Planet Diversification

A while back, garat posted some relatively kickass planetary biome concepts, and it got me thinking...

I got few ideas on how to easily and greatly increase the number of variety of possible planets. I'm sure some of them are already part of the planetary creation utility, other's I'm not so sure about. By the looks of it, the planet creator tool is a capable mapmaker, but to me many of the terra type planets look similar, even though they have completely different terrains.

My first suggestion is to have an setting on the tool that adjusts the biome normality seen below:

Most of the planets I've seen so far in the tech demos look patchy, with deserts and jungles randomly covering all latitudes of the planet save for the ice caps. I'd like an option where I can make biomes as uniform or as patchy as possible. Yes, I realize the game is still in alpha, but I though I would just throw this out there.

I'm almost certain this is already a feature, but an option that allows you to change how broken up the landmasses are:


An option to adjust lake coverage a planet:


Island cover:


Rivers:

The previous three options wouldn't create map obstacles I think, it's just for eye candy or personal preference. The next 2 optiond will greatly impact unit movement.

Mountains:


Haziness, jungle worlds or Venus-like planets will be very hazy obstructing view range and unit movement:


I guess the main thrust of this post is to have a diffuse layer color selector for the various biomes. You can select the color of the foliage or the ocean water, or even the atmosphere layer as easily as picking your faction colors. I believe this feature alone will allow for a huge amount of customization, for the creation of truly alien looking worlds, and add to the replayability if only to flesh out map scenery.









I made 2 examples by just tweaking the colors around.





I'm not suggesting that you'll end up with an equal number of blue ocean planets to pink ocean planets, but maybe here and there you discover a very strange looking place, heh.

This is a little off to the side, but I had a few additional suggestions all related to map making. I think it's important for the map maker to be able to:

-Adjust the color, size, and brightness of stars.

-Adjust the ambient lighting on planets separate from starlight.

-Adjust the ambient light AND color of the space skybox, simulating nebula. Also, the density of stars in the skybox.

-Adjust the fog of war/visible range on planets (gravimetric disturbances wreaking havok and whatnot)

-Adjust periodicity of weather events, earthquakes, lightning, rain, and natural meteor showers.

-Adjust cloud cover density.

-Adjust the scale of terrain greeble, like the option to have giant trees or stout little mesas.

-Adjust unit movement speeds through various biomes on specific planets, for instance a planet with particularly thick trees or algae chocked oceans slows down units moving through them. Maybe large planets with higher gravity have an overall slowing effect.

-Adjust mineral and energy generation speeds on custom planets. Be it specific biomes or entire planets.

-In one of the dev updates, someone mentioned that if an asteroid impact carves out a deep enough crater, the magma will bubble up from the mantle. Maybe we should also be able to change this depth, I imagine the magma layer is just a sphere under the planet surface that intersects with cracks and deep craters. Geologically dead planets like Mars will have a deep magma depth, while geologically active planets like young earth will have a shallow magma depth.

download/file.php?id=9796&mode=view







In summary, I think a color selector would make a valuable addition to the map making utility. Thanks for reading my suggestions!

+1

Great examples.
I bet they are going to implement alot of similar features. This looks all very common sense so I hope it happens.

I hope they end up with this or something similar.

And gosh, the fact that you've used images so well is darn impressive. This is how threads should be.

Epic examples and proposal.
+1

thanks a lot ethannino. Great work. Hope something like this will be included.

This thread is monumental. :shock:

+1

Good ideas and beautiful illustration!

I'm with Lordq, very nice post and extremely well illustrated!

+1, great-looking worlds need lots of customization and MOAR COLORS.

actually i's be Uber-geeky if the foliage color was automatically determined by sun emission and atmosphere absorption spectra...

Great suggestions though and i can only assume they they have something along those lines already in planning...

This would be pretty cool. That's why we have green plants after all.

Also, all of my +1s. Have them.

wow, great post. +1

gah! Thanks for all the positive feedback!

Yeah, I was thinking that too, and also a function of the distance to the star. Close up planets would be more tropical (lighter and brighter foliage) and far out planets would be more alpine (darker foliage).

Also, I was thinking maybe there would be a slight natural variability in the color of planets, like this terra-type planet would have slightly greener oceans, or redder arid terrain than the next, just because. Just a little bit of variability, even for planets with similar suns and orbital distances to spice things up.

hell, even dead, lifeless rocks in our own solar system have different coloration:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 071008.jpg
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planet ... 961007.jpg
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1108/ve ... n_1024.jpg

I forgot to mention this in the OP, but here are a few more suggestions:

-Back illumination: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-co ... eladus.png
Here's a pic the Cassini probe snapped back in 2011. It shows the icy moon of Enceladus around Saturn, you can see how Saturn's reflected light illuminates the back face quite a lot. I think this may be a pretty neat feature to have, just a point source at the center of the planet that greatly lights up close by moons and orbital units. Speaking of Saturn...

-Planetary rings! I have an idea for a tool that would allow map makers to easily create planetary rings. I'll update this post with a pic later.

Rings are formed by closely orbiting moons or captured asteroids breaking up from intense tidal forces, or from collisions.

-Ice color, pretty self explanatory, a color slider for ice biome. I was thinking it might be automatically tied to the water color, but can be adjusted independently.

-Orbital Eccentricity. Very rarely do we find a planet or moon with a circular orbit. An addition to the planet maker tool that would allow us to adjust the eccentricity of an orbit in the x, y, and z directions. This would allow for some pretty intense seasonal changes in addition to tilt.

-Orbital direction and orientation. Venus is the only planet in the solar system with clockwise rotation, probably due to some annihilation event early in the solar systems formation that knocked it in the opposite direction. Orientation would just be adjusting the rotational tilt, also the rotational speed.

-Seasons, caused by highly elliptical orbits or extreme tilt angles. I was thinking seasonal changes may cause ice cap melting and sea levels to rise and fall. Some plants may shed their leaves like in the fall, or flower like in the spring.

-Moon shadows. On Earth it's uncommon that the moon eclipses the sun because the moon's orbit doesn't quite line up with the ecliptic, and the Earth is a relativity small target to blot out. On larger planets like Jupiter, this is a lot more apparent: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0212/ju ... i_full.jpg

Sorry if I'm throwing too much out there. I know the goal isn't to be as real as possible, but I fell some of these may add to the uberness of the game.

To test the fesability of such a task I built a blue desert mod. Seems to work fairly well

Screenshots:

Ay, that looks pretty cool!

Nice work, man.

Colors can indeed make such a big difference. :mrgreen:

Awesome post and ideas! Im kinda wondering if the planet editor will make it into alpha or if it will wait till beta?

I appreciate your idea. Let's hope it will find it's way into the game :geek:

OP, your ideas are made of epic win in its purest form. They must be brought to PA as soon as possible. Either by Uber or by modders.

Wow what a brilliant thread +1 thanks for sharing the pictures, they look awesome!