Planetary Databases

Huh?

A planet is a complex little rock. It can be a gas giant, a livable planet, an overgrown asteroid...something the size of a moon...whatever! But when you're trying to play Robo on a planet with no details about what it is, then how are you really going to play at all? The planet database, and the planet viewer...and the planet creator are all organized on how to create and view a fairly detailed planet. The problem, which you can already guess, is how much detail do we put on one of these things?

• File format

  • planet name
  • tech level
  • capital city
  • rings start
  • rings end
  • climate
  • ave temp
  • pole declination
  • lenth of day
  • diameter of planet
  • type of atmosphere
  • gravity
  • population
  • number of moons
  • Moon List
    • moon info per moon

  • orbital distance from center of solar system
  • orbital declination (how far off the solar plane)
  • City List
    • name
    • X
    • Y
    • population
    • is there a spaceport here?
    • is it bounded?
    • is it coastal?
    • major industry
    • agricultural radius
    • slope of economy (waxing/waning)

  • Grid Data
    • there will be 10,000 grid squares, which is an average resolution of 100 x 100, or 50x50 at the poles, and 50x100 from temparate to temparate latitude, I'd say.

    • This is where the size of the data will be crutial. an extra byte per grid is an important factor. some data will be combined into upper and lower parts of integers, or stored as characters. If you can come up with a better layout, please lemme know!

    • Grid Unit
      • int elevation_terrain_vegetation;

        
        elevation = 0xf800 & x;
        terrain = 0x0780 & x;
        veg = 0x007f & x;
        			

      • int ave_temp;
      • int top_3_minerals;

        
        m1 = 0xf800 & x;
        m2 = 0x078 & x;
        m3 = 007f & x;
        			

    • I don't like byte-hacking very much either, but I don't see why I should spend 64,000 combinations on some lookup table with just 16 entries in it!