Novian Orrery Project (The Returnening!)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Cora Cuz'avich, May 3, 2020.

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  1. Bowen Bloodgood

    Bowen Bloodgood Avatar

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    I very vaguely recall figuring out the horizon way back when but I don't remember the details now. A lot of staring at my town moondial. It may be my memory playing tricks but I seem to recall that the world on the moondial is correctly orientated but also that I thought it was really weird. I'd have to go stare at it for a few more hours again. But I don't think there's meant to be any physical indicator on the moondial.
     
  2. Cora Cuz'avich

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    And hey! It looks like the moon phase is actually based on the position of the moon and sun to Novia. Since it doesn't actually change in the sky, I thought maybe it might be on its own unrelated counter, just cycling on independent of everything else. I suppose I should have known better.
     
  3. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I think the angle is correct, but yes, its motion on the small craftable one doesn't really indicate anything, as it would mean pretty much everything in the sky rose and set daily. Mostly just checking if there's something I'm missing.
     
  4. Toular

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    Yup. knew that. Does not quite make sense, though ... The Perennial coast has a more tropical feel than, say Norgard or North Paladis.
     
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  5. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Ooh, I almost think thought they messed up. But apparently, the phases appear flipped in the southern hemisphere. Somebody knew what they were doing.
     
  6. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Actually, they did mess up. Based on the moondial, it should currently be a full moon. (The moon and the sun are on opposite sides of Novia.) But the game says it's a new moon.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Hmmm. So, the moon thing is annoying, but it's now occurring to me that the constellations move as well. I jad thought to have them statonary around the perimeter, but if they move, then it'll be useless for sieges, as the planets won't align to them properly.

    This just got a lot tricksier.

    Still confused about the months, too. I can't really find anything other than SotAwiki that lists them relative to constellations, but their list doesn't match what's currently in the game.

    grumble grumble grumble
     
  8. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Aha! SotaWiki is wrong. Looking in this post by Bowen shows the months/constellations in a different order, which matches what I see in the sky. So that's one issue out of the way.
     
  9. Bowen Bloodgood

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    heheh.. once upon a time the constellations moved the other way. Their order of appearance was most untraditional. It's probably just old data.
     
  10. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Ah, okay. That explains that one, at least.
     
  11. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I think I can ignore the issue with the moon. As long as the moon progresses through its phases in the correct order for the southern hemisphere, it shouldn't matter, as the moon in the sky never actually changes how it looks based on its phase. Though, I am going to have to go to a moon gate lunar rift and see what's on the stones- I would expect the dev who handled all this would know the side of the moon that lights up is reversed in the southern hemisphere, but it wouldn't hurt to double check.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2020
  12. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Well, I was right to check. The symbols on the lunar rift stones are how the moon would appear in the northern hemisphere, not the southern. Doesn't really affect anything, since the moon isn't dynamically lit by the sun, and doesn't actually show what phase its in, but it'll affect what symbols I use where on the rift chronometer.

    It also looks like the zodiac ring on the craftable moondial is in fact rotating. It's very slow, as it would take twelve earth days to make a full turn. I'll know for sure tomorrow evening; if it's moving, it'll have turned enough to be very obvious.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2020
  13. Bowen Bloodgood

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    I'm sure there must've been a time when game devs would say to themselves "no one will ever notice this minor detail". Bwuhahahahahaa! And once upon a time.. every day at high noon.. the sun would stop for 5 minutes! Yes.. someone noticed... :)
     
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  14. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Spent some time at lunch trying to wrap my head around the constellation issue. It's going to be difficult to get the entire outer ring to move. Not impossible, but I may have to start some 3d modeling to work out the details. I had hoped to get a plan worked out first, instead of directly iterating in CAD.

    Another possible solution would be to have Novia rotate at the rate the constellations normally revolve, and leave the constellations fixed. I don't think it'll be too hard to recalculate the motion of everything else, it all just needs to move slightly faster to maintain the correct orientation to Novia. Its a lot more math, but the physical design is much simpler.
     
  15. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I think I've figured out a design that works. (Theoretically, at least. As in, "it works on paper.") The gear pair that controls the constellation ring will drive a disk with eight arms (because Ultima) that extend out and then up to support the constellation ring at the level of the ecliptic plane. Because that gear pair will be close to the bottom of the stack, the armed wheel should have plenty of support. I may have to fashion the arms from metal wire or rod though, instead of printing them, to ensure they have enough strength. (Though, hopefully 3d printed arms will support the weight. It seems like it'd be a part that could get lots of cool detailing. Maybe they look like the earth serpent, since the constellations also feature order and chaos; having them be supported/balanced by the serpent fits the mythology. Outside of that ring will be another ring on pillars that is fixed to the base, this would support the "horizon cage," for lack of a better term. (I should look it up, other orreries have them, so it probably has a name.) Although the one on the craftable moondial rotates, it's not supposed to, like the one made of light on the ornate moondial. The cage will serve two functions; it'll indicate true north, and also allow you to see which constellations are currently above the horizon. (Well, three functions, it'll also look pretty cool.) Both rings will be wide enough that all of the planets revolve inside them, so none of the parts intersect each other.

    Oooh, I might be able to use the horizon cage's ring as a support for the constellation ring. Then the arms won't have to support the ring's weight, they'd just need to be able to drive its rotation.
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2020
  16. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Quickie update: hit a bit of a snag.

    For one; the gear design software (Gearotic) I'm using is free... but you need to pay for it to be able to export. I would likely pay for it, except it doesn't export into a 3d format I can use in SolidWorks. The paid version will export a 2d drawing which I can then use in SW to re-create the gear... but I have do that individually for each gear. Since exporting in that fashion only saves me about 10% of the effort of doing it from scratch, and the gear software does provide me with all the measurements and such, I felt that the purchase would be unnecessary.

    Of course, this does requiring me to learn how equations in SW work, which is not a feature I have ever needed to mess with. And getting my equations to correctly generate a gear based on the numbers Gearotic is proving a challenge.

    For two; I'm not about to drop several hundred dollars on a 3d printer while the immediate future is so uncertain. I had been planning the purchase for some time before the pandemic for other projects, but it seems wiser to sit on that cash for the time being. There's still a lot of design work to be done, though, so I'm not really in a rush.

    Once I can get this gear geometry stuff working correctly (still going to have to figure out bevel gears too; that's a whole other pile of terror) I can begin doing some more work on the overall design of the machine itself.
     
  17. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Well, that was an unexpected rabbit hole.

    Short version- while some of the calculations are similar between imperial and metric gears (same math, different units) not all of them are. The arbitrary bits are calculated in different ways, which is why my CAD math isn't matching Gearotic's math. Weirdly, information on metric gear design is extremely lacking on the interwebs. The easy path would be to just concede and do this all in imperial, where there is a lot of info available to guide me. But now I'm just being stubborn.
     
  18. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Hm. Next stumbling block: if the tooth count is high enough, I need to do some calculations with negative angles. SolidWorks does not like that. Well, not in the way I'd like to do it.

    [EDIT] Hmm... It looks like I could do it by using two different templates, one for low tooth counts and one for high. The high one would include a "360+x" function to get around the equations issue. I think.
     
  19. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Not the most thrilling thing to see, but I was able to work out the math (and a solution for negative angles on high tooth count gears) and design gears from scratch in SolidWorks. I set up the file in a way where I can make a copy, input a few key numbers from Gearotic, and get working involute gears that mesh correctly.

     
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  20. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Couple things:

    I was monkeying around with some ideas for the visual aspects of all the parts, and came up with idea of having lines of text around the rims of the larger gears. Elgarion had pointed me to some versiosn of the runic font that didn't have the "scratched into a hunk of wood" look, and would be more appropriate for something that was engraved. Unfortunately, they didn't play well with SolidWorks. Either they had overlapping outlines which SW can't use, or they had bits too fine to cut in properly. So I poked around a bit more, and found an open source program for designing fonts. (FontForge) While it's more than full-featured enough to make the runes from scratch, I cheated a bit by drawing them up in SW, as I could then dimension the letters to something in the ballpark of the smallest I'd likely use them, and ensure all the elements had sufficient thickness to 3d print cleanly. I also threw in a few extra obsidian-esque symbols to use as sentence separators. I also made some plainer symbols, in case the obsidian ones don't read well at small sizes. I also used the original Ultima version of the runes, for nostalgia, and because it's the one I remember better.* It's not the most well-designed font ever, but it's readable, and thick enough to 3d print well. When I use it, I intend to cut it in with a high draft angle, so the letters will look like they were chiseled in with a v-graver instead of hjust cut straight down. That should give them a little more visual appeal.


    [​IMG]

    I also think much of this is going to be on hold until I actually purchase a 3D printer. It occurred to me that I probably shouldn't get too far into the actual 3D modelling until I have an idea how strong the material is and how small I can go on the gears. I could just design big enough that I know it's not likely to be a problem, but I also don't want this thing being two feet across, either. I might do a few sub assemblies in the mean time, to work out some ideas, but I think it'd be wise to get the printer and have a better feel for how small I can make stuff before I go in whole hog and model 50ish gears and assorted connectors and supports and what not.

    *Well, technically that's true. But also, not having read a lot of runic in SotA, I wasn't aware the runic system was different. (Thanks, EA!) When I searched for the runes, I quickly found the image that was in all the old game manuals. Since that was the one I remembered from the early U5-U9 days, I figured it was the right one and used it. I'd already done all the grunt work by the time I realized there was a difference, so I'm retconning my mistake as "nostalgia." Though, the nice thing about using a font rather than creating the icons in SW directly is not only ease of use, but I can always change the font with a mouseclick or two, so If I decide to go with the "New Brittanian" runes, it'll be a pretty easy change.
     
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