[Noise]

Had an idea.  I was wondering if it was possible to make a "dark sun", no glare, nothing, just a black disk in space.  The idea is that I need something like this to simulate getting closer to a black hole by using the supernova SEXP.  Next question, can the "SUPERNOVA WARNING:? seconds" be changed to "EVENT HORIZON WARNING: ? seconds".

[Ashrak]

Gravitons (unprooved) move very fast so as soon as a black hole forms...your dead.....

[aldo_14]

IIRC, the engine treats black as if it was trnasprent when it comes to suns & nebulas..... so you'd have to try a very dark grey...

[Noise]

Ashrak - Well sub-space is unproven too, but for games sake we'll just let that one go.

Aldo - How about the "Event Horizon"?  I'm totally lost, but sure that it can be done.

[Solatar]

Go into strings.tbl and search for references to the supernova warning. Just change the text to Event horizon or something. I've changed loads of stuff in that table, sorta nifty.

Of course this would make it so it always said event horizon, but if you don't have a supernova in the campaign, then it won't matter.

[SadisticSid]

Originally posted by Ashrak
Gravitons (unprooved) move very fast so as soon as a black hole forms...your dead.....

Agreed, if you had a matter of seconds before coming into contact with the event horizon you wouldn't be able to escape the gravwell without enormous thrust and a very strong hull.

[kasperl]

i wonder, is there a point around a black hole where you can safily be, but if you go like 2 clicks further in, you're dead?

also, could 2 black holes exist next to eachother?

[Noise]

Well, for simplicity, we'll just call it the point of no return.

[Starks]

Originally posted by kasperl
i wonder, is there a point around a black hole where you can safily be, but if you go like 2 clicks further in, you're dead?

also, could 2 black holes exist next to eachother?

2 clicks???? Make that 2 lightyears.

(The blackhole should at least be the distance to Knossos 3.)

[Sesquipedalian]

How to make a black hole in FS2 (you need fs2_open for the $NoGlare part to work):

1) Make a black (RGB: 0,0,0) circle on a green (RGB: 0,255,0) background with no antialiasing in your paint program, and save it as blackhole.pcx (make sure it is 8-bit colour) in your effects folder.

2) Make another image, this one just all black.  Save as reduce_ambient.pcx in the effects folder.

3) Make an entry in the first part of stars.tbl like this:

Code: [Select]

$BitmapX: blackhole

4) Make an entry in the second part of the stars.tbl like this

Code: [Select]

$Sun: reduce_ambient
$Sunglow: reduce_ambient
$SunRGBI: -1.0 -1.0 -1.0 -1.0
$NoGlare:


5) In Fred, place blackhole.pcx as a background image (scaled to whatever size you want) and reduce_ambient as a sun.  Put them at the same co-ordinates.

Tada!

(Note:  You won't be able to see either of blackhole.pcx or reduce_ambient in Fred since they are both black.  In FS2, you'll get a big blank spot in the sky and lots of darkness.)

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by kasperl
also, could 2 black holes exist next to eachother?

Not for long.

[StratComm]

Yes they could, they would be orbiting around each other.  It's only if one gets inside the other's event horizon that you would have the swollowing effect.

[kasperl]

so, if you have two of them orbiting eachother, you could have a very small point where you could survive, and out of that point, you would die?

[karajorma]

If the two black holes had the same mass then the point halfway between them would have no net gravitational pull. (You can get the same effect with black holes of differing masses but it's harder to work out where the safe point is).

If the black holes were close to each other I suppose you could have a point where moving 2km meant certain death but before you got to that point you would start being pulled towards the hole more and more quickly and there is no way to get FS2 to simulate that.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by LLivingLarge


2 clicks???? Make that 2 lightyears.

(The blackhole should at least be the distance to Knossos 3.)

Astrophyiscists (Professional star gazers) say that black holes can have event horizons ranging from a few milimeters across to several lightyears.

Depends if you've found a baby one, or the Super-Mega-Black Hole at the centre of the Milky Way

[StratComm]

I suppose that you could theoretically.  It all depends on how close they actually are to each other.  In terms of Freespace backgrounds, there is either nothing to indicate that the two black holes are the same distance away, and since the things are many light-years in diameter (the event horizon of any sizable black hole anyway) then you arent' going to be close enough to one to really have issues with its gravitational effects.  Except that it would possibly generate a gravitational field large enough to support intra-system jumps several lightyears or more in distance.

[Sesquipedalian]

Exactly.  Which is what we... nevermind.  

[Setekh]

Originally posted by kasperl
i wonder, is there a point around a black hole where you can safily be, but if you go like 2 clicks further in, you're dead?

Define 'safe'. It also depends on how much you are accelerating and in what direction. For example, at a certain distance, you can have zero acceleration but be in a safe orbit around it. Closer still, your orbit will slowly deteriorate and you will eventually fall into the black hole.

If you're talking on a scale of 2 clicks, you have two alternatives. Let's call the further point "F", and the closer point "C". If you are completely 'safe' at F, you will only be falling very slowly towards the event horizon when you are at C. If instead you are guaranteed dead at C (ie. even light does not possess the speed to escape the gravity well), then when you are at F you will still be pulled very strongly toward the black hole. 2 clicks is a very small amount of space for black holes... you may just have to fudge it scientifically.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Exactly.  Which is what we... nevermind.  

Ooh.  Possible plot spoiler?

[Flipside]

Ahhh... we are all forgetting that Freespace 2 ships are totally immune to gravity in any form, so you could quite happily have a battle at the mouth of a black hole

As for having an image, yes, in reality it would look like a big black er..... hole  But it would be much nicer to have a more artistic looking one swirling gracefully round

Flipside