What's the Secret of NavMap items?
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cata123 wrote:
And about the system editing , for me is the hardest part (almost impossible) to make what i want - every system unique, size about 300x300k + , suns bigger than planets and planets much bigger than the largest battleship ; the most stupid example is Ross planetoid from bretonia , where the battleship is almost at the size of the planet .I have to disagree with this. Yes, the scaling is bad in Freelancer but the problem that arises is fun vs reality.
Making systems larger can make them realistic, but at the same time they become emptier and crossing them can be a bore. Yes, you could increase the speeds on ships, but then if you run the risk of making them uncontrollable in asteroid fields. It’s also harder to find players when there are 150 200x200k systems.From an exploration perspective it might make sense to have larger systems, but as (StarTrader?) said a while ago, making systems bigger will only players spend a bit more time travelling between one discovery and another. Seems more fun to actually be making discoveries rather than spending time reaching them.
The best implementation of realistic scale I’ve seen so far was the way X3 Terran Conflict handled it, with Trans-Orbital Accellerators (Aka tradelanes which send the player between “systems” which represent each planet.) You had realistic scale but the systems could be small at the same time.
Anyway, the scale of systems might be weird in Freelancer but it’s a much better option than having vast but empty systems. This is a game: Fun > Realism IMO.
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cata123 wrote:
@moonhead , ok , and where the “aliens” are ?
It will become pretty boring if you don`t add at least a new species of aliens (except from oldy nomads).In my sofar vague plans, there must be at least two or three alien races, and not necessarily sapient ones. And a couple of non-human faction closely and causally related to humankind. But I think it is fitting to not to focus too much on alien species; it is sort of a signature feature of FL that it focuses heavily on mankind, so any alien factions I might implement will probably not of the kind we see in Star Wars, but more some eary background presence, beings with whom mankind (more specific: the player) can hardly communicate directly.
A revisiting of our own solar system is also in the planning, on the side, mainly because a few years ago I was in a good modding vibe and made all solar system’s planets and about half of it’s moons (actually I’m getting into the planet building stuff these days). it has been done in more mods and I don’t wanna make too much work of it. Btw the textures I used I all found thru google - and I forgot to note the original authors…. I had to make them all fit the FL planet setup -a planet being a cube inflated to look like a sphere- , which at the time seemed to most work to me, and I didn’t give it a thought that these texture files themselves were also made by some people, prolly based on NASA phographs)
And about the system editing , for me is the hardest part (almost impossible) to make what i want - every system unique, size about 300x300k + , suns bigger than planets and planets much bigger than the largest battleship ; the most stupid example is Ross planetoid from bretonia , where the battleship is almost at the size of the planet .
I’ve been there too, but have arrived largely at the same conclusion as Xalrok: a really realistic system would be utterly boring and empty. (And on a side note: we should then also eliminate engine and weapon sounds, as there is no sound in space - sound being waves propagating thru a medium, which is lacking in space.)
I did however contemplate to get rid of most of the Houses stars, and turn each house into one solar sytem each, divided over several game systems. So this would largely be a cosmetic operation, where e.g. each of Liberty systems would no longer have a central star, but some central gas giant, and Manhattan, Los Angeles, Denver and Houston would be moons rather than planets and the sun would be some NON_TARGETABLE somewhere on the side. The sun would look the same for all Liberty Systems, but on a different scale, so it would appear that each system was at a different distance of the same central star. The House of Liberty would thus represent one star systems, divided into several jump nodes.
The main disadvantage of this approach, is that this way all the system light would come from one side, and these systems were originally not designed for this. Freelancer also doesn’t render shadows* so it looks a bit dull. I haven’t totally given up on this concept, and will use it for my custom houses.
*(I mean: FL does render a shadowy side on a planet, being the side opposed to where a system light is, but a small moon before a large gasgiant won’t caste a shadow on that gas giant.)
This wouldn’t really make the game systems larger, but instead of representing a stellar system, they would represent a part of it (like the Jupiter or Saturn system).
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. Yes, you could increase the speeds on ships, but then if you run the risk of making them uncontrollable in asteroid fields.
Yea, and there comes the beauty of game : deadly asteroid fields.
In realistic way, a collision with an asteroid is equivalent to ship breaking to pieces, not just some little shield damage in a titan with adv brigandine shield crashing to an asteroid .
Anyway the scale of planets and suns in FL is really unrealistic, and its not so boring making the system a little larger, eventually adding more objects to the system and making planets on Y axis too, also removing the ship auto level (what the hell, there is no gravity, you cant say that is up or that is down ), eventually removing the engine drag.
An another example is types of planets - large gas giants same size as rocky planets and worse , the sun smaller than both !!
Well, that is unnaceptable in my opinion, and im gonna change this (in my mod). Take a look in this video http://www.220.ro/documentare/Stele-Si-Planete-Foarte-Mari/xlSYawB7ih/ I didnt tested yet but i read about the possibility to add systems on top on each other , on different Y axis, and the navmap revealing just the system on same axis, not all. -
cata123 wrote:
large gas giants same size as rocky planets and worse , the sun smaller than both !!
Well, that is unnaceptable in my opinion, and i`m gonna change this (in my mod).I agree with you on this one, although enlarging the stars beyond 10K or so doesn’t really add much as there isn’t much makeup to add to a star (except for the splines but tbh I think these are a bit goofy)
Btw the asteroid fields aren’t realistic at all (neither is the one in The Empire Strikes Back). Of course it looks cool, but in real asteroid field, the asteroids are really widely seperated - it’s mostly empty, and you’d need to skill to try to actually crash your ship on an asteroid!
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Moonhead wrote:
I agree with you on this one, although enlarging the stars beyond 10K or so doesn’t really add much as there isn’t much makeup to add to a star (except for the splines but tbh I think these are a bit goofy)Btw the asteroid fields aren’t realistic at all (neither is the one in The Empire Strikes Back). Of course it looks cool, but in real asteroid field, the asteroids are really widely seperated - it’s mostly empty, and you’d need to skill to try to actually crash your ship on an asteroid!
I’ve found the main problem with making suns larger is that coronas seem to have a limit preventing them from going beyond a certain size. An obvious solution to this would be a series of damage zones that increase the amount of damage they do as you get closer.
The most realistic asteroid field you’ll ever see in the entire game is Tohoku’s. I’m pretty sure that the clouds in FL are unrealistically dense as well.
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Xalrok wrote:
I’ve found the main problem with making suns larger is that coronas seem to have a limit preventing them from going beyond a certain size. An obvious solution to this would be a series of damage zones that increase the amount of damage they do as you get closer.
:lol: I’m curious to what size you tried them, then…. I think I never made a sun beyond 30K or so, and decided it didn’t really add anything…
Xalrok wrote:
I’m pretty sure that the clouds in FL are unrealistically dense as well.
Yes, probably so. In fact, the game does not at all really provide us with how it would be in real space… But it’s cool nonetheless. And I can really sympathize with Cata123’s ambitions to get more realism into the game. it’s just, like you say, that this shouldn’t diminish the possible fun in the game.
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space is huge. i am sure some nebula or asteroid field as small as they are in FL, somewhere out there might be as dense as that, why not. for the suns dilemma… well, crossfire has a pretty realistic solution, based on generic sph. maybe their screenshots are inspiration enough to create something similar for the purpose of realism.
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Gisteron wrote:
space is huge. i am sure some nebula or asteroid field as small as they are in FL, somewhere out there might be as dense as that, why not.It’s not very likely, physically. But indeed, there might be some rare cases… E.g. when two solar objects (moons, planets) come within each others Roche limit, one of both them might be ripped apart by tidal forces; the resulting debris might then resemble an FL or TESB asteroid field for some period of time.
Thx for the tip about suns in Crossfire. I’ve played that afew times, and I saw a lot of beautiful stuff but didn’t think the suns were that special tbh. But I’ve hardly seen the entire mod’s universe.
Btw I did try to use planetary .SPHs for suns sometime, but it didn’t work out well. Maybe I should try again.
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Xalrok wrote:
I’m pretty sure that the clouds in FL are unrealistically dense as well.Just make them less dense, like the one of the dyson sphere, by increasing the range. Use more trasparent textures for the exteriors.
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Once more, forget trying to be realistic… Remember most “real” nebulae are entirely transparent in the visible spectrum. The pretty NASA photos you see are in fake colors.
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There’s a reason they call this genre sci-fi.
If it looks good, roll with it. Wouldn’t be much of a game if you had plain black backdrops and no sound would it.
I thought they were quite clever when they designed this game, they disguised the shatty graphics by blending colours together to distract the eye from looking too closely at any one feature.
