The system editor is really cool, but are there plans to allow us to build non-procedural planets, using more traditional map making tools? It makes sense using randomly generated worlds when you just want to start blowing things up as quickly as possible, but as the core game is still focused on ground combat, having engaging maps is important, and something that can't always truly be done just by adjusting sliders. For example, creating truly balanced maps, or specific features like having two poor starting continents and putting tons of metal at the north/south pole, or on strategic islands scattered through the sea. On a semi-related note, will there be variations on elevation eventually? Rather than just passable/impassable, it'd be great to see hills and raised cliffs that offer tactical advantages and dilemmas, letting your artillery fire further or from outside LOS of thing below, or for chucking missile turrets up on, etc. I bet there's a load of people out there eager to re-imagine Seton's Clutch in PA!
there are variations on the planets base height map now. when you set height scale in system editor's "Planet editor" it deforms the sphere making mildly hilly terrain, when you set the water height you can then get islands or ponds on the planet. Biome Scale will allow you to set how big each sub biome on the planet is, in an example - setting biome size to 100 on a tropical planet will make lots of sandy plains, jungle and and few mountains maybe tiny bit of ice, if you set biome scale to a lower value these "Sub biome areas" (the tropical planet is made of a composite of many biomes) change shape and size. The biomes are then wrapped around the deformed height mapped sphere!
Aha, I was wondering what the biome scale slider actually did. Thanks! Still though, would be neat to be able to chisel specific features into the map. I've been trying to make a continental earth map with a metal-rich island but the process has basically been browsing many many different seeds until one comes up that's similar to what I'd imagined. Being able to paint directly onto the planet would be great, imo.
I do agree, with the current million billion zillion procedural combos this engine is capable of, getting a planet that is specifically designed to bottle neck armies into valley style battles has a 1 in 1 million billion zillion odds chance of appearing or happening in the system editor .. lol I also have been furiously searching for this magic number combo to generate that kind of planet
I seem to remember in the dim and distant past a mention by the devs that they hoped people could completely customise planets, either from scratch, or using a generated one as a starting point. I believe the files that are used to create the planets will also be editable.
Biomes are moldable/moddable planet templates can be customized via their .json file to use custom or specific biomes so yes it will definably be possible to create custom procedural planets. Maybe a valley Biome could be in order to fix this , one like the Cutout and Bridge biome/brushes on the metal planet template but nice and big valleys to wrap around a planet instead . https://forums.uberent.com/threads/alien-and-utopian-colored-biomes.52147/ here's my custom planet mod thread Custom planet biomes aren't supported in game yet , but they do work in the system editor to look and play with,
Mavor has stated it won't be in the game but the hooks will be there for someone to mod one in. Are you sure about biome slider? I have yet to see it make the slightest difference to planet generation.
in my system editor the biome scale at high values seems to make the planet either lots of sandy plains, jungle, and large biomes style. at lower values it make lots of mountains and and lots of them , and a few small biomes, Planet size, seed, and height, all affect the outcome of this for me, like 100 and 1000's of crazy combo's. But setting biome scale too small with most combos makes almost just 1 biome type everywhere even if the planet template consists of lots of sub-biomes (jungle, sand, mountain, blah blah) my theory for this is, the first sub-biome in the .json planet template gets generated the most, and covers most of the planet making other sub biomes smaller or non existent maybe it get priority over the others. Biome Scale only seems to majorly impact planets that use multiple sub-biomes In example , Earth, Tropical, Metal, maybe Lava, (not sure about lava ,, haven't peek at that .json yet .)
Neutrino has commented that although they don't have any plans for 'hand-crafted' planets they will ensure that the hooks are in place that should someone want to, they could create a tool for doing so. Mike
As for hand crafted planets it's my goal to enable this. Basically the planet geometry that I generate becomes what I call "base" brushes. It's my intent to all those to just be modelled instead of using the planet gen.
