Solar-Sim Devlog

Solar-Sim’s count of tracked Solar objects reached 100 today, thanks to the addition of moons for Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. More moons for Jupiter through Neptune will be added over the coming weeks.

For moons with currently unknown diameters, I’ve defaulted them to 5 kilometers. All moons added today use the “plain ol’ white sphere” as their 3D model, so they’re not exciting to look at… but they do appear in their best-known positions using the latest available data (thanks to the Cassini mission).

Of all of the outer planets, Saturn is the one with the most moons (40) currently in Solar-Sim. As stated above, more moons will be added and both Jupiter & Saturn will eventually exceed 50 satellites each.

Saturn isn’t properly tilted on its rotational axis right now, so its moons might not appear in their appropriate position with respect to Saturn’s ring system. Fixing this is on my “to-do list” as well!

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 and the webserver will both be offline briefly this morning for routine server security patching.

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).

As noted in my May 9 patch notes post, you can now use a command called /speed to adjust your ship’s flight speed.

/speed accepts a number as a parameter, such as “/speed 1000″. The number you specify is the number of Solar-Sim “units” your ship travels per second. Solar-Sim’s scale is currently set at 1mm:25km — meaning 1 Solar-Sim unit of travel measurement (a Multiverse “millimeter”) equals 25 real-life kilometers.

Using this information, it is possible to adjust your ship’s speed to the speed of light and test whether Solar-Sim’s scale is accurate or not. Here’s how you can duplicate this test:

The speed of light, according to Wikipedia, is 299,792,458 meters per second. Divide this number by 1,000 to convert to kilometers per second. Take that number and divide it by 25 to account for Solar-Sim’s 1:25 scale.

The final result from the above calculation is 11991.69832. Since the Multiverse platform doesn’t currently allow decimal/fractional speeds, we’ll need to round it up to 11992.

So, now that we have all of this information, we can do the following inside of Solar-Sim to test the speed of light:

1. Type “/warp earth”.

2. Use the A/S/D/F/Q/E and PageUP/PageDown keys to maneuver your ship to be touching the surface of the Earth and facing the sun.
3. Type “/speed 11992″.
4. Press the NUMLOCK key. This will cause your ship to move forward at a constant speed until you press NUMLOCK again.
5. Start your stopwatch and go grab a cup of tea while you’re waiting.
6. Stop your stopwatch when your ship arrives at the surface of the Sun. Apply plenty of suntan oil. I’d recommend SPF 10 million.

Wikipedia says light takes 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. How long did it take for your ship to travel the same distance?

For a much shorter test (no trip to the kitchen required), try flying from the Earth to the Moon. A beam of light can do this in 1.3 seconds.

I made some improvements today which allowed me to increase Solar-Sim’s scale by a magnitude of 4. This means all models now appear 4 times larger than before. Solar-Sim’s new scale is 1mm:25km.

At Solar-Sim’s new scale, it is still very easy to see our Sun from Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The Sun can be seen from Jupiter and Saturn, but it is difficult to find from Jupiter and extremely difficult to spot from Saturn. (The Sun is just 1 or 2 pixels wide when you’re at Saturn).

I was able to reduce your ship’s “in-flight turbulence” (for lack of a better term). In plain English: the further away from the Sun you get, the more your ship will appear to vibrate up and down as you move around. This effect is not intentional. I was able to reduce it by half, but it won’t be eliminated completely until Multiverse releases a server update to address this.

Last, but not least, I introduced a new command: /speed

You can adjust your ship’s flight speed at any time by typing /speed number, where the number you specify is between 100 and 30000. 1000 is your ship’s default speed. I “capped” this command at 30000 because at higher values your ship will start “rubber-banding”.

I timed how long it took me to go from the Earth to the Moon at a /speed of 150. It took a little over 2 minutes. Your assignment of the day: how long did it take the crew of Apollo 11 to travel from the Earth to the surface of the Moon?

Extra credit: if your Solar-Sim flight speed is millimeters per second, and 4 millimeters in Solar-Sim equals 10 real-life kilometers, what value would the new /speed command need to accept in order to simulate Apollo 11’s flight to the Moon?

Note: Due to today’s patch, your Multiverse client will automatically download some updated files the next time you connect to Solar-Sim.

As requested by John in the comments, here’s what you can currently /warp to. As this list will grow over time, I’ll add an in-game command or a web page where an up-to-date list may be retrieved:

Amalthea
Ananke
Apophis
Callisto
Carme
Ceres
Charon
Deimos
Dione
Earth
Elara
Enceladus
Epimetheus
Europa
Ganymede
Halley
Helene
Himalia
Hyperion
Iapetus
Io
Janus
Jupiter
Lysithea
Mars
Mercury
Mimas
Moon
Neptune
Pasiphae
Phobos
Phoebe
Pluto
Rhea
Saturn
Sinope
Sol
Tethys
Titan
Uranus
Venus

Happy /warp’ing!