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...have planets not show up on the radar?
As I stated in the topic, I would like to know if there is a way for a spöb not to show up on the radar. I am busy making planets with multiple landing locations but when I look at the radar it looks... Well not quite what I was hoping for. So yes, if anyone could help with my problem it would be greatly apreciated.
@sp3cies, on Apr 25 2006, 03:53 PM, said in Can I...:
I don't recall any way to make a planet invisible on the radar, but you can obscure it with other spobs.
They way I read your post, I gather you have a large planet with various locations on it. Is the radar looking like a jumble of badly aligned planets?
I think you'll have to align the locations in the same spot so the radar looks like 1 planet. The player can select the different locations by using the 1-4 keys.
Alternately, if you really want the landing locations in different places, you could make the planet an unlandable stellar, and have smaller, invisible landing locations classified as stations. (You'll probably want to change the landing STR#s then.) If your planet isn't too big, the station radar dots should mostly be contained within the planet radar circle.
1. Yes, the radar looks like a jumble of badly aligned planets.
2. I have more than 4 ports.
3. The planet is big but the minor planets still show up around it. If the planets showed up inside the circle that would be fine too but they seem to float outside of the bigger planet giving the impression of lots of planets. Setting them as a station doesnt seem to help either.
@sp3cies, on Apr 25 2006, 10:53 AM, said in Can I...:
The Polycon TC for EV:N has two planets that stay invisible until you buy a certain item to see these planets. So, it might be possible to do but I honestly do not know how.
You have given me hope.
@crow-t--robot, on Apr 25 2006, 04:58 PM, said in Can I...:
Polycon does it by hiding the entire system with a visbit. When you do not have the item (A cloak scanner) the visbit is set so that there is an empty syst. When you do get the item, the bit changes. Something like that would not work for this proposal.
Humpf.
Use offset spobs. Make one spob image in the planet of your choice. Copy/paste it into as many different pictures as required to make up the number of spobs that you intend to use, Make each one the same size- this is important. Then make each picture only show the area that it needs to show. In the syst resource, place them all at the same x-y coordinates and they should all have the same size in the map and show up at the same place and be individually selectable by clicking.
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This may be a brilliant way to have it work. Are sure the engine is going to handle the spob's picture the way it has to be to pull this off, though? It would mean it has to center the pict with the given coordinates according to the center of the unmasked picture but allow selecting only the part that shows after applying the mask.
It would truly be brilliant if it worked. Still a good thing to test even if it doesn't. I am half expecting success and half expecting something like the engine messing up with selection because of overlapping graphics as it would if the masked part was not masked at all. Or simply not selecting one of the spobs if it is completely within another spobs unmasked and/or masked area. Using the presets 1-4 to select would be a way around this but this allows only for four landable "stacked" spobs.
Trying is the only way to find out..
You'll be able to click on each one individually but the selection brackets will always appear around the entire planet. So it will work, it'll just look a little odd.
But did you test that? I have a faint memory of messing around with spobs with same coordinates and their selection was totally screwn up if my memory isn't failing on me. If you're saying the selection brackets considers the whole pict then doesn't the engine consider that the same way as well when you try to select and reacts weirdly because it can't really guess which you are clicking, because, after all, they are all the same size and at the same coordinates.
@darth_vader, on Apr 25 2006, 05:41 PM, said in Can I...:
Oh, my mistake sorry for raising false hopes.
Offset spobs (from the graphic center) works with regard to the radar, but I don't believe it works is space when you try to land. (this is what Mumbling Psyco is getting at, I believe.)
See, the center of the spobs are all at the same coordinates, and so Nova has trouble picking the closest spob to land. In such a case, I believe Nova will pick the lowest ID to target. This will cause problems if you have more spobs than you can choose from the 1-4 number keys. As only one spob is selectable via distance, the others would need to be selecatable via numbers, and if you have more... causes problems.
I stand corrected if Nova calculates based on distance from the masked areas, but I believe it calculates from the coordinate location.
This post has been edited by Desprez : 26 April 2006 - 02:54 AM
No worries Crow T. Robot.
Alright rmx256 I will try what your saying tonight and see what happens with both 4 ports and more. On top of that I am going to try something else that you gave me the idea to do which is something like what you said. ( I however wont mention it incase it makes me look really dumb) :S
Thanks
This is something that I've been meaning to try myself for quite some time. For now I just have 'city' sprites on top of the main spob which is listed as unselectable.
Alright I just found some spare time so I tried some stuff out. I started with just two halves which worked fine I could select both of them by clicking on them I however couldnt select the second one from a distance. I then tried quarters, in this I could only select two pieces by clicking and the other two had to be selected by the 3 and 4 keys and whenever the whole planet was in view the framerate went down. I then tried six pieces just to check it out and like with four pieces I could only select two by clicking or four by hitting the number keys. The last two were inaccessible.
EDIT: I tried moving each piece of planet one pixel out. This allows all pieces to be selected by hitting the land key so that works. I also happened to look at the landing image when one hails the planet... looks quite off.
You say you have city sprites on top of your main spöb... do you have the same messy radar as I do?
This post has been edited by Sp3cies : 26 April 2006 - 06:50 AM
I do, but I also am using moons in nearly all of my inhabited spobs- the moon is listed as a planet type so it has a proportional circle on the radar. The city is a station so it only has a dot. By careful positioning the moon's circle obfuscates the city's dot. Even when it does not I don't mind a dot labeling a port on a planet. It is only realy messy in the Semma'akheru Qab system, which has eleven spobs, seven of which are inhabited.
Alright, I eliminated a couple of ports and put the remaining ones closer to the middle they are now contained by the main planets circle. Its a pity but I guess thats the most practical solution to the problem. If the sprite is small enough it doesnt have to be a station to make the small dot. Thanks for the help anyways.
What are you using to indicate different cities? I am using round flashing indicators at the moment because everything else is looking really out of place but that might just be my bad photoshop skills.
I've used a few different things- I was using a specific sprite for each city type, government and size but I am running into a few walls (max file size and max number of spob types). Right now they're just stylized representations of cities from space at night, I think Greece highly reduced. In the long run I've not decided what they'll be- probably a form of the outfit picture for a plot of land or the determinative of place- an X in a circle.
Rmx256: make them look like crop circles. /nod