Has the direction of orbit been reversed?

[EmperorPingu]

I've been looking at the in game night sky for hours and hours for a project I'm doing and I've noticed something...

Across an in game year, the amount of revolutions the night sky does from the perspective of the player is 1 less than the number of days in an in game year...

In real life, when we experience 365 solar days with the sun rising and setting as we usually expect it, we also experience 366 sidereal days - which is basically how many turns the earth makes with respect to the cosmic background. This is because when you think about it, as the earth goes around the Sun, the orbit itself makes the Earth go around the sun, so each day the Earth actually has to spin a tiny bit more in order to catch up to where the sun should be rising.

Here's the thing: in real life we see the stars revolve around us (relative to our position) 1 more time than the number of days in an in game year - in Vintage Story, we see the stars revolve around the player 1 less time than the number of days in an in game year...

Now, one might think of that as a bug or something, but the developers would have had to of known and thought consciously about sidereal days for them to want to program that level of detail into the game. The thing is, the only way this could happen is if the direction of orbit of the planet we're on was opposite to the direction the world spun about on it's axis (relative to the horizontal plane on which the orbit sits).

So... there are only two possible situations this could happen (if we assumed an Earth-like planet):

1. Either the direction of orbit was the same as Earth's but the Sun rose in the West and set in the East instead...
2. The direction of orbit run's counter to direction of the axial spin.

Since the Sun rises in the East in game like it does here on Earth, this means that relative to its star, the planet of Vintage Story must be orbiting retrograde to the direction of plantery axial spin.

If the Vintage Story world was Earth itself - this would mean at some point in history, the planet just up and started changing direction of orbit around the Sun - doing a complete reverse.

It makes me wonder if the Vintage Story world is Earth or not (not too clued up on a lot of the lore apologies), but with Earth animals like bears, and chickens, and goats, and Earth plants etc., it does make me wonder what happened.

I guess in another sense - for the Earth to reverse it's orbital direction, this would symbolically represent some kind of messing with time on a cosmic scale.

I'm at a loss - anyone know what this is or what it means?

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

It makes me wonder if the Vintage Story world is Earth or not (not too clued up on a lot of the lore apologies), but with Earth animals like bears, and chickens, and goats, and Earth plants etc., it does make me wonder what happened.

Without spoiling too much, yes, the setting is Earth. As for why everything is so messed up, basically someone scienced a little too hard and things happened. Playing through the main story and reading in-game lore books and tapestry text, as well as item flavor text, will explain quite a lot(though keep in mind only 2 out of 8 chapters are implemented).

 

21 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

I guess in another sense - for the Earth to reverse it's orbital direction, this would symbolically represent some kind of messing with time on a cosmic scale.

I'm at a loss - anyone know what this is or what it means?

It's possible, but I think the more likely explanation is that the code that governs the starfield and other celestial bodies isn't quite fully developed...yet. 1.21 improved the moon's orbit and made it more realistic, and I think it was supposed to improve the starfield's seasonal rotation as well(that is, actually add seasonal variation), but it's just not quite there yet.

[EmperorPingu]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It's possible, but I think the more likely explanation is that the code that governs the starfield and other celestial bodies isn't quite fully developed...yet.

yes but that's just the thing - if nothing was implimented at all we might expect to see the stars revolve around at the same rate as the number of days in an in game year - what someone did is make a conscious choice to make the stars revolve around the player 1 fewer times. If they were going for Earth accuracy they would have made it 1 more - so either this is inaccurate maths on the devs part or this was deliberate. It seems odd why they'd go to all the trouble of simulating what the stars would like like in the night sky just to coincidentally infer a retrograde orbit at the last step :0

With regards to seasons and stuff I did also notice that the axial tilt doesn't appear to be in the right place relative to where a player might expect the equator and poles to be - but I do vaguely remember a patch note saying that part hadn't been implemented yet. So I can forgive the axial tilt part but that doesn't explain the number of celestial revolutions - the math would be as simple as changing a "-1" to a "+1". More specifically:

m = days per in game month

rev[year] = number of revolutions the star-sphere should do about it's axis per in game year (from the player's perspective)

---

rev[year] = m*12 + 1

Instead what we have in Vintage Story is:

rev[year] = m*12 - 1

 

Crunching the numbers, in real life (simulated) you might expect the numbers to be:

Star-sphere axial rotation per in game day = (((m*12 + 1) / (m*12)) * 360)°

... IF the world had the same direction of orbit as Earth does right now.

In Vintage Story what I'm measuring is:

Star-sphere axial rotation per in game day = (((m*12 - 1) / (m*12)) * 360)°

Which would only happen if the orbit was retrograde to direction of axial spin.

[LadyWYT]

Yeah I have no idea on that part, as all I really see are magic math numbers.  I'm not saying the Earth's orbit couldn't have been changed by certain events, just that I think it's much more likely that the code governing that sort of thing is still underdeveloped. Kinda like how chickens exist in the game but not other birds; it's not that some event wiped out the entire bird population, but rather that the assets for birds haven't yet been made.

Regarding orbits of celestial bodies, I seem to recall that the moon actually orbited the opposite direction that it does now in the game. I could be mistaken, of course, but that's also why I'm inclined to lean toward "it's goofy code" and not a lore event.

[EmperorPingu]

23 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I seem to recall that the moon actually orbited the opposite direction that it does now in the game.

oooh? I shall have to have a look into that - I got so obsessed with the stars I wasn't paying much attention to the moon

[LadyWYT]

28 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

oooh? I shall have to have a look into that - I got so obsessed with the stars I wasn't paying much attention to the moon

Like I said, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it used to rise in the west and set in the east. It also didn't take moon phase into account with solar eclipses, and there was a time that the moon could cover the sun but no eclipse would happen at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if someday we had lunar eclipses in the game in addition to the solar eclipses.

[Broccoli Clock]

I've said this before, having a realistic representation of a the night's sky is not difficult, it's just a skybox. The real difficulty would come if you wanted to simulate the whole thing, for example calculating the retrograde orbits of the planets (and Pluto), or things like procession.

There is literally a texture of the skybox now, so just make it a realistic one, and for brownie points you could do one for the mid 1300s to match the rough time period we are in.

[Diff]

10 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I've said this before, having a realistic representation of a the night's sky is not difficult, it's just a skybox. The real difficulty would come if you wanted to simulate the whole thing, for example calculating the retrograde orbits of the planets (and Pluto), or things like procession.

There is literally a texture of the skybox now, so just make it a realistic one, and for brownie points you could do one for the mid 1300s to match the rough time period we are in.

This isn't about the texture, it's about the way the texture moves. It rotates slightly too slowly, something that texture swapping won't fix.

[Broccoli Clock]

3 minutes ago, Diff said:

This isn't about the texture, it's about the way the texture moves. It rotates slightly too slowly, something that texture swapping won't fix.

Sure, although the discussion has had people mention the star field and the orbits of other planets.

[EmperorPingu]

41 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I've said this before, having a realistic representation of a the night's sky is not difficult, it's just a skybox. The real difficulty would come if you wanted to simulate the whole thing, for example calculating the retrograde orbits of the planets (and Pluto), or things like procession.

There is literally a texture of the skybox now, so just make it a realistic one, and for brownie points you could do one for the mid 1300s to match the rough time period we are in.

I did a whole bunch of the maths over in mod requests if you're interested - it's a bit heavy mind

Personally, I don't mind like a creative cosmos as long as it's consistent unto the laws of its own universe and (if used in conjunction with a fully developed navigational update) acts both realistically and a little intuitively for those who want to use the skies for navigation - we on earth have the big dipper that points to polaris, the creative cosmos should have something similar.

My biggest gripe isn't so much that the orbit direction is retrograde to the plane (which it has to be if the heavens are too slow), as this could be a creative construct of their universe related to lore - my biggest gripe is that no matter what climate you start with, if you consider where the equator and poles "should" be - it doesn't line up with the points in the night sky should be rotating about. I.e: at the north pole you should be able to look straight up to see the point of rotation, at the equator the points of rotation should sit dead on the horizon - they don't. It basically means that unto the laws of it's own universe, the climates zones are not where they should be.

1300s sky, hadn't thought of it but that sounds awesome

[Broccoli Clock]

24 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

I did a whole bunch of the maths over in mod requests if you're interested - it's a bit heavy mind

As a dev that regularly over engineers their code, I am all too happy to fall into rabbit holes!  

24 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

 we on earth have the big dipper that points to polaris, the creative cosmos should have something similar.

Pedant alert! * some of us on Earth *  The antipodeans would be looking for the Southern Cross..

24 minutes ago, EmperorPingu said:

my biggest gripe is that no matter what climate you start with, if you consider where the equator and poles "should" be - it doesn't line up with the points in the night sky should be rotating about. 

Yeah, I mean it's always going to be a skybox, rather than a sky simulation; just a flat plane with geometry to make it look spacial. 

 

Overall though, I think I share your vibe of "whatever you give us, allow us to navigate with it", even if it processes somewhat over the sidereal year.

Edited December 31, 2025 by Broccoli Clock

[EmperorPingu]

2 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

As a dev that regularly over engineers their code, I am all to happy to fall into rabbit holes! 

Alright then, have a look at it if it takes your fancy xd - it took me like a week to write mind. I can't code for crap so I tried to figure out all the maths needed behind it to make it work (which is why is so big) so a coder could translate it into whatever's needed. Actually, it was because I was designing that mod request that I came to look at the stars the way I did and realise the above "anomoly" (if it even is an anomoly).

Yes yes I know about the Southern Cross, I has that northern hemispherial bias...

And yeah, if you like realistic navigation... I swear by it, that mod request is more or less how VS should be handling navigation (polar coordinates and clocks to make it work!). If a modder was to make it, it would be the best navigational mod out there second to none - you have my word :0

[Yakkob]

most likely, it just hasn't been properly implimented yet, but I also can't necessarily rule out some sort of jonas tech... although the energy requriments would be immense even for a type 2 civilization, let alone the mid to low type 0 that is shown. 

[Broccoli Clock]

20 hours ago, EmperorPingu said:

Alright then, have a look at it if it takes your fancy xd

I said I over engineer everything..

I never said I over engineer everything well..