Update#60 : Yeah NEXT STEP

I'm almost ready to toss those mud-caked shoes, but not quite yet. I'm finally satisfied with the generation of primary planets. The value ranges are acceptable, the density ranges are according to design, the resources are designated according to design... it's just all finally fine. What's next is finishing with the whole of the GENESIS Project* by adding moons and asteroids. I could move on since some usable planets are created, but most planets in my universe - just as the real universe - are what we would consider giants... and giants are exciting because of their many moons! Asteroid belts too! With their various asteroids and sneaky little dwarf planets pretending to be asteroids.

I've been hard at this for a few days, as you may have noticed it's taken a bit longer to finish than what I projected in my last post. Hopefully it won't be the same for moons&asteroids; again, projecting 1 week to finish, but can't make any promises. On the bright side, a lot of the work for those was already finished along with the main planets (like density and resources, which were surprizingly complicated!) so all I have to do is quickly figure out how the moons and asteroids will be scaled and placed; and unlike planet formation I will not be picky AT ALL about how big they are. Considering how big Earth's moon is compared to Earth, while most of the moons of the giants are small asteroids... moon size can be practically anything!


The night is close enough to over, so I'm going to relax for the rest of it. Good night!


*All of this world-building tool-making is a whole sub-project of the greater UNIVERSE Project, because it's taken about 3-4 times longer than expected to complete. Some of that time was my own fault and ineffectiveness, but the rest is just the usual things-aren't-going-as-expected project progress. Ultimately, I think it will end up being between 1/4 and 1/2 of the total project time taken, once it comes time for Open Beta. Thus, it is the GENESIS Project.

Update#59.8 : Out of the Muck (ALMOST)

Just as I finished muddling with equations and getting sample solar systems, making the backup of that and then heading here to make an excited update about it... it suddenly hits me that my planet formation scheme - while giving nearly perfect results for a star which is approximately like our sun - will not scale properly, and will actually produce exponentially larger/smaller planets as the stars change in size mass when actually they should have a linear relation to the star's mass.

I almost made my friday deadline for this, but I forgot a detail. Also, I had some RL stuff to do away from the computer.

I'll probably be busy tomorrow, but the day after will be dedicated to fixing this one last little thing. All of the hard stuff is finished, and I know already a couple ways to fix this little processing oversight; it's just a matter of figuring out which will be best/easiest and applying it. Once it's done, I'll probably get away with 1 day fixing resource allocation scheme (because planets should never have negaive values for resources, oops!), and then I'll need up to a week to finally make moons and asteroids.


I'm looking into getting some things done to improve my design center/web server machine here (mainly a reformat) to improve machine efficiency and therefore my working efficiency, since I need to reload browser pages often and it's a bit slow on that task. Also, I may or may not acquire a spare computer from a nice friend of mine, which would then allow me to have a dedicated web server machine.

I think I can see, realistically, a bit of test-level gameplay starting in about 1 month.

Update#59.7 : Detour? Detour.

Last night I was quite determined to at least finish refining the equations for Protoplanetary Disk #2 ... I have done that, and am pretty well satisfied. I did not unfortunately get to investigate the Disk#1 equations because all the rechecking and editing took hours longer than I expected for #2 .. but now, I at least have a comparatively simple equation to work with, and I fully trust its values and behaviour. The greatest value in this right now is, I have a frame of reference with which to compare and refine the more complex equation. I hope and expect to have it fully taken care of over the next 3 days. Then, moons and asteroid fields, another (hopefully) 3 days or so.

I don't remember if I've said it recently, but after all this creationism I'll be making the new map-viewer systems so that all the new stuff can be seen and manipulated. Also, I'll need to have the map workings clear in my mind for when I start adding players assets, as they'll have to show up on the map as well.

Update#59.6 : Oh Bother..

I found the center of my main issue is in the one place that I didn't want to have any issues ever again... the Type1 (aka original) mass band equations. Now that I'm looking at them more closely, they seem to be producing strange values that don't make much sense to me.... and yet I've been able to use them to make planets as they were designed for so it seemed like they were working perfectly fine... ?!

Figures... The day that I planned to have fully finished all of planet formation, I have to take a trip back to where it began... At least it's not going to be a total rebuild; the logic is all fine, I just need to fix some magnitudes and re-tweak some things accordingly.


Revealed : The mass of planets and stars in UNIVERSE is actually directly related to real masses in the universe. Resources will probably be in units of metric tonnes. Planetoids are all measured in PMU (Planetary Mass Units) which is approximately 1PMU = 3x10^18 kg. The unit of mass for stars is Jupiters, which doesn't sound very scientific but it's actally a very practical unit.

The lowest theoretical mass for a hydrogen-fusing star (and a dim red dwarf) is around 75 Jupiters. Our Sun's mass is approximately 1000 Jupiters. Large stars which are measured in 'solar masses' for convenience can then easily be converted to 1000's of Jupiters.

Update#59.5 : Challenge Failure

I did not complete the whole genesis process by the end of this weekend as planned. There was the density redesign, and now I've found a massively horrid bug in my main planet mass calculations... I'm seeing the old equation was actually producing values grossly larger than it should be, and the new one is making similarly under-sized mass values... neither one is working quite the way it's supposed to!

Strangest parts about it are... the new equation is so simple that I can't understand how there's anything wrong at all, and the old one showed to be working according to the right 'pattern' which is one of the reasons why I never questioned it. WEIRDNESS.

I will keep working hard tonight and tomorrow to get to the bottom of this and fix it.

Update#59.4 : Clawing My Way...

In order to 'properly' implement multiple possible planetary formation equations, I need to rearrange a chunk of the code.

Also, the planet density method I was using before was very forced and arbitrary just to make a Sol-like solar system form; I want something a little more 'natural' and variable and automated, so I'll waste some more time making that happen.

Do or don't, I'm not sure that I'll get everything I want done in the next 50 hours; but I'll certainly be trying.

Update#59.3 : Digging Deeper

After doing a little research to remind me of a few things, along with a lot more experimentation, I've made a good lot of progress, but there's still a bit more to do that I wasn't expecting.

The main primary-planet formation process that I've been working on, I'm pretty much calling it done ... but then I found/realized/remembered that I need to make a secondary but simple planet formation pattern. It will not take nearly as long to develop, probably just a day or two, really.

Basically, the two patterns:
1) similar to our solar system, small rocky inner planets and larger outer giants
2) giant inner planets...

#2 is a common planet system formation that's been discovered; there may be smaller rocky outer planets in such systems, but current instrumentation and measurments have not been able to detect them. Will UNIVERSE have them? I don't know yet but probably not. Don't worry about resulting planet populations, this 'loss of planets' should be offset by the fact that most or all giant planets will have a population of moons which are just about as good.

Update#59.2 : Partial Satisfaction

I finally have a satisfactory formation of the inner planets. Now working on outer planets.

Note: The website is currently inaccessible from the internet, but since there's nothing to play yet then that doesn't really matter anyway.

Update#59 : The Foot Goes Down

I'm setting a stiff goal that I'll be working pretty hard toward, after having the last few days 'off' with an out-of-town friend visiting, and more time lost due to illness.

By the end of this upcoming weekend I want to have all of the basic system creation fixed and finished.

It seems like it's going to involve a lot of experimentation, lots of time sitting, and ... well just lots of time, really. But I'm so determined right now, because this is taking too long! Just like all of you, I want this game.

Update#58 : Thinking.. Time.. Thinking Time..

The last few days (but not all of the days since my last update) I've been busy with an out-of-town visitor and friend, delaying the final development and refinement of planetary genesis... it's not all bad though; getting out is good, stories made and shared, and also the afk time is good for figuring out things that I might not have otherwise considered.

What I ultimately mean by that is... my main 'current' challenge about forming planets the way I want them, I had a mildly unfavourable way to fix it that I was considering when my friend got in town, but I have since come up with a few 'better' possible solutions, which I will likely be testing tonight and/or tomorrow.

Update#57 : Coordinated Perfection

First of all, still sick.

As I was finishing up that previously mentioned bit of planet formation, I ran into a little issue of... the planets weren't forming at all as I expected they would. The idea was, for a sun-like star, there should be a few small inner planets and then a few gas giants... what I got was one or two small planets (usually one) followed by a massive super-jupiter planet, followed by a bunch of dwarf planets.

While thinking on this problem, I had a moment's distraction that made me realize that I was missing an important consideration with my coordinate validation system; I was missing a piece required to support both 'relative stationary' and 'geo-stationary' orbit positions. So, I had to go back and look at it again to add this little detail. I realized then that I could improve the code in several ways, while also incorporating the new little extra... so I did. It's done now. Not only did I fill in the gaps, but the total validator code size was reduced by about 1/2, and that half is also purely a more efficient and capable; that will make a big difference on a busy server.

I still need to do a bit of final testing, but it's pretty much finished; I have faith in my work! Then I can go back to fixing planet formation, which I don't expect will take long. I have an idea how to fix the planet formation; once that is out of the way then I'll add on moons and asteroid fields.

Revealed : Fleets will be able to choose whether they hold a relatve orbit around a planet, or keep geo-synchronous orbit over a point of the planet.