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 about 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.