Making New Star Systems...

[jedi_mac]

Just posting my comment on making new systems as a discussion because I really wish Bethesda would hurry up and update the kit or tell us how to get land-able surfaces on new planets/moons already. Got a bunch of new custom star systems with planets all needing the Houdini data or whatever to make them playable.

"Don't know if you're still needing help but here goes:

Under Star in the Object Window right click on any star and click New.

You name your star BLANKStar. Right Click on it and choose view inspector.

This brings up the window with your input options.

Under the first Form section you're going to use the open button to choose 6 component options total(in any order as far as I know):
HoudiniDataComponent
BSGStarDataComponent
BSGOrbitedDataComponent
TESFullName
TESModel
TESPlanetModel

That's for stars. For planets and moons it's a slightly different set of options to choose.

For each one of those options you add it adds a new field below to input data on the star/planet/moon.

You can input the Full Name in the new first section.
TESPlanetModel adds a section with an open button near the bottom that you'll need to choose a HoudiniStarPlanet.nif from Meshes. I used BAE to extract the planets folder from meshes into my data folder to select the houdini nifs.

There's an eyeball button near a spider button in the upper right corner of the window that you click to unveil check boxes. Do this and choose "child can use" if you want orbitals(planets/moons) around the celestial body you're making.

A drop down box with Collision is available now too and for a star you want to select ignore navmesh but for a landable planet/moon you want the collision option.

Next drop down option is for the sun preset and I have just been making everyone a G2 like Sol's and using Sol's planet data for figuring out orbital data and mass/radius/XYZ locations.

Next you do the XYZ location data which is in relation to Earth/Sol at 0,0,0. The XYZ coordinates seem to be +,+,+ in the upper left corner of the galaxy map.

In that same section name the system again which I think is what you see on the map if the name is present. The full name and Gilese seem to be in the other info panes of looking at a planet/star/moon.

Also in this section is the planet ID which you have to make unique so the information you're plugging in sticks.

Next section is the Keyword section and you're going for one option on a star, Star Class, which again, I'm doing all mine as G like Earth's sun. If you're doing a planet or moon you want up to 16 options from the open button and the easy thing to do is type planet into the filter and find the options for atmosphere, temp, pressure, magnetosphere, flora, fauna, water, gravity, etc. Look at other planet's inspector info to see the ones chosen for inhabited vs uninhabitable vs gas giants etc.

Next section is the orbited data and you put in Mass, Radius, and gravity for a Star but for a planet and moon you do the gravity well data too. This makes it so you stay in orbit of a body, if you don't add the well info the body will fly away from you after you arrive.

Earth has a 1 for surface gravity and gas giants have 2 or more.

We already covered the planet model part so next section is the Star Data section.

You put in mass and radius again, but also the magnitude, temperature, and spectral class which I do G2. The habitable zones are the start of and end of your solar system's habitable zone for planets. Look at other planets with orbits and that will help narrow that down but I tend to just copy the Sol system for my systems. You have an option to make a binary star but you need to make a separate star to link to on both their inspector forms.

Hippoarcus is a catalog number I think and Gilese is like the name of a star or galaxy in a catalog system?

You can only travel to a system if it has a planet in orbit.

So far I've been able to set up the atmo effect but can't get the houdini tennis ball default texture to replace with a star/planet/moon surface yet so I can't land on anything I've made.

Supposedly the kit is going to have that feature at some point so I'm going ahead and getting my mod systems ready ahead of time.

Hope that helps."

[510deshawn]

Be patient lol

[DrNewcenstein]

Great info OP.

Only problem will be everyone adding their star systems to the same xyz locations.

[jedi_mac]

Appreciated Doc.

Well the XYZ coordinates allow for so many decimal places and the way overlapping or binary systems work it will/should just stack the names like it does already.

I'm making my own mini galaxy that I guess is colliding with the Milky Way at a weird angle. I'm making this set of systems off to screen lower left of Sol and Eriadani in the empty space on that side of the map. Doesn't conflict with any Vanilla worlds and any future mods that add anything there can be adjusted or allowed to stack.

Bethesda could at least announce something about this topic to tide people like me over.

[jedi_mac]

Anyone know if they added the Houdini editing stuff in yet?

[jedi_mac]

Bump to see if anyone has any new relevant info on the Houdini planet data issue.

[Baneful Otter]

The textures aren't loading for the star I'm making. Any idea why? The flares render in the galaxy view but the star has the "texture didn't load" texture applied to it

[Near Gravity]

You can put a Star System on the Starmap, and you can create a Star, and planets orbiting it, but you cannot input the data necessary to make it work in game. The Houdini Data is locked, and there is currently no way to do anything about that, or even copy over data from another planet.

Unfortunately, that's just the reality right now. No new Biomes, because we can't edit any of that information, and all kinds of issues with actually generating the planet itself, or Star, and making them work.

I never actually tested if I could get a ship to travel to a new system, other than noting it showed Unknown Error on the Starmap, before making such an attempt. Honestly, I was happy to just put it on the starmap, where I wanted it, and get all the correct data entered in the Stars Forms.

Everything but the Houdini Data, and no matter what I've tried, the closest to a texture I've been able to get is the sun flares showing up. Short of dumping 2 million loose files in my game folder, which I am now relatively sure won't solve the issue, as I did find all the correct files and put them in there and the only thing I achieved, even with another 40GB of files loose and the ini adj. is not a single texture shows up on a model, and everything is glowing pink.

Or it crashes on load; that too. Not my PC, I watched resource monitor, and it barely pushed the system. Something in the files caused the crash.

Anyway, I just spent an hour looking on Reddit and a few other places, and everyone agrees, it's impossible, until Bethesda makes it possible, short of hacking the game, which apparently someone did, though they only implied they were successful; they never stated that it actually worked, or showed it working.

So, patience I guess. Too bad too, I had an entire system planned out, and thought it would be quite interesting.

The basic problem, is that the game does not provide any access to edit certain components and data, and there are no additional files for it. A Star consists of exactly 2 files, with multiple components, and while you can edit a lot, you can't edit what is important.

A planet has somewhat more, but it still has that Houdini Data, and you can't just copy it over, no more than you can the star. There is a biome file, the planet file, planet location file, and for named planets, some additional stuff, (there are mats for both planets and stars too, but I'm not including them in the count), and I think one other file, or maybe two, but it's still all basically hardcoded and inaccessible to anyone using CK right now, aside from editing some forms and basic data.

To put it bluntly, you can create an entire system, but it will only exist in your imagination and the CK files of your Mod, for all extents and purposes.

Ironically, despite that, I think the most annoying thing about ck, is the requirement to invalidate older files, which breaks every existing asset in the files, except the ones you mod in, and requires you to dump 120GB or so into your mod folder, and load it with the CK and game, just to make some of it work, but more likely just breaking the whole thing and causing it to crash.

It's like, you know, you could have just allowed it to use the compiled database right?

[Near Gravity]

And yes, Gliese and Hipparcos are catalog entries for Stars. Gliese 667 for example, (used for Oborum Prime), identifies a Trinary system, though in game it is a Binary system.

Hipparcos is a separate catalog, where it refers to one of a number of entries for Stars that represent a certain brightness at one or another point in time, (Luminosity), as Hipparcos is a representation of Magnitude, and the numbers you see are not indicative of that. They're the catalog entry itself, of which there are actually only about 30 or so I know of, and some Stars have more than one entry.

So, if you want to use this yourself, you can just add an entry which matches one or another Star. As far as I know, it isn't needed, (some Hipparcos entries are blank for example), and only indicates which real Star they were basing the system on, which may include it's position relative to Earth, (Sol is 0 x, 0 y, 0 z, and everything else is relative to it in the coordinate system)

Honestly, looking at the Starmap in game, this can be a little confusing, because it is somewhat difficult to tell exactly which angle you are viewing the galactic plane from. It seems to be offset even when your Cursor is on Sol, and the coordinates of given systems don't add up from that PoV. It seems like the base view is about 45 degrees above, and 45 degrees East, though I'm not entirely sure of that.

Easy way to figure it out is to just move one axis at a time and check the game in between, to see where it moves it. I didn't bother as all I had to do to get mine in the correct, relative position, was invert the numbers.

Also worth noting, as far as I know, the coordinates are in Parsecs, not light years.

[Near Gravity]

Spent a lot more time on this, and while I figured out how to add a system, and even texture the planets, I still haven't had any luck with surfaces or biomes. The functionality just isn't there in the CK yet as far as I can tell.

I stopped working on it last weekend just because I'd had enough with it, and haven't put any more time into it, focusing on other stuff instead. Honestly, quite frustrated with it after trying I don't even know how many different things, and scouring the file structure until I was sick of looking at it.

Still, learned a few things along the way, but I'm still on a pause as far as that goes. I know what I can do, and so far it isn't adding planets or moons you can land on. Everything but really.

I'll probably focus on some other stuff for a bit, maybe get back to it later, but not right now. Plenty of other stuff to do anyway.