New idea for planet shapes.

[Iv121]

I still don't like cube planets because they don't fit the theme you chose for futurecraft. You go realistic ? Go realistic all the way. It will look bad with a cube planet if you use ralistic ships and such, imagine you have a cube here:

Spoiler:

or here:

Spoiler:

BTW still anybody up for a signature with his ship ?

[cats]

I still don't like cube planets because they don't fit the theme you chose for futurecraft. You go realistic ? Go realistic all the way. It will look bad with a cube planet if you use ralistic ships and such, imagine you have a cube here:

Spoiler:

or here:

Spoiler:

BTW still anybody up for a signature with his ship ?

I agree. A cube shaped into a sphere wouldn't be distorted to the point of uselessness.

[Prototype]

But cubes are easier, and would be less buggy (why bother with infinite faces when you can just do 6)

And if we try to be too realistic we won't get anywhere, cubes are simpler, and simple is normally better.

And while cubes may not fit the theme of FC, spheres don't fit the theme of minecraft, so I think we are better off with cubes.

We are likely going to have to compromise here, if we want to see FC ever released

Unless you mean having planets render as 2d circles while you are in space above them, that might be a good idea.

[Iv121]

Have a look at my screens and see that spheres fit even more than cubes. The point is that we work with such scales that even the cubic minecraft becomes smooth (It's slightly hard to tell the SSD Lucifer was built in minecraft until you look closely) It's even easier than cubes BTW - why have 6 faces if you can have only one ? As Frost suggested it's better to have one plane and make a transition between it and space. I'd go for loading bar but Frost prefers to distort the face.

If you want cubeness it can be added elsewhere - the space texture. As I noticed a high res foreground with high res background objects but low res simple background texture look well together. You might add a high res background like in the forum image but a more colored yet low res background should also look nice with the ships.

[Prototype]

Have a look at my screens and see that spheres fit even more than cubes. The point is that we work with such scales that even the cubic minecraft becomes smooth (It's slightly hard to tell the SSD Lucifer was built in minecraft until you look closely) It's even easier than cubes BTW - why have 6 faces if you can have only one ? As Frost suggested it's better to have one plane and make a transition between it and space. I'd go for loading bar but Frost prefers to distort the face.

Hang on, is it the shape of the planets will be cubes, but they will look like spheres from space?

If so, then that could work.

I thought you were saying make the actual planets spherical.

[҉]

If we've finally got a reasonable way to make planets work, why in hell are you people still arguing about it!? Be joyful that there's now a way to have planets at all!

[cats]

If we've finally got a reasonable way to make planets work, why in hell are you people still arguing about it!? Be joyful that there's now a way to have planets at all!

Because there are still more reasonable paths to follow, and some that are less feasible that will produce a better result. If we go with a cube shape planet that's a cube when seen from space, we get absolutely no distortion, no dig restriction, but we sacrifice consistently stable gravity and a lot of realism. A cube planet with a spherical space sprite will have the added benefit of realism, but we get distortion on the geographic projection. With a flat map, like I suggested, with a spherical projection, we would have no need for changing of gravity fields, realism (with slight distortion), but would be restricted by bedrock layer.

[҉]

If we've finally got a reasonable way to make planets work, why in hell are you people still arguing about it!? Be joyful that there's now a way to have planets at all!

Because there are still more reasonable paths to follow, and some that are less feasible that will produce a better result. If we go with a cube shape planet that's a cube when seen from space, we get absolutely no distortion, no dig restriction, but we sacrifice consistently stable gravity and a lot of realism. A cube planet with a spherical space sprite will have the added benefit of realism, but we get distortion on the geographic projection. With a flat map, like I suggested, with a spherical projection, we would have no need for changing of gravity fields, realism (with slight distortion), but would be restricted by bedrock layer.

We've been over this so many times. Every system has drawbacks. Fine; we get it. I find it very frustrating that, after the better part of a year without progress, we finally get something and everyone insists on discussing things that have been pretty conclusively broken in the past months. It's almost like you guys don't want there to be a way to do things. The reason we've been going over this forever is that pretty much every way sucks, and when Fr0st finally comes up with something that might suck a bit less everyone starts taking their various positions around the sucky ideas again instead of being glad that the debate is over and we can move on to having a mod.

[Prototype]

He has a point, everybody shut up and follow the aye-aye

[Iv121]

We'll it's not like we suddenly came with that, it was the pla pretty much from the beginning . Actually if you rethink the somewhat far from possible gameplay you imagined there is no need in this discussion at all - There is no need in the planet at all (at least not as a huge place you want to wander at). It takes the space out of futurecraft a bit. Give me a good reason to mine in an asteroid or a nebula instead of a comfortable planet ? Give me a reason to build space stations when I can build an impenetrable deep bunker on a planet ? I don't think bunker wars is what you want , leave it to ICBM . Maybe visiting other planets, cities and such can be nice and can be kept in the game but other planetary stuff and especially planetary combat doesn't seem to fit in. I know you say "More is cool" but I try to see where it goes more realistically.

[Shadowcatbot]

Were waiting for the magical Cube-Sphere to show up. That or Cats and IV just HAVE to have realism or there heads might explode or some stuff.

[Ivan2006]

Just an idea: have ring worlds (easy geometric principe) until we come up with something more useful.

[҉]

We'll it's not like we suddenly came with that, it was the pla pretty much from the beginning . Actually if you rethink the somewhat far from possible gameplay you imagined there is no need in this discussion at all - There is no need in the planet at all (at least not as a huge place you want to wander at). It takes the space out of futurecraft a bit. Give me a good reason to mine in an asteroid or a nebula instead of a comfortable planet ? Give me a reason to build space stations when I can build an impenetrable deep bunker on a planet ? I don't think bunker wars is what you want , leave it to ICBM . Maybe visiting other planets, cities and such can be nice and can be kept in the game but other planetary stuff and especially planetary combat doesn't seem to fit in. I know you say "More is cool" but I try to see where it goes more realistically.

1. You suddenly came with what? What has been the pla pretty much from the beginning? We're sitting here having this debate because there is no plan related to planet shapes, other than the one Fr0st has just proposed.
2. Planets are important before you get to space. You won't spawn with a spaceship magically ready for you; that would be stupid. You have to build one, and you'll do that on a planet.
3. You'll mine asteroids and nebulae for two reasons: Either because you can get stuff there that you can't get on a planet, or because it's easier. Asteroids and nebulae might contain rare elements that don't turn up in planets' crusts. You can feed an entire asteroid into a mining ship and have it melted down and separated into its components much more easily than you can bore through three kilometers of stone.
4. You can dock ships at space stations without having to go through atmospheric reentry. Large ships won't be able to land on planets at all, so either you'll build a space station or you'll have to have a complicated system of shuttles to ferry things between your ships and your bunker.
5. Why wouldn't I want bunker wars? That'd be awesome.
6. It amuses me very much that at the beginning of your post, you used 'because it's been the plan from the beginning' as a reason for something (although I'm not sure what), but now at the bottom you're saying there shouldn't be planetary combat, which is so old it's in the MCF OP. I have never said 'more is cool', but I am saying now that 'removing ground combat is stupid'.
7. What do you mean by 'doesn't fit in'? Fit in with what, exactly? There's nothing for it to fit with yet. The mod is called Futurecraft, which implies a very broad scope (the entire future). After World War 1, many military leaders predicted that strategic bombing would be the only kind of warfare conducted in the future. Looking back on them nearly a hundred years later, the look pretty dumb. It is probably equally dumb to suggest that the future will not contain ground combat, so logically it should be included.
8. In conclusion, I think that was a somewhat silly post, but let's do our best to stop arguing amongst ourselves and start getting a mod made.

[cats]

Planets need to be interesting. More so than vanilla MC to keep people interested in exploring and mining and building. Craters, (realistic) mountain ranges, large lakes, Karst landscape, etc. Valleys, trenches, polar wastes, ruins, more ruins, crashed spacecraft, and on and on...

[Prototype]

Planets need to be interesting. More so than vanilla MC to keep people interested in exploring and mining and building. Craters, (realistic) mountain ranges, large lakes, Karst landscape, etc. Valleys, trenches, polar wastes, ruins, more ruins, crashed spacecraft, and on and on...

We aren't even in alpha yet, that can wait.