Incorrect moon phase?

[Chuckerton]

So i witnessed a solar eclipse. It took me a little too long to get out of my house so i got a screenshot late, but i think it wont matter. 

Correct me if im wrong, but this should be a new moon right? I shouldnt see any light on the moon, except for maybe a very small sliver? 

 

[LadyWYT]

34 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

Correct me if im wrong, but this should be a new moon right? I shouldnt see any light on the moon, except for maybe a very small sliver? 

The game doesn't take moon phase into account; the only thing that matters(currently) is whether or not the moon is positioned over the sun.

[Thorfinn]

@Chuckerton, the answer is simple. The world is not a sphereoid, nor is this a single star system.

[Vratislav]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

The world is not a sphereoid

Ahhhh, flatearthers will come here!  

[Maelstrom]

The world could be a cubeoid.  

[IronOre]

What if it actually was a wrapped cuboid that you could walk all the way around instead of a plane stretching out in all directions until a drop off edge?

I'd love to see a voxel game try this sometime.  I found an interesting article on it with some test windows you can play around in:

https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1938-square-tiling-of-sphere/

 

https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1939-planetary-dungeon/

Edited August 29, 2025 by IronOre

[Facethief]

6 hours ago, IronOre said:

What if it actually was a wrapped cuboid that you could walk all the way around instead of a plane stretching out in all directions until a drop off edge?

I'd love to see a voxel game try this sometime.  I found an interesting article on it with some test windows you can play around in:

https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1938-square-tiling-of-sphere/

 

https://www.redblobgames.com/x/1939-planetary-dungeon/

Cool article!

The only problem is that the worldgen would have to change in weird ways; I think it’d work better if the “planet” was toroidal, as seen here.

[IronOre]

18 hours ago, Facethief said:

I think it’d work better if the “planet” was toroidal

Yeah, that would probably be more straightforward and you could set it to have just one band of latitude from the north pole to the south pole, which in this case would wrap to each other.  Still I think it wouldn't be too much harder to do it like the article showed.  Then you could really navigate by the stars once they get that fixed.  It was on the plan for the most recent update but it isn't working yet. It would be nice to known where you were on a finite world without getting to repeated latitudes.  Even without map I usually set my worlds to avoid this by trying to spawn near the equator with a world size and polar distance that makes sure both poles end up on the map without too much more beyond that, but since the actual latitude of spawn is randomized I can't get it exact.

I was thinking about those 8 empty spaces the demos in the article show for where 3 corners come together.  Maybe those would have to be hard barriers you couldn't traverse, or they could just be voids rendered as sheer rocky walls with lava pouring into them from various fissures and if you jump in it just displays you falling for a while and then you die.

It is interesting that in this case, even if a mini-map is used it doesn't always have to have north at the top (there could even be an option to rotate your map) so that the player could get a bit turned around, or if it auto-rotated to the way you are facing.  Then  you'd have to use the sky to know the actual direction, or use a compass.

Per the OP it is great to see that the moon phases are now correct in relation to the sun since the latest update.  I haven't yet taken the time to figure out the current eclipse pattern, but I plan to.

[Tom Cantine]

Oh, the shape of the world is a WAY more complicated problem than that. At least, if you assume that the sun and the stars (and, apparently, the moon, though I still have some kind of bug in my version that I can never see the moon at all) are actual objects in a three dimensional space, observed from the surface of the world. 

 

[IronOre]

On 8/30/2025 at 11:55 PM, Tom Cantine said:

I can never see the moon at all

Not see the moon!?  That is untenable!  The previous moon was a bit of a mess, but it is greatly improved now and is giving me something much closer to the feeling I have in the real world when I watch the moon.  I get what you are saying about the actuality of the flat plane and thee dimensional space of VS, but I am just so glad to have finally found a game that even attempts to simulate the sky in something that approximates how it works (I am really hoping they can get the stars fixed at the very least now).  I spend so much time watching the real-world sky and studying the patterns that it is very familiar to me.  I know what phase of the moon is current and can predict when it will rise in relation to the sun, I glance at the sun and shadows throughout the day and I am instantly oriented in time and space.  When I play VS I can do many of the same things (I keep the date/time portion of that window covered by the stats window) and it all feels very natural.  I love that!