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Author Topic: Feedback - Planet Aesthetics  (Read 387 times)

Sendrien

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Feedback - Planet Aesthetics
« on: August 03, 2023, 08:01:54 AM »

During my survey/exploration playthrough, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful some of the Gas Giants in the Core Worlds are. Their colours are vibrant and their atmospheres give them "individuality".

In contrast, Gas Giants outside the Core Worlds are very uniform in appearance, apart from their size.

Why not increase the range of possible appearances when the world is being generated? Part of the joy of exploration is sometimes finding a unique looking planet.

I noticed this the most with Gas Giants, but I'm guessing that my suggestion could be applied more universally to other planet types as well, especially those with atmospheres.

Edit: Good examples would be Chaxiraxi, Chijoraji and Melikah.

« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 08:13:22 AM by Sendrien »
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Alex

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Re: Feedback - Planet Aesthetics
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2023, 09:18:32 AM »

Procgen does try to make some things a bit more special! To that point, Chijoraji is actually a procedurally generated planet (it should be in Magec) and would not be there in every game. Not to say it couldn't be better, and I'll keep it in mind! But in general it's just fundamentally not going to be as good as stuff that was hand-made by David.

I suppose the way to do this would be something like a bunch of hand-made presets, hmm...
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Sendrien

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Re: Feedback - Planet Aesthetics
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2023, 09:43:42 AM »

Procgen does try to make some things a bit more special! To that point, Chijoraji is actually a procedurally generated planet (it should be in Magec) and would not be there in every game. Not to say it couldn't be better, and I'll keep it in mind! But in general it's just fundamentally not going to be as good as stuff that was hand-made by David.

I suppose the way to do this would be something like a bunch of hand-made presets, hmm...

Yeah, I play around with the appearance of my planets manually in the save file, so I know that there are some parameters that procgen uses to vary the look of planets. I don't know if you've set very restrictive limits on the variance there, or if my current seed just happens to have very uniform looking gas giants. But perhaps there is some benefit in having wider variance?

And yeah, hand-made presets could be interesting, as well as potentially having a few different looks for the textures of planets.

As far as all of this can be done with low effort, I contend that they add a lot of immersion value to the exploration experience.
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Alex

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Re: Feedback - Planet Aesthetics
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2023, 09:49:25 AM »

But perhaps there is some benefit in having wider variance?

Perhaps! But if you have wide random variance for a bunch of different values, there's a good chance that much of what comes out will still be "average"; something striking requires either lots of luck or an artistic touch, I think.
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Liral

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Re: Feedback - Planet Aesthetics
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2023, 05:09:21 PM »

Procgen does try to make some things a bit more special! To that point, Chijoraji is actually a procedurally generated planet (it should be in Magec) and would not be there in every game. Not to say it couldn't be better, and I'll keep it in mind! But in general it's just fundamentally not going to be as good as stuff that was hand-made by David.

I suppose the way to do this would be something like a bunch of hand-made presets, hmm...

If procgen resized the already hand-made presets for the Core Worlds, the player could enjoy the beautiful artwork and maybe not even notice. ;)