image-name convention/mechanism? (+ custom pics)

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

Not a gameplay mechanic, rather nuts-n-bolts mechanical question.

I'd like to add some images for chunks and planets, maybe some races as well.

Assuming the game selects appropriate images by a naming convention, what are the rules to this code?

M#   Methane world? mediocre?
O#   Gaia planet, oxygen atmosphere. O for optimal? or excessive O2?
o#   low oxygen or carbondioxide atmosphere? or oxygen without water?
b#   toxic or barren places of moon or above size, terrestial.
a#   copies of b# images, confirmed for moon chunks, planetary chunks use b#.
gg#  gasgiants.
ast  Asreoids, comets.
h#   Hot world.
ha#  Hot world with atmosphere.

These are my best guesses.

I'd also like to submit a request for separate comet images, suggest co#.
I've yet to terraform a planet, does the image update automatically in accordance with the altered atmospheric conditions?
I'll know in short order whether adding images with the name : cyphernumber+n will use the additional images.

-
Arnoud

edit: O# and o# are the same group, probably, the numbering is continuous.
edit2: removing any planet images causes a crash at first system generation. this bodes ill for adding to the images, feels like hardcoded filenames.

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

yup ].jpg).
I added a bunch of rocks and planet images to the filefolders, based on the conventions mentioned above, they are not used in system generation of a newly created game.
The files can  be replaced and custom images can be manually selected, but not automatically.

A request to Steve:

Could you perhaps add something like the filename selection rules I dreamed up?
Or if that is too much trouble for now, can you add some extra placeholder filenames in the various categories?
(If you do that, please also add separate image for comets as well!)

-Areyar

p.s.
I got a bunch of additional (crudely edited) images taken from googleImageSearch, scienceDaily, www in general.
Mainly of chunks and planets, but also some additional race mugshots.
They are not all exactly square, but I did my best using paint.
(photoshop would have been so much easier and better, but my master PC is indisposed for now)
I'll post them in a folder on photobucket.

[Steve Walmsley]

The selection of planet images is as follows:

Asteroid: "Ast.jpg"
Gas giant or Superjovian: "gg" + random number from 1-10

Terrestrial and Chunk:
If Atmospheric pressure > 20 then "ha" + random number from 1-6
Else if Temperature > 500 then "h" + random number from 1-3
If Oxygen present then
If hydro extent > 85 then "O" + random number from 1-7
Else "M" + random number from 1-23

If none of the above applies then "b"  + random number from 1-19

Also small moons are  "a"  + random number from 1-10

Steve

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

Hey, thanks man.

Nice to see that I was not too far off.
Could you expand the random number range of all (xept b#) with a bit for the next version?
(and expand the image archive with a bunch of duplicate images for stand-in)
(better would be a txt file in the images folder, that aurora would read to find the range of image files)

I renamed my new chunk files to a1-10.jpg, but it throws a runtime error 53, file not found.
Odd.
I can only blame my crude editing as the cause, because I replaced all a# files before with a copy of a1 and that worked as expected.
Does aurora demand a certain dimensions?
Ah. yes it does. 150x150=ok, 105x107=e53. Oddly default b9 is [100x99] and that seems to work.
edit: yup. I edited the filesizes to be square and a multiple of 5. I'm probably more conservative that required, but that fixes it.

Now I have all my moon-chunks looking like chunks of rock. Only chunks in planetary orbits look like b# moon.
Maybe dwarfplanet or planetoid would be a better name for some larger 'chunks'. but then my chunkhunting will have been in vain.
If you want to use these in your games, you'll need to manually replace existing files with these.
edit3: hmm . i think i'll upload a zip at a later time. photobucket has you dl onefile at a time i think.

[waresky]

*edit* Post moderated.

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

*edit* Post moderated.




--
I need to add that these pictures are not my property, but by various artists and scientific groups.  At any rate their quality has been (intentionally) severely reduced from the originals, to the point of thumbnails in fact, so these do not constitute full works of art.
As they were freely available from google image and public sites, (and locking image download is easy to do) I consider these to be under creative commons or fair use policy.

[waresky]

*edit* Post moderated

[Trueknight]

Nice pics Areyar! Good finding. I'll probably use some of them for my game, thanks!  

*edit* Post Moderated

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

Some more planets were added today.
under descriptive names in stead of guessed filenames.

+++
*edit* Post moderated
+++

Drat.
I edited my extra racepics to square dimensions. Au uses 215x175.
for future reference: flags use 490x variable.

[Erik L]

The "offending" post has been moved to bugs. The vitriol has been exised.

Play nice. I direct you to rule #2.

Archive attachments are enabled board-wide (now), so any ace, gtar, gz, rar, tar, zip file should be attachable to a post. Just don't upload anything you would not show to your mother, sister, or priest.

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

Thanks for the excisening, my patience with people being rude on forums has been wearing thin lately.

When I got a plug and play series of images ready, I'll be sure to use the archive function.

[praguepride]

I created a pic pack for the sol system, didn't realize these were here.

What I'm wondering is if it's possible to permanently attribute sol system planets to a specific picture. I understand that this is a game crasher if the pic isn't there, but as long as the error displays the missing pic name, i can always copy ANYTHING into that name and get things moving again.

Also, perhaps in the opening options it'd be nice to be able to expand the list of numbers if you've added pics. For example, you can have a 100 different H# pics, so why should we be restricted to only 6 (or whatever it is).

It'd be awesome if the picture name was extended by 1 letter. This would allow us to have 100 Gas Giants and HA planets

OR

Change GG and HA to just G and (B perhaps)?

Using the stuff from above...

If Gas Giant:
RNG 1-99 -> G##

Else If Chunk
RNG 1-99 -> C##

Else If Asteroid
RNG 1-99 -> A##

Else If Terrestrial
-If Atmospheric pressure > 20 then
-RNG 1-99 -> Y##

-Else if Temperature > 500
-RNG 1-99 -> V##

-If Oxygen present then
--If hydro extent > 85 then
---If temp > 0c then 0##
---else if temp < 0c then P## (for ice planets)
--Else "M" + random number from 1-99

-EIse If Oxygen NOT present then
--If atm < 1 then B## (for barren, thin/no atmosphere planet)
--If atm > 1 then T## (for aTM's but no oxygen, this would be pics of planets with atmospheres)

Finally, if it can't find anything, R## for random

So, in conclusion:
A## for asteroids
B## for barren terrestrial (Mars, Titan)
C## for chunks
G## for gas giants
M## for earth
O## for ocean
P## for ice planets
T## for non-oxygen terrestrial planets with atmosphere between 1-20
V## for volcanic or super-hot planets (Mercury)
Y## for super-high ATM's (Venus)

And I'm assuming that VB has some sort of "try/catch" block where you can intercept errors. It would be awesome if it can dynamically limit the RNG based on the files present in the folder, but if not, then you could catch the "image not found" error and either re-run the RNG or just hardcode it to R01 for example.

[Erik L]

Closest thing VB6 has to try/catch is On Error Goto.

I could see that working, set your "random" number in the error section to 1, and resume.

[praguepride]

On a side note having a default "planet not found" image would keep the game from crashing when someone points it at an invalid picture.  (so long as they don't remove the default pic)

[Commodore_Areyar (OP)]

If there are going to be changes to the planetimage selection method,
I'd like it if there was a new cathegory for methane worlds. Also changing M to B for barren, and then iceplanet F for frozen.

Some possible ideas for exotic planets.... inhabited world : citylights on nightside. shipyards in orbit. etc
Sulphurous atm = yellow world. (+red for molten sulfur oceans.)
boron atm = red/brown atm...or was that bromium? I think it is
Nox atm. = red/brown
chlorine atm = bright yellow green.
methane = blue green, like Uranus.