Asteroid Rings

[Fyron]

I'd like to make asteroids become a ring around the star. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any way to do this from XFileClasses_Stellar.txt. An asteroid field is a collection of asteroid rock objects:

Code:

---

 Name                                                 := Asteroid Field 1 Medium

XFile                                                := 

Override Texture Filename                            := 

Base Model Radius                                    := 0

XFile Collection Radius                              := 25.0

XFile Collection Random Selection                    := TRUE

XFile Collection Min Amount                          := 15

XFile Collection Max Amount                          := 20

Number of XFiles Collection                          := 7

XFile 1 Name                                         := Asteroid 1a

XFile 2 Name                                         := Asteroid 1b

XFile 3 Name                                         := Asteroid 1c

XFile 4 Name                                         := Asteroid 1a

XFile 5 Name                                         := Asteroid 1b

XFile 6 Name                                         := Asteroid 1c

XFile 7 Name                                         := Asteroid Big 1a

 

---

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any way to control the location fo these objects, beyond being inside the collection radius.

I would rather not rather not resort to making asteroids into bitmap effects, which do happen to have controllable locations.

As such, I am wondering if anyone would like to take on the challenge of making .x models of actual asteroid rings. Presumably, if the ring is designed to fit on a SE5 system map at, say, ring 6, it could be resized for smaller or larger orbitals. Not sure what that would do to the sizes of the rocks though, so it might end up being better to have a set of asteroid ring models, designed for several different orbitals (say, 3 through 7).

[David E. Gervais]

Hi there,

In SystemTypes.txt you often see more than one planet with the same 'position' (ie Ring 7 might have 2 planets assigned to it.) The game seems to be smart enough not to place these planets in the same hex, so simply add a bunch of Asteroid objects and assign them the same Ring #. In the example below Object 12 is an asteroid field that will be randomly placed in Ring 5. Simply Copy this data a bunch of times to 'mostly' fill the number of hexes in the target ring. And change the Obj ##. So if you wanted ring 5 to be filled with asteroids create Obj 12 to say 32 and add it to a new System type.

Code:

---

Obj 12 Physical Type                             := Asteroids

Obj 12 Position                                  := Ring 5

Obj 12 Stellar Abil Type                         := Normal Asteroids

Obj 12 Specific Stellar Obj Name                 := Any

Obj 12 Size                                      := Any

Obj 12 Atmosphere                                := Any

Obj 12 Composition                               := Any

---

I hope this helps, At least that is how I see it could be done. Also, I wouldn't 'Fill' the entire ring, if the game does a search for 'empty' hex in a Ring and keeps finding only asteroids the game might hang while doing the system generation.

Cheers!

[Fyron]

That is exactly what I do not want to do. Too many game balance issues. SE5 has the capability to accomplish the visual effect without so much disruption.

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, it would be rather cool to have a large continuous ring of asteroids that slowly rotates like a ringworld. But this would be a pain to manage from the aspect of other game mechanics like remote mining.

[Suicide Junkie]

Considering the size of the asteroids, sprites really aren't that bad...

Given an angular, animated sprite which shows the asteroid rolling its chunky faces around, you wouldn't even notice unless you looked really close and spun the camera around at the same time.

[Fyron]

Another possibility besides having 1 object for the whole field is to break it up into parts, such as 6 separate fields. Each would represent one sixth of the complete ring. They could use the same base model(s), but rotated to the appropriate angle. This would allow multiple ships to mine the ring, as well as multiple planets to be constructed, without going overboard like in FQM SE4.

BM:
The actual object would always be located at the same place, such as the "top" of the ring (according to hex coordinates). There would probably be some sort of super-asteroid or other marker to indicate this position. The model/animation would then be offset to appear centralized in the system.

SJ:
Are you volunteering?