🚀 go-pugleaf

Ross Ridge <rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Ross Ridge <rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> looked up from reading the
>>In the original Starflight (which was ported to the Commodore 64) you
>>could land of lots of distinct planets.  
>
>Xocyll  <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote:
>>Yeah and those planets were full 3d representations that you actually
>>entered the atmosphere of, getting lower and lower while the details got
>>higher and higher?  Why am I thinking not?
>
>Yes, that's exactly what happened in the game.  Graphically it's not
>all that impressive by today's standard, but back in 1986 it was really
>amazing.
>
>>For an accurate representation of an asteroid, you would need a heft
>>GPU.
>
>For an accurate graphical representation even todays computers can't
>render an asteroid perfectly.  For gameplay purposes, you could do a
>wireform representation with all sorts of crags, bumps and whatnot that
>you could land on using computers that are over 20 years old.

Except I'm not talking about wireform.

>>Well since it's hypothesized that they're the result of the breakup of
>>larger objects (moons and planets) and we know how things look when we
>>blow them up, that's not much of a stretch.
>
>We don't *know* that's true in every solar system.  By your own arguments
>asteroid could be formed in completely different ways in other places
>in the Universe.

Gee Ross, why do you think I used the word "hypothesized" and the "not
much of a stretch" phrase?

>>We can assume they'd be similar.  We can't assume that every system will
>>behave exactly like ours does, since we know there are multi-star
>>systems out there.
>
>Hold it, why do you get abritrary decide what must be same and what
>can be be different?  Why does something as fundamental as the laws of
>physics get to change, but not how asteroids are formed?
>
>If I can't say your idea of asteroids is unrealistic because I can't
>possibly know what asteriods are like in another solar system, then
>neither can you.

Except Ross, your whole argument for how asteroid BELTS are was based on
YOUR imagination of what I thought asteroid belts looked like, something
that was completely false.

>>I don't think the buying public would be too interested in a space-sim
>>type game with unicorns and gummi-bear asteroids though.
>>Since you bring it up I'll assume you would be.
>
>No, it was an example of how ridiculous your argument is.  You haven't
>actually tried to justify this asteriod idea of yours as being something
>that anyone other than yourself would actually want to have in game.
>You've only tried to justify it as being more realistic, and by your
>own arguments space unicorns that shit out asteroids is just as realistic.

I put it forward as an example of something that could be done now in a
Privateer type game, that couldn't be done back in the day.

The X-Games (BTF, 2,3) show that there is a market for that kind of
thing, since in X2 etc you set up automated mines on asteroids as well
as various other factory complexes and Privateer was all about doing
your own thing, not rigidly following an on-rails story.

For that matter EVNova also had asteroid mining and even had a
specialized asteroid mining ship (although it was a top down 2d game and
you didn't actually land on the asteroids you blew them up and captured
the pieces.)

>>But how nice to see you're going to just declare it pointless and never
>>actually answer the question of what the hell were you thinking when you
>>went off on this ultra dense asteroid field business and ascribed that
>>as my wants when it's the exact opposite.
>
>As I already explained, I incorrectly assumed that you were talking
>about a gameplay idea which couldn't be implemented on PCs available ten
>years ago.  

Except the ultra dense fields, formed randomly and disappearing when
you've stopped looking and reforming when you come back that you talked
about are EXACTLY what they used 10 years ago and more.

>I also incorrectly assumed by realistic you ment something
>that resembles what we know is real rather than something that we can
>only imagine exists.  

Really?  I say realistic asteroid field and you start talking about
ultra-dense Hollywood style fields with collisions every minute or so.

How is that YOU assuming that by realistic I meant realistic when YOU
start talking about something that you argue would be totally
unrealistic and would totally preclude what I specifically mentioned?

You misread what I wrote (or didn't read it at all), leapt to a
conclusion and started arguing furiously about something that no one but
you thought.  When corrected you just dropped it without ever admitting
what you did, and here you are doing it again.

>You don't need a lot of computing power to draw a
>single asteroid on screen, and if more than one asteroid is visible on
>screen at a time then the asteroids are massively more dense than could
>naturally occur in reality as we know it.

Really you don't need a lot of computing power to draw one highly
irregularly shaped asteroid that's rotating in 3 dimensions and
following a specific orbit that will be changed by your ship firing on
it to clear a spot to land?

I'm assuming by asteroid density you're actually talking about the
density of the asteroid field here not the density of a particular
asteroid.

Why exactly couldn't you have one up close and another one or two on
screen off in the distance, miles away, yet still visible to the naked
eye/scanner?  

There are going to be asteroids out there that aren't heavy mass
objects, being made up of lighter elements only (so the gravity
interactions would be minimal.)  A very large silicon asteroid would be
very light (mass) and also catch what little light there might be making
it visible.


And Ross, if you're saying HERE that "You don't need a lot of computing
power to draw a single asteroid on screen," and at the start of this
message that "For an accurate graphical representation even todays
computers can't render an asteroid perfectly."

You don't think there's a middle ground in there somewhere?
A detailed asteroid as perfect in graphics and physics as we can make it
with modern CPUs and GPUs.  
Something of a detail level that would be totally impossible to do 10
years ago, or even last year.

I'd like to have a little more SIM in my Space-sims.

>Seriously, what point do think there is in continuing to discuss whether
>or not your idea of asteroids are realistic or not?  I could point out all
>the factual errors you've made, try to clear up all your misunderstandings
>about physics and space, but what's the point?  Everything we actually
>know about the universe is compelely irrelevent because you've declared
>that things could be different.  You've declared that even the laws of
>physics could be different.

I haven't declared anything Ross, you're the only one making blanket
statements here.  All I said is we haven't been out of this system so we
CAN'T KNOW that the conditions observed here hold true out there.


Two words Ross, Dark Matter.

Our theories of the universe don't work unless we introduce this
invisible undetectable kludge to explain why the figures don't add up.
We have no proof dark matter exists, it's a theory to explain the
anomalies in the observational data that DON'T fit our "laws".

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr