Solar-Sim Devlog

All of Jupiter’s known moons are now in Solar-Sim:

2003J10
2003J12
2003J15
2003J16
2003J18
2003J19
2003J2
2003J23
2003J3
2003J4
2003J5
2003J9
Adrastea
Aitne
Amalthea
Ananke
Aoede
Arche
Autonoe
Callirrhoe
Callisto
Carme
Carpo
Chaldene
Cyllene
Elara
Erinome
Euanthe
Eukelade
Euporie
Eurydome
Ganymede
Harpalyke
Hegemone
Helike
Hermippe
Herse
Himalia
Io
Iocaste
Isonoe
Kale
Kallichore
Kalyke
Kore
Leda
Lysithea
Megaclite
Metis
Mneme
Orthosie
Pasiphae
Pasithee
Praxidike
Sinope
Sponde
Taygete
Thebe
Thelxinoe
Themisto
Thyone

All 63 of Saturn’s currently-known natural satellites that have orbital information available via NASA are now part of Solar-Sim. Here is the complete list!

2004S12
2004S13
2004S17
2004S7
2006S1
2006S2
2006S3
2006S5
2007S2
2007S3
Aegaeon
Aegir
Albiorix
Anthe
Atlas
Bebhionn
Bergelmir
Bestla
Calypso
Daphnis
Dione
Enceladus
Epimetheus
Erriapus
Farbauti
Fenrir
Fornjot
Greip
Hati
Helene
Hyperion
Hyrokkin
Iapetus
Ijiraq
Janus
Jarnsaxa
Kari
Kiviuq
Loge
Methone
Mimas
Mundilfari
Narvi
Paaliaq
Pallene
Pan
Pandora
Phoebe
Polydeuces
Prometheus
Rhea
Siarnaq
Skathi
Skoll
Surtur
Suttungr
Tarqeq
Tarvos
Telesto
Tethys
Thrymr
Titan
Ymir

Remember: You can type /warp name (for example: “/warp titan”) to instantly arrive at any of them. You may be surprised to see some of these are pretty far away from Saturn!

Solar-Sim has been taken offline for routine server maintenance. When the server comes back up, I will be making some changes that require Solar-Sim to be taken offline again from time to time.

The biggest change I’m making this weekend is to Solar-Sim’s frame of reference. Solar-Sim currently uses an “Earth Mean Equator” frame of reference. I originally chose this because that was the only frame of reference available for the star catalog I used to build Solar-Sim’s starfield background. While this made the planets line up nicely with the constellations, flying around was a bit odd because the Solar System was essentially tilted 23 degrees.

The frame of reference is changing to use the plane of the ecliptic. This means I’ll have to reconstruct the starfield background, but your ship won’t have to be tilted as much anymore when you travel from planet to planet.

Another change happening this weekend is the appearance of some moons and planets will change. I’m conducting a review of all texture maps used by Solar-Sim, and any that are found to be copyrighted will be removed.

As requested by John in a comment post, a new command has been added today: /list

Typing /list all by itself will display a list of different categories of objects that you can /warp to, such as planets, asteroids, and moons (satellites).

Typing /list category will display a list of all Solar-Sim objects within that category. To see an example of how this works, type this:
/list saturn satellite

You can instantly travel to any of the listed objects with the /warp command!

The /warp command was improved today so multiple ships warping to the same object have a much smaller chance of ending up directly on top of each other. Your ship’s position will be determined by calculating a random point along an orbit 100,000km from the center of the object you want to warp to.

This orbital distance is larger for certain objects:

• Neptune and Uranus: 125,000km

• Jupiter and Saturn: 150,000km
• Sol (the Sun): 2.5 million kilometers

Your ship will automatically re-orient itself to face the object you just warped to. The only caveat with this is /warp won’t adjust your ship’s pitch. This means if you held down your right mouse button and moved your ship’s nose to face the North Star, and then you typed “/warp saturn”, your ship’s nose will still be pointed upwards at the North Star, as in the screenshot below.

Finally, the /zoom command gives you a little more help if you type “/zoom” all by itself. It’ll tell you that 2 options are available.

1. A simpler version, where you can type “/zoom in” or “/zoom out”. The “/zoom in” option will narrow your field of view and also slow down your ship. This allows you to see smaller objects better.
2. For experts, you can specify your own field of view by typing “/zoom #”, where # is a number between 5 and 45. Typing 45 is the same as typing “/zoom out”, and 20 is the same as “/zoom in”. Unlike the simpler mode, this option doesn’t automatically alter your flight speed… and you can narrow your field of view further than with the simpler “/zoom in” option.

The screenshot below shows what a field of view of 5 degrees looks like when orbiting Jupiter. In this view, you can see the Sun rather easily (if your ship is pointed at it). The Sun is very difficult to find from Jupiter when in the default 45 degree field of view; it is easy to miss among the starfield background.

Most of the updates made over the past few days to Solar-Sim were “behind the scenes” types of changes. Here’s a highlight of them:

• Fixed the /group command so if you’re grouped and you type /group with nothing after it, it doesn’t send a blank line to the group chat window anymore.

• Added /groupinfo command, which brings up the Group Information screen. A future update will bind this command to a hotkey (such as F2).
• Renamed “Combat” chat window to “TBD” (to be determined). I want to make this chat window go away, but Multiverse hard-coded the number of chat windows in several places, so this task will take more time than its worth right now. I’ll come back to it later.
• Started to investigate voice chat. I updated the server’s firewall so the voice chat server actually works, but I’ve disabled the default voice chat channel for now. The intended direction for this is group members will get their own voice chat channel (which is why I messed around with the group code).
• Added /help command. I’m not happy with the current format, and this may eventually change to pop up a window.
• Character names are now checked for uniqueness and profanity. This change consumed the bulk of the last few days, as Multiverse doesn’t ship with any code to accomplish this. 10+ years of running a M.U.D. has taught me this is a necessary feature!
• New player ships don’t spawn on top of each other anymore. New players are randomly distributed in an area very close to the Sun. A future change will likely expand this area so ships aren’t packed so closely together.
• 4 spacecraft are now tracked by Solar-Sim. These are:
  1. Deep Impact

  2. Stardust
  3. STEREO-A
  4. STEREO-B

  All 4 of these spacecraft currently share the same 3D model. Each spacecraft is shown larger than Solar-Sim’s 1mm:25km scale… otherwise they would be too tiny to see.

Much more work is needed in the area of groups and voice chat. I was hoping Multiverse’s code in this area would be OK as-is, but I’d say these 2 features aren’t production-ready yet. Chat channels could also use some TLC… the “Local” and “System” tabs you see in the chat window aren’t used for anything (again, this is how Multiverse currently ships).

Solar-Sim was updated today with the following changes:

• 4 new ship models are available in the character creation screen.
  

• Saturn has rings now!
  

• The starfield background now includes all stars up to magnitude 8.0. Brighter “yellow” stars were changed to a non-yellow color so they wouldn’t be confused with Sol.
• Removed “that object has no action” annoyance message when right-clicking on a Solar object. (A future patch will change right-clicking to display information about the object clicked.)
• Removed the “Stats | Inv | Group” window.

If you’re having difficulty spotting the Sun from Jupiter and beyond, you can type this new command to remove the starfield background:

/starfield off

The background stars can be turned back on again by typing:

/starfield on

Multiverse’s “Sample World” mini-map image has been replaced with an orbital map I created for Solar-Sim. This orbital map currently shows the orbital paths for the major planets and Pluto from Jan 1, 2009 through Dec 31, 2020. This means the orbits for Mercury through Jupiter are complete, but Saturn through Pluto’s orbits appear as arcs rather than complete ellipses.

The orbital paths for Saturn through Pluto will be completed after the mini-map has been successfully tested on various graphics cards. The Multiverse Client ran into “out of memory” errors when I tested various mini-map sizes. The one currently in Solar-Sim now works fine for me, but I’d like feedback from other testers before I put any more work into completing it.

The mini-map’s resolution can be changed by clicking the little “-” and “+” buttons in the lower-left corner of the map, as in the example below:

And here’s an example of how Solar-Sim screen currently looks with the new mini-map. Click on the image to view a full-size version.

(Please note that as this screenshot was taken from the Demo version of Solar-Sim, the final version when Solar-Sim “goes live” will look different).

The /warp command has been updated today to allow spaces within object names. This means it is now possible to “/warp Tempel 1″ or “/warp 90377 Sedna”.

All major planets and natural satellites are identified in Solar-Sim by their proper names, which consist of 1 word (so no spaces needed in the /warp command).

Dwarf planets and asteroids are named according to their official designation, such as “90377 Sedna” or “99942 Apophis”. The /warp command now lets you warp to them with either the full official name (e.g.: “/warp 99942 Apophis”), or a simpler alias which has the number omitted (e.g.: “/warp apophis”). Pluto is the sole exception to this, as it is the only dwarf planet in Solar-Sim that doesn’t have a numeric designation.

Here’s the list of dwarf planets and asteroids currently in Solar-Sim, as of today:

• 5535 Annefrank (alias “Annefrank”)

• 99942 Apophis (alias “Apophis”)
• 1 Ceres (alias “Ceres”)
• 136199 Eris (alias “Eris”)
• Pluto
• 90377 Sedna (alias “Sedna”)

Warping to comets is a bit more complicated, as comets are typically named after the person(s) who discovered them, and each discoverer may have found multiple comets. To reach these solar objects, you’ll need to specify the comet’s number. Each comet will have an alias that doesn’t require a slash.

Comets currently in Solar-Sim:

• 1P/Halley (alias “Halley”)

• 9PTempel 1 (alias “Tempel 1″)
• 103P/Hartley 2 (alias “Hartley 2″)
• 81P/Wild 2 (alias “Wild 2″)

All of the above, except for Pluto, currently appear in Solar-Sim as a plain white sphere. These will be replaced by more realistic-looking models in the months ahead.

Many more asteroids and comets will be added to Solar-Sim. Requests are welcomed, with preferential treatment given to objects that will be visited by space probes over the coming years. The comet Hartley 2 is a good example, as it will be visited by the EPOXI mission next year (October 2010).