
	Technical details speaking of The Noctis Galaxy
	-----------------------------------------------



	Noctis overview:

	First of all, the name of the program: it's weird, it's the latin
	word for "night", and it's been given by the fact that Noctis has
	been mainly coded in the night, because I (the author) currently
	haven't enough free time if not in the night. More precisely, it's
	been coded during my restless nights. The project started in 1996:
	as many of the so-called "real programmers" I just felt surprised
	about seeing a glimpse of light coming from the window and suddenly
	realized it was 5 A.M. but, even if the far stars on the screen were
	not reachable (because they were just a 3D matrix of random dots),
	I felt really intrigued by the concept of a game where there should
	have been no missions to complete, no enemies to kill, and players
	were just alien creatures "boldly going where no alien being has been
	before". At first I imagined an alien entity having the shape of a
	cat, because I have a real passion for cats; however, in late 1999,
	when Noctis was first released on the Internet, I decided that an
	"undefined being, either alien or human" would have left more freedom
	for players to imagine their own aspect in the game. At the moment,
	you can still find traces of the feline way of life, by just taking
	a look at how tall you are, and to the "strange" proportions of the
	stardrifter; even more indicative of Noctis' historical background
	is the simple fact that Noctis explorers live on the prowl... but
	if I may say, this would be unavoidable: there are no restaurants
	in the Noctis galaxy, as well as in our Milky Way.



	Technically, what's Noctis?

	The program has been noticed by many players as a very impressive
	work: a whole galaxy in so little space (actually about 216 Kb),
	"that's magic" some said. Well, at code level, Noctis is a complex
	group of C++ and assembly functions managing everything at random.
	It has a 32-bit pseudo-random number generator, and starts from your
	stardrifter position to determine the position of all nearby stars;
	then, the attributes of the stars are determined by their individual
	positions, which also gives a "random seed", a number, that drives
	the construction of all planets' surfaces and attributes. There are
	pratically no stars having the same seed, because the probability
	for two stars to have exactly the same seed is 1 against 2 raised
	to the 32th power, or 1 : 4,294,967,296.



	The Galaxy:

	The Noctis Galaxy is not the Milky Way (our galaxy) so do not expect
	to find the Earth somewhere. You are imagined to be at hundred of
	millions light years away from Earth.

	The galaxy you're exploring in Noctis is elliptical. You can imagine
	it as having the shape of a huge lens. It's about 180,000 light years
	wide, and 6,000 light years tall. Below I'll explain what would happen
	if you moved away from the core of the galaxy (where you start from)
	and travelling for a very long time. But first, you need a reference
	coordinates system, otherwise you'd just get lost within a few jumps
	from star to star, being not able to find out where you are.

	This universal coordinates system, valid throught the whole galaxy,
	is provided by the Parsis Universal Coordinates. The galactic
	cartography console of the on-board computer continuously shows
	your actual position measured with this coordinates system, where
	a single unit means 0.00005 light years. Therefore, the galaxy is
	about 4 billion Parsis wide. Your "home" position, the entry point
	for Noctis explorers, is at Parsis +3797120;-4352112;-925018, at
	about 5 light years from the class zero star called "Lyonesse".
	These are also the values showen by the cartography console when you
	enter the Noctis Galaxy by running the program for the first time.
	The first value is your X position, the second's Y, and third is Z.
	From there, you can travel in any directions, until the real edges
	of the galaxy, located at some +2 / -2 billion units along X and Z.
	While the Y axis (when you move vertically) would soon lead you out
	of the galactic plane, meaning that if you travel vertically for
	some time, you'll soon find very little stars on your way. Yet a
	spherical halo made of oldest stars will be present, but I think it
	would be much better to stay within the galactic plane, where stars
	are more numerous and easy to reach. Along X and Z (moving along the
	galactic plane, horizontally) you'd have to travel all of those 2
	billion Parsis units before hitting the edge of the galaxy. You can
	decide to travel until that point, but there's nothing interesting
	to see once you get there, and such a long travel would certainly
	be quite boring... let's calculate. If you can target and fly to a
	star every 30 seconds, averagely travelling for 40 light years for
	each jump, getting to the edge of the galaxy would take 2250 jumps,
	or almost 19 hours! Do it only if you're *very* curious.



	The stars:

	There are many kinds of star within the galaxy.
	Many of those are known by actual physics.
	Stars are catalogued in 12 classes, from ZERO to ELEVEN,
	which are all listed and described below:

	Class ZERO:

		Description: 	"medium size, yellow star, suitable for
				planets having indigenous lifeforms."

		Notes:		Class zero stars are just like our Sun,
				and if you're looking for planets supporting
				life and breathable atmosphere, you should
				definitely take a look around class 0 stars.
				Althought, in effects, such planets are
				possible even around other stars, for example
				live planets have also been discovered around
				a few class 3 stars. A well known catalogued
				system is, for example, Miracle.

	Class ONE:

		Description:	"very large, blue giant star, high energy
				radiations around."

		Notes:		Such stars are very massive and large.
				They usually have a lot of planets around
				(even 20), but it takes a lot of time to
				reach the planets, because their orbits are
				normally spread around the star at very
				long distances.

	Class TWO:

		Description:	"white dwarf star, possible harmful
				radiations."

		Notes:		This is a white dwarf, or what remains of a
				class zero star after it died. Don't think
				such stars to still have living planets!
				When they died, they exploded and usually
				destroyed all of their planets. Normally,
				only massive planets survived, such as gas
				giants and substellar objects.

	Class THREE:

		Description:	"very large, ancient, red giant star."

		Notes:		This is a star that will die in a few million
				years. Class zero stars sometimes become like
				class three stars when they get very old. So,
				it's actually possible to find live planets
				around class three stars. As I said, there's
				a well known example: Miracle, which fourth
				planet has an atmosphere based on oxygen and
				nitrogen, but very little lifeforms, because
				it's unfortunately an icy planet. Discoverers
				were so displeased the planet revealed to be
				so cold that they called it "Piece of ice".

	Class FOUR:

		Description:	"large and glowing, orange giant star,
				high nuclear mass."

		Notes:		A big star, fairly more massive than class
				zero, and usually unsuitable for life.
				Same things as class one.

	Class FIVE:

		Description:	"small, weak, cold,
				brown dwarf substellar object."

		Notes:		This could hardly be called a "star".
				It's more likely a very big gas giant planet,
				even though it still emits some light and can
				be surrounded by averagely one or two planets.
				Be careful on those planets: they're usually
				very dark and you may get lost easily.
				Oh, and don't expect to find life.

	Class SIX:

		Description:	"large, very weak, very cold,
				gray giant dead star."

		Notes:		Do not ask scientists: they'd just tell you
				such stars don't even exist. But scientists
				don't even know gravity becomes a repulsive
				force in some cases, and they still believe
				the universe is expanding because of their
				ridiculous "theory of the Big Bang".
				I'm not fooling you. Believe it or not, time
				will tell us. Ok, apart from this, class six
				stars are very useful because they emit around
				high quantities of lithium ions. Lithium is
				what keeps stardrifters going, so if you see
				one of those stars, consider it a treasure!

	Class SEVEN:

		Description:	"very small, blue dwarf star,
				strong gravity well around."

		Notes:		A blue dwarf is a very dense star, almost
				like a pulsar, just that it doesn't spin.
				No life, few and small planets, enormous
				radiation fields, and a hell of gravity.
				Keep out.

	Class EIGHT:

		Description:	"possible multiple system,
				unsuitable for planets."

		Notes:		A star that's too near to another star,
				or it's co-orbiting along with another star,
				both spinning around a common gravitational
				center. But it's not that interesting, and
				the combined gravitational pull pratically
				means no planets at all...
				The individual stars classified as class 8
				can be of any other types, and they're
				labeled "class 8 stars" just to inform
				that they're part of a multiple system.

	Class NINE:

		Description:	"medium size, surrounded by gas clouds,
				young star."

		Notes:		This is just a new star, still surrounded
				by the gas clouds that condensed to form it.
				Usually such stars have lots of planets,
				many of which have strange orbits and will
				probably crash in to others in some million
				years. You can rarely find a planet where
				it's possible to descend: normally, class 9
				stars have a lot of proto-planets, either
				too big or too hot. Not very interesting.

	Class TEN:

		Description:	"very large and ancient runaway star,
				unsuitable for planets."

		Notes:		Run-away stars are old asters which in some
				way (mostly by passing bewteen two or more
				massive stars and consequently being thrown
				away at high velocity by the effects of their
				combined gravity pits) have acquired a very
				high momentum and are now travelling across
				the galaxy, pratically "running away" all the
				time. Well, don't expect to see them moving
				with your eyes: even if their speed is high,
				it's averagely 1,000 to 3,000 kilometers per
				second in respect to the other stars, so it'd
				just take few millenniums for you to see them
				effectively move. The only facts you can
				experience of runaway stars is: they're big,
				reddish, and weak. Also, they rarely have
				planets, because they've pratically "lost"
				them along the way...

	Class ELEVEN:

		Description:	"tiny pulsar object, unsafe,
				high radiation, strong gravity."

		Notes:		Those are very weird. A class 11 star, also
				known as "pulsar", has the same size as a
				small planet, but it's hugely dense. They
				are fully made of neutrons (neutrons are
				particles formed by protons and electrons)
				and if you could take away a little piece
				of their matter, you'd immediately die
				because that fragment would explode, being
				no longer compressed by the pulsar's gravity,
				which is incredibly strong. Those stars also
				spin around their axis at huge speed. Why?
				Well, imagine you're on a wheel chair and
				spinning. Imagine you're keeping your legs
				and arms in full length out. If you then
				contract them quickly, you'll find your
				rotational speed will suddenly increase.
				So it's easy to imagine the same thing happens
				to a star when it contracts within such little
				space. Also, the surface of class 11 stars is
				usually not perfectly uniform, so they can
				emit intense radiations and light from small
				sectors of their surface. This gives the name
				"pulsar": those brighter sections work like
				lighthouses, making the star appear as if it
				was "pulsing", instantly becoming less or more
				bright at regular intervals. Finally, pulsars
				may have a few planets, but they're normally
				weird. They look like gas giants, but they're
				much smaller: even the planets around pulsars
				are very dense, and their aspect was given by
				the catastrophic effects of the explosion of
				their star, which is just the remnant of a
				bigger one, usually what was a class 4 star.

		Get near:	If it wasn't for the stardrifter, it would be
				potentially harmful to get near pulsars. But
				you've got a very safe vehicle that will never
				let you die and protects you against anything,
				so fear not: disable the "force radiations
				limit" feature and run to a pulsar.
				It's no use, but an impressive view!



	The planets:

	There's no numerical classification for planets: they are difficult
	to classify, because a lot of classes would be needed. For example,
	take the small and rocky planets: some have smooth surface with dust
	plains and craters, while others look completely different, having
	lots of peaks, mountains and tiny craters. Some are bright, others
	are very dark with brilliant impact circles... it's a mess, not to
	speak of the other kinds of planet. In a nutshell, the stardrifter's
	on-board computer describes planets very approximately: to know what
	they effectively are, you have to get in their vicinity.

	"medium size, internally hot, unstable surface, no atmosphere."
	---------------------------------------------------------------
	This is either a proto-planet, or a planet continuously stretched
	by combined gravitational fields. They are especially frequent
	around class 9 stars, and the all-terrain capsule isn't able to
	land on their surface. Anyway, don't think it would be a good idea
	to land on such planets: their surface keeps changing day by day,
	because of very powerful events (volcanoes, mudslides and so on).
	Also their surface, at high temperature, isn't usually much solid.

	"small, solid, dusty, craterized, no atmosphere."
	-------------------------------------------------
	Any kind of small planet, unable to keep a significantly dense
	atmosphere around, fits this description. Normally their surface's
	rocky or dusty, and filled with craters, valleys and small plains.
	They are safe for landing, but moving on the surface can be difficult
	because of their little gravity.

	"medium size, solid, thick atmosphere, fully covered by clouds."
	----------------------------------------------------------------
	Such planets have solid surface, just you can't see it from space,
	because they're entirely covered by dense clouds. High pressure
	and temperatures are also frequent. Winds are strong in the upper
	side of their atmosphere, and they'll shift the capsule a lot,
	but once on the ground you'll be able to move without great
	difficulty: yet the air, being so dense, will slow down movements
	and interfere with your sight. You may get lost in case the planet's
	distant from its star, or when the star's very weak (e.g. class 5).
	Apart from these considerations, they're not good places to visit.

	"medium size, felisian, breathable atmosphere, suitable for life."
	------------------------------------------------------------------
	"Felisian" means Earth-like. You'd call live planets "terrestrial",
	but the stardrifters' original civilization initially lived on a
	planet they called "Felysia". So it's quite normal that the on-board
	computer describes such planets as "felisians". Ok, it's rather
	clear that those are the most beautiful planets to visit, but don't
	think you'll always find soft grass fields, forests and suchs.
	Sometimes a world's described as "felisian" just because it could,
	theoretically, host life. But the on-board computer cannot tell if
	the planet has a comfortable temperature to live in. So you may find
	such planets to be almost completely desert, or covered with ice and
	huge snow plains. Some others are almost totally deprived of dry
	lands, being formed by a unique, great ocean, with only some reefs
	and small islands. There would be a lot of things to say about live
	planets, many of which you can certainly imagine: the weather may
	not always be good, especially if you try to land under wide clouds.

	"medium size, rocky, creased, no atmosphere."
	---------------------------------------------
	These are planets almost totally made of rocks, arranged in monoliths
	with their size going from sand grains to whole mountains. Normally,
	you can easily land and move on these planets, but there isn't very
	much to see indeed.

	"small, solid, thin atmosphere."
	--------------------------------
	What deprived these planets from becoming "felisians", it's usually
	their relatively small size. Alternatively they may be too far or
	too near their star and atmosphere's either evaporated or frozen.
	They have very little air, and it's normally not breathable because
	only heaviest elements didn't escape the planet's little gravity.
	Most of their volative elements have normally concentrated near the
	poles, where they're frozen forever. You can land for some relax:
	you can bet nothing happens there since huge amounts of time.

	"large, not consistent, covered with dense clouds."
	---------------------------------------------------
	Those are almost certainly gas giant planets, having inconsistent
	surface. Therefore, you cannot land on them. Anyway, they're nice
	to see from space, and their clouds have a wide range of colours.
	Very special types of gas giants can be found around small and
	dense stars (class 7 and 11): they are the remains of gas giants
	which have been totally wasted by a "nova" explosion, and they're
	even smaller than felisian planets. Their surface, in such cases,
	is mostly formed by a weird substance: liquid metallic hydrogen.

	"small, solid, icy surface drifting over liquid water, no atmosphere."
	----------------------------------------------------------------------
	If you target some planets very far from their star, you'll also find
	planets like these. They're fully covered with water ice, and have
	liquid water underneath as a single, big ocean. It's easy to land on
	them, but be careful you may find canyons and such. There's no life:
	sometimes comets crack the surface and bring organic substances in
	their oceans. In such cases, early life can form there, like tiny
	bacteria and RNA sequences, but they won't last.

	"medium size, surface is mainly native quartz, oxygen atmosphere."
	------------------------------------------------------------------
	Those planets are used to build stardrifters. They're quite frequent,
	even though there are no planets like these in the Solar System.
	Oxygen and silicon are two of the most diffuse elements in the whole
	universe. When they combine, they form quartz. Planets like these
	have crusts made of quartz, while the remaining oxygen keeps floating
	around, forming the atmosphere. Unfortunately, there's no nitrogen,
	so the 100% oxygen atmosphere is absolutely not breathable. Their
	surface's nice to visit: it's shiny and sometimes, there are even
	high peaks and hills, entirely made of transparent quartz.

	"very large, substellar object, not consistent."
	------------------------------------------------
	It's a weird aster, something between a planet and a class 5 star.
	Like a gas giant, but very big. You can't absolutely land on it.
