teal you might be able to get a hint to solve your difficulties by looking at the celestial bodies mod

hope this helps

harpo

Here are some tips about gravwells and planetsizes:

There are 2 parameters in the planet and Star entites moveAreaRadius and  hyperspaceExitRadius. The 3rd parameter is the BoundingRadius around the mesh you will find it in the mesh files.

The meshes bounding radius (BoundingRadius) is the inner movement border. if you have no mesh in use (such as for nebulae etc.) then only the center point is the border.

The moveAreaRadius is the outer movement border.

The hyperspaceExitRadius is where the ships enter and exit hyperspace. It's value is between the other 2 parameters.

So if a gravwell should work properly you have to keep in mind this formula:

BoundingRadius < hyperspaceExitRadius  < moveAreaRadius 

If gravwells are overlapping, this happens if you use large values and position the planets in the galaxyforge very close, ships are beginn to jump between both gravwell equators. One of the devs explained this behavior: the Gravity well is no sphere it is more like a cylinder with invinite high.

the star faricon:

each star entity has a parameter farIcon  this is a reference to a brush from the HUDIcon-Generic.brushes file. all starfaricons beginn with HUDICON_SOLARSYSTEM in the name. the brush reference which snip from a tga is used.

Here an example:

brush
    name "HUDICON_SOLARSYSTEM_WHITE"
    content "Simple"
    fileName "Icons_planetsSmall"
    pixelBox [ 0 , 100 , 69 , 69 ]

Harpo,

               Does the map size, small, medium, large or huge determine the zoom out range?  I know the maps are within a certain boundary, x to x, i think. My problems with the zoom out and the planet and star sizes and the jump weirdness (they are tracking toward the center of the planet or star, shimming up or down to clear the orbital body and then jumping) and the faricon disappearing makes me think it may be the size of the map i'm dealing with.

Since i'm committing a deal of energy to this aspect of the mod, i've decided to branch it out from the main mod, well... create a new mod with this main difference, and call it the HP mod (for Huge Planets). I know its silly, especially with the problems i've already encountered, but i've re-sized them again, twice as large as before, so now i've gone to twenty times as large as the originals. It looks "BEAUTIFUL"!!!      Haha, but now the task of getting it to work.

If anyone wants to jump in and help you are most welcome, it will be a co-created mod, im not a leader or anything, all i can say is i get these off the wall ideas and want to see if i can get it to work.   

I will be uploading HP Beta 0.1 tonight, with the 20x planets/stars if anyone wants a go. Of course since this project is still in its beta stage (too many problems to be considered workable at present) then of course a lot of people may want to bypass it. Whatever you feel.

But would appreciate anyone's assistance if they want to throw in with me.

I've noticed several things off the bat, especiallyl with the 20x version tonight, it takes quite a while to cover the distance around the planet to engage an enemy. But you know, its kinda cool.    And i am getting to like that part of it. That of course and the sheer size of the planets and stars, haha, anyway, give me a holler if you would like to jump in. I dont know how close or far i am from actually getting this workable. The game plays, but there are anomolies, like the image breakup of the star image and the faricon disappearing and the jump weirdness and the jumbled stars for standard multi-system maps, but some i may be able to correct if i change the size of the map, and some i may be able to change with galaxyforge to re-space the planets and stars. I am hoping, but we will see.

Thanks for listening and hope someone would like to give it a go with me, take care,

-Teal

Indirectly yes. cause if you have a map with many stars it is zoomed out much more to fit your whole map in the screen.