather see an alien atmospheric colour shift as required and variable draw distance shown as a weather pattern. To a certain extent the current lighting storms weather show effects show what is possible. When it is raining we can fly across biomes and there is a smoother graphic transition. Draw distance is lower and things look darker in all biomes. What if we tinted away from the standard blue skys background on alien worlds instead of using the alien biome? Here we can get much more efficent use out of all the other biomes just by changing the colour palette of the sky and expanding the existing weather effects.
Looking forward to the release of multi-stars. One of the biggest reasons my brother won't play this game much is the lack of being able to have multi-planetery systems to allow more planets while still keeping realism of number of planets around a star/distances between them.
