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[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #29: Solar System Brainstorming

I have changed the Birth environment of Organizam once again. At first, I was going to make the birth environment be inside of your mother. Then I was going to make it part of a flower. And now I am changing that and making it part of a mini solar system.

As the habitat of Organizam is manifesting in my head, one key concept that is becoming a big part of the habitat is the idea of it behaving like solar systems do. So imagine an ecosystem with these small sun like energy balls with various rocks (that represent planets) en-circling it. The birth environment should be no exception to this. Going to be incorporating this solar system concept in the birth environment up next. Here is a rough sketch of what I would like it to look like.



The rock closest to the sun will have no vegetation on it because it’s so close to the sun. The second rock will have vegetation on it as it’s just the right distance from the sun. It also a has a moon rock en-circling it. The blue circles represent the eggs of the main species in the game. I might add more planets, but so far this solar system will only have two planets.

[gaarlicbread]

I just found this devlog and love the idea. Hayao Miyazaki is a great inspiration. I love the art style and the idea of the game an interactive narrative with an empowering message.

Have you seen the game Osmos? The solar system idea reminded me of that. I'm guessing you don't want to dive into orbital mechanics, but the naturalistic, orbity environments may be similar.

Looking forward to seeing more as the game continues to grow!

[Vakey Rujevic]

I just found this devlog and love the idea. Hayao Miyazaki is a great inspiration. I love the art style and the idea of the game an interactive narrative with an empowering message.

Have you seen the game Osmos? The solar system idea reminded me of that. I'm guessing you don't want to dive into orbital mechanics, but the naturalistic, orbity environments may be similar.

Looking forward to seeing more as the game continues to grow!

I have heard of Osmos, but very little. Had no idea that it's core environment mechanics are based on the Solar System mechanics. My interest for this game has peaked and I'll be looking forward to playing it.

And you guessed right: I don't want to jump too deep into orbital mechanics, just enough to create that orbital effect in some environments in the game. Made a lot of progress on that today. Will be posting more info on it soon.

Thanks for the kind words and the follow!

[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #30: First Draft of Solar System Mechanics

Finished implementing the solar system mechanics. Here is the first draft of the birth planet spinning and rotating around the sun, all in a counter clock wise direction resembling the motion of our own solar system (depending on what angle you look at it from).



Up next I will have the inner planet rotate around the sun and give the birth planet a moon. When I am done I will also write a tutorial on how I implemented this (I used no code, just Unity’s 2d physics).

[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #31: Implementing 2D Solar System in Unity (No Code)

Finished implementing the Solar System Mechanic for the birth environment. For size reference, the main organism in the game will be as big as the moon of the green planet in the animated gif below (the gif has been sped up by 8x).



This mechanic will be at the core of many lush environments in the game. Life thrives where there is a powerful energy source. So through out the world of Organizam there will be these powerful energy balls of light that allow for existence of life in the world. Hence why the green planet above has eggs on it. What better place for an organism to lay her eggs?!

Implementation of the Solar System

I used no code for the implementation of the solar system. All I used was multiple AreaEffector2D and a DistanceJoint2D. The DistanceJoint2D was used to keep a planet within orbital distance to the sun. And for AreaEffoector2D, I would first create one with following properties:



Setting “Force Angle” to 90 will always push the moon up when it goes through that area (set it to 270 if you want it to orbit a clockwise direction). Then I added 18 more AreaEffector2D objects with the exact same properties as above. The only difference is that z index of the rotation property in the transform would be offset-ted by 20 degrees. Thus creating this loop:



And to make the planets rotate, I used the ConstantForce2D component to add constant torque to the planets and moons. That’s all there is to it. Let me know if you guys have a better way of doing it or improving on this system?

[marcgfx]

I don't use unity or anything similar, but it seems complicated for something you could likely write with a few lines of code.

the planet with eggs looks cool

[Vakey Rujevic]

I don't use unity or anything similar, but it seems complicated for something you could likely write with a few lines of code.

the planet with eggs looks cool

Thanks

That is true if you want the planets to ignore Unity's 2D physics engine. For my case, I want the orbit of the moon to react realisticily when it collides with stuff. Like the following:



Still possible to do it with a few lines of code! Although, we still have to use DinstanceJoint2D (to maintain the distance of the planet to the sun). For fun, here is some completely NOT tested code of how I think this can be accomplished.

Code:

var orbitDirection = (centerOfOrbit - planet.position).normalized;

var orbitAngle = ConvertAxisToAngle(orbitDirection);
var forceDirection = orbitAngle - 90; //anti-clockwise
var forceAngle = ConvertAngleToAxis(forceDirection);

planetRigidbody.AddForce(forceAngle * Time.delta);

Would love to know if there is a better way to accomplish this! And if anyone want's the code to the functions above (ConvertAxisToAngle and ConvertAngleToAixs), let me know. I would be happy to share.

Thanks for the fun challenge Marc.

[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #32: Spirit Organism Formation

Been working on creating spirit Organisms. They are basically an array of balls floating around in space that can morph into any kind of organism or structure in the game. Here is an example of my most recent work:



They have a very important purpose in the game. They act as an ancestral guide for the player. If you study any organism of planet earth, you will notice that from birth they have ancestral wiring that tell them how to behave, what to be afraid of, what to enjoy, etc. The perfect example of this is the Mimic Octopus that from birth knows how to mimic other creatures without ever having seen them. They know this thanks to evolution and the passing of DNA from it's ancestors. It's ancestor's have studied other creatures and learned how to mimic their behaviors. And it is these behaviosr they were able to pass down to their children through DNA.



And here is where the problem lies. How do I convey all this behavioral DNA to the player? This is where the spirit organisms come into play. They will communicate to the player how you should behave to be inline with the behaviors of the organism. And they communicate through demonstration, not words. That's why they can morph into so many things.

Up next, I will work on the birth of spirit organisms. You might have noticed from my previous posts that the environments of Organizam are heavily inspired by Space. So spirit organisms are will born from near by stars. More on that soon.

[FK in the Coffee]

It's mindboggling to me how this hasn't attracted more attention. Certainly one of the most stunning games I've seen in development here, and all of your devlog posts are incredibly informative. It sucks that this got rejected from Indiecade, but I wish you all the luck while you keep polishing this!

[marcgfx]

I wouldn't exactly call the interaction with the moon realistic but I do understand why you want to rely on unity's physics calculations.

this spirit organism stuff sounds interesting, but I don't think I understand it yet

[lithander]

looks beautifully analog

[Vakey Rujevic]

It's mindboggling to me how this hasn't attracted more attention. Certainly one of the most stunning games I've seen in development here, and all of your devlog posts are incredibly informative. It sucks that this got rejected from Indiecade, but I wish you all the luck while you keep polishing this!

Really appreciate all the kind words! Especially coming from someone who has been in this forum for a long time.

I am grateful for all the positive attention the game has been getting so far and am positive this will attract more attention as I dwell deeper into the game.

[Vakey Rujevic]

I wouldn't exactly call the interaction with the moon realistic but I do understand why you want to rely on unity's physics calculations.

this spirit organism stuff sounds interesting, but I don't think I understand it yet

You are right about the interaction of the moon not being realistic (wrong choice of words there). But glad you understand what I was going for

As for the spirits, I hope it will become more clear when I release a playable build of it soon.

[Vakey Rujevic]

looks beautifully analog

Thanks Though I am not sure what analog looks like.

[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #33: From Stars to Spirit Organisms

In my previous update I mentioned that spirit organisms will be born from near by stars. Here it is:



Up next I will be having the spirit organisms start moving towards the birth planet where they will awaken the player allowing the player to hatch. Essentially, this is how the game starts.

[Vakey Rujevic]

[Vakey Rujevic]

Update #34: Updated Following Path

I implemented the following path logic a while back. However, it was pretty static within world space. For my current use case, I need the path to move along with the a moving object (in this case a planet). Here is a demonstration of a path moving along with an object:

[Vakey Rujevic]

Worked on having the spirits orbit the birth planet today:

[Vakey Rujevic]

I have been sketching out how I would like artificial organisms to look like in the game. Skeleton and steampunk inspired!

[QOG]

I have been sketching out how I would like artificial organisms to like in the game. Skeleton and steampunk inspired!

Very cool look, I'd love to see it in motion.