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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Moon cycles
Wlgenroosje
Member
So with the recent livestream intrepid showed us the night sky and some of the moons. I wonder if these moons have all different moon cycles. If so, I think it would be really cool to have like special events and/or game effects with the different moon cycles.
For example:
Every moon would have a calculable cycle and every moon would have a different effect or event depending on a specific position in the sky. Like maybe for every moon you can have a different sun eclipse.
where the sky darkens like night time or changes color. So moon 1 eclipses the sun and certain plants have a higher change of dropping high grade material. Moon 2 eclipses the sun and crafting improves 5%. moon 3 eclipses and higher monster spawns etc. Maybe even a combination of multiple moon positions with a special event. With this many moons I'm sure the events can be timed so that it isn't to frequent and feels special every time.
And to add to that you can build a planetarium in a scientific note that shows the moon cycles and shows when the next eclipses and/or other planets and other moon combinations would be.
For example:
Every moon would have a calculable cycle and every moon would have a different effect or event depending on a specific position in the sky. Like maybe for every moon you can have a different sun eclipse.
where the sky darkens like night time or changes color. So moon 1 eclipses the sun and certain plants have a higher change of dropping high grade material. Moon 2 eclipses the sun and crafting improves 5%. moon 3 eclipses and higher monster spawns etc. Maybe even a combination of multiple moon positions with a special event. With this many moons I'm sure the events can be timed so that it isn't to frequent and feels special every time.
And to add to that you can build a planetarium in a scientific note that shows the moon cycles and shows when the next eclipses and/or other planets and other moon combinations would be.
3
Comments
Too bad Intrepid doesn't have a community dev stuff... we would make systems for free and for paid money of course or even for subscription time
I'm not familiar with programming sadly. Can you tell me why a programmer would need to work that long on fixed moon cycles?
Then you would have to do all those things for every effect the moon will bring on every region, item, mob, events, etc
Since the moons would influence in a lot of stuff, then you would have hundreds of small tasks to complete
Also, not all systems are created, so sometimes the moon dev would have to stop what he is doing and do something else and wait for the other guys to complete their tasks too. So moon guy would work on other moon related tasks
tl:Dr The Ground is a shaped (flat) landscape, The moons are Either low or high poly (slices) spheres with textures (i'd assume low rather than high since you can't land on them new levels would be better for moon areas anyway than a large sphere). So generally you make the texture rotate for a moon, you don't make the sphere & your sure as hell don't make the flat landscape. You have can objects & textures it go on a X, Y, Z access (Single or overlapped often with noise maps to imitate clouds/atmosphere) or move from a local set position in an orbit on a BP rotation (orbiting a sphere not a landscape - Flat shaped land) depending on code/coder e.t.c e.t.c e.t.c. So you main issue is the lighting when it comes to moon cycles because lighting is what causes shadows, Generally lighting is single source Skylight with added postprocessingvolume & I assume skyatomsphere on the landscape rather than separate ones for the moons they probably just used a second slightly larger sphere & put a opacity/Emissive glow texture on it (so it glows all angles), rather than a niagara glow which often is for more single angle use, but not limited to. So those are the main issue, then you need to know moon cycles, then you need to code all factors keeping in mind that single light soruce: Skylight (Ctrl+L to change direction) Is going to interfere with whatever you do as its constantly giving light even in the dark, causing bloom if you don't adjust your skybox settings e.t.c.. (Also lighting maps HDRI e.t.c.). ~ This is getting to long, I'll be showing something similar on twitch this week (Mars moons/cycles UE5) anyway if you want to know more.
tl:dr it wouldn't take a year it'd just take the whole set of knowledge of each contributing issue, mainly the moon cycles themselves.
if you just want to code a cycle to a date & skip the rest the majority of the problems with lighting & shadow, then its much easier. ~ Also the best way to add comets.
Let's assume four moons, and the rarer the eclipse, the more powerful the power of the eclipse. When more than one moon eclipses on the same day, the impact of the eclipses are multiplied.
Use prime numbers, starting with 7:
Moon 1 eclipses every 7th day - very weak impact for that one.
Moon 2 eclipses every 11th day - somewhat stronger impact.
Moon 3 eclipses every 13th day - moderately strong impact.
Moon 4 eclipses every 19th day - strong impact.
Every 77th day moons 1 & 2 would both eclipse and their impacts would both be quite stronger, perhaps with another impact happening.
Every 247th day (13x19) moons 3 and 4 both eclipse to large impacts, plus something else.
Rare occasions would find three moons eclipsing - really weird stuff happens! When all four moons eclipse, woah Nelly lock the barn door~~~!
There ya go Arya, I did a week's worth of your work in less than ten minutes for ya.
So the way I was thinking was when a moon textures coordination (x, y) overlaps with sun, cover both texture with eclipse texture. And then just turn night time lighting on. Doesn't seem that complicated to me this way
I believe it is complex, my friend
Let me explain myself, moons have different orbits, different speeds, they are at different distances from the planet, so how will they generate eclipses?
They shouldn't be together in the sky at night in most cases, in most cases you will have 1-2 moons together since they have different orbits, distances from the planet and different speeds
It is a mistake having 3 moons together at night
Also, how will the three moons affect the light during the nights while have 0 to 3 moons in the sky and while having different light effects?
Then there are all systems that will be influenced by the moons and possibly constelations too, will mobs be affected? will spawns be affected? will potions and events? etc
Every new feature for sure will take a day of testing, implementing and documenting, at least a day if the implementation is small
So, for a full system with a few hundreds of conequence, it would take a year
If there's barely any implementation I still think that the whole thing would take a good 6 months
There is also other tasks that will be locked by other devs, so some systems will be developed on top of prototypes and listeners which weren't even implemented... so you can't fully test the whole thing
The moon system with all its effects plus possible relation with constelations is a dragon to be tamed for sure
Off the bat, it is a gross mistake having 3 moons in the sky at night... when the system is finally implemented and it's a good system then it should have 0 to 3 moons being in the night or during the day
We could see the moons moved when Stephen time forwarded in the stream, this is very promising!!!!
Maybe the devs will fully implement a good system, seeing that gave me hope
Three moons in the sky at night is unpassable, it's unforgivable if the game is launched like that, for now since it is alpha and it's just a showcase it's fine... but we gotta monitor this and demand a proper system... making the moons move it's how a good system should be started but in the final version they should NOT move in an even way