TWO-SUN SOLAR SYSTEM

yea so it was an example and a very bad one at that but multiple suns, as I exposed does add interesting gameplay (of course I'm not god and all seeing and all that so I'm not seeing it stacked up to the idea from the pleiad of ideas but) all things considered I see this as a great idea.

A strong engine buff, possibilities for the PA engine multiplied times itself thanks to this great unlock

Multi-systems in ONE match and all the game modes you want to play with for it.

more technical orbital mechanics where perhaps waiting it out for a bit will sometimes get you on target sooner (already the case but if you're trying to get from one system to the other the answer to the right time becomes much more obvious)

I dunno what to tell you mate. Just what is so non-prioritary about this? you can't go scavaging through the engine after alpha... at least it's never been done before and as optimist of a person as I am on a daily basis with how resting hopes on the scale change has gone I wouldn't risk it.

do you see the forest? find me one or two better trees.

It is a good post-launch feature. PA is a platform. Always on the move.

it's an engine revamp not a feature, stop belittling it.

I think this would be a great thing to have for the galactic war map.
It would add diversity to the look of the randomly generated galaxies.
same with maybe having some random nebula way off in the background in some systems just filler art, or even point light stars in the background (stars that twinkle/sparkle/flash).

A just before release graphical polishing style thing, something that would probably only be needed with galactic war to help make individual systems more unique.

So apparently this is relevant again?

I don't think so, this is discussed in a whole deep and we don't know nothing more that
N before, so wait and USE SEARCH BUTTON, thanks. Indeed we need binary suns

No, but now instead of one topic about it on the front page, we have two.

yea and that's my fault how?

check the OP dates.

I was asked to move this, NOT by Tat, to the main forum. Either discuss or ignore. Can we please stop with endless discussions about which discussions are relevant? Respond, or ignore. There is no need to moderate the forums in your posts. We've got that part covered. I promise. If you feel strongly, report a post, and we'll make a decision, like we always do. Doesn't mean you'll agree with that decision, but we will make one. ;-)

If you feel a topic doesn't add anything to the overall body of knowledge on the forums, the best way to handle it is.. respond to topics that do instead.

it could be done if you just made the sun art of into two spheres. it would just bee graphical but it would work.

Is it possible to make this idea a mod?

I know the sun is currently used as a container to hide destroyed planets, so changing the art may allow players to see destroyed planets.

If a mod is possible i will attempt to make one...

Honestly? Don't know yet. Could be, but there's a lot of things we want to make happen in modding before solar layout really enters into it.

I would imagine that if someone wanted to make a secondary biome type for various stars, and assign those to a "planet", they could, as any orbiting bodies already have their gravity wells. But we'd probably need to have non-standard (gas) planets in first to do that, which is a while off yet.

AWESOME,,, blue sun biome will be on the way

i was thinking of using a planet orbiting the sun very closely to get the effect like you mentioned.
Gas giants when implemented would be obvious choice if players can't land on them..

I think it will be cool to see people harvesting modified gas giants that are used as extra sun's for big eco boosts

edit.
fixed typo's

Id like to make Metaball suns, now that would be some EPIC AWESOME!

No, man ^^ i didn't said that to you. Sorry I said that to all the other guys who don't do a search ._. ^_^ because of the other thread.

Hi there, UberGaf here! I'm the dev that wrote all of the existing (pseudo)physics in the celestial system so I thought I would chime in with my $0.02 about binary star systems and the physics in-game.

As it stands today, the motion of the planets is on rails - but they are two-body physics-correct rails. That is to say, there is an implementation of a numerical solution to the Kepler equation that governs how PA bodies orbit each other.

In a binary star system, both stars orbit their common center of mass. Given this I think it would be pretty easy to implement a binary system where two stars (which will eventually just be gas giants) tightly orbit a common center of mass defined to be at 0,0,0. Because all of the physics is represented by independent 2-body systems, there would not be stability problems. Additionally, any body in orbit around such a binary star would itself orbit the common center of mass for the system, so there is no special case physics there either.

I think by far the more challenging aspect of this would be imposing correct constraints on what's allowable in-game to preserve the *feel* of the celestial system. For example, if you set a planet in orbit around just one of these two suns (which the system would happily allow you to do), it would just look and feel all wrong; the deficiencies of the two-body model would jump out to even the casual observer.

If you watched my celestial live stream, you'll remember I opened with the comment "the only thing harder than real physics is game physics". This is an example of that idea - we aren't trying to create the highest degree of realism for an N-body simulation (though that does turn out to be crazy hard even for buff computers) - we're trying to create something that looks and feels good, and is fun to play.

So in summary: I think the tech/physics behind a binary star would be pretty easy to implement. Putting them in the game in a way that *feels* good would be the greater challenge. If we were to restrict them to eye candy and not let players try to fly planets between them, then it probably wouldn't be so bad.

Lighting is not my area - so I will abstain from commenting on what complexities exist there.

Wait... Is the sun going to just be a gas giant with different art? Does that mean we would have an orbital layer on the sun?

Two things. 1 - for the naysayers: how about just being able to customize the look / feel / impact of the sun at the center of the solar system. Changing its mass, making it supernova at XX minutes into a game, maybe even make it collapse into a nuetron star and allow it to start gathering mass, increasing gravity and causing nearby planets to fall into the sun. Those to me seem like cool, novel ideas that will add lots to PA.

2 - Sure, having multiple stars in a system would be nice, Im all for it. However, how would the lighting work? I know quite a few people enjoy playing this game at laptops at college or whatnot (at least I do). As such, I don't have alot of GPU power at my disposal. By causing two sources of lighting to appear on a map I have a very real fear that this will then preclude me from being able to play in multiplayer matches / gametypes simple because I cannot handle it. Pulling on the community's knowledge, is there a way to fix this problem / include multiple sources of lighting while still keeping PA accessible to a wide range of players, from those on super-machines to those running on integrated graphics?

Well, it should be surely possible atleast. Spore had solar systems with 2 stars sometimes.