Stellar Engineering

[aurreth]

Very strange.  Started a new game and my custom systems did weird things.  I'm missing a planet, two moons, and formerly Planet 1 is now Planet 2.  It's like a new game reshuffled the planets, which I didn't think was a thing.

[Jaimedarkfyr]

does anyone know when the CK will release? these ideas have me wanting to build my own galaxy and maybe have a black hole transport the player back and fourth to it or something lol. if thats even possible for the CK. 

On 12/4/2023 at 10:55 AM, worm82075 said:

Not trying to rain on your parade here but it behooves me to see this much effort being given to solve a problem that will disappear the moment the CK releases. Seems to me your time would be better spent on something tangible that will not evaporate in the very near future.

though the eventuality of the CK being released could solve some of these issues, we have no idea if it will or wont in full. there may be a chance that it only lets you edit the existing planets and such. we cant be sure what all it will be capable of. so i dont think delving in to this is a complete waste of time in full.

[DocClox]

7 hours ago, Jaimedarkfyr said:

though the eventuality of the CK being released could solve some of these issues, we have no idea if it will or wont in full.

It's always useful to know something about how a system works at a low level. If nothing else, it helps a lot when it comes to working out why something isn't working further down the line.

[tomsite]

22 hours ago, aurreth said:

Very strange.  Started a new game and my custom systems did weird things.  I'm missing a planet, two moons, and formerly Planet 1 is now Planet 2.  It's like a new game reshuffled the planets, which I didn't think was a thing.

The Unity hits hard. Maybe the game thought it would be nice to really change everything and everything you experienced before in another Universe has to be different now. Maybe one day you enter New Atlantis and instead of being a nice city it will be a total dump and totally run down. ;). Or you go to New Atlantis and it will be the House Varuun main city and Andreja is the president ordering your decapitation Skyrim style. And then you see the cart and hear a familiar "Hey you, you are finally awake" followed shortly after by a nuclear explosion and the music from Diamond City Radio is playing in the background. You look at your Starfield watch, which is now a PipBoy and realize you spent the last few hundred years in a cryo pod. Then you jump in your spaceship to fly to NukaWorld on Mars to get some Chunks and Boom-Pop. You go back outside to fight a few dragons that roam the skies of Mars with the help of some Raiders and your trusty Nord Greatsword. A true experience in the world of Bethesda games.

[aurreth]

Except this wasn't NG+, it was a brand new game.  I had a gas giant and its one moon ganked, and the rest of the planets in that system reshuffled.  Which is making at least one planet unusable, because I see an ice ball but the game thinks it is a gas giant.

For the most part it's no big deal, I was able to build an outpost where I wanted, but it was definitely a strange thing to happen.  It probably means that custom systems can't be installed at the start of the game.  You have to wait until after character creation or something, then enable the system mods.  I'll have to test things out to find out when is the appropriate time to enable a custom system.

It's a shame Bethesda specifically prohibits porting from one game to another.  Would be cool if there was a planet you could land or crash on and play Fallout, or jump through Unity to Skyrim.

[aurreth]

Ok, one thing I've noticed.  There is a keyword for the system location record that controls the frequency of space encounters.  You can set it to none and you won't get random ships or merchants or whatnot.

BUT, if you set it to something else ("few"), and then get something like a sensor contact, and then set it back to "none", that map icon will never be cleared because the "none" setting keeps the game from refreshing the system/map.

So obviously to clear stale icons you would set it to "few", wait for them to clear (not sure how long it takes), and then set it back to "none".  HOWEVER during the refresh cycle the game queues up encounters.  The map clears, you set it back to "none", but those encounters are already scheduled, and now you end up with a whole bunch more icons that you are trying to get rid of while you are working on customizing your system.

Major pain in the ass, since it is already nigh impossible to get stale map icons removed (I'm looking at you "landing area").  There really needs to be a divorce between "creating new encounters" and "removing old encounters".  They should be separate processes, not all rolled into one.

[HeyYou]

Can you force a reset on the system?

[aurreth]

12 hours ago, HeyYou said:

Can you force a reset on the system?

I'm very much still poking around the edges right now.  And really hope someone decides to tackle the map, do things like add an expiration to landing points, clean stale icons from the system maps, etc.  More scripting than I'm capable of or have the time to learn (I do have an actual job lol).

[aurreth]

Figured out how to change the sky on planets.  I got tired of the yellow sky on Venus, and the tint that gave to everything, so I gave it blue skies.

In the Body section of the planet data there is an unknown INAM, with a sub record "Atmos Handle".  It's a number (5 digit).  Changing that number changes the sky.  I replaces the handle for Venus (54499) with the handle for Jemison (first blue sky I could think of, 49168) and bingo, blue skies on Venus.

This does not change the weather, which I didn't want to change anyway because the scalding liquid thunderstorms seem appropriate.  The only affect I've noticed is that the sky is blue and the yellow tint went away.

Edit:  Got big fluffy white clouds when the weather is clear too.

Edited December 15, 2023 by aurreth

[aurreth]

Changing the sky from the other side, i.e. how you see the atmosphere from orbit, is a bit, er, wonky.

What a planet looks like from orbit is handled by Components (aligned) / Component #0 in the PNDT record.  Look for "atmosphere_mesh_outer:0" and "planet_mesh:0".  Under those there is a File Hash value, which is a pointer to the atmospheric and planet surface files.

Here's the thing.  Those hashes are in hex, but when you try to edit them you have to enter decimal values.  So if I want my planet to have the same atmosphere texture as Earth when viewed from orbit, I get the hash from EarthPlanet, D06C81A6, convert that to decimal, 3496772006, and enter that into my custom planet File Hash, where it is converted back to hex.

The Folder Hash value appears to be the same for every planet, so you don't need to mess with that.