Status of planet surface, atmosphere and nebula

[royfalk]

Roy: "I'm reasonably certain none of these have really worked. Atmosphere, surface, nebula, etc."
Stephen: "I don't know about nebulae, but atmosphere and planet surface definitely work."

Scope:

1. What stuff (unit) do we have that isn't clearly defined and working. Working and defined: planets, missiles, ships, stations... Not necessarily working or defined: nebulae (really?), buildings, atmosphere, AtmosphereHalo, atmospheric_fog_mesh, terrain, cities, city lights...
2. This is not an open discussion. We open a thread per code (class, header, something) and we reference it. We then go over VS and WC assets to see if this is used.
3. Purpose is to identify stuff that's clearly working and well programmed vs. stuff that's in progress. If it's in progress, we do a go/no-go for it depending on how big the gap is. If no-go, document in an issue and remove the code - link the commit to the issue so we can find the code later for reference. If go, document gaps in an issue and close them.

[royfalk]

General Thread
Everything not related to a specific object goes here. Including objections to the process.

[stephengtuggy]

I think this makes sense. I'm sure there will be those who object to taking out code that is only partly functional. But we need to. We can't keep moving forward effectively with this much cruft weighing us down.

Besides, like you said, we'll leave it so we can refer to the code in question later, by going back to the commit(s) in question.

[royfalk]

Nebula

/src/cmd/nebula.*

[stephengtuggy]

Atmosphere / AtmosphereHalo / atmospheric_fog_mesh. (Are they the same feature? Separate features?)

[stephengtuggy]

Terrain. This one's a doozy. From what I have seen, Vega Strike project members have spent many hours constructing terrain for Earth. It still isn't included in the released game. And I'm sure those individuals would hate to see their effort go to waste.

What do we want to do here? At a minimum, I think we should keep the source files in Assets-Masters. That might be all we can do for now, though.

[BenjamenMeyer]

from what I recall from conversations with @Loki1950 they were planning on modeling planet level stuff so you could fly lower in or something. For now, I do agree that we should keep the stuff in Asset Masters. It may be a while until we understand enough of the engine code to resume it - and that's okay. I certainly agree we should try not to let the effort go to waste. So I propose:

1. Keep it in Asset Masters
2. As we learn stuff we should document it

[stephengtuggy]

Cities / City lights. (Same feature? Different features?)