Old Earth
What it is
A low-altitude ground-skimming biome rendered as cold grey ruins on a dirty surface: opaque hand-baked dirt scrolling beneath the ship, a square topographic lat/long grid drawn on top of the dirt, and dark grey square buildings sitting on the ground (instead of dissolving into a void skyline like Sunrise City’s towers). It is the only biome that has no entry in the biome config table — the world generator falls back to the starter biome’s hub-and-spoke topology while the attached level preset overrides the terrain shape pool to buildings. The biome is also the only one that swaps in a dedicated “grounded” building bake variant, and the only one that draws a lat/long topo grid as its gameplay underlay. One player-facing planet attaches to this biome.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Player-facing label | Cold grey ruins on a dirty ground |
| Terrain content | Square buildings on hub-and-spoke roads (no asteroids, no pillars) |
| Buildings allowed | Yes |
| Default level preset | Old Earth Ruins |
| Generator mode | Standard ring-based hub-and-spoke pass with starter-biome topology defaults |
| Building bake variant | Grounded (flat base connecting to dirt — not the skyline fade) |
| Gameplay underlay | Square lat/long topographic grid (unique to this biome) |
| Role | Sniper-pressure planet with the cold-ruins ground-skim vibe |
| Attached planets | One |
Visual and ambient
The biome runs the dark mastering preset with a low-thin atmospheric fog layer. The parallax recipe is deliberately minimal — a single fully opaque hand-baked dirt-ground layer at near-the-ship parallax replaces the standard back/mid/foreground stack. There is no starfield, no atmosphere haze, and no silhouette buildings — the camera reads as “ship skimming a surface” rather than “looking down from orbit”. The dirt layer modulates RGB noise on a four-octave value-noise tile so the ground has a grain to it; alpha stays full so every pixel of nebula below is hidden. The gameplay underlay then draws a square topographic lat/long grid on top of the dirt, with roughly one in three-and-a-half grid cells dropped to give the ruined-survey-grid look. The background nebula is keyed to a grey-green mist archetype with cold-ruins tone. The level palette is a near-black base with deep grey lines, light grey accents, and a near-white illumination on hub markers; the hub style is “crater”, the spoke style is “ghost” (no energy flow), and the hub particle is “dust”. The lantern preset is “dawn”. Drop shadows render at the default offset.
| Backdrop and lighting knob | Value |
|---|---|
| Atmospheric fog alpha | 0.25 |
| Post-processing mastering | Dark |
| Shadow offset multiplier | 1.0 |
| Background nebula pool | Per-planet pinned archetype (not the shared smooth-nebula pool) |
| Pinned planet archetype | Old Earth Nebula (grey-green mist, square noise shape, low warp 0.6, density 0.40, low luminosity 0.9) |
| Building bake variant | Grounded (visible base block connecting to dirt) |
| Parallax layer | Slot | Parallax | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand-baked dirt ground | Near | 0.90 | Fully opaque ground that hides everything below |
| Gameplay underlay (this biome) | Value |
|---|---|
| Pattern | Square lat/long topographic grid |
| Cell size (world px) | 96 |
| Cell drop rate | 0.28 |
| Pattern repeat (cells) | 16 |
| Tile size (world px) | 1536 |
| Level visual knob | Value |
|---|---|
| Base color | Near-black (#0d0d0d) |
| Line color | Deep grey (#374151) |
| Accent color | Light grey (#9ca3af) |
| Illuminated color | Near-white (#e5e7eb) |
| Spoke style | Ghost (no energy flow) |
| Hub style | Crater |
| Hub particle effect | Dust |
| Spoke flow | Disabled |
| Illumination speed | 0.4 |
| Danger tint | 0.4 |
| Pathable wilds | Yes |
| Lantern preset | Dawn |
| Preferred palette preset | Tone |
|---|---|
| Noir | Near-greyscale ruins look |
| Pure Grey | Totally washed-out variant |
| Dusty Rose | Faint sunset wash over the ruins |
Terrain mix
Because the biome ID has no entry in the biome config table, the world generator falls back to the starter biome’s topology defaults (ring-based hubs and spokes, 6 hubs per ring, 400–1000-unit ring distance, 150-unit spoke width). The attached level preset then overrides the terrain shape pool to the city building pool, the terrain density to 0.85, and the layout pattern to chaotic. So the terrain is dark grey buildings — the same four footprint sizes the Sunrise City biome uses — placed inside the wilds of a hub-and-spoke ring layout rather than inside city blocks. There are no asteroids, rock shards, or obsidian pillars in the pool. The 3D draw path uses the grounded skyscraper bake variant (front face holds full alpha all the way down and connects to a visible base rectangle on the dirt), so every building reads as sitting on the ground instead of dissolving into the void.
| Layer | Shape pool weights |
|---|---|
| Centers (large pieces) | building_2x3 50, building_2x1 30, building_1x2 20 |
| Mediums (intermediate ring) | building_1x1 35, building_2x1 30, building_1x2 25, building_2x3 10 |
| Smalls (outer ring) | building_1x1 50, building_2x1 25, building_1x2 25 |
| Topology and density | Value |
|---|---|
| Level radius (fallback) | 2500 |
| Terrain density (level preset override) | 0.85 |
| Terrain intensity (fallback) | 0.7 |
| Hub min distance (fallback) | 400 |
| Hub max distance (fallback) | 1000 |
| Hubs per ring (fallback) | 6 |
| Hub clear radius | 200 |
| Spoke width | 150 |
| Layout pattern | Chaotic |
| Hub size factor | 0.45 |
| Spoke width factor | 0.8 |
| Density factor | 0.99 |
Enemy bias
Uses the bugs-with-sniper variant of the enemy roster — the orb is still the swarm archetype (most spawns), and the rare/elite slots are filled by the charger and a sniper variant. The sniper is borrowed from the city-roster’s leader pool and used here as the scary rare invader against the cold-ruins setting. Spawn pools shift across run progress from pure orb commons in the opening band, through orb commons plus sniper commons and a single charger common in the early-mid band, to orb rares and epics with charger rares and sniper rares/epics in the late band.
| Spawn pressure | Value |
|---|---|
| Enemy count multiplier | 1.0 |
| Spawn grace before full pressure (s) | 1 |
| Enemy set | Bugs-with-sniper (orb swarm, charger + sniper rares) |
| Swarm archetype | Orb |
| Leader archetypes | Charger, sniper |
| Crate density (of 100) | 40 |
| Debris density (of 100) | 16 |
| Spawn pool band (progress %) | Composition focus |
|---|---|
| 0–8 | Orb commons dominate, single charger common, single sniper common |
| 8–20 | Orb commons + first orb uncommons, charger common, two sniper commons |
| 20–40 | Orb commons and uncommons, charger uncommon, sniper common + uncommon |
| 40–60 | Orb uncommons and rares, charger uncommon, sniper uncommon + rare |
| 60–999 | Orb rares and epics, charger rare, sniper rare + epic |
| Event pool weighting | Weight |
|---|---|
| Magnet | 2 |
| Weapon | 1 |
| Artifact | 1 |
Boss-arena default
The boss is keyed per-planet, not per-biome. When the encounter starts, the building scatter clears inside the arena and a boss-keyed terrain pattern drops in for the duration of the fight. Old Earth’s boss is the Ringmaster — a name-only entry in the boss-ID list at the time of writing, with no concrete boss definition yet — so the arena pattern is a forward placeholder until the boss is built.
| Planet | Boss at T-zero | Arena pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Old Earth | Ringmaster (no concrete definition yet) | Placeholder until boss is built |
Which planets use it
A single player-facing planet attaches to the Old Earth biome.
| Planet | Numeric ID |
|---|---|
| Old Earth | 33 |
The planet’s reward-track XP curve is set to a 1.0x placeholder multiplier — equal to the Landing Site baseline — and base run XP per completion is a placeholder of 10. Reward names for the planet are still placeholder strings (“Earth Event”, “Secret Boss”, “Global Shield Boost” buff, plus generic ship and weapon TBDs).
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: this is the only biome ID in the planet config that has no entry in the world-generator’s biome config table. The generator falls back to the starter biome’s hub-and-spoke topology while the attached level preset overrides the terrain shape pool. The fallback path is the same one that the parallax recipe registry uses for unknown biome IDs but used here on purpose. Worth a callout on world.md explaining the “biome ID without a biome config” pattern.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the grounded skyscraper bake variant (front face holds full alpha all the way down, with a visible base block connecting to the dirt) is unique to this biome. The default Sunrise-City variant fades the front face to zero alpha at the bottom for the “dissolving into the void skyline” look. Worth a one-line callout on world.md or biomes.md next to the building-shape pool documentation.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the square lat/long topographic grid is one of three gameplay-underlay variants (default hex grid, Delphi water-wave grid, Old Earth lat/long grid) and is unique to this biome. Worth a shared “gameplay-underlay variants” table on world.md or biomes.md.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the bugs-with-sniper enemy set borrows the sniper archetype from the city roster’s leader pool and uses it as a bug-roster rare. Old Earth is the only player-facing planet that wires the sniper this way. Same pattern as Network Station (field), Delphi (racer), Solaris (mortar). Worth a “bug-roster variants share city-roster leaders” callout on enemies.md rather than restating per biome page.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: per-planet boss assignment (Old Earth → Ringmaster) is duplicated between this page, biomes.md, and bosses.md. Acceptable repetition per the wiki stat-table rule — flagging only.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the planet-specific archetype pin (Old Earth Nebula archetype, grey-green mist, low luminosity 0.9) is a single derived fact in code and is not yet captured anywhere else in the wiki. Old Earth differs from Landing Site / Sunrise City / Voidstar / Obsidian Spire (which all pull from the shared smooth-nebula pool); it has its own pinned archetype like Solaris through Obelisk do. Candidate for promoting to the planets rollup.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: planet 33’s XP-curve multiplier (1.0x) and base run XP (10) are explicitly flagged as “placeholder” in the source data, as are the reward-track names (“Earth Event”, “Secret Boss”, “Global Shield Boost”). Worth a “placeholder vs. final” classification on planets.md or progression.md so the placeholder state of planets 30–37 is visible from one place.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the Ringmaster boss is a name-only entry in the boss-ID type union with no concrete definition file yet. Same status as several planet 30–37 reward names. Worth a “named-but-undefined boss” list on bosses.md.