Suggestions for Celx functions

All about writing scripts for Celestia in Lua and the .cel system
Topic author
Henry Harris

Suggestions for Celx functions

Post #1by Henry Harris » 14.07.2004, 04:51

Current scripting is oriented toward travel to objects that are known beforehand. Celestia sorely needs scripts that are more exploration oriented. I'd recommend the following celx function:

table scan(range, object_type)

"Scan" would return a table of all objects of type "object_type" within a sphere of radius "range." The object_type "all" would be included as a possible value. Imagine a script that would give you information about neaby objects as you explored space in new directions.

A much more complicated suggestion would be star and planet creation functions. The idea would be to write scripts that create and destroy objects based on star and planet-forming statistics. The functions would be completely non-specific and leave the statistics and star and planet characteristics to the script builders knowledge of astrophysics. This would allow for the creation of a virtual universe that is a combination of real objects and statistical objects, giving the user, for example, the experience of traveling in a galaxy that has hundreds of billions of stars rather than the current 2 million max. The scripts would be written to destroy statistical objects (and recover their memory) as they passed beyond detection so as to keep memory requirements and the redraw speed near or the same as they are now.

Henry Harris

:P

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