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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsSolarex - procedural stellar system generator with a dream of space miner game
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nikki
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« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2010, 03:52:05 AM »

those races are great , they kick off my imagination !

if i may make a suggestion : i wouldn't use the names: "Poison breathers", "The ones who float" not because off offensiveness, but because they are made up off more then one different words.
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kinnas
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« Reply #21 on: January 21, 2010, 03:59:26 AM »






The clouds need a lot more swirl!

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Alex May
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« Reply #22 on: January 21, 2010, 04:14:20 AM »

Just tried the current version. Really cool. Keep up the good work.
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Hajo
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« Reply #23 on: January 21, 2010, 07:21:25 AM »

Just tried the current version. Really cool. Keep up the good work.

Thank you Smiley It's really quite amazing what such random-number based algorthms can do, at least in this case.

@Kinnas: Yes, the clouds will benefit from more swirls. I'll see if I can convince the "turbulence" warp of PovRay to be swirly turbulent. So far I had no luck there.
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Hajo
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« Reply #24 on: January 27, 2010, 06:41:32 AM »

I've been experimenting with semi-procedural portrait generation. These are assembled from 6 base portrait parts, and allow a total of 8 permutations. Each new base part will double the number of permutations possible. It'seasier for me than to draw a large number of full size portraits, but also has not the variation possible in real full-size portraits.


And in martian, or rather venusian green:


They look a bit ill there, though, but I guess for them green is a healthy color. I think this way I can create portraits good enough for my project. They will be upscaled, and shown in big pixels, but that also seems to be acceptable overall ... maybe I'll blur/tear/snow them with "transmission errors" in the final dispaly.
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Hajo
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« Reply #25 on: January 28, 2010, 01:43:36 AM »

A first test of rockeater portraits:

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Hajo
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« Reply #26 on: February 04, 2010, 05:21:17 AM »

I've put a new version online, with a few changes - this is again a quite experimental release, and things may or may not work properly.

 => http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_21rc/

- It has got a new title screen with a credits list.
- I tried to fix a number of UI layout and redraw problems.
- Changed font to a bigger font in some places to improve readability.
- For the very curious, a work-in-progress version of the trade screen is included, but it doesn't show more than the list of available goods. Prices and quantities are just placeholders.

Under the hood there are more changes towards space ship data, cargo, and keeping track of the players position in space, but those aren't visible yet.

Also, the portraits are not included yet, because I'm not yet decided about the way to include them. Or just call me lazy Tongue
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Hajo
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« Reply #27 on: February 06, 2010, 09:21:00 AM »

I'm working on the flight and traveling parts. So far one could instantly access planets and stations, just by clicking them.

Soon, one will have to actually fly there to find out the details.

I liked the "explore a galaxy on your desk" feature, which allowed instant access to all data. I think I'll try to keep it somehow, maybe as a sandbox mode or separate project. For the exploration and prospecting parts of the game it's important that data is not readily accessible, but must be discovered. Also the time factor involved in traveling seems to be necessary for a game.

Meanwhile I've started with a super simple stellar system navigation map. Planet orbits are shown as dotted circles, one can pan and zoom the view. The screenshots below show a little tour into a stellar system.

Rikon system overview. A white dwarf sun with some plants. Some of the planets have moons.

Closing in to Rikon 1, a ringed planet with several moons and space stations in orbit.

Finally a detail view of Outpost Cassini, orbiting the moon Rikon 1-3

I don't plan to implement a 3D space flight simulation. Travel will happen on this navigation map, in a more abstract fashion.
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Hajo
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« Reply #28 on: February 07, 2010, 02:41:26 AM »

I noticed that the ordering of the moons was wrong often. You can see this problem in the screenshots above. This will be fixed in the forthcoming release.
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Hajo
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« Reply #29 on: February 08, 2010, 01:27:17 AM »

I've put a new version online, with a few changes - this is again a quite experimental release, and things may or may not work properly.

=> http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_22rc/

- Added system navigation map.
- Improved naming for dual stars (alpha/beta).
- Extended goods list.

The biggest change is the new system navigation map. Well, navigation itself is still not included, but this is where you'll move your ship once the travel part of the game becomes more complete. At the moment you can see the planet and moon orbits, pan and zoom in and out. A new, more spatial view on the system data.
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« Reply #30 on: February 09, 2010, 12:15:23 AM »

I just love procedurally generated stuff and I'm actually developing something similar (see signature), so this is a very interesting project for me. (The app also started very smoothly, which I'm not accustomed with Java/Firefox combo, guess FF3.6 is really an improvement).

Anyway, I would really enjoy a completely stepless zoom, i.e. one could zoom out all the way from a single moon view to displaying the whole galaxy (and the galaxy looking like a galaxy, not just bunch of stars) with only using the mouse wheel! I see you already have parts in place, now only remains the integration. Tongue Also, you'd probably want to hide the star names from the current galaxy view at a certain zoom-out level.

About visuals, the stars need higher resolution images as they become blocky when scaled up in the solar system view. Also, nebulae would be really nice there at the background. I've written a tutorial of one technique of generating them: http://www.infiniverse-game.com/?p=articles-creating_nebulae.php Maybe it could be useful for you.

Keep up the good work! Smiley
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Hajo
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« Reply #31 on: February 09, 2010, 01:06:52 AM »

The nebulae tutorial is interesting indeed Smiley I had been trying to generate nebulae with PovRay, but the results were not good enough, so I postponed that.

Your project is quite advanced, you have already covered all levels from real galaxies down to planet surfaces. I had been pondering if I can use images of real galaxies as density maps for creating suns in a more galaxy-style fashion, maybe elliptic clouds and spirals can also be calculated by formula. So far I haven't spend much time on those questions, it's been just ideas.

I hope I can keep display performance good enough for the view of a whole galaxy. It will add flavor though to have stars arranged in a real galaxy shape.

I kept the star and planet images small, to have a small download package. As you mentioned, Java applets download and start slowly with some browsers, and I wanted to keep the overhead as minimal as possible. Red and blue giant suns seem the worst, maybe it will be sufficient to replace only those, but I guess with the introduction of nebulae background images and more UI decorations the download size will grow noticeably anyways. You're lucky there with the ASCII graphics, those won't cause big downloads, and still look very nice on the screenshots Grin

Thanks for the feedback, and good luck with your project, too Hand Thumbs Up Left
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Hajo
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« Reply #32 on: February 10, 2010, 06:27:39 AM »

Small update v0.22b, on the same URL:

=> http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_22rc/

- Significantly inhabited planets got names now
- Added "lookout", "wheel" and "spindle" as space station types
- Slightly prettified galactical and system navigation maps
- Added "robots" to the goods list, finetuned some prices

More internal changes to keep track of ship position and cargo, also prepared goods/cargo structures for space stations and (later) space ports.

Preview of the planet names:
http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/solarex/planet_names_preview.png
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Hajo
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« Reply #33 on: February 11, 2010, 05:33:32 AM »

I've got a report that this version has problems and does not show stellar systems. I've tried to test with the latest Java 1.5 and 1.6 versions and it worked for me, but if someone else experiences such problems, too, please let me know.

Other than that I'm working on a simple space flight simulation. So far the code can track the ships position, allows to set a destination location on the navigation map, and makes the ship move there with constant speed.

I feel uncertain how fast or slow I should make the ship. The passing time has no purpose but to hinder the player to inspect a lot of planets very quickly, so that it's more thrilling to arrive after a (long) journey, and also to make the player select planets more carefully before flying there.

Linked to this question is the question if different drives should allow different speeds. I tend to say no, otherwise the game just becomes a powerup spiral, and eventually will be boring once a player has all the best equipment because "there is nothing left to do", while I want the game to focus on exploration, not powering up.
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Hajo
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« Reply #34 on: February 11, 2010, 01:32:05 PM »

The v0.22b did not start properly on some systems but only showed a black window. I've changed the title screen code a bit, and it seems to work better now.

Update v0.22c, on the same URL:

Hand Point Right http://www.funkelwerk.de/applets/solarex-0_22rc/

This version also includes very rudimentary ship movement and destination tracking code, please ignore that on the navigation map, till the first "official" release is done Ninja
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