As I've mentioned before, I'm looking for software to help with my drawing deficiencies. Floor plans typically involve straight lines, so I'm good there with a ruler. But let's not talk about my larger maps.
Zy's universe (literally) has shown up my weakness when it comes to working solar systems. I understand the concepts in Stephen L. Gillett's book
World-Building, but working the equations out on paper and visualizing what that means... so far the result has been to chunk it all aside to deal with later.
There is no more later. The Triangulation entry story must be submitted by March 31st. And I need to work out the math for their local time and some visualization of what the planet has gone through must go into the description. And since hiring whoever built Pandora for James Cameron is out of the question, I need a solution that won't hurt my head.
So software, namely software actually created for RPGs set in outer space. When I gamed, my groups weren't so into maps so I had no idea how big the market was for this. However a lot of the free ones on the net are random generators with a limited degree of control over the variables, (which I suppose works just fine when the party takes a wrong turn at Planet Albuquerque and you as GM need a new planet fast).
AstroSynthesis by NBOS came up high in my searches, lets you configure just about everything, and it comes with a free trial period.
This is actually my second trial run. I had tried the program on my old computer before it died and figured out I really needed help with the Goldilocks Zone around stars. AstroSynthesis puts distance planet is from star and temperature and orbital properties under your manual control, which isn't a bad thing until Gillet's equations figured in AUs and AstroSynthesis using kilometers had me boiling and freezing the habital tidal locked moon around a gas giant I was trying to build. A glance at the forums saw I wasn't the only one concerned and the creator promised version 3 would have a warning that the planet was getting out of the Goldilocks zone.
"Version 3 is probably what I want to spend money on, since it will have more checks on the things I'm screwing up." And then came the computer melt-down of 2010 and I put planet building on the back burner again.
Forward to last weekend where I knew I would need to be doing orbital calculations for Mealte's homeworld very, very soon and having a conversation over the O.Z.'s planet as shown in
Tin Man. I was just using Earth's calender there, but with it being a planet of a double star system that means its orbit is probably further away to match the temperate climate of Vancouver, Canada.
"That's the perfect test for AstroSynthesis! I know it has to match Earth, so I'll just tinker with the distances until I get there and see how long the orbit is. If I can do that, I can probably safely move onto complete original planets that are not tidal locked to gas giants. And then I can really have fun with the time periods between Earth and the O.Z."
Or looking back now, make myself tear my hair out and chose to not use what I had learned in the stories. *Shrug*
First I tested a new random generator
Star System Generator by donjon. That gave me numbers to start with for a planet in the Goldilocks zone orbiting a K7 orange star and a red dwarf. That's not the star system for the O.Z. but I had a distance I could plug in now.
Using AstroSynthesis: me and its zoom feature (not that it really has a zoom feature) are not friends. Getting it to select a star system was nigh impossible and if I started the animated tour of the galaxy, the program froze while bouncing around the sector of space I had just created.
But I finally managed to create a double star system with a hospitable Earth-like planet with three moons. I got an orbit map of the planet and moons. Next stop is the orbit map for the entire system! And the ability to select that was grayed out.
This did not match my previous experience with calculating orbits, but I finally found the answer.
Version 2 doesn't have orbits around double stars because the math couldn't be pre-calculated. But it's coming in Version 3.
Please see
World-Building by Stephen L. Gillett, specifically pages 29 - 31 and 146 - 150. My comprehension of these sections is it is doable but complicated.
Again the results of my test is Version 3 is what I should spend my money on. But there is no ETA for Version 3. It was supposed to come out last year and didn't.
*headdesk*
Looking back at options, I found
Cosmographer 3 by ProFantasy Software. What it can create is gorgeous to look at and it appears to be "put this object here" drawing, which I can do. I'm afraid that I'll still have the same won't do double star system issue, it won't check my math (planet is too close to the sun so it has no water, silly user!), and the price. In order to get the program to run, I'd have to shell out $112. That also gives me Campaign Cartographer 3 and Fractal Terrains, so I'd be able to use it for planet-side drawing for everything I write, but still! There is no demo version for Cosmographer to test first.
*headdesk*
I'm going to send them an email asking my questions, but I doubt I can buy it until next year.
