Planets as units?

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:07 pm

Generate a big ball unit, and call that a planet?

It may sound stupid, but it has some advantages...

(1) WC3/4 style atmo flight becomes sort of possible.
(2) Possible to assign the planet unit to a faction, so that if a system is taken over by the kilrathi, a new base screen and trade model can be imported.
(3) Planets can refuse landing.
(4) Can attach subunits (moons, comm satellites etc).
(5) Planet can launch fighters for self defense.

I'm trying this and it's kinda nice.

crouton · Post by **crouton** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:18 pm

Sounds cool! Can you make a test starsystem and see how it works, or do you have to edit everything?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:43 pm

I'm beginning to suspect the current system is a bit too rigid...

Good for you spirit!

Post by **klauss** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 6:22 pm

Spirit work actually proves it's flexible.

Another usefulness of such an approach: more than one city to dock to in a planet: just make subunits (cities) dockable, and not the main planet. Cities would be invisible subunits (no mesh attached).

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:15 pm

Perhaps atmospheric flight would then be possible if you assigned a crapload of LOD's...

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:37 pm

Sheherazade is working on that: Sub-unit LOD's is what it is, as you wouldn't want to increase the detail for the whole planet, but rather just the area you're flying over.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:33 am

I tried it and it can more or less be done... screenshot at:

http://spiritplumber.dynip.com/planet.png

Sorry for the death star look. A sphere is reasonably simple to render, so it doesn't even have that many faces (2000).

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:43 am

And yes, having multiple dock points would be really great for, say, Earth...

The bad part is that it would be somewhat harder to autogen the planets, although even that can be done (WCU autogen currently looks at wcuniverse.xml and converts an "empty" planet to a random space station, just declare all planets empty and do the same).

Another good thing is that planets can be effectively conquered, since a unit has a specific owner.

Post by **mkruer** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:23 am

I say KISS, for me its ok to have it be an object, that can launch fighters and what not, but I am against allowing multiple destinations on planet. This is something that can be added at a later date, and I can even have built in support. But this is like item 999 on the list, and we are still at 10.

Last thing, one of the reason to move to a new WCU was to get rid of the autogen stuff. it has ended up being more of a disaster because any one change has unknown repercussions, that was the reason for the idea to move to an SQL backend.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... php?t=4309

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:50 am

Works for me (redoing the autogen I mean) but I still think that habitable planets should behave as units... multiple docking points is something we MIGHT want to use later on in life, and this lets us implement it. Eye-candy planets (gas giants etc.) can still be autogenerated.

Post by **klauss** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:48 pm

IMHO, autogen itself could add the multiple docking points, real simple. Just as I said: as dockable subunits of the undockable planet. Should work. If I get the time, I'll fiddle with that.