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Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 4:59 pm
by Geoff the Medio
herbert_vaucanson wrote:Terran ----------.
... | ................. |
Desert ..........Ocean
... | ................. |
Barren ......... Iceball
... | ................. |
Radiated ....... Methanic
... | ................. |
Inferno ........ Swamp
... | ................. |
Toxic-------------'
The name "Iceball" is silly. Stick with "Tundra", or perhaps "Glacial" if "Tundra" doesn't sound cold enough.

Otherwise, the layout is generally good. Having "Swamp" next to "Methanic" seems a bit odd, though is no worse than desert next to tundra. (ie. it makes sense if you think about it the right way, but seems wrong upon initial inspection...) The problem is also partly due to the ambiguity of the name "Swamp", which is really just "semi-Toxic"... which suggests that removing "Swamp" might be an idea, but having "Tundra" only two away from "Inferno" doesn't work, which is quite similar to the reason that "Swamp" was added to begin with (to separate "Ocean" from "Toxic").

You not liking it is not a convincing reason to remove Gaia, however, and it does make some sense to have it as an environment, as it acts and looks like one.

Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:55 pm
by Ablaze
Despite the point by point, I still maintain that astronomers have almost no idea if there is intelligence outside of out own home planet.

Here is an interesting link.

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:36 am
by herbert_vaucanson
Geoff the Medio wrote: The name "Iceball" is silly. Stick with "Tundra", or perhaps "Glacial" if "Tundra" doesn't sound cold enough.

Otherwise, the layout is generally good. Having "Swamp" next to "Methanic" seems a bit odd[...]

You not liking it is not a convincing reason to remove Gaia, however, and it does make some sense to have it as an environment, as it acts and looks like one.
Ok. I like Glacial. Swamp was just a name for a not too hot, chemically different environment: so we could change the name, if we can do without the charm of the "Swamp thing". What about:

Terran ----------.
... | ................. |
Desert ..........Ocean
... | ................. |
Barren ......... Glacial
... | ................. |
Radiated ....... Methanic
... | ................. |
Inferno ........ Ammonial
... | ................. |
Toxic-------------'

About Gaia: it acts like a strange environment, automagically good for everybody... while I would prefer a different Gaia for each and every environment - which could be easily implemented by a building/template (like the gravity stuff). Of course, stone is stone... but I'll keep dripping and hoping :D

Afterthought

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 9:42 am
by herbert_vaucanson
I had a couple of new renaming ideas:
first, a imho-nicer name for Glacial: Frozen. Second, why not shift the name "toxic" to the "swamp"-"ammonial" slot and rename the original "toxic" with something stronger? I would go with "acid" for the old "toxic": that is, a world like the real venus, with lots of CO2, heavy pressure and temperature, more than a trace of H2SO4.
According to this new ansatz, "toxic" would be now the sci-fi vision of Venus, the sweetspot for the lizards as I delineated some race ideas in previous posts in this thread.
So the proposal now is:

Terran ----------.
... | ................. |
Desert ..........Ocean
... | ................. |
Barren ......... Frozen
... | ................. |
Radiated ....... Methanic
... | ................. |
Inferno ........ Toxic
... | ................. |
Acid -------------'

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 9:56 am
by noelte
Maybe now there is room for swamp between Terran and Ocean?

Crazy idea

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
by herbert_vaucanson
Another idea: a terraforming score, say between 0 and 99, to identify the environment. Since my last wheel proposal has 10 slots, it is easy to associate an environment to a score.

The advantages: it would be possible to imagine - or implement later - partial or intermediate terraforming stages (OCEAN - swamp - TERRAN - arid - DESERT - martian - BARREN...).

Moreover, this would couple with a wild use for a gas giant, beside my previous suggestion (associating the color of the gas giant to a rare special resource, which could be gathered only late in the game due to the difficult engineering feat required). This idea requires that we can have satellites, as well as more than one star in a system. With high tech, it should be possible to light gas giants up into small stars, in a controlled fashion. This could have immediate terraforming effects on the satellites.
This could be done as follows: suppose the terraforming score has a random part and a predictable bias, depending on the planetary slot: by adding a star, we keep the random part but simply slide the predictable bias, because now the satellites are on a different slot.

For curiosity's sake

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:33 pm
by guiguibaah
I was listening to a documentary on the CBC (Canada's public radio broadcasting corporation) on a company that creates fake moon rocks and sediments for corporations to test their equipment on.

The argument for a need for fake moon material is based on the fact that moon dust gets everywhere. It cloggs the zippers of astronaut suits, it creates films on transparent and transluscent surfaces, it acts as a mild abraisive and it destroys wheel bearings like you wouldn't believe. Hence why the caterpillar corporation is very interested in testing its equipment with fake moon dust.

In other words, not all barren planets are 'machine friendly'. Just an interesting FYI.

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 7:41 am
by herbert_vaucanson
Interesting! And understandable, once read. Thanks for the hint :D

But we are just trying to cut an environmental scheme for a space game, and with a quite crude axe... I suggested "barren" for machines because it sounds cool (I think) and it fills a slot not many other forms of life would. I guess I have been a bit cheesy... but I liked it, it is simple and the "envi-wheel" itself is cheesy as well :P

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 9:38 am
by Obiwan
An art work question
Does this require any at this stage?

I trust your minds to come up with plausable hard science excusess for things. :P but from a visual point of view, two things seam to be missing with the wheel as it is. imho

Jungle worlds - Primordial

Frozen worlds - Ice worlds

All the Tundra picts Ive done. There are 5 so far. (only 2 have been posted) have looked extremely cold and frozen.
So in other words Id need to add some true Tundra looking worlds to the sets.

Acid, Methanic, if I put my mind to it Im sure I could illustate these too.

Own personal feeling

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:33 pm
by guiguibaah
Personally, I'd love to see some artwork of an "asteroid field view" or of a "Gas Giant" view IF there is a decision to implement Asteroid colonies or Gas Giant colonies for Gas Giant races or whatnots.

Also, when I did the sound effects for Swamp, I realized I made them a little more on the "Jungle" side of things. When I revisit them, I'd like to make swamps a lot more inhospitable... namely, a lot more insect sounds, especially the sound a horde of mosquitoes make when some get stuck in your ear. IMHO though, I don't see much a difference between Jungle and Terran.

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:36 pm
by Geoff the Medio
Does this require any at this stage?
We will only require new art if Aquitaine or Tyreth decides that the v0.3 design needs changing to include some new planet types.

However, feel free to make and post more redundant art for existing planet types...

However however, it might not be worth
spending much time on this if we're going to eventually switch to 3D textured spheres for planets, which will require distorted square wraparound textures, rather than spherical one-sided images...
All the Tundra picts Ive done. There are 5 so far. (only 2 have been posted) have looked extremely cold and frozen.
I think Tundra is supposed to be extremely cold and frozen... why do you want to change that...? The name "Tundra" isn't terribly great, which is why we've been suggesting alternatives... I don't think we'd retain "Tundra" in addition to "Glacial" or "Frozen". (I prefer "Glacial" incedentally...)

And I already have 3 Tundra planet images... So... were only two of those made by you...? (I assume you're talking about the from space sidepanel images, not the surface images)
Jungle worlds - Primordial
IMO, "jungle worlds" are a subset of Terran worlds... How would these look any different from space? Perhaps jungle would be slightly darker green coloured...? In any case, I don't see the need for a separate planet type. You could make some more varied art for the current Terran type though...

herbert_vaucanson,

"Acidic", rather than "Acid", IMO is fine to replace the current Toxic

I'm not sure about having both "Acidic" and "Toxic" though... it's not clear what the difference is...

And I don't really like "Toxic" to begin with, as "toxic" the word essentially means hostile to life, which isn't erally true in this context, as some type of life might like this kind of planet. Unnecessary human-centricism, I suppose.

I'm not a fan of "Swamp" in general either, but at least it sounds rather different from "Acidic", and isn't "biased". We do need something else between Methanic and Inferno though... having two extremes of temperature with only one environment type between them doesn't really work. So "Swamp" works there, I suppose...

Then again, "Ammonial" is nice, because it doesn't have a clear temperature connotation, but is clearly appropriate as "weird chemically" between Methanic and Acidic... It would also have a nice bright green (not foliage-like, but chemical-ish) planet image that would be quite distinct from the bluish Methanic and Yellowish Acidic (presumably...)

Also, it seems that "Barren" could be removed from the wheel, and placed off it like Gas Giants, Gaia and asteroids. Doing this would give a nice symmetry to the wheel, with Terran, Methanic and Inferno all being separated by two intermediate environment types:

Code: Select all

        Terran
      /        \
  Desert      Ocean
    |           |
Radiated      Glacial
    |           |
 Inferno      Methanic
     \         /
   Acidic - Ammonial

Barren | Asteroids | Gas Giant

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 9:23 pm
by Obiwan
I ment the surface image Geoff. I didnt do any of the space views.

Jungle worlds feature in much scifi novels, thats the only reason for me wanting them.
Vegetation gone mad, reaching for the sky like skyscrapers. Amazonian jungle type thing.

example of one I made. 600kb image
Image

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:30 am
by herbert_vaucanson
I like the art! maybe no birds but flying "gas pipes" would give it a more exotic look...

Ok to junk "swamp" and "toxic". I think "acid" sounds cooler than "acidic", which remembers me of bad medicines :P I would keep "barren" - I think we need something between "desert" and "radiated", and I do not understand why a rock world should be "off-wheel". So either we keep it in the basic wheel (and maybe scrap radiated instead), or we introduce it as one of the middle-steps to be eventually implemented for terraforming -or fun- reasons. Taking for now the first position, I'd propose the following scheme (in a list to be folded to a loop):

#: "name"....- "code color" - "planetary art color"
#.# - "middle-step name"

1 Terran.......- LIGHT BLUE - blue and light brown, white clouds
1.5 arid
2 Desert.......- LIGHT BROWN - light brown, little white clouds - light atmo.
2.5 martian ?
3 Barren.......- GREY - ivory grey, no atmosphere
3.5 radiated
4 Inferno......- RED - red, yellow and black, light atmo.
4.5 volcanic ?
5 Acid..........- YELLOW - bright yellow and ochre
5.5 venusian ?
6 Ammonial..- GREEN - green with spiralling orange clouds - thick atmo.
6.5 ?
7 Methanic...- PURPLE - purple with white cloud stripes
7.5 ?
8 Glacial.....- WHITE - very light ice blue - light atmo.
8.5 tundra
9 Ocean......- DEEP BLUE - blue with white clouds
9.5 swamp

P.S.: what about my gas giant proposal? It would give a nice middle-to-late game spice-up...

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:48 pm
by Krikkitone
I like it,

I think at least the renaming should be done, ie Tundra, Toxic, and Swamp to Glacial, Acidic, and Methanic

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 6:02 am
by Laccase
Found this webpage http://home.comcast.net/%7ebrons/NerdCo ... n/Key.html listing planet types. Also available at the site, is a neat Solar System Generator program http://home.comcast.net/%7ebrons/NerdCo ... arGen.html