Scio's NEW Planet Editor Concept

Okay, so the OE's great the TE's still a little iffy, but we know what we need, and it seems we've neglected the Planedt editor, oing with my old concept that isn't that good or user friendly. This is going to have my new ideas and it will be constantly updated.

The Solar System
The solar system will start out as a planetary disk. Out of that planets will form, and smash into each other, all of that good Belgium. How it happens.
That's basically how you'll have your solar system form. The PE, however will be making planets that are fully fledged.

In The Beginning
You're going to start out with a sizing table, how big you want your planet to be. This will decide size and gravity, however, gravity can be slightly adjusted with a small slider. Gas giants will be made in the same way they were in the old editor, by laying down layers of gases on top of the molten liquid core.

There will be an option to randomize rock layers and landforms on the planet.

Rocky bodies are going to start out looking like hell, literally. They're going to be masses of black volcanic rock with cracks corresponding to the gaps between tectonic plates. Tectonics will be a part of your planet, and you'll have continental drift and all sorts of other things that come with the rifts like ocean trenches, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.


You start to create your planet by building with different layers of rock. You'll have a few panels of rock types- sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. You'll have a panel of each type with a few different types of rock on it.

The rock cycle will be active as well, so your planet won't stay a granite ball if you make it that way.

Buildng Controls

Basically, you will have brushes and paint. The brush you select will define how rock is placed, and the "paint" will be a tye of rock selected from one of the rock palettes described above. You can also carve into your planet to create canyons, valleys, etc using different brushes. More brushes will populate in small features like hills, small lakes, bluffs, ground covering (except for organisms) etc.
You can pour water onto any point on your planet, and also plant springs. You can designate other liquids like liquid methane if temperatures permit*. Different layers of liquid can be poured on, as long as they are of different densities they will not mix.


The "ecosystem brushes" concept stays. These are brushes that you define which use a group of different populations of organisms that can be 'painted' onto a planet. For a grassland, you do not just paint on grass, you paint on the grazers, predators, worms, foragers, etc as well.

Static VS Dynamic
Static planets never change from original settings, geologically. In God mode, you should be able to pause organic evolution on a planet as well.
Dynamic planets can be affected by geologic activity, disasters, etc, and are constantly in a state of change, like our planet earth. Basically, random things happen to tectonic movement, random asteroids get hurled at your planet, etc.





That's all for now.



*Temperatures are designated by distance from the sun, geologic activity, etc.

<Disclaimer>

Spoiler:

Excellent. Again, good work Scio. Everything I could think of that needed change from the old PE is in this. I vote yes.
And I like the disclaimer. I'm glad I can terraform still

I like. Although, painting 'Grassland' onto different planets should not necessarily be possible. There's no guarantee that grass would evolve on every planet. Just saying.

I like the sounds of the editor. But who the Belgium is going to work on it other than one person!!!!

I like it. Alot.


ALSO:


Yay! Progress!

it looks awesome (and sort of unrelated to the topic but the belgium jokes are getting old (that was to everyone)). it really does look nice.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I like. Although, painting 'Grassland' onto different planets should not necessarily be possible. There's no guarantee that grass would evolve on every planet. Just saying.

Grassland was just an example of what you could do with an ecosystem brush. Of course it won't be for every planet.

Koiboi- Belgium is actually how things get censored. There are some words people may find offensive, and as a joke I used the censorship option to turn them all into Belgium.

Great concept. An option to randomize the planet would be nice.

Commander Keen wrote:

Great concept. An option to randomize the planet would be nice.

Hmmm... that would be cool, but I imagine you would come put with some WEIRD planets- like.... mile-high spires next to mile-deep pits in the planet. I'm sure it could be corrected, but it'd take a while.

Commander Keen wrote:

Great concept. An option to randomize the planet would be nice.

excellent idea.

The usefulness of static planets are that they require less processing. Am I right?

andry796 wrote:

The usefulness of static planets are that they require less processing. Am I right?

And static planets are equal to the Ptolemaic system, except that EVERY object is stationary : P

andry796 wrote:

The usefulness of static planets are that they require less processing. Am I right?

That, and you can keep it exactly the way you made it. I imagine it'd be more for people who made a planet "perfect" and didn't want a bunch of nasty earthquakes to come and obliterate their weiner-shaped continents.

Good, good... We have a concept that is good and we can put forward ideas!

Making evolution stop is just asking for the life to die out, one by one. If life can't adapt to change, it dies.

And why the gravity slider? Gravity should be proportional.

And could we add an option to make its satellites, too?

And one final thing, adding valleys and mountains, the crust is huge... You would have to zoom in a lot to see any changes you make other than differentiating sea and land.

Oh, and there is just one more thing: Will there be a max size for a planet? I hope not, I want to see what happens if I make a gas giant sized rocky planet. Or an overwhelmingly huge star sized rocky planet. Or a rocky planet so overwhelming huge that it could have stars orbiting it! Wow! Obviously no life, but seriously epic. That is, if the planet doesn't collapse in on itself, causing a black hole or a black squish or anything... So will it be limitless or what?

Now this is idea contribution.

Darkgamma wrote:

andry796 wrote:

The usefulness of static planets are that they require less processing. Am I right?

And static planets are equal to the Ptolemaic system, except that EVERY object is stationary : P

No.
Static planets simply never change themselves- they still orbit and whatnot, they just don't have erosion, eruptions, etc. Their environments never permanently change, although they can go through seasons, tides, etc.
There will be limits on sizing. This is because of our old friend, gravity.

Gravity slider....

Gravity depends on spin (different to subatomic particle spin property), density and size of the planet. Really, if you want to have the best editor, you should have these three separately.

Gotrol wrote:

Gravity slider....

Gravity depends on spin (different to subatomic particle spin property), density and size of the planet. Really, if you want to have the best editor, you should have these three separately.

Wait, so I could have a planet as big/bigger than a star? It would just have to spin really really fast? That sounds good.

Yes, though, separate sliders. One gravity slider thing would be inaccurate.

Well, if you got a planet thats too big.... in an dynamic system it would brake apart. Sure you can edit your planet to be ridiculous (within limits I assume), but then your planet would fail very shortly... draw a star in, tear apart, lose atmosphere, spin out of orbit and subsequently freeze, etc... Thats what I love about Thrive, it punishes the player for idiocy, but makes it exciting! Unless you have god tools, or godly terraforming tech...

Gotrol wrote:

Well, if you got a planet thats too big.... in an dynamic system it would brake apart. Sure you can edit your planet to be ridiculous (within limits I assume), but then your planet would fail very shortly... draw a star in, tear apart, lose atmosphere, spin out of orbit and subsequently freeze, etc... Thats what I love about Thrive, it punishes the player for idiocy, but makes it exciting! Unless you have god tools, or godly terraforming tech...

This thing is, if you can edit the satellites (still waiting for an answer on that one), then you could make them purely out of hydrogen.

Now, if you made your planet 8x the size of a star (for example), with a hydrogen ball orbiting, the satellite will be the size of a star, at least. This will mean it starts doing the thing stars do, and will be plasma etc. Basically it will be a star. A star orbiting the planet.

The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate to not fly apart, but not collapse in on itself.

In normal solar systems, the star does have a wobble. So, in a way, the star isn't actually a satellite, it just has an incredible huge wobble.

Could it be possible? Or has I forgotten something?

The Uteen wrote:

This thing is, if you can edit the satellites (still waiting for an answer on that one), then you could make them purely out of hydrogen.

Now, if you made your planet 8x the size of a star (for example), with a hydrogen ball orbiting, the satellite will be the size of a star, at least. This will mean it starts doing the thing stars do, and will be plasma etc. Basically it will be a star. A star orbiting the planet.

The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate to not fly apart, but not collapse in on itself.

In normal solar systems, the star does have a wobble. So, in a way, the star isn't actually a satellite, it just has an incredible huge wobble.

Could it be possible? Or has I forgotten something?

I believe you can edit satellites. However, there are issues here. The star can't be to close to the planet, or the issues are obvious. If the planet spins too fast, than it throws off it's atmosphere and becomes barren.

Now, your rocky giants do exist, but they're not entirely rocky. They're refered to often as "Hot Jupiters" or "Hot Neptunes." Look it up.

Tenebrarum wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

This thing is, if you can edit the satellites (still waiting for an answer on that one), then you could make them purely out of hydrogen.

Now, if you made your planet 8x the size of a star (for example), with a hydrogen ball orbiting, the satellite will be the size of a star, at least. This will mean it starts doing the thing stars do, and will be plasma etc. Basically it will be a star. A star orbiting the planet.

The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate to not fly apart, but not collapse in on itself.

In normal solar systems, the star does have a wobble. So, in a way, the star isn't actually a satellite, it just has an incredible huge wobble.

Could it be possible? Or has I forgotten something?

I believe you can edit satellites. However, there are issues here. The star can't be to close to the planet, or the issues are obvious. If the planet spins too fast, than it throws off it's atmosphere and becomes barren.

Now, your rocky giants do exist, but they're not entirely rocky. They're refered to often as "Hot Jupiters" or "Hot Neptunes." Look it up.

Interesting, they are big, but definitely not as big as a star, aren't they just bigger jupiters/saturns that orbit close to the star?

I have just thought of something I missed though:

The reason they wouldn't form is because they would need much more material than actually available. And so, they would only form if made in the editor, in which you would be able to supply it with as much material as you like, and, as you said, the spin and size would have to be very carefully balanced to prevent losing the atmosphere.

And when I say they should spin quickly, I mean fast enough to cancel out their gravity, but not entirely, but enough to prevent it collapsing in on itself. Which is very fast.

This would only be for scenery, though, life would definitely not form on it, possibly extremophiles, but with the immense coldness... I doubt it.

Although, it the planet had several suns in orbit and an atmosphere of almost purely CO2 it might just warm up enough, but then there's still problems relating to the amount of volcanoes and other disasters that would occur on a planet of this size's surface...

Scenery planet, nothing more, except maybe an achievement for making a stable sun(or bigger)-sized planet.

Sounds cool!

The Uteen wrote:

Gotrol wrote:

Well, if you got a planet thats too big.... in an dynamic system it would brake apart. Sure you can edit your planet to be ridiculous (within limits I assume), but then your planet would fail very shortly... draw a star in, tear apart, lose atmosphere, spin out of orbit and subsequently freeze, etc... Thats what I love about Thrive, it punishes the player for idiocy, but makes it exciting! Unless you have god tools, or godly terraforming tech...

This thing is, if you can edit the satellites (still waiting for an answer on that one), then you could make them purely out of hydrogen.

Now, if you made your planet 8x the size of a star (for example), with a hydrogen ball orbiting, the satellite will be the size of a star, at least. This will mean it starts doing the thing stars do, and will be plasma etc. Basically it will be a star. A star orbiting the planet.

The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate to not fly apart, but not collapse in on itself.

In normal solar systems, the star does have a wobble. So, in a way, the star isn't actually a satellite, it just has an incredible huge wobble.

Could it be possible? Or has I forgotten something?

Sattelites are just planets that you put in orbit around other planets.

That size planet can't happen, it would become a black hole.
I believe 10x earth size is the limit for rocky bodies. Probably under there actually.

One thing I didn't understand from the OP is how would this data be handled by the game. Would the planet have a volumetric dataset going all the way from the core to the surface? This would be unecessarially large and would cause lack of resolution at the surface. I think that 2d heightmaps and 2d density maps for geological variables would be the best solution.

First of all, we use Newtonian model of gravitation right? In that case we have a pretty solid definition of what gravity is.

I think we might as well start with proper Gravity math. Wikia’s not the best, but certainly gives you an idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_potential

This math is within comprehension of an average 12th grader… so shouldn’t be awesomely complicated for bashinerox or any other coder. For people who did IB math HL and Phys HL (me), this was standard course…. Any more people from IB here btw? I’m curious.

For proper Gravity we need to set mass values for (let’s say 1 cubic meter) each chemical element, here I again assume we are not expanding our own periodic table, once we have that down the formulas should work in relation to distance. Then we can think of adding values of revolution and speed of rotation to the gravitational formula. (That’s where the gravitational potential comes in).

Agree or no? I have no idea about how to code that however…. =(