Custom playfields

Discussion in 'The Hangar Bay' started by Xango2000, Dec 1, 2016.

  1. Scoob

    Scoob Rear Admiral

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    Yep, I was bang on the opposite side of the planet.

    There's certainly some attempt at orbital stuff - even the space station around Akua appears to "orbit", either that or something odd is happening. I remember one time on Akua, I'd finally built my first SV and I set off into orbit to get some Sathium. I noticed that Thermica Station was clearly visible when I got into orbit - having gone directly UP, no deviations. Many game hours later, I return to orbit from the same base, intending to raid Thermica Station, but it's not there! I had to fly a good 3rd of the way around Akua before I found it.

    Scoob.
     
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  2. Our Grid

    Our Grid Captain

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    Yep. And your quoted comment is the only thing I have managed to come with as well, other than a shoulder shrug! :confused:
     
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  3. Scoob

    Scoob Rear Admiral

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    Ah well! :)

    On another note, as this topic is about custom playfields, are there any completely custom Solar Systems with new / different / tweaked planets I can just download? I fancy starting my LAN server up again - I've been SP recently - and while I like doing my own tweaks, I want to be surprised by things, and not just wait to experience something I've added. Feeling lazy, so I just want to download, copy to my server and play ideally, though happy to do config of course :)

    Scoob.
     
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  4. piddlefoot

    piddlefoot Rear Admiral

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    There will be a complete set of planets at 5.0 from me, that are all done on 5.0 YAMLs as theres new AI in them, in my set there are new Template folders, Tropical, for example, and I do everything needed to just swap folders and start a game, even the dedicated yaml.

    They however cannot be put into a new solar system because we have no way to get out of the solar system were in.
    You could modify a few thing to locate them on the map at distance so the ''look'' like 2 solar systems on the map but really its just an illusion.
     
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  5. Scoob

    Scoob Rear Admiral

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    Cool, I'll keep an eye out for that then :)

    Sorry I meant new as in replacement, not additional, just something fresh and different not done by me so I'm "surprised" on occasion :)

    If the 5.0 .yaml is different, it's likely worth me waiting before I do any more modding myself too.

    Scoob.
     
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  6. Gray

    Gray Commander

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    there's a FixedPlayerStart entry in the yaml, however it never worked for me when I tried it (in creative tho, dunno about survival). default spawn is 0.0.-4000, with the planet usually starting at 0.0.0.

    if moving the spawn isn't possible maybe moving the the planet works, but no idea what side-effects that will have...

    EDIT: gave the 10x planet a spin, even the default spawn isn't safe! :eek:

    20161213142808_1.jpg

    however, I like the new size. the normal size isn't as bad as STO when it comes to space/planet ratio, but it's still nowhere near black prophecy (RIP) - couldn't find a screenshot, but you can see some of it in the trailer:



    so... new AI in 5.0 :D (is the AI modded?).
     
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  7. XeroTerragoth

    XeroTerragoth Captain

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    Perhaps this has something to do with the "time of day" that you entered/left the planet? I've done quite a bit of customization on playfields and testing them in SP, and in the process I noticed what appears to be a simulated planetary rotation type of thing going on. What I mean is when I enter atmo with the moon behind me and head straight down the the planet's surface, wait a bit, then head back into space, I'm usually not on the same "side" of the planet that I entered from.

    I also noticed (if you set up the playfield right) that the map and planet object both appear to use the same image file to display the surface texture. The point here is, that if you build your base somewhere you can recognize on the map from space, you can then head to that landmark and enter atmosphere from there and (usually) land right on top of it without issue.

    Having said all that, I'm not sure if any of these things break when playing on a 10x planet...lol though this thread has got me thinking of tweaking some of the custom playfields I created and testing it out.

    Edit: I'm pretty sure we have rotation for the planet, but I read other people talking about orbits...afaik there are no orbits for anything (yet?) in the game. I think people are just getting confused by the planet rotating...:oops:
     
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  8. Scoob

    Scoob Rear Admiral

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    @Gray - thanks for the tip I might tinker.

    @XeroTerragoth - yeah, the night/day cycle does make sense. I think I landed initially at night, and took off in daylight.

    Hopefully larger planets work more reliably in 5.0. While it takes LONG time to fly around a 10x larger planet in space, it doesn't take 10x longer in atmosphere. Something is very screwed up I think. While the planet is doubtless larger, and looks better, the looping the planet travel time simply doesn't take as long as it should. I guess this is why we're not meant to play around with this setting, it's plain unpredictable.

    Thing is, everything did look larger (landscape-wise) initially, but the flight-times simply aren't right for the apparent size. Ah well! :)

    Scoob.
     
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  9. Xango2000

    Xango2000 Captain

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    Exiting the planet probably puts you inside the planet because they didn't figure in distance from center of planet so it throws you out to a set of default coordinates.

    Just a guess
     
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  10. XeroTerragoth

    XeroTerragoth Captain

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    Perhaps this has something to do with the Real vs Scaled radius? I would imagine that the planet should take longer (C = 2*π*r or π*d so something like <difference in distance> * π * traveling speed) to circumnavigate in orbit than it does in atmosphere. The farther you are from the point of origin, the longer it should take to complete an orbit.

    Having said that, this applies to IRL, where planets are actually round (not just simulated to look round). I would only guess that the difference in time might be a little of both, since in atmosphere, you're traversing a flat plane until you hit the green wall and teleport to the other side of the (read: flat) map.

    My point here is that the physics of this might be screwed up for the same reason the planets still have poles: trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole - almost literally.

    Edit: Did some math in my head:
    C = 2*π*r or π*d where r or d is in meters (m).
    So it would take [C * <speed (in m/s)>] seconds to make a full trip around the planet.
    From there, you should be able to calculate the difference by knowing your distance from the planet, and the diameter of the planet (add them together and plug that value in for d).

    Sorry, at work and bored, on the forums to keep myself entertained so I don't snooze at my desk. These are the things my brain does when it's bored lol :rolleyes:
     
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  11. Scoob

    Scoob Rear Admiral

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    Sounds like a good guess to me :)

    @XeroTerragoth - Possibly, we're trying to force an unsupported feature, so I'm not entirely surprised things are getting a bit screwy. Until it was mentioned earlier, I didn't even realise the game would start with such tweaks in place.

    Scoob.
     
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  12. arg821

    arg821 Commander

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    Hey Scoob,
    Yep you can have lots of drones protecting different type of assets - its how you allocate them that is key. For example, if you have chosen to have 30 ore deposits on a planet in total, and you have specified a range of 1-3 drones protecting each one, you now know that there are insufficient slots for this request to be filled completely (the game will randomise it). So when flying around you will see some deposits with 1, or maybe 2, or at an outside chance 3 drones, but there will be quite a few deposits with 0 drones due to that limitation.

    You can customise this a little by assigning 0 drones to certain types of ore deposits/POIs, and assigning 1 or more to other types. By setting the range parameters (in brackets) to the same number, i.e. [ 2, 2] you are enforcing that number where slots are available.

    You can even force 0 drones on any resource deposits and POIs, which is what I did as a test, and forced 50 drones to protect the drone base. It was kinda cool to see a swarm of drones protecting one drone base. Using the console command 'find', you can get close enough to them and type 'find drone' to see how many are there. Max I could get to spawn were 39 (again, guessing that troop transport accounted for that last slot).

    Its fun to play around with isn't it ..... since we get no direction from the devs, we have to play and work these things out ourselves.

    Andy.
     
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  13. dichebach

    dichebach Captain

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    Re: the Pole "level" I did not fiddle with that at all yet. If memory serves it is "30" by default. I want to say that the "poles" on Earth are at 90-degrees from equator and the polar regions are at -60 and 60 latitude respectively, so . . . yeah "30 probably" means effectively "2/3 of the pixels from the middle."

    So presumably if you change that to say . . . 1, you might just get "virtually no polar region" . . . ot your app my lock up and CTD!! :p

    Like I said I haven't tried it yet. If I were a developer and had a development install of the game I would most certainly HAVE tried it though :D I mean, who cares if it "crashes" in Visual Studio! right . . .
     
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  14. Zeerog1

    Zeerog1 Ensign

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    Is it actual posible to make bigger planets? So yes how is it done? I want to explore that posibility to bring some more variation in the galacxy ;-)
     
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  15. dichebach

    dichebach Captain

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    1. Download Notepad++

    2. Go here: H:\Steam\steamapps\common\Empyrion - Galactic Survival\Content\Playfields

    You'll see a bunch of folders, for different planet types. Browse through them a bit bit to get a sense for what is here.

    3. Select one of the .yaml files in one of these folders. (for this example I'll use temperate)

    4. Proably a good idea but not essential to make a backup copy of your original. Just right-click-> copy then-> paste Windows will automatically append - Copy to the new instance of the file.

    5. Use Notepad++ to open the yaml you are going to edit (not the "copy")

    6. Change the two values circled in the pic. Adding an additional order of magnitude is fine. Several of us have done it and no major problems noted (type a zero on the right hand side of the number {left hand of the decimal place})

    [​IMG]

    Personally I would not recommend anything less than that, but you could experiment with whatever multiplier you want to use. X100 might even work, but I suspct X1000 will cause issues.

    7. Note, the surface of your planets will be expanded relative to their coordinate positions in the "sector" space. This may produce issues for some planets. I have no experience with that at all, but Scoob mentioned when he traveled to one planet that he had increased (Ningues I think) that he emerged from warp immediately in atmosphere.
     
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  16. Zeerog1

    Zeerog1 Ensign

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    Hmmm, so it work to make planets larger that way ;-). The out of warp distance is predefined i gues so if the planet is bigher you stop closer to the planet surface. I gues we have to find a way to alter that. I gues if you make then 100 times bigher you end up in the planet ;-). I wil try it out. Are there isues with the biomes and spawnhights of plants? Or is everything just streched out? Gues we have to find this out. Is it also possible to do it the oposite way and shrinking the planet? Would be great to make moons with more diversity. I gues i have to test that out too. A playfield generator would be a great asset to create more easely custom planets.
     
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  17. dichebach

    dichebach Captain

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    At 10x I haven't seen any issues with the positioning of elements on planets. If anything, the topography looks WAY better, and the plants and other decorations (rocks, etc.) look just as good if not better. The biomes look better IMHO . . . with the default scaling, Akua (and to a lesser extent Omicron) have a "Dr. Seuss" feeling: the proportions of the object of interest our too big relative to its contextual surroundings. Basically: hill slopes are ridiculously steep, transitions from level to sloped to alpine are far too rapid, biomes are far too patchy (you can run through a tropic forest into a plain thence into an alpine biome) far too rapidly.

    10x alleviates a lot of this. 100x might alleviate it more, or it might make it worse, I haven't experimented.

    POIs in 10x Akua: I haven't seen ANY problems. If anything they look better too. Note, I have not traveled into orbit from the starter planet, and also have not tried Omicron at 10x. But I did set ALL my playfields to 10x, so when I get back to continuing my playthrough (got distracted by RL here lately) I may get far enough along to observe the effects of 10x on other playfields too . . .

    As far as I know there are only two problems that have been observed with 10x playfields:
    1. (my observation and I suspect others have too, but haven't commented): the map marker icons are jumbled on the mini-map

    2. (Scoob's observation): when you come out of warp at Ningues, you are already in atmosphere or very close to it.

    Like I said above: I almost wonder if the algorithms they created/used for the procedural generation were not 'tuned' to a scale more along the lines of 13,000, but then at some point in development they thought it wise to downsize playfields because of other concerns such as performance on servers . . .

    I'm sure their designers and developers have full plates getting 5.0 done, but hopefully, eventually we get playfields and sectors AND inter-sector spaces with proportions that are more toward the 13000 (or maybe even 65000, which is 50x compared to the default 1300). The game will be far, FAR better at that scale and as long as it performs okay, why not!?
     
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  18. Gray

    Gray Commander

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    I think it doesn't really matter, once you hit orbit/space the game just ports you to either playfield with the corresponding coordinates. so when you hit space at 0 0 1000 for example you get put into the space equivalent - however, it's an assumption and I haven't really tested it.

    there's a limit how much you can enlarge a planet since the space playfield has a maximum size as well (or rather the game thinks you want to go into deep space once you hit a certain limit - iirc it's at 12 or 15k - and you get a "you need a warp drive" message constantly).

    being able to change this value too would be nice, larger space playfield could offer some options for MP servers.
     
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  19. zaphodikus

    zaphodikus Captain

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    Was bugging me how the docs in the Sectors.yaml is wrong. but now it makes sense if I say:
    Code:
    # Default starter planets on a Dedicated Server are Akua and Omicron. 'true' behind playfield template sets starter planet [ "0, 0, 0", Akua, Temperate, true ]
    
    should rather say
    Code:
    # Default starter planets on a Dedicated Server are Akua and Omicron. ['<originname>:<index>'] behind playfield template sets starter planet player Origin, example   - ['0, 0, 0', Akua, Temperate, 'Human:1']
    
     
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  20. Xango2000

    Xango2000 Captain

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