Camera

A few people have looked at our project and one thing has consistently bothered them. The camera

it doesn't feel right. Something about it just feels odd. It's far to jerky and it really sorta gives the project more of an analytical feel as opposed to an entertainment feel

I sat down to finally have a look at it after thinking of that for awhile. I decided that the camera needed to move more naturally. The best way to do that was rid the camera of it's jerkiness. Before if you rotated the camera or zoomed in or out it checked where the mouse variable was before and where it is now the difference is the speed. So the position would be updated on the speed. So if the speed was 10 then you would move 10 units. If the next frame your speed was 0 then you stopped. In this situation the same thing happens except once you stop it doesn't go to zero it starts to decelerate so it visibly takes awhile to actually stop.

This is more natural as only in a virtual environment can you jump around like that. In the real world everything needs to accelerate and decelerate.

Weather

What makes the grass grow? What gives trees and flowers the ability to breed

Weather is the current conditions as opposed to climate which is the atmosphere over long periods of time.

Weather is made up in the differences between moisture and temperature from one area to the next.

Most of our weather begins with the sun... because I want to avoid the sun as much as possible I guess I am going to have to make it up... dangit.

I guess I can just give it an assumed variable. You won't really see the sun moving or the light changing but we can give it a position and pretend that there is in fact a sun affecting the weather.

wikipedia provided this information information

Common natural weather effects

Air mass - A large volume of air characterized by it's temperature and moisture. Air masses gather their characteristics by where they are. ie over water it gets wet, over desert it gets hot.

Anticyclone - Opposite of a cyclone. As opposed to weather being pulled away from the surface air is pushed down onto it.

Arctic cyclone - An extremely large air mass found in the artic region that provides various weather effects depending on the season

Clouds - Clouds are a visible mass of water droplets

Crow Instability - Some small air effect. not of significance to our project

Drought - When an area has a deficiency in it's water supply that lasts for a period of months or years

Dust devil - Similar to tornadoes. What makes them different is that they form in sunny weather and are rarely strong enough to damage property or people

Dust storm - Strong winds cause loose particles to be swept up and carried. It's a sandstorm.

Extratropical cyclone - Some sort of basic weather formation... it apparantly helps to drive the weather on planets so more research is required to understand this phenomenon and to get weather working

Foehn wind - When wet air hits a mountain it tends to lose alot of moisture and get warmer. Foehn wind is the warm dry air created

Hail - Irregular chunks of ice created by thunderstorms and usually created on the very head of a storm

Hurricane - aka tropical cyclone. Very large powerful weather affects created by warm rising air. Excellent weather system and is defiantly going to be in the project

Lake effect snow - this is when cold air is blown across a warmer body of water. The air picks up the warm moisture and deposits it onto firm surfaces once it comes off the lake

Lightning - is a discharge of atmospheric charge usually found in thunderstorms but can also be created in volcanic eruptions and dust storms

Mesocyclone - from wiki "is a vortex of air, approximately 2 to 10 km in diameter (the mesoscale of meteorology), within a convective storm.[1] That is, it is air that rises and rotates around a vertical axis, usually in the same direction as low pressure systems in a given hemisphere"

Rain - Atmospheric water droplets eventually form together and fall back to earth this is known as rain and is a staple or weather and ecosystems

Sleet - This is a mixture of snow and rain

Snow - Same thing as rain except frozen into crystals. unlike ice pellets snow falls gently

Squall - Sudden sharp increase in wind speeds

Subtropical cyclone - A mix between tropical cyclones and extratropical cyclones

Supercell - The most severe thunderstorms, they are formed with a mesocyclone in the front and are one of the few cloud formations that may cause tornadoes. They also have severe wind, hail, and downpour.

Temperature inversion - when the gradient of temperature is revised. Normally going away from the earths surface the temperature goes from warmer to cooler. Inversion is the opposite and this causes things such as smog and fog.

Thunder - A sonic shock wave created by lightning

Tornado - Swirling wind vortex of death. Very powerful

Tropical storm - Similar to other large warm air based cyclonic effects... Probably going to move all of them into one category

Weather front - These are the boundaries that separate 2 air masses.

Wind - wind is created when the sun heats the air the air moves up and then more air moves in to occupy it thus creating wind.

Less Common Weather Affects

Diamond dust - Similar to fog except not a blinding and is created with the droplets being frozen and never actually water

Halo - the halo that can appear around the sun from time to time... who cares.

Light pillar - more stuff created by the sun... again who cares.

Raining animals - For seemingly no reason animals fall from the sky, usually fish frogs or birds

Rainbow - a sun based effect no one cares about

Sun shower - it rains while the sun is shining

Sun dog - bright spot on a solar halo... again no one cares

Thundersnow - snow instead of rain

Novaya Zemlya Effect - some sun effect no one cares about.

Thats a list of phenomenons. Going to need to go through them and study some meteorology in order to understand how to replicate some of those effect.

Terraforming

It's been bothering me for awhile.

The subject of terraforming is interesting and complex. Since we started the project I have been trying to think of ways to strike a good balance between blindingly simple and mind numbingly complex.

The issue with the terraforming is that a lot of a planets makeup comes from the system it is in and what sort of star it is orbiting.

I have to look at terraforming without the idea of having a star. It is simply assumed that the star the planet orbits is perfect for the formation of life.

Now the planet starts as just plain rock... In order for it to support life it must have a good balance of atmosphere, temperature and liquid water. The range has to be very good.

(The following is my dumbing down of the reasoning. please do not be upset if I'm a little general or inaccurate. This in no way corresponds to actual physics. merely it is a mockery of them)

Component	To Much	To Little
Atmosphere	To much atmosphere results in all planetary life being crushed and the heat going through the roof. Thing of it as like having 30 sweaters on in the middle of summer.	To little atmosphere and your planet gets cold. Not to mention water cannot exist properly. If there is not enough pressure than water boils at a lower temperature meaning at some threshold it will simply evaporate.
Temperature	This is easy to figure out. to much and the planet cooks	To little and water can't exist in a liquid state
Water	To much water and the planet becomes an ocean and can't support advanced plants and animals	To little water and the planet will be arid and unable to support plants and animals at all

So in reality the life sustaining of the planet is dependent on only 3 variables. Temperature and atmosphere. So the goal in the terraforming stage will be to get those into the proper range.

Obviously we will not get the variety of minerals and life by merely monitoring whether or not the values are in a correct range. The true fun and variety will come in playing with those ranges. So for example we have all 3 variables at the highest percent they can be. suddenly you have a planet that is hot and arid. There is plenty of water but it has difficulty moving around as the atmoshpere is to dense to allow the water to evaporate and create humidity.

Any thing that can be done to change the terra variables of the planet will affect all of them

Here are some of the things that will be made possible in order to change the planets

Meteors
Comets
Volcanoes
Earth Quakes
The addition of moons
Solar Winds

Thats the list as it stands now. the more I think about it the more I will be able to come up with. Although 6 different actions seem pretty decent to me. I can see there being one or 2 more at maximum

Another one

Started another blog. This one is going to be more focused on my work. I intend to write down ideas here regarding projects and the like I am working on. This idea was given to me by looking at my siblings blogs. I figure I can use this as sort of a journal of my own thoughts.

You are welcome to read but I don't know how interesting you will find it.

Sample

Working sample