Because the computer-generated images that symbolize said other planets are generally done with some shitty-shit stupid noise algorithm to generate the surface rather than anything decent (well, at least it’s not uniform noise), whilst the ones for planet Earth just use existing map data for the Earth surface.
As it so happens I’ve been working on a game that has planets, so here’s an example generated with better algorithms:
PS: also note that for game purposes, the athmosphere is unrealistically thick as a proportion of planetary radius, purelly because it looks better. A lot of choices in game making are mainly artistic freedom which at first people with a Science or Engineering background tend to shy away from “because it’s not how things are”.
do you have an algorithm for picking a photogenic angle for your game?
Nah, the planets are just shown as 3D objects in the game.
The little icons as the one I linked were made by a special game mode for development which I call the PlanetPhotoStudio that just lets me manually rotate the planet 3D object and take a snapshot. Since the planet surfaces are pre-generated using an external program (“Grand Designer”, highly recommended) and only some results are chosen, it’s fine to also make those icons during development time.
It’s actually less hassle to create a “photo studio” (especially since most of the work for it is also used in the main game) and do it manually for each planet like that than to try and come up with an algorithm for “how photogenic a 2D view of a planet looks”.
Because the computer-generated images that symbolize said other planets are generally done with some shitty-shit stupid noise algorithm to generate the surface rather than anything decent (well, at least it’s not uniform noise), whilst the ones for planet Earth just use existing map data for the Earth surface.
As it so happens I’ve been working on a game that has planets, so here’s an example generated with better algorithms:
PS: also note that for game purposes, the athmosphere is unrealistically thick as a proportion of planetary radius, purelly because it looks better. A lot of choices in game making are mainly artistic freedom which at first people with a Science or Engineering background tend to shy away from “because it’s not how things are”.
I think it’s also that we choose the most photogenic angle for earth, if you pick a random angle of earth it sometimes doesn’t look as good.
e.g.
do you have an algorithm for picking a photogenic angle for your game?
Nah, the planets are just shown as 3D objects in the game.
The little icons as the one I linked were made by a special game mode for development which I call the PlanetPhotoStudio that just lets me manually rotate the planet 3D object and take a snapshot. Since the planet surfaces are pre-generated using an external program (“Grand Designer”, highly recommended) and only some results are chosen, it’s fine to also make those icons during development time.
It’s actually less hassle to create a “photo studio” (especially since most of the work for it is also used in the main game) and do it manually for each planet like that than to try and come up with an algorithm for “how photogenic a 2D view of a planet looks”.
Good luck with the game! Sounds like it’ll be interesting
Thanks!
It definitelly looks nice, though the game play is IMHO what makes it fun or not.