Seasons There have been requests for seasonal variations of plants. Planets now determine the current season at the viewer's location. This is shown on the Compass window, where the current weather conditions are shown. Season determination is based on the position and movement of the world's sun. Other suns in the solar system do not affect season. Plants and ground texture change appearance with season. Season changes are not gradual. There is no scene generation time between scenes; the rendering change is instantaneous. Winter to spring is quite abrupt when all the trees and plants suddenly have leaves and flowers and everything turns green. Non-aquatic plants:

• Spring - Leaves, flowers
• Summer - Leaves, no flowers
• Autumn - Leaves in fall colors, no flowers
• Winter - No leaves or flowers.

Aquatic plants:

• Spring - Leaves, no flowers
• Summer - Leaves, flowers
• Autumn - Leaves, no flowers
• Winter - Leaves, no flowers

Season affects the outside air temperature calculation. Work on this revealed that a large number of worlds have very little axial tilt. Axial tilt is needed for seasons to change; Earth's is 23.5 degrees. The axial tilt calculation was changed so habitable worlds have a mean of 24 and a standard deviation of 7. Other worlds have a mean of 45 with a standard deviation of 15. This change will affect all existing worlds. Depending on axial tilt and orbital configuration, it is possible for a world to have areas that never change season. Seasons can change from autumn to spring with no winter in between if the sun doesn't retreat far enough. Likewise the season can change from spring to autumn if that area never gets sunny enough for summer. It is always summer on ringworlds but the plants have their flowers. Think of it as early summer. Potted plants in the environment do not show flowers until they have been planted for ten minutes. This coincides with the first time the potted plant is ready to be harvested for its fruit or seeds. Potted plants in your hand always show flowers but they will disappear as soon as the flower pot is dropped. The seed planted time is reset at that time. This causes the flowers to appear at the same time the potted plant is ready for harvesting. Delete Blueprints It is necessary to enable deletion of any blueprint, so the user can manage the blueprint libraries. Delete blueprint window in the designer now has a checkbox to show all blueprints, not just your own. Blueprints that are currently distributed with the software are not listed. It is safe to delete any blueprint. Deleted blueprints are not actually removed until no game object is referencing them anymore. Celarious' saved game file contains a large number of blueprints that he likely could not access. They show strange inconsistencies including broken architect information. Removing them reduces the size of the saved game file considerably.

[ 2024-03-22 23:34:45 CET ] [ Original post ]