Bizarre Phantom Red Moon Planet

A planet with no traits keeps showing up on my maps and in my games

from GalCiv3 Forums

For a while I've noticed that some of the planets in my games have a peculiar red moon, yet none of the planet arts have a red moon.

 

I am working on a mod where all planets have traits, and all planets are extreme, and all traits have HUD icons. I changed <PlanetTraitLikelihood> to 100%, and <ExtremePlanets> to 100%, and was testing using only a single planet trait (with an icon). When generated using both the map editor and the game itself, approximately 1/4 of the planets on the map have a conspicuous red moon and have either blue or green 'oceans.' These worlds apparently have no trait, and no HUD icon. The oddball planets are usually in systems with another, normal (trait-bearing) world.

 

This suggests that:

  • something in the code may* be generating traitless planets and circumventing the normal planet generation system. Could this be some kind of system to balance out the proportion of habitable worlds?
  • The 'art' for those planets may* not be one of the XML-defined arts. Could it be a built-in default art?

Can anyone else confirm this? Both of these would represent modding limitations (albeit obscure ones). It would be great to be able to modify or circumvent them. Does anyone have any suggestions, other than the obvious?* 

 

Thank you!

 

*I say 'may' because I am aware that I may also have an odd planet trait or somesuch buried in a third-party mod. I continue to look for one, but I have a hunch that isn't what is going on, so I thought I'd ask.

18,079 views 14 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

UPDATE: It now appears ALL randomly generated planets in my game are using the non-existent 'red moon' planet art!

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The red moon is Mars  used as a moon I do believe.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 2

The red moon is Mars  used as a moon I do believe.

 

Ok, that is intersting (I think it may be too red, but whatever), but where is the PlanetArt? How do I override it? Any idea?

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Its actualy Iridian moon. Look in PlanetArtDefs and search for :- MoonSurfaceTexture

There are actualy a few modifiers that effect moons:

    <MoonModelFile>gfx/planets/planet_globe_with_seams.sdf</MoonModelFile>
    <MoonEffectFile>gfx/fx/sm4/compiled/Planet4.fxo</MoonEffectFile>
    <MoonSurfaceTexture>Moon_Iridia.dds</MoonSurfaceTexture>
    <MoonRadius>3</MoonRadius>
    <MoonRotationSpeed>0</MoonRotationSpeed>
    <MoonAxisTilt>1</MoonAxisTilt>
    <MoonOrbitRadius>45</MoonOrbitRadius>
    <MoonOrbitSpeed>-0.2</MoonOrbitSpeed>
    <MoonShadowBuffer>0.1</MoonShadowBuffer>

I am guessing but I think the MoonEffectFile will effect the color. (I cant see anything else that would)

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 4

Its actualy Iridian moon. Look in PlanetArtDefs and search for :- MoonSurfaceTexture

 

Thank you, I'll check into that.

 

I'd still like to figure out how to shut off these random worlds that don't have traits. If I can't, my mod will live. But it would be nice!

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I do not think you can shut off no trait planets. Atleast I could not find a way when I tried a few months back.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 6

I do not think you can shut off no trait planets. Atleast I could not find a way when I tried a few months back.

 

Muchos gracias! I will probably just take your word for it and move on. I will change that moon, though. :)

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Took a deeper look into the PlanetArtDefs, I think you could remove the planets with not traits. But, it will take alot of the randomness out of galaxy generation. Will require you to remove or add a trait to the GenericWorld Art defines. I do not believe the schema will allow you to add more than one trait to a single art define to keep the randomness in there.

 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 8

Took a deeper look into the PlanetArtDefs, I think you could remove the planets with not traits. But, it will take alot of the randomness out of galaxy generation. Will require you to remove or add a trait to the GenericWorld Art defines. I do not believe the schema will allow you to add more than one trait to a single art define to keep the randomness in there.

 

Oh, I see what you mean... giving a trait the same name as the generic art defines... I don't know that that will work, because I suspect that the random generator picks a planet, decides if it will have a trait (random chance based supposedly on a percentage), THEN accesses the appropriate PlanetArt. If it were otherwise then the relative abundance percentages would be a field in the PlanetArtDef, not the PlanetTraitDef. I might be wrong, though.

I'm pretty sure if you take the GenericWorld PlanetArtDefs out it will crash, but I haven't tried it. I was just trying to set the % of planets with traits to 100%. If that doesn't do the job, it seems to me that part of the game is dysfunctional (not 'broken' because it does not effect game play). I was hoping that the Red Phantom Planet would lead to the secret of why planets without traits keep sneaking through, but it looks like it won't. Boo!

I don't think it would take randomness out of the galaxy generation routine to remove the generics if you add a lot of planet traits with their own varied PlanetArts. There are only a handful of GenericWorlds: replacing each one with a trait (so, what 5-6 new traits) will effectively maintain the visual diversity of worlds in the game. Frankly, having half the world in the game with a red moon isn't very diverse at all. Further, the planet traits are designed to allow for more visual diversity than is actually there (since most fields can have multiple options), so simply making PlanetArtDefs more varied could also preserve diversity.

And no, you are right, there has to be a one-to-one correspondence between PlanetArts and PlanetTraits. I don't see how that would be a problem. You could have a trait Generic World1-5, a trait GenericWorld6-10, etc. I guess I don't see a problem.

 

Thanks again! It is really great to get all this information from someone who has been there already. I will be sure to put a thank-you in the mod!

 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Setting the Trait value to 1.0 (supposedly 100%) in the map xml doesnt actually make all planet have traits, I even set it to 100 and it acted no different to 1.0. i am confident though the Randome no trait planets come from them Generic planets, if you added a trait to them you kind of tricking the generator into using planets that have traits. (If there are no defs for blank worlds it has no choice but to use one with a trait :) )

 

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 10

Setting the Trait value to 1.0 (supposedly 100%) in the map xml doesnt actually make all planet have traits, I even set it to 100 and it acted no different to 1.0.

Ok, that confirms my suspicions. Like I said, I wonder why it does this.

 

Quoting Horemvore, reply 10

f you added a trait to them you kind of tricking the generator into using planets that have traits

I will try this when I get a chance, and let you know if it works. :)

 

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 10

if you added a trait to them you kind of tricking the generator into using planets that have traits

 

I tried, this didn't work. :(

 

I can confirm that the red moon planets can be accessed in the editor as "Good Planet," "Great Planet," "Fantastic Planet," and "Perfect Planet." At present, there does not appear to be a way to turn them off. :(

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting General, reply 12

I can confirm that the red moon planets can be accessed in the editor as "Good Planet," "Great Planet," "Fantastic Planet," and "Perfect Planet." At present, there does not appear to be a way to turn them off.

 

Removing the 'generic planet' arts does not, repeat does not, eliminate the red-moon planets. They are not keyed to the planet arts at all, apparently. One interesting possibility: I haven't thoroughly tested, but it appears that removing the generic planet arts may reduce the proportion of red moon planets. It may simply reduce the incidence of generic planets other than the red moon planet...

 

 

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

UPDATE: The "red moon planets" appear to be a series of planet arts that are indeed hard-coded (i.e., not in the .xml files). They appear to be referenced in some of the planet definitions, e.g.,

<Planet>
<InternalName>PlanetKona</InternalName>
<DisplayName>Kona_Name</DisplayName>
<PlanetType>Habitable</PlanetType>
<PlanetClass>5</PlanetClass>
<DisableColonizationEvent>true</DisableColonizationEvent>
<ArtDefine>TempOKPlanet07</ArtDefine>
</Planet>

I assume that the random planet generator is using these hard-coded planet arts rather than the generic arts in the regular .xml files. I'm not sure if this explains why one cannot have 100% planets with traits (i.e., 0% generics), but it is a start.

 

It would be swell if this were fixed in Crusade so that we can mod ALL of the planets.