Bigjoe5 wrote:
But tundra areas also have very low precipitation... I have to admit, I'm not very clear on what distinguishes tundra from a very cold desert, and in terms of planet types, I think that cold deserts are too much like tundra planets to really fall under the category of desert. If I saw a "cold desert" planet, I would probably think "why isn't this classified as tundra?".
Because it's at the colder end of the desert range and close to the warmer end of the tundra range? If it's a circle with each leading into the rest there have to be some deserts that are near tundra and some that are closer to 'terran', just as there are some terran worlds that're closer to Thalassa than Earth, etc.
It needs to make sense both in a terminological sense and a gameplay sense, it has to gradate in some way, and it makes zero sense, at all, for a really hot desert environment to be closest to a very cold tundra environment, but if there are cold deserts that's close to tundras, as there are on Earth, then that works and makes more sense. To me, at least.
I didn't invent this schema afterall, I'm merely trying to make sense of it, if there are better explanations out there happy to hear it, at some point we need a clear write up of all this in game and I suspect it'll be me writing it
Well I think a "desert world" (as opposed to a 'desert region' should not just lack precipitation... it should have very little water of any kind, so it can be cold but no ice.
while it would be 'closer to tundra' you could have a desert world with fields of yellow grass that would be 'closer to terran'
You want it to be recognizable as desert to someone who doesn't have a degree in environmental science.
Otherwise like all of them (although I would use the "Desert (ice)" for tundra
Bigjoe5 wrote:
But tundra areas also have very low precipitation... I have to admit, I'm not very clear on what distinguishes tundra from a very cold desert, and in terms of planet types, I think that cold deserts are too much like tundra planets to really fall under the category of desert. If I saw a "cold desert" planet, I would probably think "why isn't this classified as tundra?".
Because it's at the colder end of the desert range and close to the warmer end of the tundra range? If it's a circle with each leading into the rest there have to be some deserts that are near tundra and some that are closer to 'terran', just as there are some terran worlds that're closer to Thalassa than Earth, etc.
It needs to make sense both in a terminological sense and a gameplay sense, it has to gradate in some way, and it makes zero sense, at all, for a really hot desert environment to be closest to a very cold tundra environment, but if there are cold deserts that's close to tundras, as there are on Earth, then that works and makes more sense. To me, at least.
I didn't invent this schema afterall, I'm merely trying to make sense of it, if there are better explanations out there happy to hear it, at some point we need a clear write up of all this in game and I suspect it'll be me writing it
Well I think a "desert world" (as opposed to a 'desert region' should not just lack precipitation... it should have very little water of any kind, so it can be cold but no ice.
while it would be 'closer to tundra' you could have a desert world with fields of yellow grass that would be 'closer to terran'
You want it to be recognizable as desert to someone who doesn't have a degree in environmental science.
Otherwise like all of them (although I would use the "Desert (ice)" for tundra
I'd use Ouaz's choice for tundra, since a Tundra is a higher altitude grassland in cold regions
If you're going to add the images, I reworked the Barren landscapes, because I didn't like the ground colour (and it doesn't correspond to the Barren planet texture very well).
I added directly the border to the images (so it doesn't need to be programmed), like in the previous mockup.
Vezzra wrote:Hm, I definitely like the idea. Provided we do a decent couple of images per planet type, getting the same image of a desert for each desert planet doesn't help immersion IMO.
In case someone is willing to code up the changes needed to implement different images for each planet type, I produced some alternatives from the unused art here: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... planets_bg
Attachments
pt_gasgiant2.png (40.75 KiB) Viewed 6723 times
pt_desert2.png (43.86 KiB) Viewed 6723 times
pt_barren2.png (45.58 KiB) Viewed 6723 times
All released under the GNU GPL 2.0 and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licences.
Sloth wrote:In case someone is willing to code up the changes needed to implement different images for each planet type, I produced some alternatives from the unused art here: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... planets_bg
Considering how badly we struggle to get the release out, no one might pick that up before 0.4.6. To avoid that your suggestion gets buried and forgotten here, can you make an appropriate issue on github and put a link in there to your posts here?
Handling multiple graphics in that context is a bit complicated... In some other contexts, like handling textures for planets or icons for stars on the map, it looks for all images with similar names but varying numbers, like blue01.png, blue02.png, blue03.png, etc. But for the planet pedia view images, it has a particular filename less flexibly encoded, with not check for how many similarly-named files are present...
Vezzra wrote:To avoid that your suggestion gets buried and forgotten here, can you make an appropriate issue on github and put a link in there to your posts here?
I made a pull request instead (that only contains the pictures). That should do as a reminder.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Handling multiple graphics in that context is a bit complicated... In some other contexts, like handling textures for planets or icons for stars on the map, it looks for all images with similar names but varying numbers, like blue01.png, blue02.png, blue03.png, etc. But for the planet pedia view images, it has a particular filename less flexibly encoded, with not check for how many similarly-named files are present...
I'm well aware that this is no trivial task. Otherwise i would have been tempted to try it myself.
All released under the GNU GPL 2.0 and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licences.
Should a planet have the same graphic throughout (a sub-type), or randomly pick one each time it is viewed (might be confusing for some)?
For the later, gas giant seems more in-line with terran or ocean when compared to the first version.
dbenage-cx wrote:Should a planet have the same graphic throughout (a sub-type), or randomly pick one each time it is viewed (might be confusing for some)?
As with various other pick-from-a-set textures or images, use a consistent mapping from object ID to texture id, such as mod(object_id, num_textures)