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[Hajo]

Starting a dev log, since I have posted about it a few times, and it seems to be better to have one place to collect all the discussion.


Long ago I had been working on a Elite II - Frontier clone. The project overall didn't succeed, but I had the galaxy and solar system generators mostly done, also a bit of the space flight and planet surface exploration parts.

Lately I was reminded of this, and I tried to revive parts of the old code. Particularly the galactical map and solar system generator were of interest for me, and so I started to port those to Java:

  http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex/

It's a Java Applet, and it needs the Java runtime version 5 or newer installed (the browser plugin should be installed and registered automatically with the Java runtime).

If you experience oddities, problems, failures or have other, positive, feedback I'm very interested

At the time being, the galactical map is in place and allows access to a virtually unlimited number of solar systems. Each system will be generated with a lot of details and can be inspected. From the system explorer view, one can open the planet information panel, and the space station information panel, both are work in progress.

In addition to the systems from the galactical map one can enter numbers (aka seeds) for system generation in the system explorer panel, and see what kind of system this number might spawn.

The solar system generation algorithm is not physically correct in a strict sense, but tries to create results which are not obviously wrong, well, at least believable. Dual star systems are a very new addition and most likely not calculated correctly yet, so please be lenient with those.

Having galactical map and solar system generation in place, I want to move on, and also implement the prospector/space miner part. I want to keep this very simple. So there won't be a graphical display of landing on planets. The players space ship will stay orbit, and explore the planet with drones or probes, maybe landing modules.

The galactical map:

Click to view full size

The tabular system view:

Click to view full size

The planetary resources information view (work in progress):

Click to view full size

Space station general panel (work in progress):

Click to view full size

Early version of the system navigation map:

Click to view full size

Former posts, for reference.

Recently:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=632.msg305369#msg305369

Mostly an update of the martian type of planet - with a more dense atmosphere:

And a bit later, update on the earthlike planet type:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=632.msg307870#msg307870

And another update, after getting help and advice from people (thanks!):
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=632.msg308406#msg308406

A while ago I sketched two gas filtration drones (for collecting more or less valuable gases from planet atmospheres):

Now, I'm proud to present the Fanfostar Chorus-12 gas filtration drone, manufactured by Deep Breath 2001!

It's also known as the "Thirteen Horns of Jericho", due to the enervating sound that it produces while evacuating the pressure chambers. In dark space station bars there are rumors told, that more than one space ship was shattered to pieces just from the sound waves, when readying this drone for launch. And even veteran space prospectors are said to pray once, or maybe better twice, if they consider making use of this fine piece of modern gathering technology.

Yet, it is definitely unsurpassed in efficiency by any other gathering drone, and will endure even the most hostile atmospheric conditions - says the bundled operation manual. And it comes with a 3 day warranty!

Another fine piece of gas filtration technology is the Trompetechos Dual, manufactured by Zhoofump & Smithbone:

Much more silent than the Fanfostar Chorus-12, the Trompetechos Dual is the preferred gas gathering drone of many aspiring prospectors. It works reliably in most atmospheres, but is allergic to dust particles and ice crystals, particularly in atmospheres with some amount of fluid hydrocarbons. Several sets of brushes and scoops are bundled with the Trompetechos Dual, and the curses of the staff are legendary when they are ordered to clean the intake horns after mission.

[Hajo]

@hajo, yes, it's better than the earlier version. I think what would really add realism is if it looked more like it had an atmosphere; i.e. was surrounded by a thin layer of semitransparent stuff that tended to scatter blue light, with its effects being more pronounced when you looked through it obliquely (towards the edges of the visible disc). I know nothing about 3D graphics programming, but get the feeling that implementing something like this literally the way I've described would be computationally expensive, but maybe you can cheat somehow.

Also, if you could procedurally "twist" the cloud texture so it formed spiraling weather patterns, that would be really cool and probably would look more realistic, too.

Anyway, now I'm going to look for more information on your project because it looks really interesting.

The blue halo for the atmosphere is still on my list, so far I haven't found the right approach yet. The last version should have a thin layer of a blueish atmosphere, but it doesn't show right.

The planet is raytraced, the patterns are generated procedurally. So on one hand I have a lot of freedom, and computation speed is not an issue, because the planet (and all the others) are rendered before integrated in the project. On the other hand, I'm limited to the features that my raytracer offers, and my skill to use them - I think there is a spiral or toroidal warp feature, but right now I wouldn't know how to apply this to the clouds. But with some luck and the right documentation I'll learn how to do it.

Using PovRay to render the planets.

[Kunal]

I had done something like this a few years back. If I remember correctly, what I did was create a circular blue translucent 'billboard'. Since its just a plane it is (relatively) computationally inexpensive. The billboard would be rotated depending on the users POV. The alpha values would range from 0 to say 0.7, depending on the location of the light source.

[Hajo]

Actually it shoudl be as easy as defining a sphere slightly bigger than the actual planet, give it a translucent blueish hue and ... so far it didn't bring the expected results, mostly because I think I got the "interior" of that sphere wrong, it should filter light more the farther it travels through, but my raytracer disregards this wish of mine (aka I haven't learned yet how to use media setting correctly)

I managed to improve the image a little bit again, by splitting water and land parts. More contrast on the land structures, and a changing structural pattern for the oceans.

I'm quite pleased with this one now. Thanks again to all who gave me inspiration, hints and advice! This is so much better now than the version from yesterday.

[Hajo]

Project is on halt currently because I've been busy with this:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=240.0

I think in a while I'll pick up the space miner part again. Need to work on a space station UI and I'm pretty clueless about that - it's a real roadblock currently.

Basically it needs to serve these 4 purposes:

- buy/sell goods
- upgrade ship equipment, buy new ship
- sell prospected information about resources to companies
- browse news, take missions (if there will be missions)

I guess I'll need a kind of generic "space station" screen that has icons or such to open the 4 detail screens.

The next release will include a bugfix for Mac OS X, there are display problems with the tabular system view. Also a better random number generator for testing if it will produce better systems, the current generator might not be "random" enough. But most likely the difference will be small.

[Cokho]

It could be great! Your idea reminds me of Space Merchant Conqueror

[Hajo]

Space Merchants: Conquerors looks great on those screenshots for sure. I wish I could do that too. Maybe some day

I hope to pick up work on Solarex again soon. Today I finally integrated the improved earthlike planet image and with some luck I'll be able to continue work, although the next two weeks I'll be pretty busy with other things it seems.

I'll need to figure out a little price simulation for goods, so that trading will be interesting, but not without risks for the careless.

[Hajo]

I've updated the first posting with a few screenshots, showing the parts of the project which already work. The resource gathering screen is work in progress though, the lower part where the available gathering drones ought to be shown is still to be implemented. Also besides metals and gases, the other resources are not calculated yet.

Once the space miner part is developed more, this screen will only be available if the players ship has the right sensors and probes, and is close enough to the planet to actually prone it for resources.

At the moment all screens are accessible right away to check if the planet creation code is working correctly and produces believable results for the resources.


Edit: A little bit of progress - I finally had some free time and worked on the so-long-not-getting-along-with projected space station UI. I finished an outline of the very first space station screen, the general information panel. It sure will be fleshed out over time, but well, this is how it looks right now:

Click for full size

I wonder how to make the portraits - there should be different races of aliens, and drawing portraits is really not a talent of mine.

[Hajo]

In another forum I got some suggestions for adding atmosphere and flavor by descriptive texts and I tried that. I've added a short "welcome" type text blurb under the headline, with a message from the station crew.

Also a bigger text area giving your own impression of the station.

Click for full size

(Ack, I think "pools" should rather be "puddles" there in the text. I thought I had changed that before taking the screenshot, but apparently I didn't.)

I think I'll change the "inhabitants" label to "population".

[Christian Knudsen]

Is this planet randomly/procedurally generated? If so, that's pretty damn good!

[Hajo]

Is this planet randomly/procedurally generated? If so, that's pretty damn good!

It is, but I made use of the excellent procedural texture generators in PovRay. So I can only take praise for finding good parameter sets and making use of the options that PovRay offers. It wasn't easy though, and I like this planet very much too.

Almost everything in this project will be procedurally generated. It's cool to make whole worlds from a single numeric seed. Almost. At least I can dream of that

Thank you for the feedback

[Christian Knudsen]

Okay, so it's not being generated in-engine? Still cool, though.

EDIT: Yeah, okay, I took a closer look at PovRay. Guess it is in-engine.

[Hajo]

The planets are rendered separately and just loaded as bitmaps in the game. I try to keep it simple, so that I actually have a chance to finish a game once again

[Christian Knudsen]

But they're rendered while the game is running, right?

[Hajo]

At the moment they are rendered beforehand, and I have only a few fixed bitmaps on the server. So each of the earthlike planets will look like the others, although with different parameter sets each could be rendered unique.

The planet data will be calculated newly for each system, so all planets should be fairly unique, although they share the images. I wanted to keep the presentation simple, but dived more deeply into the generation algorithm for the systems, and the planetary resources.

[Hajo]

I've put up an experimental release. It has a number of features which are unreliable, particularly the support for dual star systems can create wacky systems. The reason to put this up was the new space station panel, and it should be good enough for testing that.

I've been trying to write a number of welcome and station flavor messages, so be sure to click several stations to explore them all. Some combinations of welcome messages and station descriptions are .. hilarious or stupid, depending on how you want to see them

- Experimental support for dual star systems. Sometimes it creates very wacky systems.
- New space station general panel with randomized welcome and station flavor messages. Just click a space station in the system explorer view to open it.
- Improved earthlike planet image included.
- Better random number generator used for solar system generation.
- Experimental Mac OS X UI bugfix added.

http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_19rc

[Hajo]

The new space station panel shows government type and tech level. At the moment these are fixed values, just to have something to show. I'd like to include these values in the overall simulation algorithm, but I'm a bit clueless how to. I want to ask about the government type first.

If the stellar system generator produces a system, it's known how many inhabitable planets and moons are there, and how many space stations.

From these I can roughly calculate a total population of the system. A race can be randomly chosen, or chosen based on the planet types ... some races might prefer cold planets, others like hot planets, and there might be different needs for atmospheres, too. Different races could have different preferences for government types.

What government types would you suggest to include in the game? And given the above ideas, how would they be chosen for a particular system?

[st33d]

Are you familiar with this site?

It would be interesting to see space phenomena such as asteroid belts, nebulae and black holes.

Very interesting work, keep it up.

[Hajo]

Very interesting work, keep it up.

Thank you Also thanks for the link, the site was new to me, and it sure will give more inspiration for modelling planets and space bodies.

Asteroid belts will be difficult, due to the large number of small bodies. But bigger asteroid bodies should be possible.

A while ago I had been working on some gaphics for pulsars, black holes and an asteroidal body. So far the more "normal" suns and planetary systems seemed more important, but once the core of the project is done, I'll try to include the more rare space bodies, too.

Nebulae might not appear as entities, but would make great background images for the galactical map and the system explorer. So far I'm a bit stuck with painting/renderiung such nebulae, though, so I have postponed them till later.

These are a few studies of mine, picturing a pulsar, a black hole and a chewing-gum asteroid. (Erm, yes, a black pulsar on black space is hard to see. But if you have upped your screen brightness you might still spot some of the pulsars surface )

[Hajo]

I've been working on government type and population calculations for the space stations and the planets. Also I've sketched five species/races to populate the games universe:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=269.0

Those are not very detailed yet, but was good enough to implement some calculations which kind of plantes are likely to be inhabitated by them.

Right now I think, I have the basics of population and government type calculations in place. There is some finetuning needed, the Clonkniks seem to be everywhere, while the other races inhabit only few planets. But basically it works:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_20rc

It also has a new, species-specific naming scheme for the space stations which works nicely, I think. In a while I want to have a better planet naming scheme, too, but that looks tricky to me at the moment.

It's an experimental release again, because it definitely lacks some polish and might have a number of yet unknown bugs and problems.

There are "Rockeaters", "Poison breathers", "The ones who float", "Clonkniks" (with a typo that makes them Clonkniki) and "Terraneans" in this preview. I left the names as I had sketched them first - I hope "Poison breathers" is not too offensive, it seems worse in English than it appeared to me initially.