Celestia Forums

how do i get winstargen to actually create a SSC file, instead of outputting it to the Cmd.exe screen?

As best I can tell, generation of .ssc files requires you to use the command line version.

p.s.
The windows-only executable is quite old, too. (May, 2004).
To get the most recent (Feb, 2006) version of the program, you have to compile it from source.

I AM using the windows command line version.... but it won't generate a file. i see the SSC code in the command line window, but no new file whatsoever.

As with most unix-style command line programs, you have to redirect the console output to a file if that's what you want.

e.g.
./stargen.exe -W5 -s1850770294 -c >pell.ssc

selden wrote:As with most unix-style command line programs, you have to redirect the console output to a file if that's what you want.

e.g.
./stargen.exe -W5 -s1850770294 -c >pell.ssc

ok, thanks.

But, for some reason, it only outputs empty ssc files when i try to specify mass and other fun stuff. (e.g. stargen.exe -m0.962 -c >cancen.ssc CAN Cen)

it only works with the code you gave me.

If you don't specify -c, Stargen writes its output to a subdirectory named /html/
Did you look there?

e.g. if my default directory is
Astro/StarGen/StarGenSource
and I type the command
./stargen -m.31 -s20 -n1
It creates the file
Astro/StarGen/StarGenSource/html/stargen-20-0.31.html

Unfortunately, however, it does look like -c will create ssc output only for the stars Stargen has listed internally

You should contact Jim directly to report this problem.

Ok, I e-mailed him. He said it was "semi-intentional", and cited lack of time as one of the reasons.

This Jim, the author of StarGen. As you've found out, the Celestia support in StarGen is really really thin, largely because I've been really short on development time and there always seemed to be some other priority when I did find the time to work on StarGen. Catching up on the bug reports and trying to come up with some reasonable way to deal with generating moons are the two top contenders.

Basically, the only support I have at present for Celestia is outputting the factors that StarGen already generates in the Celestia format. The next item on my Celestia list was to try to address all the various Celestia factors that are just boilerplate, specifying some sort of range for each one for each type of planet and either deriving them from the data I have or randomizing within the range when there isn't a value.

Other possibilities are allowing mass-generated random systems be linked in, as was brought up here. Another was to allow the user to specify a template file with some of the data StarGen doesn't generate already specified with some sort of macros to be replaced. This one was probably impossibly vague. Finally, the one I chose was to try to get a solution to the moon problem so that I would have more info to fill in.

Right now, my priorities aren't resulting in much StarGen time, but if I knew that there were specific people waiting on specific things (and there are people feeding me ideas on moons, so that's getting a bit of my attention), I might be able to shuffle things enough to get something accomplished.

So what (the simpler and more specific, the better) do people want?

JimB.

For myself, I'd love to see a Windows version that allows all of the inputs that the command line option allows.

But, more specifically I suppose, I'd love to see the ability to generate systems in low mass systems, perhaps even brown dwarfs.

The ability to generate systems which will output planets similar to those being discovered today (ie, large massed worlds in high metallic systems).

The ability to manually determine stellar characteristics, such as metallicity, age, diameter, luminosity, etc.

...John (a long time fan of your program)...

Old thread I know but any chance this might get updated so you can export to an ssc file using the windows version?