Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Hudzy on June 28, 2002, 03:10:07 pm

Title: No Sun option
Post by: Hudzy on June 28, 2002, 03:10:07 pm
Maybe it would be possible to remove the necessity to have a star in mission. I always think it looks silly when you're in a nebula caused by an exploding star billions of years ago and there's still a star shining away in the system.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on June 28, 2002, 05:26:24 pm
em... aren't stars born in nebulas? or was that something esle?
Title: No Sun option
Post by: phreak on June 28, 2002, 05:31:42 pm
supernovae leave neutron stars (usually)
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Hudzy on June 29, 2002, 03:59:03 am
Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
supernovae leave neutron stars (usually)


I didn't know that. Oh well, learn something new every day :D But how about for missions that take place in a void of nothingness. The example I can think of now is in Dante's Ascension.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Redfang on June 29, 2002, 10:30:27 am
Agreed, though it could be a little too dark in a mission where there isn't a star. :)
 
And supernovae can leave black holes too, and they can't be seen anyway.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 29, 2002, 03:39:16 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Redfang
Agreed, though it could be a little too dark in a mission where there isn't a star. :)
 
And supernovae can leave black holes too, and they can't be seen anyway.

Well, for nebula missions a general lighting could be used, or the nebula itself could actually glow (though I suspect that would slow the game down a bit)
Especially if the Bobbau gets the lighting code working...mmmm, glowing Shivan ships ;7
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Killfrenzy on June 29, 2002, 04:26:56 pm
Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
supernovae leave neutron stars (usually)


Yes, but they're not that big! You still see the orange giant that's omnipresent in every mission! :D
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Galemp on June 29, 2002, 06:49:55 pm
Okay, here's the idea: in nebula missions, there should be ambient lighting instead of a sun, by default. The mission designer should be able to put a sun in if he wants, however.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: YodaSean on June 30, 2002, 12:06:11 am
can't you just make a really small star, or make your own star picture that looks like nothing?
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Reaper on June 30, 2002, 05:09:53 am
Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean
can't you just make a really small star, or make your own star picture that looks like nothing?


It's possible to make sun really small... In double size of a star you see... Not big, but it still shines as it was near... :)... I use that for my Deep Space Station in SS
Title: No Sun option
Post by: mikhael on June 30, 2002, 12:57:55 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Redfang
Agreed, though it could be a little too dark in a mission where there isn't a star. :)
 
And supernovae can leave black holes too, and they can't be seen anyway.


Um. No.

Gravitational collapse and supernova are mutually exclusive alternate events in a star's lifetime.

A supernova is a the violent shedding of a signifigant amount of a steller mass--and with it, the warping of local space-time it engenders. Post supernova, the star has enough mass to remain metastable for a while, as either a neutron star, white/red/brown dwarf, pulsar/quasar, etc.

A collapsar, such as a black hole, is pretty much the opposite. The warping of space-time around the star is such that a supernova could not occur. The star is too massive and cannot muster the explosive power to shed its outer layers. As the particles in the stellar body fuse into heavier and heavier (on the periodic table, not weight) elements, the star begins to lose the outward pressure that keeps it from collapsing. Since heavier elements fuse with signifigantly less energy with each step up the ladder they go, culminating at the iron limit, the star collapses in on itself to form a singularity.

Black holes are very unlikely to be found in nebulae outside of very dense stellar clusters, such as the center of a galaxy. In a nebula like the ones in Freespace, you're likely to find baby stars, in ones or twos.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: r0nin on July 01, 2002, 09:01:34 am
Gravitational collapse and supernova are mutually exclusive alternate events in a star's lifetime.

Huh?  I don't know where you get your information, but you are wrong about this.  In fact, a common result of a supernova is a black hole, and one of the first places that astronomers went looking for them was in nebulae.

Modern black hole theory estimates that any star more than three times the mass of our sun (the Chandrashekar limit) will still likely retain enough mass after supernova (which sheds only the outer layers of the star) to collapse into a singularity.  It's not the total amount of mass that causes the collapse (otherwise, most stars wouldn't exist in the first place), but the fact that the star no longer produces enough of a fusion reaction to withstand the already-present pull of gravity.  It is during this rapid gravitational collapse that the outer layers of the star are sloughed off in explosive fashion (that's the supernova) leaving whatever remains to stabilize into a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole...
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Unknown Target on July 01, 2002, 09:05:39 am
r0nin! You sly devil! What are you doinmg here:D:p?
Anyways, you're correcty, but, here's an interesting fact:
Some scientists have theorized that there may be donut-shaped black holes. If this were true, we might be living in a 5D universe.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Nico on July 01, 2002, 09:31:50 am
and this morning I ate an apple.
what about staying on topic pals?
That request, for me, brings another one I keep asking: the damn self illumination entry in the ships.tbl to be enabled for D3D. The first step for really cool environment lightning.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Raven2001 on July 02, 2002, 05:08:29 pm
Lightning??? Only have one word for you dudes: STARLANCER!!!! :)
Title: No Sun option
Post by: aldo_14 on July 03, 2002, 03:47:55 pm
BTw, what happens if you replace the white sun pcx with a straight black image (like the reduce ambient thing, with positive lighting)?
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Nico on July 04, 2002, 02:01:04 am
her... you don't see the sun's image, that's all. What are you expecting?
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Fineus on July 04, 2002, 03:03:59 am
Perhaps that the sun glow wouldn't register either - getting rid of that glow is one of the big tricks that I'd like to see happen... although there are more important things...
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Fry_Day on July 04, 2002, 07:14:23 am
Do you mean the glow, as in the semi-transparent glow like engine glows, or the flare that blinds your when you look at the sun directly?
For the blinding thing, I believe it's only commenting a few lines of code, from what I've seen of the source code
Title: No Sun option
Post by: aldo_14 on July 05, 2002, 03:51:15 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day
Do you mean the glow, as in the semi-transparent glow like engine glows, or the flare that blinds your when you look at the sun directly?
For the blinding thing, I believe it's only commenting a few lines of code, from what I've seen of the source code


no, having a non-visible source of ambient light - i.e. the same as having a sun, but without the sun r the resulting lens flare.

Actually, lens flare effects could be quite neat for very gright objetcs.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: IceFire on July 05, 2002, 09:57:47 pm
Lens flares would be great (the circle thingys).  And so would invisible lighting (whithout glow,flare, or anything except for the casting of a colored light).  And so would ND stuff in D3D as Venom wants.  Or lightmaps :)
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 06, 2002, 02:40:42 am
for the star thing try combining a really small star with a black .pcx
Title: No Sun option
Post by: TheVirtu on July 06, 2002, 02:42:10 am
Yes, I'd like to know how they did that in Dante's Ascension, I have an idea with it my campaign sometime :D
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Martinus on July 06, 2002, 10:14:47 am
Quote
Originally posted by Unkown Target
we might be living in a 5D universe.


Length, breadth, height, time and stupidity :wink:


Anyway, on topic; wouldn't ambient light look strange? Surely the light being in nebulae is a result of reflection and dispersal of light from stars in the nebulae? Just guessing though since I haven't read up on this kind of stuff.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: aldo_14 on July 06, 2002, 10:26:40 am
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor


Length, breadth, height, time and stupidity :wink:


Anyway, on topic; wouldn't ambient light look strange? Surely the light being in nebulae is a result of reflection and dispersal of light from stars in the nebulae? Just guessing though since I haven't read up on this kind of stuff.


Who cares?  Seriously, there's enough stars out there for some light, not to mention your own ships running lights, or any matter of 'stuff' you can make up to justify it..... a planet coated in fluorescent algae, for example :D
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Martinus on July 06, 2002, 11:00:52 am
Ooooohhh! There's a thought, complete blackness except for what your fighter's lights illuminate, you'd have to fly mostly by radar but it would look fantastic. Reminds me of bits of 'Event Horizon'.

You could put forward facing lights on the fighter, sorta like headlights on a car, it would be very atmospheric and claustrophobic. :nod:
Title: No Sun option
Post by: CptWhite on July 06, 2002, 02:44:04 pm
its easy to make a mission without a star, use a stars.tbl with an entry that does have the entry in the tbl you distribute with your mod, the result is no star at all just ambient lighting, the only thign you cant do is simulate nebula glow  or light sources from other objects without the "facing the sun" glow thing.....the option to disable this is needed
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 06, 2002, 08:25:10 pm
i like the idea of no light, so make a no sun option, like being in deep space, and only have bobbous running lights on. :) now THAT would be cool :cool:
Title: No Sun option
Post by: penguin on July 06, 2002, 08:37:26 pm
(maybe a little off-topic)  How dark is space?  Assume we're still in the galaxy, halfway between two stars.  How much light would there be?  Could you see a fighter at 1km?
Title: No Sun option
Post by: TheVirtu on July 06, 2002, 09:41:13 pm
A kilometer? Hahahah, I wonder if you could even see a few feet :)
Title: No Sun option
Post by: Martinus on July 07, 2002, 08:25:46 am
Since there is realitively little distortion in space (no atmosphere, low concentrations of dust particles) I'd say anything that's refelcting sufficent light would be visible over quite long distances. The amount of light would obviously be a deciding factor.
Title: No Sun option
Post by: penguin on July 07, 2002, 09:13:05 am
Could the human eye adjust to this low lighting?  Of course you'd have to turn your instrument lights and HUD down REALLY low or you'd be blinded by them...
 
And even if you couldn't see a fighter at 1km you could probably see the thrusters and lasers, which would look much brighter in the absence of other "light pollution."  So ships laying in wait could be almost invisible, but ones in flight or in combat wouldn't be.  Hmm...

They would still appear on sensors, though, unless there's a good reason for them not to...
Title: No Sun option
Post by: ##UnknownPlayer## on July 14, 2002, 01:22:24 am
This blends in with the idea of having a HUD projection of the wireframe of a ship to show enhanced imaging.

The thing is, if you were outside of the galaxy the result I would expect is that with no light around you you'd find that you'd see a whole lot of 'stars' that were actually other galaxies. It'd be the same as when you go out into the bush camping away from all artificial light and look up - its an amazing sky.