For Backers Only: Planetary Biome Concepts

Absolutely beautiful. I can pretty easily tell what each planet is from space. I think the forest biome looks the best, next to the ice.

Keep up the amazing work!

Oh now that is what i want to see heck yeahhhhhh!!!!

Love the contrasts between the planets. Instantly identifiable what type of planet it is.

Looks great!

Edit: btw i think the correct term for the 5th one down is archipelago. If it was a water planet, it'd be entirely water.

All these look great and that stuff everyone says.

Two things i think:

firstly i think it will be more accurate to refer to the biomes as tropical, temperate, arid, mountanous, archipeligo and such. Calling something a forest biome works in minecraft but here i think a forest will be a group of objects that frequently occurs in tropical biomes. then its look is imherited from the biomes section on trees.

Secondly the inclusion of these fantastic biomes like crystal and acid or radioactive wasteland can easily be added in later. we all want to see them but the current biomes can all mesh together to create a coherant planet. ice/polar for top and bottem, temperate with splashes of mountanous and arid all work together to create something interesting. as said even a splash of metal can work. crystal though is reaching a bit. for the third time i want them... i just want them later

Crystalline planets could totally explode in to tiny shards.

All planets are readable with out blowing up the image except the one above the metal planet.

It was more a reference to the crystalline terrain type from TA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5HFQzxshv0

It was just... crystal.

Crystal terrain offers some good chances for light effects, prisms, reflections, and such. It also gives a good opportunity to deal unique planet damage, as crystal will fracture and shatter rather than take standard craters. Might be fun to do.

If you wanted to go the whole hog on crystal planets you could even have a seed land on a planet and slowly convert it all to crystal... maybe this type should be green...

Sounds like a scrap metal heaven to me! But it took years for that particular resource to grow to any useful capacity. The time frame is far too slow for PA.

Who didn't love Core Prime? It was a metal planet with unlimited metal resources perfect for newbs to learn better strategies. (you didn't have to look at AIs putting metal extractors randomly on non metal ground either.)

why yes, i am.


as for the biomes
Desert
alpine
Ice
Lush (jungle)
Archipelago
Mountain
Metal
volcanic
moon
gas

nice to see this i was looking forward to seeing some of the biome types

my biome guess:
Desert
Forest
Ice
Jungle
Water
Mountain
Metal
Lava
Moon
Gas

looks good

If there was a slider to be able to tint the colors for the biomes one could have much more variety with the same set of biomes. For example a moon planet could be tinted red -> mars type looking planet. Or the lava may be tinted to toxic waste-green and look like a toxic wasteland. Or the gas giant could be tinted white-> saturn looking planet.
And a slider to have a single-biom on a planet only. Think of ganymed, 100% ice with water below, or mars - 100% desert with alot of canyons
I'd like to see more scifi/ non-earth landscapes, earth type planets are pretty rare after all.

Oh and a ring system would propably be cool for larger planets - think of saturn.

other then that it looks good so far, its easily understandable what each represents.

Very nice, i like all the concepts, very easy to identify each type.

Is there the possibility for a swamp equivalent?, something akin fighting on Dagohbah.

I see:

* Desert planet
* Woodlands planet
* Ice planet
* Jungle Planet
* Archipelago/Ocean planet
* Rock Planet
* Metal Planet
* Lava Planet
* Moon
* Gas Giant

Question: Will Gas Giants have a varying color pallet? What about moons? Not all of them are grey, you know =p

Yes, they are all easy identifiable and it looks like anyone calls them the same.

I have one little point of critic though:
Less swirls please. They look just strange, especially the swirl in the ground texture in the forest biome and those large, swirly tentacles in the island biome.

I DO miss the swirls in the gas giant atmosphere, but everywhere else they look just strange.

As for the ground, will we get more interesting ground textures (especially bumpmaps or alike) as in the desert biome? Forest and Jungle could profit a lot from a shader which produces additional, grass like vegetation which has pure cosmetic use (no interaction like with trees).

Metal biome could also use more details, I think of something like clearly visible weldseams, pipe-like bumps and vent-like openings. All details which can not be interacted with, but which add details to unoccupied areas.



Desert vs Mountains is mainly "sandstone" (compressed and eroded sediments) vs "granite" (eroded mountains, mainly granite, but also basalt columns)? First offering mostly small path and sight blockers while the second one has more slopes and larger structures?

More swirls please.

This is not just to be contrary.

I really like the swirls.

The current swirliness must either remain at its current level or increase please.

I could tell all of the biomes apart easily without blowing up the picture.

I'm going to be sceptical!

This just is a sweetholder, in my opinion this concept has been made months ago and posted because they don't want to show us something we would really like to see.

An actual ingame screenshots for instance.....
Mavor said the backer forum part would be so the backers would get information that would not be published to the normal forum, the only thing so far that holds that promise is the Megabot.

Give us something that isn't months old!