Would you want new planet types and atmospheres?

[Resident Alien]

Were you thinking of the Chlorans from the Skylark series also by EE Doc Smith? They were nasty, made the Xi'Chung Hive look like cute friendly kittens.

ps. Skylark of Space, just re-published -check Amazon.com.

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Originally posted by pathfinder:
hmmm, I know the planet atmospheres are hard-coded since I asked MM about that a while back when I tried modding in a chlorine atmosphere (EE "Doc" Smith "Lensman" series...hehe). But it WOULD be nice to be able to...

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[This message has been edited by Resident Alien (edited 24 April 2001).]

[pathfinder]

Resident Alien: yup..me be BIG fan of that series!

[DirectorTsaarx]

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Originally posted by Trachmyr:
I know it's hardcoded... but I don't think it would be that difficult to change, instead of it pulling the atmospheres from hardcoded variables, it could pull them from a txt file... I don't know the actual code MM is using, but from my programming experience, I can't see why it would be that difficult to implement.

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I think one of the issues is that MM tried to "color-code" planets to represent different atmospheres (at least it seems that way to me, but maybe I haven't checked deeply enough); adding more atmospheres could throw off the color coding. Yeah, you would probably want to add more pictures anyway, but you'd have to find a color sufficiently different from existing colors. Or throw out the color coding...

[dmm]

I think it is hard coded only because MM assumed that no one would ever want more. That is SO common with programmers. (Bill Gates: "Who would ever want more than 640K of RAM in their PC?") Then getting them to admit the mistake is almost impossible.

I'd love to see planet types be moddable. My programming experience also tells me that it wouldn't be that hard.

The point about the color schemes is a good one, and maybe is the real reason for the resistance from MM -- his artistic sensibilities. Misguided artists are even more stubborn than misguided programmers! Personally, I'd like a hydrogen planet to look like a circle with an H inside.

One Last note: Towing or propulsion of planets has been mentioned before. What would happen if you towed a sodium planet into a chlorine one? Boom! You'd get a salt water asteroid field. Now THAT would require some tough coding changes.

[disabled]

I look foreward to MM maybe adding new planets in the future.

For atmospheres, I think they should follow something along the lines of elements that naturally occur paired. Like Hydrogen, Oxygen, Flourine, Bromine, Iodine, and Chlorine. Along with various byproducts of them.

As few new planet types, I would enjoy oceanic (suggested already), anti-matter, and maybe machine worlds/ancient lost worlds.

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HADRIAN AVENTINE
snpacifica@yahoo.com
http://www.hyperionbase.com

[Phoenix-D]

Oceanic would be a bit dicey, as some of the planets already have descriptions like "90% surface ocean.."

Anti-matter would also be a bit dicey. Remember what happens when matter/antimatter connect..and I think they are also attracted to each other (unlike charges)

Phoenix-D

[disabled]

There's an idea, planetary collisions.

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HADRIAN AVENTINE
snpacifica@yahoo.com
http://www.hyperionbase.com

[Suicide Junkie]

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Anti-matter would also be a bit dicey.

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RAMMING SPEED!!!
*KA-Boom!

And, dropping your troops on a planet would be devastating

[Phoenix-D]

Heh, who needs planet destroyers, just tow an anti-matter planet over!

Phoenix-D