Moar biomes?

[pjf]

Right now Real Solar System only ships with a custom biome for Earth. It would be really nice to have custom biomes for other bodies. I have this map which I seem to recall SpacedInvader made for the moon, but I don't have a license for it, nor have I tested it at all.

Any extra biomes would probably best be backed up in the RSS distribution (or as their own stand-alone distro), but I'm raising this because lunar biomes are fun, and increases the amount of early-game science and exploration players can do.

[NathanKell]

Last I heard from SpacedInvader, s/he mentioned working on biomes for other worlds. I should send a PM to touch base. That said, it's very, very hard to make biomes for most places because we know so very little; offhand I think we only know enough about Mars (besides Earth and the Moon) to have biomes...I mean, we could simply generate them based off heightmaps for other planets, with generic crater/lowlands, midlands, highlands, slopes, and poles...

[pjf]

Biomes are KSP's equivalent of "interesting places to check out". I feel they don't have to be completely accurate to provide fun value. For example, here are some possible Mars regions I've taken from Amazing Space:

The Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter would be a biome, along with the various cloud features. The freaky hexagon on Saturn would be a biome, etc.

I don't believe that planets need to have particularly many biomes; but adjusting your orbit so you can check out the GRS, or dropping a lander on Olympus Mons feels freakin' awesome, as opposed to "I made it to this planet and all I got was this lousy science". ;)

[NathanKell]

Oh, I agree entirely about Mars and I believe SpacedInvader (and perhaps someone else in the RSS thread?) was working on it. And for the giants, we'd have to do it by hand. But we might consider writing a script to generate biomes for terrestrials, since they have heightmaps.

[pjf]

But we might consider writing a script to generate biomes for terrestrials, since they have heightmaps.

If we do this, we should also consider Community Resource Pack maps at the same time, although I'm guessing that should be a separate ticket. I'd love to mine ice from the moon's polar craters, or tap the rich Karbonite reserves of Olympus Mons. ;)

[Felger]

Since I've taken on the Biomes project, this seems like a good place as any to make note of places of interest in the solar system. Examples:
Olympus Mons
Jupiter's Red Spot
Herschel Crater on Mimas (don't recall if that's actually represented in RSS)
Et Cetera

Add away!

[NathanKell]

Alas, Mimas is not. But Kopernicus is probably going beta after Thanksgiving, so...not so very long to wait. :)

[pjf]

Since @Felger has been doing an amazing job in RSS, I think we can close this off here. (Looking forward to the RSS release which includes said biomes!)