Celestia Forums

Ran: the Billow Maidens
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After more than six months in the pipeline, Ran is finally done.

The Billow Maidens is a sci-fi scenario featuring a fully populated solar system with many worlds to explore, artifacts to discover, spacecraft to follow, and strange, but believable places to visit. You can even speed up time, and actually see civilisation spread through Ran system - from the Orion rocket arrives in 2094, to a generation starship in a hollow asteroid leaves three thousand years later. Entire planets are terraformed and changes visually over time.

Many thanks to Jestr for his fine-tuning of the Orion flight. Thanks also to Frank G., Christophe, and Selden, for testing this Add-On on different Celestia versions, and for their valuable comments: they have all improved Ran.

Ran is available on my website now, and will also be listed on the Motherlode shortly. Both lo-res and hi-res versions are available.

Here?s a few screenshots: downloads, more info, screenshots and CelUrls on my website.




Feedback and criticism is appreciated.

- rthorvald

Truly Spectacular....

I can personnally state that this add-on is absolutely unbelievable. Rthorvald has done a spectacular job. Be foreworned, however, that the add-on is large (over 300 MB). Set aside some time for the download. If you have a dial-up modem ....



Frank G

Wow!, and this is only after looking at the screenshots so far.

regards,
TERRIER

Gonna have a go at this...looks awesome!

Regards...bh.

Magic rthorvald!!!

Even the "light" version is fantastic!
Wandering around planets with the near Trifid Nebula is really amazing!

May I ask you to kindly cut the monster zip file into (at least) 3 parts?
It takes an eternity to download the file!

Thanks a lot for your precious work!

Pierluigi

piellepi wrote:May I ask you to kindly cut the monster zip file into (at least) 3 parts?
It takes an eternity to download the file!

Initially, i wanted to keep it as one file, so people wouldn?t have to reconstruct the Add-On directory after downloading it; though many here can do this blindfolded, i remember a lot of frustration over this when i started out with Celestia myself: i expected things to work "out of the box", and they often did not... It took some time before i could download something without me wanting to plant an axe in my CPU before i got it working...

But i can see that 341 MB is a bit over the top to do in a single download for many.

There will be an update to Ran in a few weeks; i?ll see about having a split-up version too then, along with the single file. But right now, i?d rather not spend another 7 hours re-uploading it without it having any new content... I hope this sounds reasonable

-rthorvald

Hi!
After a night long download here at office, now I have my precious copy of the 300+ Mbyte zip file!
I have splitted it into 2 zips in order to fit them into 2 Compact Flash Memories (192MBytes each): have you ever tried such media?
They are small, weightless and all they require is a CF reader (that nowadays you can buy everywhere...): it's a real plug and play device and when you plug the CF into it, you can read its contents with Explorer.
So you have no need to burn a CD in order to carry home those files!

BTW the addon is really great, but with my PC at office (with a practically inexistent graphic card ) I have done few travels among planets, but the first thing I noticed is that CEL commands don't work.
I followed rthorvald prescriptions (creating a extras\addon\th_ran\ folder and so on): from Celestia I do navigate among planets (even if I couldn't see any spacecraft: I'll try later at home ) .

Instead, when I click on a CEL command (for example "Aegir flyby" inside the html file or directly from rthorvald's site) nothing happens: the date changes but I find myself in the middle of nowhere...
If I press the "G" key then I can "go to" Aegir (it's wonderful! ) but nothing else happens.

What do you think about? Usually CEL URLs work very well in Celestia (the latest version 1.3.2rel10)

I also tried to run Celestia and then click the CEL url: the result is the same... All I can say is "Oh my God, it's full of stars!" ("Mio Dio, ? pieno di stelle!")

Good bye
Pierluigi

The CEL URL locations don't seem to be working for me either (1.3.2pre8) but regardless this is a spectacular addon! Thanks!!!

Dave

piellepi wrote:when I click on a CEL command (for example "Aegir flyby" inside the html file or directly from rthorvald's site) nothing happens: the date changes but I find myself in the middle of nowhere [...] What do you think about? Usually CEL URLs work very well in Celestia

This is a weird problem, but it seems the MacOs 1.3.1 version i captured the CelUrls with have a bug of some sort: for some people the CelUrls work, and for some they don?t... I have started a thread in the Bugs forum to track down the problem; it?s here: http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5470. So far, the meagre evidence i have says the OS or Celestia version don?t have any relevance, which is very strange - it might be something with the settings.

piellepi wrote:I do navigate among planets (even if I couldn't see any spacecraft: I'll try later at home

The spacecraft and other artifacts only exist at certain times. If you don?t get the CelUrls to work, just take a look in the ReadMe for a few hints.

-rthorvald

Hi rthorvald!

I'll further investigate on CEL urls

BTW I found a small green alien friend resting quietly upon _Verdandi asteroid! It's very nice!!!

IMHO your addon is very very very beautiful, just one small step below the best one : Rassilon's Kokaubeam!

Now I'll try the newest version of Celestia: there are some small issues in displaying the "elevator" and I'll be more detailed.
Thanks again!!!
Pierluigi

piellepi wrote:
IMHO your addon is very very very beautiful, just one small step below the best one : Rassilon's Kokaubeam!

Pierluigi

Im quite flattered you would think so...but mine lacks the starstips which in turn give the addons that sci-fi flare needed...I tend to put more time in the construction of planets over starships...but I might give a go at this sometime...

I however feel that this is by far the best addon Ive seen in a long time...It holds to the imagination and the artistic quality I try to achieve in my works...This person is truly talented...

It looks really nice, unfortunately my computer doesn't seem to be able to handle even the light version (the Space Elevator doesn't show up and stuff like that), and also crashes regularly in the vicinity of Ran system whenever time is speeded up more than by about ~1,000 times.

Still what I've seen looks really really nice. VERY impressive work.

piellepi wrote:I found a small green alien friend

Ow, i had hoped my little Easter Egg wouldn?t show up quite that fast Should have hidden it better...

-rthorvald

chaos syndrome wrote:It looks really nice, unfortunately my computer doesn't seem to be able to handle even the light version

Try removing one or more of the spacecraft SSC files; some of them are rather complex, and might cause this if you are low on memory.

The OPS files, and the Genship and the Orion file aren?t neccecary for the Solar System: just put back in only what you?d like to view at a particular session.

-rthorvald

Hi friends!

Let me correct my opinions !

I like very very much spacecrafts by rthorvald : they are quite real!
I like textures for planets and asteroids by jestr : they are quite real too!
But I do like the "atmosphere" and the "feeling" I receive when I wander around kokaubeam : it's magic! And it's NOT real!

It's only my opinion!
Good bye
Pierluigi

rthorvald wrote:Ran: the Billow Maidens
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After more than six months in the pipeline, Ran is finally done.

Absolutely amazing! Stunning! Breathtaking! Beautifully done!

Very nice work rthorvald!!!

piellepi wrote:the "atmosphere" and the "feeling" I receive when I wander around kokaubeam : it's magic! And it's NOT real!

I have to agree with you; Kokaubeam is incredibly beautiful - and unreal...

Rassilion, how about getting your work on the Motherlode? Kokaubeam was not too intuitive to find, and it was certainly not something i wanted to miss!

-rthorvald

TYPO IN AEGIR SSC
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Thanks to Selden, for discovering a typo in the AegirOps.ssc.
This typo causes one particular spacecraft not to show up. It affects both the full version and the light version of The Billow Maidens Add-On.

Here?s a fix:
If you have the Full version, download and replace this file:
http://runar.thorvaldsen.net/celestia/downloads/ranupdate/regular/ran_aegir_ops.ssc (4kb)

If you have the light version, download and replace this file:
http://runar.thorvaldsen.net/celestia/downloads/ranupdate/light/ran_aegir_ops.ssc (3kb)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

-rthorvald

This is the best add-on system ive ever downloaded! And ive downloaded a lot. GREAT JOB!

::--::Pliskin::--::