Planet surfaces

[weylin]

Ok ok, I'm sure you are all going to say "NOT POSSIBLE!" or "CODE CHANGE!!!11"

Rather than having docking rings place you on a planet directly... what if a dockign ring put you within a sector like the one with the massive nomad wall, only instead, it would look like planet terrain and buildings, and the landing pad would accually be a station with no visible doors, just a docking point above it.

Think about it, might allow for some cool roleplay possibilties, not to mention just being plain cool to zoom around inside the city.

When you dock at said landing pad, THEN you would enter the planet sequence.


Also, is it possible to skip the jumpgate animation that this would initiate? Or change its effect to look like planetary landing?
And can a the mooring ficture act as a gate as well?

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[Stormblast]

It would be cool, but there would need to be totally new models of planets (cityscapes or planetscapes) because the most of the current models looks 3d only from a certain point. (e.g. when you land on the Manhattan you see only the fronts of the buildings, and the back isn't made.
And those new models need to be huge so you could explore cities.

[weylin]

might be a consideration to just do it to planet manhattan alone, or maybe just home planets or somthing, and add them gradually in future updates.

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[Stormblast]

Yes, but in-game you don't really dock to the planet, you dock to the docking ring, and the base is located in the ring not the planet.
Its the same as docking to a station or a dockable battleship, the only difference is the model used to represent it. (In the animation and the deck, bar, equip. room, etc. not the space model)

[Chipz19]

I was thinking about this some time ago. But the coding and creation involved to create such a thing would take a long time and alot of effort.

It would be great fun though.

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Currently Piloting:

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Bean

[LN]-Fergus.Walsh

[HF]-Peto.Gonzalez

[Tenacity]

this would be much more difficult to do with 'big city' style planets. You should probably start with something that has generic, flat-ish terrain - maybe something like pittsburgh or cali minor.

Perhaps a planet should be added to the connecticut system with this feature, so that we can schedule some "atmospheric battle" events?

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[Dab]

I would never say that planet surfaces are hardcoded. I have contemplated making new surfaces so they look better.. But I'm too lazy. Anyway, what you suggest would take roughly 3 times as much time to make as a full solar system.. And we'd have to do that for EVERY planet. You go waste a year of your life if you want it that bad..

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[Tenacity]

that's why I said we should only do it for one or two planets in order to schedule "atmospheric fighting" events.

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[weylin]

what he said :X

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[Linkus]

I'd be against this. Unless things have changed, our ships would be affected by gravity and thus would be handling completely different etc near the planets. Not only that but to make a good town or city, a lot of polygons are required that tend to end up numbering over what Freelancer likes to render.

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