Weather and Other Planetary Features
2004/07/06
Lantus wrote:
Not all "days" in our solar system are 24 hours either. Earth and Mars are pretty close (Mars' day is about 20 minutes longer than Earth's), Jupiter's day is about 10 hours long (meaning how long it takes to make a complete rotation on its axis). So clearly, things in the solar system in the galaxy we 'know' aren't exactly consistent. One interesting point to note is that in our solar system, almost all of the rocky bodies we know as moons have synchronous orbits. What the heck does that mean? They all act like our own Moon, showing the same face to their parent planet all the time, a near-side and a far-side that never change. That last IS a fine point of orbital dynamics, things tend to get locked down in their orbits unless something major hits them. This should make Rori's "night" a lot less dark than it currently is, most of the time.
Right you are. In fact, there are several physical characteristics that would be fun to see implemented in an online game. I’ll use the various planets from the Star Wars movies as examples, but these ideas could be applied to any science fictional setting:
I've left some things out, but you get the idea: There are a lot more ways in which planets in a science fiction-based game could (and possibly should) be more "realistic." (I put the word realistic in quotes because we're still just guessing about what planets other than Earth and the few others in our solar system might look like. Still, they're probably good guesses.)
A few of these things are implemented in the Star Wars movies. The twin suns of Tatooine, the water world Kamino, and Yavin IV as a habitable satellite of a gas giant world are good examples of what might be possible. But although moviemaking has a tough time (for various reasons) with showing planets with different gravities or day/night cycle lengths or variable-length seasons, a persistent MMOG like SWG could bring these effects to life though judicious programming.
Of course, the standard response is, "This isn't intended to be hardcore science fiction -- it's a game. All that science stuff has to take a back seat to other needs, such as story, action, etc." There's some justice in this remark, but it still strikes me as kind of a cop-out. When we have a pretty good idea how planets can vary, and when those variations will reasonably add to the player's feeling of being part of a space-faring civilization, then why not implement those planetary effects?
Mostly, though, it would just be cool to be able to explore the possibilities of such worlds.