Volcanos, lava and more geological active surfaces

[juvilado]

Hi, im not sure if this has been already suggested, but here it goes:

When we get to land in any celestial body, we usually find that the planet or moon is a giant piece of rock (and sometimes liquid) that has different biomes but nothing else apart from that. No interesting geological active events can be seen. We might say all the bodies are geologically dead. And that is very sad and depressing for kerbalkind!

Resembling our solar system, where many interesting active geological activity can be seen, maybe some simple items could be implemented: Lava lakes seem easy to do (just water with orange color and terrible heat if landed there), Volcanos (not necessary erupting lava, could be inactive or just have a lava river flowing) and cryvolcanos like the ones found in Enceladus, Titan and other icy moons. The eruptions could be just smokes  of different colors (the smoke of the rocket with different color could do) depending of the volcano type and the planet itself.

This geological activity wouldn't change the surface (so i think maybe it is not so difficult to implement) but would add a lot of flavor and interesting places to see to the celestial bodies. Of course this would affect the biomes, adding new or modifying the present ones.

I hope other kerbonauts will also want this, and this suggestion won't fall on deaf ears :-) 

Regards!

Edited March 26, 2016 by juvilado

[pandaman]

Yes, this has been discussed before, and (I believe) most of us would really welcome these kind of additions.  Hopefully, things like this can become a viable possibility with the soon to be released U5 upgrade.  If they do get implemented I dont expect them to appear very soon though, as I expect there are higher priority things for squad to deal with, but time will tell.  The future is wide open....

[Pthigrivi]

I would still love to see this. To be really successful and not just pretty scenery I think they need to be integrated into the gameplay, offering higher science and experience multipliers if you land/eva near them. Some ideas I've had in the past have been:

- Mineral/Ice formations

- Geysers/fissures

- Volcanoes/cryovolcanoes 

- Fossil beds/ signs of life?

 

The main thing is if these kinds of features had some kind of gameplay incentive players would be encouraged to send probes and do surface exploration before carefully selecting a specific landing site instead of just barreling onto a bland surface any old place.

[Angeltxilon]

Seems a desirable freature, I would like see active terrains, although like animation and not like a true active thing.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Angeltxilon

[Sampa]

not sure if this would be a good idea.  many of the weaker systems trying to use this game might be put under extra strain if such a thing is added.  (lag=bad things)

[Pthigrivi]

True. I'm not a programmer but I think it could be done with a few static models and some non-collision volumetric effects. I'm sure it would take some work to look nice enough to be worth it. 

[ImmaStegosaurus!]

This and rewards for repeated observations. 

[GoldForest]

Imagine launching a rocket during an earthquake. That would be terrifying. 

[78stonewobble]

I think it would pretty cool with geysers, volcanoes, caves and possibly other interesting terrain. Tho possibly not that interested in earthquakes other than a seismograph instrument.

I'm kinda imagining it as a small, but high scientific value biome, with a little something to look at and yeah it doesn't have to be top of the pop graphics, just a little diversity.

[Wjolcz]

Yep. At least having the wind on atmospheric bodies would be nice. Geysers that could flip and wreck your stuff on Vall would be great too.

[Pthigrivi]

^ Even if wind was non-physical and just dust blowing across the surface it would be a nice graphics touch. 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[Azimech]

Someday our PC's will be powerful enough for this.

[blorgon]

On 3/30/2016 at 0:41 PM, Sampa said:

not sure if this would be a good idea.  many of the weaker systems trying to use this game might be put under extra strain if such a thing is added.  (lag=bad things)

Catering to the lowest common denominator is how games (and game franchises) stagnate. This should never, ever, be a reason not to do something in a game.

[Mr falcor]

Would be great to see more features on the planets surfaces like duna could have a feature like Olympus mons or sharp rocks that could blow the tire on your rover, liquid water traces in the mountains, dusts devils and  storms that could affect your base on lander etc minmus could have ice glaciers to explore think there needs to be a new texture pack after squad have finished with 1.1 the planets just seem a bit... bland?

[jwenting]

While in theory appealing, the whole thing would rapidly evolve in what amounts to random failures and events, which is the last thing you want in a game. Makes it all way too unpredictable, effectively unplayable.

[juvilado]

2 hours ago, jwenting said:

While in theory appealing, the whole thing would rapidly evolve in what amounts to random failures and events, which is the last thing you want in a game. Makes it all way too unpredictable, effectively unplayable.

I wouldn't add anything that could affect the gameplay in that way. We fail enough by ourselves to add more failure chances!

Just visual effects and biome related gameplay changes.

[jwenting]

7 hours ago, juvilado said:

I wouldn't add anything that could affect the gameplay in that way. We fail enough by ourselves to add more failure chances!

Just visual effects and biome related gameplay changes.

Others started talking about storms affecting your craft, geysers flipping you over as they suddenly erupt from the ground, things like that...

[Rath]

I like the idea, especially that of wind blowing across the surface.  Just visual, and maybe increased barometer science when blowing, the martian wind thing is close to impossible.

[Hodari]

10 hours ago, jwenting said:

While in theory appealing, the whole thing would rapidly evolve in what amounts to random failures and events, which is the last thing you want in a game. Makes it all way too unpredictable, effectively unplayable.

Failure is not an option!  It comes bundled with the software.

 

On 3/30/2016 at 6:33 PM, GoldForest said:

Imagine launching a rocket during an earthquake. That would be terrifying. 

If your rocket isn't making the ground shake for a few miles around, it's just not big enough.

[juvilado]

5 hours ago, Hodari said:

Failure is not an option!  It comes bundled with the software.

 

If your rocket isn't making the ground shake for a few miles around, it's just not big enough.

lol

[Knaapie]

On 3/31/2016 at 4:11 PM, Azimech said:

Someday our PC's will be powerful enough for this.

When your computer can calculate the lift-off from kerbin, it could also generate some cute features when you arrive at a body with 1/3 of your parts..

I applaud the idea, wouldnt want to make ships flip over due to geysers, storms or earthquakes. Lets keep the Kraken at bay shall we?

I would love the features to have something to do with understanding a planet: Why is there a constant sand storm like on Jupiter ?, A small ice pond on the mun's poles? Water canals or wind erosion on duna ? Why is there water on Laythe? Shouldnt Tylo have an atmosphere? There are many examples on mysteries to be explored, While giving all bodies in the system a unique story, players will learn about space exploration.

Career missions could be more focused on trying to understand these bodies. The science instruments we have, should be brought along for something more than "gain 30 science".

Perhaps even Dress could be made interesting ? ^^

Edited April 19, 2016 by Knaapie

[Pthigrivi]

^Yeah I totally agree. There's a balance there between giving some fun sciency feeling background but also just building game mechanics that are fun and engaging. It can't just be flavor text. These features really should offer high enough rewards to make finding them worth it. This is why I think stock biome mapping would be so important. Say you had a geyser or rock formations or ice crystals, the models themselves would be really small on the scale of a planet. If a new or existing part could produce a biome overlay there could be several very small biomes on each world that would look like blips from orbit but once you got down to the surface you might still have to search a few square kilometers to find what you were looking for. This might mean scouting with a probe or driving a rover up to some high ground to have a look around. So long as the map provided information that was specific enough to get you close but not so specific as to eliminate the need for scouting you could really open up a whole new layer of gameplay. 
 

Edit:

 

So, not to diminish from what would Im sure be months of work, I think you could make this kind of thing happen with just a few models:

- Volcano model, resized and retextured to match the planet its on with the volumetric effect of the plume changed for cryovolcanoes

- Geyser model, retextured by planet, could have the water effect redone to produce black smokers down the road.

- Crystal formation model, could be retextured with different colors to represent ice or mineral outcroppings with different science values

- Pool model, could be retextured represent a hot spring or primordial ooze

- Fossil Bed model, rare, and retextured by planet

- Coral/Stromatolite model, rare, and retextured by planet


These could be scattered across the surfaces of each planet, maybe 4 to 10 each, and given a small biome that immediately surrounds them. When the biomes are mapped however the biome would appear to be 5km or so across, so unless it was the volcano you'll probably have to drive or fly around a bit to find what you're looking for.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Pthigrivi