Parallax Worlds 3.0 - From random to procedural and more

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Jeoshua
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A new version of Parallax Worlds appears!
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1174

Parallax Worlds is a mod which aims to make the game more engrossing and engaging by turning the game into a 2.5d world. Stars, planets, and asteroids have all been given a parallax value, and will scroll past the screen according to how large they are, and how far away in the background they are. You will be able to see the stars from the life zone of most systems, and even farther in the case of the supergiants.

In previous versions, the stars were having their distances set either manually (which I am calling version 1) or randomly (version 2). In version 3, all that has been replaced, and the both parallax and companion body calculations are being done more in a procedural generation manner. The calculations for this are not very intense, but lead to the distributions of companion asteroids for nearly all mine-able asteroids based on their mass, position, and type. Calculations will be added in in future versions taking into account their distance from the main star, to simulate the Bode Distance of the object.

The stars in this version are also quite a bit brighter than in previous versions. So bright, in fact, that a few engine bugs delayed the work on this version until suitable workarounds were found. As such, the coronae are not as bright and glowing as I would hope, and the mask of at least one vanilla object had to be modified.

A screenshot does not do this mod justice, as about 80% of the improvements are motion based. Download it and try for yourself. It is compatible with Transcendence 1.2 and above, requires a new game be generated, and works with all major expansions available on Xelerus and the Multiverse.

Have fun out there.
Jeoshua
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Uploaded version 3.1 to Xelerus.
This version makes a few bug fixes in regards to vanilla planets like the Gas Giants, and optimizes the system generation code, somewhat. Even with System Density and Beyond the Mainline running, system generation times were very much improved.

Also, in this version, the distribution of the asteroids has been changed. All objects take into account rough approximations of their Hill Sphere and Roche Limit distances. Rough because Transcendence does not have or understand cubed roots, and a TLISP implementation of such a calculation would be prohibitively slow. Square roots were used instead, which works well enough. The overall effect is to have much more evenly spread and further distant asteroid companions. Large objects will throw their "moonlets" out much farther than before, and large asteroids will instead be small clusters of asteroids.

Additionally, asteroids with ore in them will have bigger and more numerous companions, so in a way, these archipelagos of asteroids can be seen as possible indicators of ore deposits.
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mahdeen
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I mostly made this as an easy means of checking how the ships I made for The Backroads stack up to vanilla/CC ships without mucking about with TransCompiler and subsequently running the resulting TDB file through TransData. The fewer steps, the better. I figured it might be useful for other modders wanting to get general balance ideas of any ships they make, too.
mahdeen
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AssumedPseudonym
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 …Er. I’m not entirely sure why something out of my post about Ship Table Generator got copypasta’d over here by someone…? o.O
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Of all the things I’ve lost in life, I miss my mind the least. (I’m having a lot more fun without it!)
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pixelfck
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AssumedPseudonym wrote: …Er. I’m not entirely sure why something out of my post about Ship Table Generator got copypasta’d over here by someone…? o.O
Thanks for noticing... this is the typical behaviour of 'reputation building spam bots'.

I've reported the post to the mods.

~Pixelfck
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