It makes no sense that gravity works the same all over the universe. It's illogical and unrealistic. But more importantly, it's a big missed opportunity for FUN! we need all planets to have their own individual Gravity value, measured in metres per second per second ( i think). Gravity should be visible in a planet's information, so you know beforehand what you're getting into. Gravity would affect anything that goes down. Arrow/bullet flight, jumping/falling, fall damage, and to some degree, movement speed. Generally, gravity values should make some sort of sense. The larger a planet is, the higher its gravity is likely to be, on average. Terran planets (grassland/jungle/forest) should be generally more moderate, with moons, arid/desert worlds and other wierd places often being a lot more extreme. The above rules would help to guide random generation of gravity values sensibly. But all rules are made to be broken, so we should occasionally have worlds with unusual gravity values, that don't make a lot of sense based on their size and biome. So you could occasionally bound effortlessly across a forest world ^.^ anomalous gravity here and there would help to make some planets unique, and give more indivuduality and reason to explore places.
Additions to this concept: I think gravity should also have an effect on the contents of a planet, including flora, fauna and topology, Generally, high gravity worlds should have -shorter, wider trees and bushes. More stumpy things and less delicate flowers. -Animals and monsters should generally be compact, and large. Low ground clearance, thick limbs, stocky body, little or no neck. Think elephants, thinos, gorillas, and various alien equivilants. Generally few or no flying creatures. -Geographically, high gravity worlds should be more flat, as settling dirt seeks shallower angles of incline. A lot less mountains and valleys. A low gravity world should be substantially different in many ways: -Thin spindly trees, reaching up to the sky. Possibly including huge trees that are several screens tall, and made of thin twigs. More delicate and beautiful flowers. -Animals and monsters would be more varied on a low gravity world. Almost everything should be able to fly, glide, or at least jump really far. Lots of insect-like creatures with thin limbs. Think spiders, giraffes and birds of all kinds. -Low gravity worlds should have a more varied topology, including lots of hills and valleys. In addtion, a lot more normally-impossible geographical formations like tall pillars of dirt, and long overhanging cliffs. The underground parts of the planet should have more vast caverns and empty spaces, as well as a higher concentration of weak soil (as opposed to rock)
I think i saw an article or something WAY back that talked about it, i dont remember if it was the devs and if they were trying to implement it or something but i DEFINITELY want to see something like that.
+1 to variable gravity and it affect terrain, animal generation, tree growth, etc. I would lose to do a space-walk on a super-low-gravity moon and just soaring through the air sniping birds from 20 meters away. Sounds like great fun. Oh but wait, how would gravity affect birds...? Would there be no birds on super-high-gravity planets because it'd be impossible to fly?
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/reactivate-variable-planet-gravity.35931/ Enjoy! It'll be nice, on release, when this is put back into the mix. Which it surely will be.
yes, high gravity worlds would generally have almost no birds. But there could be a few specific high powered birds, with abnormally large wings and muscles compared to the rest of their body. i'm thinking they'd be huge and more like minibosses. No tiny sparrows floating around, anything with such low bone density would be unable to survive the environment,
I like this idea-I think the most bang/buck would be as a speed/jump modifier rather than getting to crazy about changing the biomes too much.
I hope this post doesn't come off as mean spirited, but I wanted to point out that you seem to be confusing the qualities of being overweight with high gravity. If I recall, the high gravity planets in our solar system are gas giants, and land features have more to do with plate tectonics and wind/water erosion than they do with gravity (doesn't our moon have a mountain that dwarfs Everest?) Again, I'm sorry if this comes off as mean - I'm intending to be constructive. I like your ideas about the light and airy fauna... I just wonder if it might not e what would evolve on a high gravity planet....
i'm tempted to try that, but the mentioned hack about turning off fall damage, makes me think it isn't properly utilising physics yet
So my only concern with that mod is how it calculates fall damage... Does the game calculate damage base on speed at landing (proper physics) or based on distance fallen (arbitrary game height values)? Because if it is based on speed then super-low-gravity planets should pretty much NEGATE fall damage entirely without any sort of modification (you'd be falling so slow you couldn't take damage in most cases, depending on the terminal velocity of the planet). On the other hand, if it is distance fallen then I guess I need to make a mechanics suggestion that they change it to falling speed, not distance... which really, is just BAD for the game overall and leads to a poor gameplay experience.
Indeed, fall damage is still not designed to work with a variable gravity simulation, yet. And it likely is outside of the scope of modifications, so disabling fall damage may be the only solution until Starbound readds the functionality. In my case, at least, I rarely ever have any issues with fall damage, minus the few times that I accidentally get a bit too excited about exploring the downslope of a hill and take a wee bit of damage, so disabling falling damage, for me, wouldn't be a big loss. That said, though, I'm alright with waiting until they add the variable gravity back into the game right proper.
Not necessarily. Higher gravity worlds would also have more dense air, which also equates to more lift force. In addition to that, because you have more dense air, much like animals in the sea use internal ballast (swim bladder), animals of flight on a planet could have a similar organ, albeit it would have air within of lower density than the surrounding air, much like a hot air balloon. This is very possible. Just think, the organ would only need to heat gas inside some organ that would expand. Then in combination with wings such an animal could fly with ease.
Something that I would like to add is that it would be cool if there was a material component to high gravity worlds. In other words, make it so that there are allot more high density ores that can be found on a planet with high gravity. Not only would it make sense, but it would create a risk/reward system since planets with higher gravity would be harder to move around on.
The Devs have already discussed this, it is more than likely going to be implemented later on in the beta.
I actually expected it to work this way to begin with. Personally, I agree. It is a missed opportunity. I would love to see the physics work slightly different from world to world. That would be another little thing to make exploring more interesting, and as you say, more fun.
