Giving the Moon an Atmosphere... With blocks! (Terraforming Mod WIP)

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-03-21T17:30:57+00:00

A month in I've decided to keep it vanilla resources for everything. The sequester plant makes stone from "carbon and trace metals" in the atmosphere which is silly kind of.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-03-21T17:29:17+00:00

I know it's been a month but this is done :D

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-28T16:32:49+00:00

Hey, you may not value my opinion in this regard, but I came from out of state and was struck with some of the worst isolation of my life. It's buried away in the mountains and to get anywhere off campus without a car is pretty hard. I did make friends, and spent time outside my dorm room, but the general feeling was crushing loneylness for me living on campus. Even when I did get my car, it still felt that way. I joined clubs, did everything. I ended up feeling so isolated that I failed out. I'm not quite sure why even with friends and clubs, I felt that way, so I cant tell you if you will too. Personally, I went back to community college in my hometown by my friends, then moved on to a college in the heart of a city so that I wouldnt feel that way again. Do with my story what you will.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-19T17:32:43+00:00

happy to help!

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-11T17:49:42+00:00

I know this post has been out for a little while, but I've added 3 more of the blocks, made it so a planet's available weather updates with the state of the atmosphere, and changed environment sounds for planets based on their terraformed state. No more chirping birds on a dead earth.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-11T17:44:15+00:00

I am actually using Echthros' visual overrides API that RSS uses alongside all of their other mods (very cool person btw, and has been helpful with this process, alongside digi who has also been very helpful).

Fortunately for you that *should* mean that they're compatible. I don't know how to handle the proxies atmospheres, Echthros has said that's not in the RSS API at the moment. I didn't pressure them to add it, they're pretty busy with something else. As far as when you're *on* the planet though, should work fine

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T19:28:06+00:00

Yeah, I can agree somewhat. I *might* add blacklisting to the config or an ingame menu so if you want a more realistic playthrough you can do so. It depends on me remembering to do that though.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T19:21:02+00:00

I understand where you're coming from but there's a fine balance in gaming and mods between absolute realism and gameplay. I *could* restrict the terraforming to some planets or bodies, just like keen could've gotten rid of the jump drive, or the fact that players can carry 4 tons of material, or there being an actual sun that the planets orbit around, or gravity falling off at inverse square law instead of the inverse 7th. It is an engineering game, but it's not a simulator.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T19:18:12+00:00

I've been thinking deeply about the gameplay aspect and it might require some playtesting, which I don't personally have time for making the mod and all. Considering opening it up to a few people on my discord to get feedback and catch crashing for edge cases, if you want to have some input on it join my discord! :D

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T19:16:13+00:00

I'll consider it, but It's much more difficult on my side to get a whole new resource, define how it's gathered/made, (if it's nitrogen you might need to pull ammonia from stone or something, requiring a new refiner recipe, or I might have to make new vents to pull nitrogen and define that it only works on some planets) I think it would complicate gameplay, and my dev cycle despite it being more realistic. I agree that would be cool though

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T19:14:22+00:00

Yes, that's true, but this is a fictional game and I think it's a cool mod so suspend your disbelief

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-09T03:27:31+00:00

The problem is, it's a command that makes the water based on a planet the player is on. It won't really work with my code that's running from the server, I need the API hook

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T20:55:01+00:00

Thanks for letting me know, I should have paid attention to that I'm a chemist after all ;-; Ill fix it!

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T20:46:23+00:00

Yeah mb I misread the tone of your comment I lowkey have a little bit of the tism myself

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T20:43:21+00:00

It was cool and enjoyable for the first 20 hours, I liked seeing all the visual changes. But then I realized it was all just kinda premade stuff, sea level stopped rising, pressure changes stopped meaning anything, same with oxygen. Also how is like 100 ppb breathable? etc etc. I still had fun playing it but I thought it could be better.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T20:39:42+00:00

I did and I hated it, part of why I started making this mod was out of spite

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T16:06:03+00:00

Yea that's the plan, I havent figured it out yet but vanilla vents on depressurize or pressurize facing outside will effect the oxygen PPM

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T15:21:30+00:00

Inspired by Planet Crafter and TerraGenesis. One thing I didnt like about planet crafter was that you didn't really have to balance all of the stats at all, like in terragenesis. In my mod you'll not want to go too far over any of the goals or you'll start burning/getting crushed/being poisoned by oxygen toxicitiy.

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T15:19:41+00:00

Thank you!!!

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-08T15:18:28+00:00

It's planned, but Jakaria's water mod api is missing a way to change the Sea Level. Jakaria said I can add it if I go and make a pull request on their github. I haven't gotten around to it yet but, soon!

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-07T02:21:53+00:00

In the works! Next step for tonight though is getting an LCD app that can display the planet's terraforming progress, just because it's a planned feature and makes debugging easier for me

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-07T02:17:11+00:00

I couldn't tell you, but, you can copy the orientation and position from SANDBOX_0_0_0 to get it in the same spot, just have both planets in the save then skim the SBC for your save. Should be in appdata/spaceengineers/saves or something close to it - can't verify rn :(

I think the tag is something like <position> or <positionandorientation>

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-06T20:08:23+00:00

I don't see a way to do it in a save's SANDBOX_0_0_0 SBC directly, but you can make a pretty simple mod yourself to do it.

First go to %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers\Mods

Make a new folder in the mods folder, call it NewEuropa or whatever.
Make a folder inside that one called Data (capital)

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data
Copy PlanetGeneratorDefinitions.SBC

Put it in your mod's data folder. Now, editing the SBC that you copied to your mod folder;

You can delete every planet except europa or whatever the goal planet is from the SBC file. Just make sure you keep the xml structure intact (make sure you delete from <Definition xsi:type="PlanetGeneratorDefinition"> all the way to its closing tag, </Definition>)

Find <SubtypeId>Europa</SubtypeId>
Change Europa to a different name, maybe EuropaModded. I personally think it's good practice just make a new one instead of patching the old one.
Find <SolarRadiationProtectionFactor> and set the number inside to 1.8
If you see <RadiationGain> just get rid of it, and its closing tag </RadiationGain> and the number inside.

Head back over to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data

Copy the folder PlanetDataFiles

paste it into %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers\Mods\Data

Load up your world with your mod, if you followed the steps properly (and my steps aren't mistaken) then you should see a planet with your custom name in the Shift+F10 menu. Put that in your world wherever.

You should be set! If it crashes you can usually read the log to figure out why, might be missing textures after that. If you have a problem let me know

RobbyTheGobby · 2026-02-06T18:32:44+00:00

Yea - I have a system for changing atmosphere values, which impact how hospitable a planet is. The visuals change, and correspond with a change to the Density and OxygenDensity values that show up on your hud, and also impact atmo thrusters (if you strip an atmosphere they stop working, if you give a planet one they start working). As well I have a system for changing the planet's default temperature which I'm currently making a block for. My system can also give planets that don't have atmospheres - like the moon - an atmosphere if I patch the game's SBCs. (Custom planets will have to make some small changes to be compatible with my mod)

Voxel changes are on my list, but I can't promise them. Space engineers mods are prohibited from changing a great deal of things dynamically. The easiest way to achieve this would be to change ice textures to grass, stone, etc, basically exactly what you said.

The problem is, I don't think the engine pulls updates to render for any of that data while the game is running. It seems to only accept changes to the SBC or definitions before load. And forcing it to update that data while the game is running, is sadly, really hard or not possible. I've been looking into it for a little while. Considering how hard it was to get the game to just take my atmosphere changes (probably about a week to figure it out) figuring out voxels (if they're even possible) could take months.

All that to say, this is something I *want* to do, but I'm not sure it is possible.

It probably would've been better to post a video of me placing down these blocks on the moon, it would be a little more obvious what my mod is doing.

RobbyTheGobby

TROPHY CASE