Biomes vs. themed planets

I have been looking through the images in the homepage's Media section, and I noticed something while looking at the two about multi-monitor support. The first clearly shows a volcanic area with charred, incandescent trees:

And the second seems to be an alien forest with steel-plated trees... but take a look at the far left side:

Recognize the soil? It's the same kind from the volcanic area.
Now, from all I've seen in these forums, I had gotten the idea that planets would be "themed", and each would be all volcanic or icy or whatever, with sub-biomes for variety. The List does mention "mini biomes" but nothing about planets themselves. Now, from these screenshots it becomes evident that extremely different biomes with their own soil and flora (and even background) can coexist next to one another in a single planet.

My questions then are: has this been mentioned somewhere and I missed it? Is this just a custom planet for testing purposes and all planets will be "themed", or will there be composite planets? Will there be themed planets at all?

 

That's actually very cool that you realized the two screenshots are (or appear to be) connected to each other. It could simply be for testing purposes, I suppose.

 

Judging from how the player's (Tiy's?) inventory and money are almost identical in both screenshots (minus a few ladders), I'd wager the forest is immediately to the east of the volcano. Your guess is probably correct though... looking at one of the livestreams, the temporary space navigation screen said nothing about the type of planet they were above (only size and level), but the appearance of the planet below as seen from space seemed to be tied directly to the type of terrain, and I don't remember seeing different terrains in a single planet in the livestreams.

Personally, I prefer themed planets. Since they're so many and you can travel back and forth with ease, there's no need for extreme variations in a single planet (just my opinion, YMMV). I remember how difficult it used to be in Minecraft to find a snowy biome large enough to build a castle from which all you could see was snow. Or an ocean fortress for that matter, though I reckon biomes are bigger now.

 

Though it would be cool if there were rare planets that were a mix of all kinds of biomes.

 

[15:48:08] <@Tiy> the engine has the ability for multiple biomes per planet, as many as we want
[15:496] <@Tiy> we're limiting it to 1 per planet at the moment

 

You people rock. Seriously.

Also, can't believe that I forgot we have an IRC channel. Gotta check it out right now.

 

We rock, yes we do, and so do you!
/me is ultimate rhymer

But seriously, I think it would still be cool if there were super-rare planets with fused biomes.

 

I took a really close look and I don't think these two biomes are connected. First, the color of the sky is different. It could be due to time of day but I also noticed that you can see one of the jupiter like planets in the upper left corner. I don't see those planets in the volcano shot and in my mind the sky should at least stay the same, even if there are biomes within biomes. (but that is my opinion) Also, the volcanic biome has a layer of soot covering the ground and I don't see that in the upper left corner of the forest one.

I hope that any "sub biomes" implemented are done so in a way that flows. I really want each planet to feel unique and if they are all just a bunch of random biomes I think it would take away some of the excitement in discovering new planets. But I trust Tiy.

 

Good eye! Yes, there's no soot on the second screenshot. However, the purple grass in that one doesn't extend all the way west either, so it could be that ground cover isn't generated near a biome boundary. As for the sky, it could be as in Terraria, where moving from one biome to another changes the background, music and sky color.

 

Oh, that's true, I didn't think of that! I hope not though because a little more continuity is needed imo.. This could be done I think by restricting things to just one sub biome per planet. And hopefully by keeping the sky the same too. It would "fit" so much better if you could see those planets floating in the volcano one. If not, well.. I'll make everything "match" on my home world.

 

I have mixed feelings on Tiy's stated approach to biomes. While I tend to somewhat agree with the situation from gameplay standpoint (planets = biomes because there are lot of planets), a natural science geek inside of me cries a little bit.

Sure, some types of planets really could work as a single biome without any problems, especially very hot (Venus) and very cold (Pluto, for the lack of better example) ones. Venus is hot pressurized hell, and Pluto is a frozen rock. It does not matter which latitude you are on, because difference in these extreme worlds is negligible.

But let's take Mars. At a glance, this is single-biome planet: cold and dry. But it is not homogenic. On it's equator, temperature goes up to +20° C at midday. Poles are really freezing, down to -153° C at winter. Planetary average is -50° C. Now, discarding low pressure with lack of breathable air: Martian equator is perfectly comfortable place, planet in general requires very warm clothing, and polar zones are extremely cold and can't be traversed without special cold protection.

Basically, it cames down to how exactly these sub-biomes work. If they are different enough, then it's fine.

Also, we do have Earth with it's extreme diversity. Why is it so diverse? Because of vast, but not overwhelming amounts of liquid water on its' surface (and yes, because of biosphere, but it's just the consequence of watery surface anyway).

If Earth had way more water, then it could have been a sort of oceanic world, perhaps with (or without, depends on water quantity) small-to-medium rocky islands (mountains). Some more hot, some more cold, but still mostly homogenic.

If Earth had more water, but not as much as in the previous example, then oceans would be larger and dry landmasses smaller. Climate would be softer, there probably won't be as much deserts and arid plains as we have it now. Also, lots of jungles and swamps. More homogenic than we have it now.

If Earth had less water, then it would have been much drier, with harsher climate, but perhaps not that diverse as it is now, because of poorer biosphere. Many parts of dry Earth would have been uninhabitable deserts.

So, my point: while it's fine to have single biome (with sub-biomes) planets with extreme conditions, it would be nice to have some diversity on "normal" habitable planets, which are not unlike our own Earth.

 

That's a very good middle point in my opinion, a bit of both sides so everyone can be happy and we have even more to explore (think "I know! I wanna see a volcano in an ice planet!" and go looking for it). Also, nice astrogeology exposition
Perhaps each planet could have a set distance to its star, and with increasing distances the planet would be volcanic, desert, "green" or otherwise inhabitable with a chance of being multi-biome (forest, ocean and tentacle planets here), then icy and finally barren.

 

I think themed planets would be much better than biomes

 

Well, they're kind of two separate things. Biomes are within the planets.

 

i think you missunderstood do know what biomes and themed planets are it's just that i favor themed planets because i'm kinda bored of the minecraft and terraria world generators,it would be nice to see a change

 

I guess I say what the devs' goals are.
Think about it.

In Terraria, you had one world, which was an island in the middle of nowhere. Because of this, the landscape HAD to be diverse.
You only had one world, so all the biomes must be present in that one island. The lack of a biome due to a generation glitch would force the player to generate an entirely new island or hack in certain items via inventory editors to achieve the desired world.

In Starbound, you have thousands, even millions of worlds. Every single world has a unique biome, unique features that only a few other planets have. Because of so many worlds to chose from, and the fact worlds can easily be traveled to and from in seconds, you don't need a world that has 4 or 5 different biomes. Of course, for the sake of diversity, having 2 or 3 biomes adds color and depth to the world. But in reality if you want a desert biome just travel to a desert planet. Every planet could have just 1 type of landscape and you can still get everything you wanted from every kind of area.

One issue I had with Terraria is that the biomes were very small. Traveling half way across the entire island just for 100 blocks of sand to get whatever I need from the desert. Small worlds had nothing in them. Large worlds had nice and big biomes, but everything was so spread out it took forever to get anywhere. So I stuck with medium worlds.

 

Oh, I know! There'll be some sort of planet classes. From "Extremely uninhabitable" (1) to "Earth-like" (100). The higher this class, the more biomes can be on this one planet.

 

It would be awesome to make a home on an extremely uninhabitable planet...lol

 

Perhaps it'd be better to have an option regarding this during a world generation process. Even if our choices are simply the number of biome present or extensive such as choosing a large mixture of biome to exist and to what ratio. With the typical random choice as well it'd be much easier to cater to everyone's request of an environment. Personally I'm a big fan of cold regions, snow and ice is something I'd like to be very frequent on my homeworld. As much as I wish to experience and explore the other forms of environment, I feel the ability to tailor minor things in generation could be a nice touch. Afterall, who wants a sunny beach a few minutes from their igloo? (I'm guessing someone somewhere does, which makes the point kinda more valid in a way)