Stellar Engineering

[aurreth]

So today I'm trying to figure out day/night cycles.  For some stupid reason Bethesda thinks all games are better if the player has to run around in the dark.  My primary outpost?  Always night.  Oh it's occasionally day, but they are the shortest damn days in galactic history.  And considering how absolutely horrid outpost lighting is I figure what I need to do is change the planet's rotation to match Venus.

Buuuut, for the life of me I can't find where that is set.  Days in a local year?  Sure, easy to find.  Planet rotation speed?  Nope.

Sigh.  And people asked me why my first terraforming project was Venus.  Because I could see what the hell I was doing!

[aurreth]

10 hours ago, HeyYou said:

Gotta be missing a trick somewhere.....

There's still a lot of unknown data, plus all the reflection data.  Some things will have to wait for the xEdit team, and undoubtedly more for the CK.  A lot of what I'm doing is tracing the interlinks between various records, because is many cases the obvious way to do something doesn't work at all.  Like there is no link between a star data record and that same stars location record.  At least not directly, and that missing connection is a big part of the problem.

[aurreth]

Figured out how to copy rings from one planet to another, so my personal pleasure planet now has rings.  Just have to wait for night to see if they show in the sky lol

[HeyYou]

2 hours ago, aurreth said:

There's still a lot of unknown data, plus all the reflection data.  Some things will have to wait for the xEdit team, and undoubtedly more for the CK.  A lot of what I'm doing is tracing the interlinks between various records, because is many cases the obvious way to do something doesn't work at all.  Like there is no link between a star data record and that same stars location record.  At least not directly, and that missing connection is a big part of the problem.

Yup yup. Lots of experimentation going on there. Here's hoping you figure it out, and we start seeing modded in system, that are a bit more interesting than vanilla.

[aurreth]

14 hours ago, aurreth said:

Figured out how to copy rings from one planet to another, so my personal pleasure planet now has rings.  Just have to wait for night to see if they show in the sky lol

Couple of things.  No, you don't suddenly start seeing the rings from the planet surface.  I'll have to figure out what controls that, although I'm betting it's some sort of atmosphere or sky setting that is totally independent of whether rings exist or not.

Second, the rings seem to retain their original axial tilt independent of the planet.  I don't think this is actually possible lol  If you borrow rings, change the axial tilt of the planet to match wherever you got them from.  It looks a lot better from space.

 

[worm82075]

On 12/5/2023 at 7:34 AM, HeyYou said:

Gotta be missing a trick somewhere.....

Yeah, it's called the CK. The game engine is designed to facilitate new form ids for objects at runtime, you are well aware of that and the new engine seems to be able to do the same with cells now but not worldspaces. The editor is needed for this and given the complexity of the changes on this cycle, decoding the esp/esm files is going to take years even after the CK releases.

 

On 12/4/2023 at 2:26 PM, aurreth said:

Eventually there will be a cure for cancer, so everyone should just stop working on it until then.  Their time will be better spent on something else.

It's my time, I'll spend it how I like. 

 

Poor analogy. The cure already exists and it's only a matter of time before it's available to all.

Like i said, I'm not here to rain on your parade. I understand the drive because I've been there and hind sight is 20/20. I feel obligated to share my experience so I would recommend waiting for the CK because it will be the main tool used to decode the plugins and spare yourself the blind alleys you are now treading. You however are not obligated to listen. You know what they say "everybody has to learn the hard way". It's not entirely true, hence my obligation, though it is somewhat true, hence my acceptance of your choice. Hell, you are likely having fun and who knows, maybe you'll actually figure something out that the CK would not have revealed. Good luck.

[aurreth]

16 minutes ago, worm82075 said:

Poor analogy. The cure already exists and it's only a matter of time before it's available to all.

As someone with cancer, I assure you it does not.

If you don't have something positive to contribute, please go bother someone else. 

[aurreth]

I may have accidentally stumbled across the solution to "clone planet, create black hole" issue.  I cloned Toliman II and replace a moon with it (I wanted a terrormorph hunting preserve), and I've been able to exit and enter the game on the planet surface without error (so far).

'Tis possible the culprit was houdini data, which this clone doesn't have (after discussing a different method of PNDT record creation with someone). 

[aurreth]

On 12/7/2023 at 3:01 PM, aurreth said:

I may have accidentally stumbled across the solution to "clone planet, create black hole" issue.  I cloned Toliman II and replace a moon with it (I wanted a terrormorph hunting preserve), and I've been able to exit and enter the game on the planet surface without error (so far).

'Tis possible the culprit was houdini data, which this clone doesn't have (after discussing a different method of PNDT record creation with someone). 

And yes, the planet, and saves on the planet, have been completely stable.  Removing the houdini data seems to have made it stop referencing its old location.

I have to repeat the experiment with Jemison, cloning it to someplace else.  That's the one that gave me the most problems/errors.

Oh, turned a worthless rock into a ringed gas giant today.  The one moon needs some attention, because the sky there is glorious.  I was standing on it when the moon passed through the rings, was a fantastic sight.

[aurreth]

Replaced Procyon B-I with a copy of Jemison, and it appears to be stable.  Removing the Houdini data and careful checking of the star ID seems to have fixed the issues I had when I attempted this early on (such as taking off from the planet and ending up in Alpha Centauri).

That's the third planet I've replaced with a copy of some other one, and they all seem to be working.

Sooo, where are we?

1. I can move stars.
2. I can rename stars and planets.  Mostly, there are occasional glitches where the original name shows up, but they are minor and don't affect anything.
3. I can assign a star system to a faction.  And it doesn't have to be UC, Freestar, etc.  It can be an entirely NEW faction, that will be displayed in the star map just like the others.
4. I can adjust the basic properties of existing planet, tweaking atmosphere, magnetosphere and temperature to make them more hospitable.
5. Along those same lines I can fix it so there is no evidence of humans on a planet.  Meaning you won't land and be surrounded by manufactured trash.
6. I can add rings to any planet... or star for that matter.
7. Custom biomes are possible on SOME planets, those that have there own unique biome records.
8. I can replace any planet with a copy of a different one.  It will look the same from space, and surface biome placement will match.  Note that replacing a planet with Volii Alpha (Neon) renders it useless, because there is nowhere to land lol

All together this allows for very personalized star systems.

Things to work on:  creating new star systems, rather than moving and changing existing ones.  So far this eludes me, although I did manage to get a blank system to appear on the map this morning.  You couldn't travel to it, likely because there weren't any planets around it.  You can't grav jump to a star, you have to go to a planet around that star.  I'm going to have to do some tinkering, basically duplicate an existing system at a new location.  I'll start with Procyon B, because it only has one planet.