DevTracker

[Grummz]

We'll do a store for t-shirts at some point. Just not right now as we're busy with the art demo.

 

[Ronyn]

Awww yeah

 

[Grummz]

I've been keeping this quiet, but I'm working on an unplanned, extra feature for the THMPR art demo in Unreal.

I was not satisfied with an empty grey plane to showcase the THMPR. So I've been creating procedural textures to create some ground cover for the upcoming art demo.
Since Em-8ER starts as a volcanic ice world, like the moon Io, I needed snow and ice.

Texturing has come a long way since Firefall and WoW. Using a program called Substance Designer, you can procedurally create almost any texture you want. It can be any resolution, and sliders can control how much it looks new or worn, rough or smooth, or any number of factors.

This is a snow texture I made for the art demo. No photographs were used. Everything is synthesized from scratch, using the nodes and connections you see in the upper part of the screenshot.

I find the whole process fun and addicting. Looking forward to making some ice to go with the snow next.

 

[Grummz]

Now I see what Maven means about the change in tone! Will work on it in future after we get more of the art demo working in Unreal.

 

[Grummz]

I had been thinking of star naming conventions and planet conventions when coming up with EM-8ER. I like the idea of coming up with the naming scheme. If I can, I will take your idea and perhaps simplify it so we can explain it quickly enough in a story form (NPC text, etc.).

I've been looking at the name EM8ER and trying to figure out exactly where we get the name. I did some digging to see what I could come up with. What I found is that a relatively microscopic number of stars are conventionally named, as there are billions of celestial objects out there to catalog and name. For the rest of those unloved stars, there are literally dozens of current naming conventions.

Take a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_catalogue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Star_Catalogue

Almost all of these appear to use the prefix for the particular catalogue followed by a number to designate the particular object. So my thought was that EM-8ER could be done exactly the same way.

EM would stand for the the catalogue name in the Crixa Universe, for example we could call it "Earth Measured Catalogue". This catalogue would list out the top 25,000 star systems most likely to contain Goldilocks planets as measured from Earth. It would have been produced when earth first unlocked the capability of sending colonies out to the stars, as having viable planets would suddenly have become much more important.

Since 8ER is a bit unconventional for existing cataloging systems, I had the idea that the listing could use base 36 (0-Z) instead of base 10 for its numbering convention, thus we would end up with stars EM-000 through EM-JAG. EM-8ER would therefore come out to EM-10899 if converted back into base 10.

EDIT: Technically EM-000 through EM-00S in this catalogue would actually be those already settled. Earth's star being EM-000 could end up being turned into some sort of in universe slang. Or alternately characters might be classified by a prefix of their star system, 0-S. Earther's might be called Zero's or Naughts, incidentally any character born on EM-8ER might be called Eighters (8'ERs).

The stars are ranked on viability, so those with proven goldilocks planets come at the front (000) while the stars least viable (of the top 25k) are ranked last. A rank of 10,899 would be at the 60th percentile in the list, which would fit with a planet with a viable yet deadly (poisonous) biosphere.

A part of the story might revolve around why someone would skip EM-00T through EM-8EQ which would have a higher viability, perhaps some sort of discovery or other event that caused a radical rethink on where to explore? Or perhaps a new technology that dramatically changed how viable a world needed to be before it could be colonized.

Ok so probably most people could care less about this, but I felt it would be a little tidbit of lore to make the game a little richer. It also might be important to have a convention if characters within the game want to reference other viable planets, given that the story revolves quite a bit around a sudden "goldrush" of planetary exploration.