Would it be right to think...

[Xephyr]

...that adjusting the Transcendence gameplay to real-life physics, that the entire game could be played in a single solar system? If you were to start at around Earth, it could take about the same amount of time traveling to the Kuiper Belt as it would to travel to Heretic in-game.

Let's say it takes place in Sol. You have some CSC's stationed at various places, mining colonies and Ferians in the asteroid belt, heliotropes near the sun, and so on. The Iocrym could be protecting a stargate in the outer limits of the solar system.

Well, just popped into my mind. Thought I might share it.

[Wurmish]

Sounds cool actually.
Mod it somehow...?

[Xephyr]

Sounds cool actually.
Mod it somehow...?

It actually wouldn't be conventional with the current Transcendence engine... the system, being too massive, would be incredibly slow running.

[digdug]

yes, Mutos tried to make a solar system with distances proportional to the real solar system, however the game glitched.

You can have a look at his work here:
http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... php?t=1895

and here:
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=194

[Jeoshua]

I have had this thought again and again when playing. It's also been brought up a few times by others (and I would like to point out the now defunct Hoshikaze 2050: Stars of Call mod that never got finished... wait, that WAS the one Mutos had wasn't it? ((still mad that it wasn't finished)) )

The biggest thing to be aware of is the utter size involved and the problems that would entail. This could be gotten around by dividing the solar system into sectors, I imagine. The inner system could be made, complete with asteroid belts. The Gas giants could be made as individual systems, and what with all their varied moons and attendant trojan asteroids, as well as their distance from Sol, they might as well actually BE separate systems.

The Oort and Kupier objects seem pointless to add in, being so cold, sparse, and numerous as to make it impossible to fit them all in one area at once, even if the game allowed arbitrarily large areas. If one were to portray them in any reasonably realistic way, it would take longer to get from planetoid to planetoid than it would to get from the Sun to Earth.

Travel between the "systems" mentioned would be absolutely non-trivial stuff... not the kind of thing one does in a weekend on a goof. As such, travel could be handled by scripting, possibly by docking at a "Port Authority" and plotting a course. "Random Encounters" in deep space might happen, too - teleporting you to a special empty system instead of your real destination, and teleporting you to the destination once a certain minimum distance from the center was reached. Not using an "Authorized" method of travelling between systems would imply poor planning, and should probably send you to a blank system... maybe kill you. You don't just jump from Mars to Jupiter... you plan it carefully.

As far as more realistic technologies, drive engines are a big thing. The thrust should be far lower, meaning it takes longer to get to max speed, AND to slow down. But the top speeds could be much higher for some engines... potentially 1 c for ion engines and the like.

Okay you know, the more this is talked about, the more my mind reels with awesome ideas.

[Prophet]

I really like this idea.

If the Sol system were broken into a number of individual game sectors you could handle travel between them with script. The sector would detect when the player moves out past a specified distance, and uses the angle to determine which sector to jump the player to.

Moving to realistic physics would be more difficult. Laser shot speed is hardcoded and can't be changed but you could rewrite laser weapons as 'missile' type weapons so you could make the shot speed accurate. Another problem is scale. Keeping earth the same size as the current in game pics, Jupiter would be over 2000x2000 pixels not including its rings.

This would be a good project to have dockable planets too, so if the player comes to a complete stop over a planet they are gated to another 'system' that simulates flying through the planet's atmosphere.

[Edit:]
I played around for a few hours and managed to build a tiny proof of oncept for this.
Download link

Its a simple topology with 5 nodes (plus endgame) set up in a "+" pattern. The player starts at the center and when you get out to 1000 ls you are automatically gated to the appropriate system node. I used a background station with a recurring timer to check the player's position but I think it could be refined and abstracted to make it more user friendly in a topology with many more nodes.

[Jeoshua]

I have had some further thoughts on this.

All the planets could be made as individual systems. The areas involved could be:

Sol & Mercury
Venus
Earth & Luna - Includes L1, L2, L4, and L5 of both Sol-Earth and Earth-Luna
Ceres & Asteroids
Vesta & Asteroids
Hildas - A semi-autonomous grouping of asteroids with a 2:3 resonance with Ol' Jove
Jupiter - Includes all moons
The Trojans - L4 asteroidal grouping in Jupiter's orbit
The Greeks - L5 asteroidal grouping in Jupiter's orbit
Saturn - All moons and a dense asteroid belt to simulate the rings
Uranus - all moons, thin nebula for a ring
Neptune- all moons
and POSSIBLY a small, cold, icy planet with a smaller, colder, icier moon for Pluto

Heading out-system too far could do one of two things: either bring up a menu asking where one intends to go or send the player into a new, empty system.

Prophet- I hadn't thought of making new laserier lasers using missile weapons, but that idea is perfectly sound now that I think of it.

It would be pointless to make the timescale 100% realistic, since then it would take a week of real time to get from Earth to Luna... no good.

[digdug]

...and we already have all the graphics of the main planets on Xelerus, 640x640 each. If you want them larger, or if you want the main Jovian and Saturnian satellites, just ask

[Xephyr]

...and we already have all the graphics of the main planets on Xelerus, 640x640 each. If you want them larger, or if you want the main Jovian and Saturnian satellites, just ask

When I tried to make a Saturn system, I just rendered a top-down image of Saturn with an asteroid belt as a ring - but I'll check out the Xelerus ones and see if I can be arsed to do anything with them.

[Prophet]

Heading out-system too far could do one of two things: either bring up a menu asking where one intends to go or send the player into a new, empty system.

Calling a dockscreen would be the ideal method of travel from the scripting standpoint.

The current topology contains an average of 26 systems so to maintain the balance curve you either need to have double the encounters or make the same encounter spawn double rewards.

EDIT: thanks sdw195, I missed the quotes in my quote

[sdw195]

Prophet your quote didnt work

[Jeoshua]

The way I have always imagined this mod, there would be FAR more stuff in every system than in the vanilla systems. The Earth-Luna system would be simply crawling with stations and ships of all types and states of repair (or disrepair). The same would probably go for every system in the game. And that doesn't even bring into play the possibility that one may be required to go back and forth between different systems to do some mission or another.

[Wraithwynd]

Look at Earth, in the past 50 years or so we have managed to make lower earth orbit a hazard to travel in/through with our 'space junk'. Even without habitats in space we have managed to put hundreds if not thousands of artificial moons in orbit; some useful, others mere scraps of older machines that no longer do anything.

We could imagine that 1-2-3 hundred years down the road we humans would have put a decent chunk of our population in space stations. Its the 'logical' choice to build perfect Utopian habitats instead of attempting to force the other planets to be Earth.

Space industry will convert the Moon into a one large mine, tunneling and excavating to extract the subsurface mineral wealth. That material will most likely be shot into lunar and earth orbits via mag rails (mag guns) where factories will gather the material and convert it into useful things 'dropping' those things on the earth, and shuttling that stuff to the space habitats that will most likely take up residence in Lagrange points and high geo-sync orbits.

The larger asteroids like Pallas and Ceres will most likely be hollowed out, mined until there is barely nothing left, the resulting pile of rubble will most likely be covered in a skin of structures that were used to support mining operations, housing, civil use while the mining was taking place. Today we see factories being 're-purposed' into lofts and flats. Most likely we will see the re-purposing of Ceres Mining Colony into Disney Asteroid or something spectacular like that.

Habitats will most likely spring up on say the moons of Jupiter as mineral resources are found.

Titan with a largely nitrogen atmosphere would most likely be 'mined' for that nitrogen. The atmosphere sucked up an put in canisters to ship out to other colonies to provide nitrogen oxygen atmospheres. Water ice is also abundant. Titan, the ultimate 'ice farm'.

The Rings of Saturn... Ice mostly, a great place to 'harvest' ice. I could imagine an eco-minded group protesting the loss of Saturn's Rings as ring harvesters are eating up the rings, compacting the dust and icy bits into ice bergs sent on a low energy trajectory to the inner solar system to supply an ever growing humanity that is thirsty for water.

Maybe these Ring Savers will be like pirates, eco-warriors who have no problem with arming up to save the Rings of Saturn....

Of course with unlimited space and 200 years to grow, we will most likely be measuring our population in the hundreds of billions as space colonies find new ways to add 'land space' quickly and efficiently ushering in a new age of the large family.

Or maybe over crowding will be the real issue as space habitats are difficult to construct and can not keep up with the population growth rate - thus causing splinter groups to break off seeking independence and constructing their own habitats out of 'found' materials.

The Moons of Jupiter are colonized, patrolled and protected by the Moons of Jupiter Armada a flee of ships who's sole purpose is to keep Earth Government types/military away from the affairs of the colonists of the moons.

In the Asteroid Belt you have the Planet Builders. The Phaetons, a group who are organized and attempting to 'reassemble' the asteroid belt into a planet based on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaeton_%2 ... _planet%29 theory. Yeah they are gooks but hey aren't most cults?

So they strap on a few engines to the largest rocks in the belt to propell them to their proto-planet Phaeton, smaller debris the 'shoot' in a low energy trajectory at Phaeton. Around the growing planet of their making they have a fleet or many stations all geared up to blast would be miners out of orbit.

Anyway, the Phaetons would be at war with the Belters - miners who wish to exploit the asteroids, mining them of their mineral wealth.

To their credit the Phaetons have had nearly 100 years to gather together enough material to make a modest small moon sized 'planet' by this time. Their hard work as seen as a exploitable resource, if only the Phaetons would disappear the Belters would quickly reduce Phaeton to a heap of slag.

Perhaps a side issue like a desire to put water on Phaeton has the cult capturing water ice being sent from The Rings of Saturn to the inner system. Maybe have them stealing containers of Liquid Nitrogen also on low e trajectories to the inner system from the Titan folk who are harvesting Titan's atmosphere?


There is plenty of room for lots of diversity and minor groups...

[Xephyr]

Sorry to bust your great ideas, Wraithwynd, but the Ringers would inhabit the rings of Saturn.

But if you're thinking of a new storyline altogether, perhaps pre-stargate travel, it sounds good.

[Jeoshua]

Of COURSE!!! The discovery of the gate! A "prequel" of sorts.

If an adventure mod were to be made with this, we need more infos from George on the state of the Sol system pre-gate.