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EP Celestia plugin project

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Mon, 2010-12-20 16:32

Kralizec

EP Celestia plugin project

Since I'm gonna be using my laptop as a GM screen when playing EP, I thought it'd be cool to make an Eclipse Phase plugin for Celestia so when some player asks "what's Ida like?" or "where's Ashoka?" I can directly show them a nice 3d animation. So I've started to gather data on every little habitat described in EP to script them... And when Gatecrashing comes out, we can even add the extrasolar systems, it's amazingly easy... So, is/was there any other project like this? Anybody wanna help (custom 3ds models would be great)? BTW... Jupiter looks tiny from Extropia! http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/7285/extro.png (asteroid habitat model taken from Orion's Arm).

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[/Kralizec]

Tue, 2010-12-21 05:26

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

Good idea! I am using it for showing where things are in my game set in the Saturn system. I'll see what I can dig up that would be useful. One thing to consider: what date do we use as the "official" time of EP in Celestia? Most things in space look either tiny or enormous; space is not very forgiving to the human sense of scale.

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Tue, 2010-12-21 05:45

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

Quote:
One thing to consider: what date do we use as the "official" time of EP in Celestia?

While the game autors have remained elusive on the exact date, I remember discussions using available data in the book(spring time on Uranus IIRC) that gives the estimated date around 2144. Which does make sense and fits the timeline well IMHO. http://www.eclipsephase.com/what-year-it Here is the relevant post:

Mandella wrote:
Well, since the core book states that Uranus' south pole is in "mid-spring," and assuming mid-spring is half way between the Vernal and Summer solstice for the south pole, then the possible near future dates are 2060, 2144, or 2228, give or take five years. The African writeup also in the core book discusses the economic situation in the latter half of the 21st century as being relevant as to the situation at the time of the Fall, so that would support 2144 for the current time, unless the author made the common mistake of confusing "21st century" with "the 2100s," in which case 2228 is a better fit. Or, my quick back of the envelope calculations for Uranus' positions are totally off due to some screwball error, in which case I will have egg on my face in my very first post here. And yes, this is only of interest if you're thinking of modeling the positions of the planets at the time of the game, which is what I am indeed thinking of doing.

So its around 2139-2149 Somebody also posted a link to simulation of Sol System in 2146 http://www.faustweb.net/solaris/solar.html?time=29-9-2146 You can find some people in the thread interested in creating Celestia add on there as well(second page of discussion).

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[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]

Tue, 2010-12-21 09:52

Kralizec

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

TY, Extrasolar Angel. Mars locations so far (it's missing the whole TITAN containment zone): http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1760/mars1f.png http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5747/mars2.png

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[/Kralizec]

Mon, 2010-12-27 22:08

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

How useful has Celestia proved in actual play? Does it act just as a handout, or do have your players used it on their own?

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Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Thu, 2011-01-13 10:19

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

Finally got into the Celestia. Looking at the outer planets, the book most closely matches 2146 - it's a rough match, but close enough for government work. And you have to ignore Eris which, true to her nature, messes everything up, as well as Ceres. As far as I can tell, the outer system never matches the book to within 1,000 years in either direction (due to Eris & Ceres). Setting the outer system to 2146, I toyed with the inner system to get the right month and day. The four inner planets come in the right configuration between August and September, with it looking closest on 9/29, but you can use 9/9. With either date, note that the 'inner system' box is rotated slightly compared to the whole system map. The good news for people in EP is that the planets will continue to stay together until around October, at which point only Venus and Mercury seriously break alignment (and they come around again soon), so the maps are basically functional for at least six months into game time (longer the further out your scope is). Using Celestia lets you figure out where all the planets are in relation to each other (to roughly calculate travel), and where locations are on a particular habitat. Ideal modifications would include adding the Trojans, adding a little measuring tool so I can see on the map how far each point is from the Sun in AUs, maybe an easy tool for point-to-point measurements and, if you're really ambitious, pork chop calculations. I'm going to read up on this a little bit in my free time and see what I can put in.

Fri, 2011-01-14 11:29

SirJelly

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

NASA solar system model- http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/ this is an incredible website which will grow to include more and more knowledge on the cosmos. this has been online for around 2 months, and is now relatively stable. unfortunately it can only go forward or backwards from real time about a 100 years. So for modeling the positions of the solar system, I personally picked an arbitrary date where the planets were in close alignment to make distances short, which coincidentally is why the voyager missions were launched back in 1978 (i think), the solar system was relatively linearly organized in the years following. you may choose to use 2060, as it is the only date in those list of possibilities that this particular simulator will do.

Fri, 2011-01-14 12:53

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

SirJelly wrote:
NASA solar system model- http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/ this is an incredible website which will grow to include more and more knowledge on the cosmos

It is very nice, but you cannot add game-related stuff to it. In Celestia it is fairly easy to add habitats and entire planets if needed.

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Fri, 2011-01-14 13:52

SirJelly

Re: EP Celestia plugin project

Arenamontanus wrote:
It is very nice, but you cannot add game-related stuff to it. In Celestia it is fairly easy to add habitats and entire planets if needed.

very true, i don't intend to start a discussion about it on this particular thread. This was simply an offering with which to create a very accurate model of the solar system to base large maps on. If talking about extra-solar planets, those maps may as well be shat out anyways, and Celestia is the appropriate software to communicate GM ideas to players. Realism where its demanded, science fiction where its entertaining and engaging.

Fri, 2013-05-10 13:28

#10

Gnothi_Sauton Gnothi_Sauton's picture

Plugin

Anyone having a plugin to share or is it complicated to do one self?

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Tue, 2014-07-29 17:59

#11

Soviet Onion Soviet Onion's picture

Bumping this thread because I

Bumping this thread because I can't find anything in the way of finished projects and know that someone out there must have one.

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[img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/an... [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/op...

Mon, 2014-11-10 08:29

#12

Forseti

Titan locations

Hello, For my adventure I've done a file adding Eclipse Phase features to Titan. Also, I had to add some features that IAU approved since the last Celestia update. You can find it zipped on my site: http://rpg.forseti.pl/wp-content/uploads/ep-celestia.zip Zip file contains all the instructions to set it up. PLease report any bugs. Specifically I worry if locations match correctly with surface texture. Please check with map in Rimward. This is no addon though and I don't have plans to develop one - I'll update only those locations that will be of use to my adventure. Sorry, not much free time on my schedule. I already have a project to translate EP into Polish wiki (http://eclipse.forseti.pl) and it takes all free time I can spend on RPGs.

Mon, 2015-03-09 10:28

#13

nerol-1

Sunward done!

Hi I created a Sunward.ssc to add ALL the orbital habitats and asteroids in Sunward. I added also the Skyhook and the Mars space elevator. I have to work on it a little, to fix some things (the space elevator doesn't start from Mons Olympus, the dome cities are not perfect aligned with surface and I am not satisfied with the O'neil habitat and Post Fall Earth map). I used a lot of graphic made by other fan of Celestia to make my job easier. As soon as I'll check everything, and I will write to all the authors about the (free) use that I'm going to make with their graphic, I will share the results. I'm not using Celestia to calculate distances and planets position, but to give an idea about the habitat the players are or have to go for the mission. Ciao Luca

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il NeRo www.sentinellefirewall.blogspot.it The blog about the adventures of 4 Italian Sentinels

Fri, 2015-06-05 10:10

#14

dare

How's this going? I'm trying

How's this going? I'm trying to get an EP campaign started, will definitely use Celestia as a tool, and I'd love to poach your hard work ...

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http://posthuman.karmavector.org/ - my EP Campaigns (in Finnish, mostly)

Tue, 2015-12-01 09:02

#15

nerol-1

Update and soon the first add on :-)

Ciao I hadn't worked on the project for months and I had to study how to use a 3d model software. I already create the data for the EP asteroids and space stations but I wans't able to modify a 3d model. Here are some example of my mods: http://1drv.ms/1N1mGps I will put on line a list with the authors of the originals meshes. I wrote an email to almost all of them to let them know I was going to use their job. Yesterday evening I finished Legba. In the next days I will do Starwell and Zombieland. I think I will upload Post Fall Earth, the Venisuan rotovator and the Belt in a couple fo weeks. Ciao

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il NeRo www.sentinellefirewall.blogspot.it The blog about the adventures of 4 Italian Sentinels