SMAC(X) In Space - why stay planet-bound?

[AlexanderIII]

While thinking about the Star Wars mod under development, I got to thinking about terrain, and the fact that SMAC seems planet-bound.

But it needn't be so. In fact, with some creative alterations of the terrain files you could completely alter SMAC to be IN SPACE. That's right!

- Land could be defined as an open space, replete with stars for effect. Sea could be defined/viewed as a sort of cool interstellar nebulae, in which you need special units (Sea units) to navigate through its treacherous gasses.
- All chasis would be renamed to reflect different sort of interplanetary craft;
- rockiness in a square would be made to look like asteroids;
- Base graphics for each respective faction would look like a certain colored planet -- swirling green & blue vesuvian planets for Gaians, harsh moon-like planets for the Spartans;
- Base defenses now are called Planetary Defense Grids, and look very similar to the old rings around the base graphics;
- raininess in a square could be made to look like green specs -- organic interstellar dust ripe for harvesting;
- as for map grid lines in terrain, they would be lines of gravitational force -- so a deep depression on this terrain would look a bit like a black hole; going downhill or uphill is defined by the same token as gravity acting for or against you. Menu.txt could be changed to say 'Snap On/Off Gravitational Grid Lines';
- as for Orbital platforms,
Sky Hydroponics Lab --> Hyperspace Hydroponics Lab
Nessus Mining Station --> Hyperspace Mining Station
Orbital Power Transmitter --> Hyperspace Power Transmitter
Orbital Defense Pod --> Hyperspace Defense Pod
Basically, anything that took place off planet and out of range of the map before we now say that it's in hyperspace, as in the Babylon 5 concept where you can have bases, facilities and even battles in Hyperspace;
- Along those lines, techs Orbital Spaceflight and Advanced Spaceflight would be called Hyperspaceflight and Advanced Hyperspaceflight;
- Likewise the Missile chassis could be renamed HyperMissile, and Planet Busters would litterally live up to their name now, as bases are now planets.

The renaming of things is the easy part. All that's left is to completely redesign texture.pcx and ter1.pcx . Any other ideas about this, anyone?

[Patriqvium]

Sounds fun! Hope you can get it work!

[civman2]

Good Idea
Some old Civ2 mods have space graphics
look around

[Jasonian]

A lofty goal-- I am with you!

"farms" could represent stations to harvest that dust of yours. Soil enrichers could enhance the efficiency of the stations.
"mines" could mine the rocky asteroids. Easy.
"solar panels" could stay solar panals and just be in space!
"airbases" could be space stations
"roads" could be wormholes, and "mag tubes" could be better wormholes.

You would need a slew of new pictures, since none of the land ones work anymore.

Also, each time a new base is founded, a new planet shows up. How could you justify this?


If you need help on graphics, I could give it a try. I'm not a very good artist, but I have the programs to make work easy and fast.

[heardie]

Sounds Cool

------------------
-Chiron Creators-
"http://members.xoom.com/acchiron"

[SMACking]

An intriguing endeavor. Would you be so kind as to send me a copy of it so that I can help? Send it to me at To infinity, and beyond!

[SMACking]

An intriguing endeavor. Would you be so kind as to send me a copy of it so that I can help you test it? Send it to me at To infinity, and beyond!

[Ari Rahikkala]

Er... If somebody didn't notice it, this thread looks a bit funny.

So, SMACking, don't use HTML code, use UBB code: text URL in brackets.

And, if you don't want planets appearing "from nowhere", all you can do is to make seas the empty space and all land to planets, or maybe making LOTS of volcano tops to prevent building bases where you don't want them.

Posting to this thread needs hitting reload or enter in the address field.

[Urban Ranger]

[The display seems wacked out.]

Just some observations and questions:

1. What would forests be?

2. There wouldn't be a use for navy -- or rather, all units belong to the Navy -- and seabases.

3. Mindworms and the like could be creatures from Star Trek: doomsday machines, crystal entities, etc.

4. Some attributes make no sense: what would Planet do? How would it affect your ability to recuit space critters?

5. What about pods? How do you explain them?

6. What exactly would formers do? Raising and lowering terrain are out of the question...

7. Since "attitude" represents gravitational force, then attitude is either highest (or lowest) on top of a base (planet).

8. Energy collection should no longer be affected by attitude.

9. Some SPs continue to make sense (the Cloudbase Academy could become the Starfleet Academy) while others don't (Xenoempathy Dome, Weather Paradigm).

Still, you have a great idea. Keep working on it!

[zsozso]

I think continents should be considered planets, then sea being space is OK and bases remain bases on planets, or orbiting stations in space (sea bases). Of course, all islands/continents in provided map files should be roughly circular in shape.

Ships act as space ships, while air units could be considered travelling through hyper-space (that's why they can fly through planets, do not have to manouver around like normal spaceships).

Planet is OK, just it is now Galaxy and environmental damage is still a factor (you can pollute space too). Recruiting is OK too if Galaxy has some collective mind.

Pods are easy to explain, they are robot debris in space (remains of space-ships etc.)

Altitude can represent gravity strength, i.e. higher elevations are "heavier" planets with stronger gravity - makes sense with relation to size, because raising a square very high also increases the size of the "planet" (pulling out squares from the original sea). Then you can say, energy comes from exploiting the gravitation force instead of solar energy, then it makes sense that higher altitude gives more.

If we think about fungus as some kind of force field of the Galactical Mind which can exist in space as well as on the planets, then even Xenoempathy Dome makes sense (after appropriate renaming).

zsozso

[AlexanderIII]

You're right Jasonian, you would need to rework almost all the terraforming pictures, including all the terrain, in order to make it work. NOT a small endeavor, by any means, but well worth the effort, as it would be SOOOO cool to play.

As for 'planets popping up from nowhere', it doesn't matter if they do. All the player has to do is suspend disbelief after being told in the introduction that each square represents a possible star system, so, in effect, each sqaure has the potential of yeilding possible collonised planets. Your screen, your map is, in effect, a Battle Map -- and in any specialized map, whether indicating tourist attractions in downtown London or mineral deposits in the eastern Pacific, lesser important details will be left out, like not indicating all non-colonized worlds in this sector of the galaxy (your map). A lot easier than changing an entire graphics file to fill the screen full of 'planets', isn't it?

And I can't send anyone a copy because it isn't created yet. I'm still awaiting the arrival of my Photoshop copy to start in on this project. Helpers, anyone?

(just how did this thread get screwed up, anyway?)

[AlexanderIII]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 12-29-1999 12:52 AM
[The display seems wacked out.]

Just some observations and questions:

1. What would forests be?

2. There wouldn't be a use for navy -- or rather, all units belong to the Navy -- and seabases.

3. Mindworms and the like could be creatures from Star Trek: doomsday machines, crystal entities, etc.

4. Some attributes make no sense: what would Planet do? How would it affect your ability to recuit space critters?

5. What about pods? How do you explain them?

6. What exactly would formers do? Raising and lowering terrain are out of the question...

7. Since "attitude" represents gravitational force, then attitude is either highest (or lowest) on top of a base (planet).

8. Energy collection should no longer be affected by attitude.

9. Some SPs continue to make sense (the Cloudbase Academy could become the Starfleet Academy) while others don't (Xenoempathy Dome, Weather Paradigm).

Still, you have a great idea. Keep working on it!

1. Forests could be

2. Yes there would be a use for a navy. The sea, as I have indicated, could be a plasma cloud similar to that of a blown-out supernova. The map would only represent a "sector" of the Galaxy being fought over for dominance by the factions, because of the richness of resources in the area. The sea terrain graphic could be altered to look like a wacky blueish plasma, and would be called the Plasma Seas. As such factions would require special units to navigate through such perilous areas (sea units).

And as there would be no terrain 'elevation', we would call it 'low gravitation' for high terrain, and 'high gravitation' for low terrain. And so a Pressure Dome would still retain its name, because you would need one in order to retain base integrity in the Plasma Seas in such high gravitational fields.

3. Mindworms could keep their name, or be called Spaceworms.

4. Planet could be re-dubbed "Onemind" for the groupmind of the universe, or "Galaxy" if you prefer.

5. If you are referring to Colony Pods, they still make a lot of sense, and would remain unchanged. If you are referring to Drop Pods, essentially what they enable to do is "jump over" eight spaces on the map or so. We could call this Hyper Pods, or Blink Pods, to represent an ability that allows you to do small "jumps" through hyperspace (see previous post) and come out elsewhere. It would be a key spacefaring technology, and so could be resituated at Hyperspaceflight (Orbital Spaceflight) tech. While I'm on the topic of hyerspace, the Psi Gate faq could be renamed "Hypergate".

6. Formers would be able to shift the gravitational constant in the local area, hence altering the 'altitude' of the region. While on the topic of altitude, it would be a good idea to assign bonuses/penalties of 7% for attacking from higher/lower 'altitude' (translated as lower/higher grav. constant).

7. It does not matter at what 'altitude' a Base/Planet is, as there could be planets in any kind of gravitational condition, depending on factors like the planet's respective star type and its distance from the local sun.

8. In some ways I agree with you, but since that is an immutable rule in the game, we will have to find a way to make it work. One plausible explanation is that 'higher altitudes'/lower gravs serve energy collection better because there is no local gravitational field from which to interfere with energy collection. "Energy" in this case could be different things.

On land/space it is a local 'sun' (as each square is assumed to be a star system, colonized or not, every square has its own star supplying energy) 'Lower altitudes'/higher gravs would contain stars with a higher gravity, hence less bright in its enegy output; at the lowest 'land altitudes' we would assume stars to be similar to neutron stars yeilding very little energy if anything.

In the Plasma Sea, enegy would come from the plama, and not from prospective stars, as the likelihood of stars yeilding useful energy in the midst of supernovae remenants is unlikely (I guess, I am completely making this one up -- anyone know of the likelihood of formed stars in a supernova aftermath?)

And like I said before, an 'Orbital Power Transmitter' would really be a 'Hyperspace Power Transmitter' situated in hyperspace deriving its power from there.

9. I'm sure all the SPs could be made to make sense, with a little renaming, perhaps even a resituation on the tech tree (as the names of some techs would change too).

[AlexanderIII]

Oops I forgot forests in the last post.

Forests could be called Bioparks (sort of like a hydroponics lab with well-rounded resource extraction). That's a tough one, actually. No idea what it would look like though.

[AlexanderIII]

this is a test



Biopark Farm,                   
12, 3, EnvEcon, Disable,  Econ/Psych/Biopark

Hybrid Biopark,               
24, 4, PlaEcon, Disable,  Econ/Psych/Biopark

[AlexanderIII]

this is a test

Biopark Farm,                    12, 3, EnvEcon, Disable,  Econ/Psych/Biopark Hybrid Biopark,                24, 4, PlaEcon, Disable,  Econ/Psych/Biopark