Forum > Shadow World
Where exactly is the Ceril VII Star System.
Micael:
Very nice, thank you- a few questions to the pictures: 1. Why so many similar continental maps? Some of them seem to have more white colours? Why you have done some many different northern stars views? Thanks micael
kmanktelow:
The actual Kulthea map is two different maps (West and East hemispheres) joined together - both with different colour schemes.
That then had to be spherically mapped onto a sphere created in an old 3D rendering program called Imagine 3D and then the sphere had to be opened up to convert it to the Mercator Projection required by Celestia.
Then I started brushing on image data from a real satellite photo of the Earth, gradually covering up the original large resolution image and then scaling it to the size required for mapping it to Celestia, testing how it looks, back to editing, rinse and repeat.....
Very time consuming.
Thinking about it, AI would probably actually help?
But, like so many things, life got in the way - grandkids, etc.
I know I uploaded the Celestia files I'd done up that point to the Iron Crown Website, so it could have been dragged and dropped into the program directory but don't think it got put up - and I suffered catastrophic hard drive failure and lost all bar the images I'd uploaded to OneDrive.......
cdcooley:
I have a copy of that set of Celestia files. They were available somewhere at some point, or maybe you sent them to me directly, I really don't remember because it was a very long time ago. I can send them to you or post them if you like.
I used them as a base for my own personal take on the Kulthean system and updated them for Celestia 1.5 and then again recently for 1.6.4. So if you don't mind and anyone is interested I could share my version as well.
In fact, I've been planning for some time now to make my version available since I'm reasonably happy with it even if it's not quite as complete as I would like and because I always hesitate before sharing something I've done for my own fun where it can be criticized by others.
Here's what I've written in my ReadMe so far.
--- Quote ---This is an add-on for Celestia (https://celestiaproject.space/) and it would not be possible if kmanktelow on the I.C.E. Forums (now https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums) hadn't shared a set of files for Celestia many years ago.
This was developed using version 1.64 on Windows but should work with with all 1.64 and newer versions on all platforms. I don't recommend the Mobile Celestia version on the Microsoft Store which has a broken implementation of the event handlers which require the scripts to be constantly running to work. (I don't know if that script behavior is a bug introduced in that particular version or an intentional change for all of Mobile Celestia but if intentional then the developers of Mobile Celestia don't understand the concept of event handlers. There's an alternate callback mechanism that is tied to the script execution and the event handlers were supposed to persist even after a script terminates. Sorry, had to vent my frustration on that one because the newer version has some really nice improvements otherwise.)
The parts of the addon are the resource files needed to add the Kulthean star system, a few scripts, and a diagram of the new keyboard map provided by the scripts.
The resources are in the "extras/Ceril-Kulthea" folder and that matches how they should be added to your Celestia installation.
The scripts can live anywhere but Celestia does have a folder specifically for scripts. Note that you can start Celestia using the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script if you want to use all my extra key functions.
The "Kulthean Custom Key Map Layout.html" file shows all of the new key bindings added by the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script. There are a number of convenience functions not directly related to Kulthea but the most important new features are bound to keys v and d. The v key toggles a display of the current Kuthean date and time. The d key puts you in a date entry mode so you can directly set a particular date and time. Since Kulthean dates span such a huge range of time the default "Set Time" dialog is terribly inadequate (and would be based on Earth time which isn't very convenient if you want to look at things from a Kulthean perspective).
If you have trouble with (or just don't want to use) the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script there are two others with more limited features. The "Kulthean Goto Kulthea.celx" script will simply and quickly position you in orbit above Gryphon College. The "Kulthean Date Mode.celx" script shows the current Kulthea date and time and allows you to change it by pressing d, but implements the feature using a keyboard callback which won't interfere with any other key remapping you might have and is only active while the script itself is running. (Press ESC to cancel the script at any time.)
For this addon I have chosen the star 9 Cet/ HIP 1803 / HD 1835 / SAO 147237 to be Kulthea's sun, Ceril. This G3V class star in Cetus (the Whale) is has the right size and luminosity and is the best match I can find matching the the SpaceMaster description of Ceril. It's a bit closer to Earth than it should be, but most SpaceMaster star positions and distances are acknowledged to be wildly inaccurate and I wanted a star of the right type, size, and brightness to be very similar in appearance from Kulthea as Sol is from Earth. The file Ceril.stc can be edited if you want to have Ceril be some other star. The source files I was working from used TYC 3698-1970-1 and the line to restore it to that position is commented out but in Ceril.stc.
The Kulthea_locs.ssc file has the Western hemisphere continent and ocean names.
The Ceril_Asteroids.ssc file was generated by kmanktelow and the only changes I made were to anchor them to the name "Ceril" so that you can decide the true location of Kulthea by editing Ceril.stc.
The Ceril.ssc file has updated information for the rest of the system including Kulthea's moons, all of the planets, and the comet Sa'kain.
All values have been set to match the Shadow World Master Atlas 3rd and 4th editions and an asteroid placeholder is included so that Kulthea is counted as the 7th planet.
Kulthea's orbit and rotation are set to align with Earth so the grid views work and its year of 350 (25-hour) days matches the average Earth year of 365.2425 (24-hour) days.
Earth's Solstice on 2000 Dec 21 at 13:37:03 UTC is synchronized with the Kulthean Solstice of SEI 2751-1-1 at the start of the Predawn Quintar in central Emer and the solstices remain aligned for many thousands of years with only minor variations.
Kulthea's moons are all aligned so that they are new and full on the correct dates each year. I've even managed to get Sa'kain's orbit set so that Charon is in its tail on TEI 2625-2-1.
And for fun, there's a "Rift" at the L1 Lagrange point between Orhan and Kulthea. (While in the Ceril system, just hit Enter and search for Rift. Otherwise it's very hard to find because it is so small.)
Finally, there are the textures for Kulthea. I've created the base textures in a semi-realistic style. I'm not an artist and I actually prefer the look to be slightly "map-like" rather than fully realistic. The "limit of knowledge" textures act as an overlay to show the roads, regions, towns, and other sites of Jaiman. (I haven't gotten to any other continents yet.)
--- End quote ---
kmanktelow:
Feel free to share it, it would be great to play with Celestia again... ;D
cdcooley:
I've uploaded both the original 2008 files I had and my revisions to the TinyPortal Download Vault. We'll see how long it takes an administrator to notice.
In the mean time I've also put them on Dropbox along with some screenshots for those who are curious.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6ong1vxx5r2f2orcm6wtc/AAy4dvJltC8TJ96XaXgGlK8?rlkey=exu9uolrjutv4zctf1r676kuf&st=hhr1hl9u&dl=0
I can also make the source textures I created in Gimp available, but just the main Kulthean texture is almost 1GB using the compressed settings so I'm not putting those up unless someone promises to take them and improve them. (The source texture is 16384x8192 and has multiple layers involved, with an even more detailed version over Jaiman.) The actual plugin files are using the Virtual Texture system which breaks that into smaller, more manageable chunks.
That Dropbox folder also has a file called "KultheanCalendar.html" which includes a Javascript-based calculator and clock that shows paired Kulthean and Terran times. Since Dropbox is just a file storage and sharing site, you will need to download that html file if you want to use it, so I've also included a screenshot of what that clock looks like. This is technically unrelated to the Celestia stuff, but the same date and time conversions are included in the Celestia scripts. Just without the cute clock display.
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