How about planet with eternal darkness? It would be cool to be forced to use torch/light source all the time And scary
That has been discussed a lot earlier and I'm fairly sure I read that it'll be a feature in some places. Then again, since they should be planets and you should be able to get around them, it would make sense to find the day side of the planet too. Unless maybe if it's one of those infinite planets with huge scale.
It's important to note that the main band of radiation that a star gives off in the visible range is what plants evolve to absorb for energy. This means that the colors of the plants native to a planet are in the range of light that ISN'T absorbed - chlorophyll is what makes plants green, and chlorophyll does not absorb the band of visible light we associate with the color "green". Therefore, if we were to project that line of reasoning to a fictional planet orbiting a red giant star, you should expect to see plant life mainly colored at the opposite end of the visible light spectrum, namely blue and purple hues. Note that the parts of plants intended to attract other life for whatever reason (to spread pollen, to attract herbivores to move around fruit, etc) can and will be any color of the visible spectrum - visible to the targeted organisms. You could have purple plants with black petals because the local insects are attracted to a band of radiation around the infrared range (which could make them really pop out, visibly, should players use any sort of infrared/heat vision).
You posted something about toning down the effects of lighting concerning star, orbit, etc. please don't. That lil planet close to the red dwarf looks awesome and what it should look like being so near to that kind of light source (assuming based on minor knowledge)
I know that, what I meant is of course planets wouldn't be destroyed. But what I was thinking is because of the light picture with the red dwarf, that maybe in a star dying sequence, It would do this: Gamma goes up 5 seconds < Gamma transitions down to what it was before in 2 seconds < Starlight is white for about 5 minutes < Gamma goes up again for 1 second < Gamma transitions back down again very fast (0.5 seconds) < Starlight turned to a dim white < Temperature decreases drastically It may be a stupid idea though. This was some other ideas about the star light thing Planets are dimmer the farther they are from the sun (I scrapped this later in my original post)When stars die, the planets within a set range (in game would be 200 million miles) will turn 100% into basalt and kills the player.
Idunno, I rather like the lighting, at least at the red end of the spectrum. Might take a few minutes to compare a blackbody spectrum against the human eye's sensitivity spectrum, since while the light from a red star could be very red, the light from a yellow star is pretty close to white, and I'm pretty sure you'd need a very, very blue star--probably too hot and short-lived to support habitable planets--to actually have a really strongly blue-tinted landscape. Just a thought! Actually, riffing on that, you could do binary star lighting. Give a planet slightly different periods for, say, a yellow star and a red star, so the red star might be in the sky after the yellow star has set, giving some nights a dim red lighting. There's a lot you can do by generalizing outdoor lighting this way.
May I second that Huzzah and say that the awesome cute waterbears (who look like they're in some kind of encounter suit) strike me as seeming like minute alien travellers already and I would second as well as third or fourth any request (such as this one) to include a version of them in a game such as this one.
Hurray! I knew my colorized electron microscopy would carry the day! Yes, the slain and dying lay on all sides. Yes building the microscope cost us most of our budget. Yes this will invariably set back the release at least a week. Yes the Water Bears will cuddle us all to death. But you know what? Silly old (water) bear!
Of course it wouldn't be lit up during night time. I was referring to the intensity change from sun up to sun down. For instance, it's morning time where I am right now and the sun isn't all that bright. By noon time, it'll be pretty intense as I live in Florida. By dusk, it'll be very low, orange light. Then of course there would be no light during night.
Except moonlight, which is really just reflected sunlight, but not like anyone is really keeping tabs here, unless there is cloud cover or no moon do to which phase it is in.
