Solar System?

[PikEnthusiast]

I was looking around the files in my mod when I stumbled across a txt file with a rather peculiar name: descr_solar_system. I was obviously intrigued, so I opened it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;
;; solar system bodies and other cosmic entities
;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


body sun
{
body earth
{
body moon
{
}
}
}


distant
{
;bearing elevation
global_offset 90 22


stars
{
; bearing elevation size colour

; pole star
0 0 1.0

; ursa minor - the little bear (includes the pole star)
219 16 0.5
225 19 0.5
231 12 0.4
241 15 0.4
250 8 0.4
270 5 0.4


; ursa major - the great bear (the plough or, more recently, the saucepan)
163 28 0.8
163 34 0.8
175 34 0.8
180 32 0.6
191 33 0.8
200 34 0.8
203 40 0.8

; cassiopeia
0 31 0.8
6 35 0.8
12 30 0.8
20 31 0.6
22 28 0.6

; draco
208 27 0.5
225 31 0.8
241 28 0.5
257 25 0.5
261 38 0.6
261 34 0.4
267 38 0.7
267 33 0.5
276 18 0.5
288 24 0.4
289 27 0.5

; pegasus
343 76 0.7
344 62 0.8
0 62 0.8
1 75 0.8
7 56 0.6
14 53 0.7
25 47 0.6


; orion - the hunter



;number bearing range elevation range size range
random 500 0 360 0 120 0.1 0.3
}


nebula
{
}


galaxies
{
}
}

I'm a little confused by the file. Could anyone tell me the purpose of this file? So far I can only think of two theories: either it's a file for the location of stars and etc on a night battle map, or it's a cut feature.

Either way, I'm interested.

Thanks
PikEnthusiast

[Callistonian]

I'm fairly sure this file was meant to store data for a cut feature involving the positions of astronomical bodies on the battle map sky box. There are several other interesting files like this in the data folder, all cut features unfortunately. I vaguely remember another file that allows you to control the position of the sun, but I'm not 100% sure it's functional (otherwise, the light source position would be hard coded based on time of day of the battle). It's been a minor annoyance of mine for a long time that the sun appears north of the zenith in so many mods (and I think vanilla as well) that are meant to be set north of the tropic of cancer, or that it sometimes sets in the east and rises in the west...

I would advise you to just make changes to the file and test, but I don't recall seeing any of those constellations in the game's sky boxes, so I'm not even sure how you would test.