Talk:Procyon

Delete these. They have almost no relevance to the game at all, especially since the SC2 map clearly states that the HyperSpace names for constellations were randomly assigned and the star given the HyperSpace name "Procyon" has no relationship to the star that TrueSpace astronomers (i.e. *real* astronomers) call "Procyon".

"Constellations" in HyperSpace and TrueSpace (real-life) constellations aren't even the same concept. Real-life constellation are stars that look like they're close together in the night sky -- HyperSpace constellations in SC2 are groups of stars that are actually near each other. And the layout, the nature of the stars in each constellation, and, hell, even the *number* of stars in each constellation are all mismatched with what the real constellations are.

It would be *more* relevant to do something like go through all the Earthling Captain names and say what they're a reference to than to do something like this, since it's almost certain the game designers didn't even know or care about the real constellations much when assigning names -- for the game's purposes all you have to know is that these are based on the names of real constellations.

I couldn't disagree more. As a player of the game, I find the relationship between the fictional stars and systems and the ones in real life interesting, as well as the origins of the names. Additionally, the name and shape of a constellation do come into play, when General ZEK sends you on the mission to find the exotic beast for his menagerie. Users of this wiki who don't find the extra information interesting can ignore it.

Further, by adding at least a small amount of information to each's constellation's article, the list of constellations can be published in the non-spoiler section of the website. The original list could be found on the game's map, and therefore couldn't rightly be considered spoiler material. The list of constellations article can't be published as non-spoiler currently, since those star systems with points of interest will have blue hyperlinks, while those without articles will have red hyperlinks.Dmleach 20:11, 23 Mar 2005 (CET)

Sigh. First of all, it will add an enormous amount of material to the wiki. The wiki needs to be kept at some kind of reasonable size. I don't see how you can justify adding stuff about the real-world constellations *and* justify *not* adding stuff about H.P. Lovecraft's fiction to the Orz entry, or adding all sorts of complicated stuff about human history and human myths and legends to the Human and Arilou entries, and so on. I'm all for being expansive, but there is a line to draw, after which we don't really have a Star Control encyclopedia, we have an encyclopedia of random facts referenced by Star Control.

I would be more interested to know things that the authors actually took time to come up with, like the in-joke references in the captain's names, but even then I'm not convinced those belong on the wiki. But they go on the wiki a lot earlier than the constellation names, which except for a few sort-of exceptions (like Centauri being close to Earth) have absolutely *nothing* to do with the constellations in real life, as far as I can tell. It's not a "reference" to anything because it's not something the authors knew or cared about. Hell, they actually said most of the starmap was generated by a randomized algorithm that properly spaced out certain types of stars, with a few handmade special star systems put in.

The easy answer to the issue of a constellation list containing spoilers is to explicitly *not* wikify it and leave the hyperlinks off. In fact it's not actually necessary to have the entries for the systems as we currently have them -- every one of them is about some *planet*, not about the systems in general, and I would vote to rename them as such (Delta Lyncis III, not just "Delta Lyncis" or "Lyncis"; Vela I, not just "Vela"; and so forth). It's a very, very bad idea to go through a big list and insist that *every* item in the list have a hyperlink just so that no item will look different from another -- that's how wikis that aren't rigorously edited get clogged with crappy stub articles no one reads.

By the way, the Lyncis constellation in the game doesn't look much like the real Lyncis at all, and there's *nothing* about the real constellation Lyncis *or* its shape that's necessary to understand ZEX's (not ZEK's) clue. Again, I very, very much doubt the *creators* of the game even knew anything about these constellations when they were writing it.

I agree with 130.58.225.137 (for once). This is not a general-purpose encyclopedia. If it's not relevant to the game, it doesn't belong here. If you're going to document the real-life aspect of stars, you may as well start creating links for "arms" because the Umgah mention them, or describe the biology of plants in the Supox article.

If someone wants to know more about the real-life properties of objects refered to in the game, they can look it up in a real-life encyclopedia.

Btw, 130.58.225.137, why don't you create a user account? You can use spam.la to send your registration to if you're afraid I'm going to sell your email address. It would make communication a lot easier. And you may like it to be able to customise some settings.

And Dmleach, I appreciate the effort, but if you need to find something interesting to edit, I can make a few suggestions.

-- SvdB 09:55, 24 Mar 2005 (CET)

The first item in this website's "Editing Essentials" article reads "Be bold when editing," so I was. I found the information I added interesting, and I bet that I'm not the only one who does. The information is unobtrusive and, unless I'm mistaken, its presence does no harm.

In response to the above, I would like to know as a fan of the game that there is a link between the Orz and H.P. Lovecraft (I actually didn't know that). In my opinion, there is definitely a call to have "meta-information" in this encyclopedia; that is to say information that deals with the game as a game, as opposed to information about the game's universe. I find it adds a layer of richness to the experience of enjoying what we all consider to be a well-crafted piece of interactive fiction.

In the end, it's not my website to make the call for or against. If the owner of the website (or whoever gets the final decision in such matters) decides it shouldn't be there, then (s)he has every right to remove it. I would, request, however, that the decision be made sooner than later, so I don't waste my time adding information that will simply be deleted.Dmleach 13:20, 24 Mar 2005 (CET)

Even if we were to add meta-information to explain in-jokes and references, I'd still disagree with you that this astronomy stuff fits in that category. It's *not* an in-joke or a reference that TFB purposely put into the game and wanted you to find. It's not something they knew about or were thinking about at all. It's just a random congruence between something in the game and something in real life. We could go on for weeks about superstring theory in physics and how it relates or doesn't relate to the space-opera idea of hyperspace that SC2 uses, but it wouldn't be relevant for a fan of the game -- only for someone who was a fan of the game *and* was really interested in that subject for its own sake.

There might be a place for a "Physics of Star Trek" kind of thing for Star Control -- though, personally, I doubt it, since to be honest Star Control doesn't have the same huge corpus of texts (tons of episodic TV series and such) that provide lots of material for that kind of speculation. But if there is a place for one it isn't here.

To clarify some more -- it might, *possibly*, be worth noting that the Centauri constellation in SC2 is where it is because in real life most people know that the Centuari triple-star group is the closest set of stars to Sol. But lots of detail on what the Centuari stars are really like and where they really are would be irrelevant. Just like it might be worthwhile to point out that there's a more-than-uncanny similarity between the description of the Orz/Androsynth scenario and the general feel of Lovecraft's stories, and maybe say that the whole people-being-replaced-by-fish-things comes out of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", but that's as much as would be worth saying -- it's enough to make people get the joke who didn't get the joke, but a full-on entry about Lovecraft and his stories and the background of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" would be overkill. In this case, just noting that the HyperSpace constellations are haphazardly named after real-life constellations is enough to get across the "joke" or "reference", such as it is.130.58.225.137