Worlds (AKA "The Planets" map)

[Reactor Worker]

I've started work on a replacement for "The Planets" map I made awhile ago and I have created this thread in the interests of posting my current progress, building up some hype for the map, and for getting feedback on the design changes I have made.

To recap, the original map known as "Planets" or "The Planets" was well received and went through several revisions as I fixed various bugs that arose and added new features. The principle of the map was always to have separate build spaces wrapped in space theme as inspired by Gmod's popular Spacebuild gamemode. The planets consisted of hemispherical interiors surrounded by one or more DTS spheres to form an outer sphere and inner atmosphere/sky. They were designed to emulate the appearance of the planets within our solar system. Eventually (and thanks to the help of Nitramtj) different degrees of gravity and kill triggers were added to appropriate portions of the map. Build pads were added around key planets to aid in the construction of orbiting space stations. My own developmenton the map stopped when I was in the middle of a third revision of the map which had rotating DTS spheres and a separate cloud layer.

This new map will be significantly different in appearance from the original, but will keep the "essence" of the map that separated it from all of the slate/slope edits that preceded it. I've posted a list of features/changes below that should make it into the new map....

• "Planets" will now be cubes in general shape
• Ground textures will be studs of varying colors
• Name change from "Planets" to "Worlds"
• "Worlds" will now reflect interesting environments, not the planets in our system
• "Worlds" will be placed at reasonable distances from each other
• Smaller "Worlds" to encourage concentrated development
• Surface details (Mountains, craters, rivers, foliage, etc)
• Focus on a small overall file size
• Single release of the map to reduce confusion and work load
• Small selection of miscellaneous, unique build spaces

My main objective is to make a unique map that will be fun and hassle-free to play on. I'd like to encourage and inspire creative building. These are two things I failed to fully achieve in my last map, but certainly something worth striving for and the concept deserves a second shot.

The most obvious change is in the general appearance of the map; whereas the original map aimed to replicate our solar system, "Worlds" will emulate a pseudo system with it's own batch of cubular build spaces. Overall the map will be very "Blocko" with stud textures on the ground and terrain that fits in with the baseplate 'cubes' that are now a default feature in BL. Speaking of terrain, part of my plan to inspire creative building is to add more features to the planets surface so rather than just being a flat you may end up seeing rivers, hills, craters and more on the various worlds.

I'll attach some W.I.P. screenshots of the worlds I am working on right now in Constructor. I've thoroughly tested the interiors in game and it works seamlessly with the bricks (such as the baseplate cubes). Interiors and bricks handle lighting slightly differently and I have yet to find a way to match up the colors perfectly, but it won't be distracting when complete. Since I am not messing with the scale of the interior in game, the placement of bricks and lighting of the interior is flawless; this fixes perhaps the greatest set of issues with the original map.

If you have any suggestions for cool ideas I'm open to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXTzHaWm1-E  (Grass prototype video)

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[Cyanian]

I really loved the individuality that The Planets had.

This sounds like it will have that same individuality. So, it should turn out quite nice.

[zenloth]

Looks like it should be an incredible map and I am looking forward to further development.

I enjoyed The Planets and love the uniqueness that a map which has the ability to build well (flat surfaces) but also an aesthetically pleasing view (not just plain old slate. The main thing which holds me back from hosting with it is just the sheer time it takes for clients to download it, but it seems that they are on your priorities :D I would hope you will release this on RTB for even quicker download times.

• Smaller "Worlds" to encourage concentrated development

Will this apply to all "worlds" or just the majority... I feel it might be nice to have one larger world as like the spawn world or whatever.

[GenaralSkar]

I liked the fact that traveling from planet to planet you need a flying vehicle and it would take a long time to get to the just by jet. Are the worlds going to be far enough that you can easily jet to them, or are they still going to be separated enough that you need a vehicle to get there quickly?

[Oasis]

Very nice Reactor. I knew you'd improve on your idea.

Anyways, if I could make one suggestion. Also a bit of a question too:

If you were to add some sort of star that the planets would be "orbiting" around, to add realism to the space aspect, would they be blocko too?

And if so, will it act as a normal planet? Or will it be untouchable, like you'd die if you stepped on it? Or would it just be pass-through-able?

[GenaralSkar]

In the very original planets map, you went through the sun, but you would die if you did. So I think he would add the same thing if it has a sun.

[heedicalking]

You should make the stud ground have a blend of real ground too. Like a rocky texture with visible studs on it

[Oasis]

In the very original planets map, you went through the sun, but you would die if you did. So I think he would add the same thing if it has a sun.

You didn't die...

[rkynick]

Make some very large worlds.

Underground caverns?

This gives me an idea; meteor showers.

[Reactor Worker]

The main thing which holds me back from hosting with it is just the sheer time it takes for clients to download it, but it seems that they are on your priorities :D I would hope you will release this on RTB for even quicker download times.
Will this apply to all "worlds" or just the majority... I feel it might be nice to have one larger world as like the spawn world or whatever.

Yes, download time was a key issue with the original map and I'm trying to keep the size down. It probably won't be as much of a problem this time around as I won't be trying to use the massive planetary textures as I did before.

All of the worlds will be a fair size; large enough for a city, but not too large that people lose interest or it is too difficult to traverse. Moons and space station pads will be smaller of course. The current "Grass" planet you see in the screenshot is almost as large as the Afghani DM build.

I liked the fact that traveling from planet to planet you need a flying vehicle and it would take a long time to get to the just by jet. Are the worlds going to be far enough that you can easily jet to them, or are they still going to be separated enough that you need a vehicle to get there quickly?

The spacing won't be as ridiculously huge as in the original. It simply isn't practical and can lead to some odd issues (such as the interiors appearing through the side of the outer DTS shape). It will still be more convenient to take a vehicle to another planet.

If you were to add some sort of star that the planets would be "orbiting" around, to add realism to the space aspect, would they be blocko too?

And if so, will it act as a normal planet? Or will it be untouchable, like you'd die if you stepped on it? Or would it just be pass-through-able?

Having a sun in the map is a tricky goal to achieve. It was one of the objects I had the most trouble with in the original map. Ideally it would be an emitter, but this hasn't always worked so well in regards to performance. A DTS shape is an OK substitute, but doesn't really do much to improve the map. The other issue is that you can't really get rid of the sun visible in the sky but it looks and works much better. I may just swing for a DTS cube with a kill trigger.

You should make the stud ground have a blend of real ground too. Like a rocky texture with visible studs on it

That would make texturing more difficult, would require a much larger texture size, and would interfere with the illusion that the terrain is really made of bricks. To me that is a lose-lose situation.

Make some very large worlds.

Underground caverns?

This gives me an idea; meteor showers.

I'd like to avoid making the interiors too complicated as it makes adjustments more difficult and the chance of errors increases exponentially so caverns are unlikely. We'll see how we go...

I thought about having various kinds of weather events like meteor showers, rain, snow, etc. They'd be a great way of making each world unique and could break up some of the monotony of just pure sunny weather. I wonder if someone has the know-how to create some kind of physical zone that periodically spawns different weather events...

[TMAN7676]

Nice reactor, I loved the planets map, but could i make a suggestion?
There should be a Asteroid belt or something, like Our Solar System.
(should also be blocko)

[GenaralSkar]

Nice reactor, I loved the planets map, but could i make a suggestion?
There should be a Asteroid belt or something, like Our Solar System.
(should also be blocko)

This.

[Wehrmacht]

You should make the stud ground have a blend of real ground too. Like a rocky texture with visible studs on it

You should really rethink this.

[Reactor Worker]

Alright, time for an update. I've finalized my basic design for the Grass planet as seen below. I was initially going to add more detail to the surface, but I realized that the more detail I add, the less options the player has and the more complicated the interior becomes. My hope is that the 3 height levels and relatively small size will encourage some creative building. I will try and include some builds with the map that will have some interesting terrain ideas to inspire players whilst still leaving them room to be inventive. The second image shows 32x baseplates tiled to give you an impression of the size of the building area.




I'm not sure if having an entire asteroid field/belt is a feasible idea, but I'd certainly like to include at least one or two large asteroids for building on. I imagine some pretty cool bases/structures could be made in a hollowed out chunk of space rock.

I'd like to include some environmental effects in the map (such as snow storms on the ice world, meteor storms on the lava world, and perhaps some simple rain on the grass world but I don't have the skill to script it; if anyone knows how to periodically create those kinds of effects, isolated to certain regions of a map, I'd appreciate the help.

The "skybox" around each world is something worth discussing. In the original I just had an opaque DTS sphere enveloping each planet, colored as appropriate. This is an OK solution and is fairly easy to use, but doesn't look that great and it means you can't look off into space or see anything approaching the world. A day/night cycle would be interesting if I could find some way of altering the DTS shapes transparency via an animation. Perhaps it could be tied into a script somehow. The lighting on the interiors and bricks wouldn't change to match however. The alternative might be to simply not have a sky at all. This would allow players to see approaching entities, see the other worlds out there (which aids tremendously in navigation), and negates some of the claustrophobia that the skybox might create. If I went with that approach, the lighting of interiors and bricks would sit somewhere between daylight and night time...sort of a dim, subtle light.

[GenaralSkar]

What about something like a partially transparent DTS shape, so you would have the 'atmosphere' but you could still see into space.