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[nova++]

Did a dumb little thing today. In theme with the statistics for a selected body in the nav screen taking a bit to load in, I did the same thing to the HUD in flight mode as it changes modes (between normal flight and hyperdrive, for instance)



The order is randomized - which I'm not 100% sure on. But I like the effect. Later I'm going to have it display some quick "debug text" in the top corner when you actually re-enter the cockpit from the interior. Little things like that, to give more of that 80s/90s home computer experience.

A bit more usefully, I also unified the hyperdrive GUI. Originally I was going to have a totally separate depiction for the interplanetary hyperdrive vs interstellar but... meh. Feels nicer having them obey the same rules.

[jb]

The game looks like it is going to be really unique and interesting. I like the idea of decorating your ship and exploring, if you get the system working well it seems like there could be endless possibilities in terms of cosmetics and things. For music, if you do go with procedural it would be interesting to make planet surfaces all unique blends based on their properties. In terms of lighting, I feel like it could be better to focus on atmosphere more than realism - vibrant skies, thick fog and wild ambient colours on planets to make them feel unique. The aesthetic you have going seems quite minimal and retro in a PC sim kind of way so I'm not sure realistic lighting is something I would care about as a player, in fact, it may end up making your other assets look out of place. Have you seen a game called Kairo? Its an indie game that sets some really strong scenes with a minimal approach. Good luck!

[nova++]

The game looks like it is going to be really unique and interesting. I like the idea of decorating your ship and exploring, if you get the system working well it seems like there could be endless possibilities in terms of cosmetics and things. For music, if you do go with procedural it would be interesting to make planet surfaces all unique blends based on their properties. In terms of lighting, I feel like it could be better to focus on atmosphere more than realism - vibrant skies, thick fog and wild ambient colours on planets to make them feel unique. The aesthetic you have going seems quite minimal and retro in a PC sim kind of way so I'm not sure realistic lighting is something I would care about as a player, in fact, it may end up making your other assets look out of place. Have you seen a game called Kairo? Its an indie game that sets some really strong scenes with a minimal approach. Good luck!

Thank you! I'll return the compliments by saying Caeser's revenge looks very cool, I have a major weakness for 90s 2.5D styled shooters.

Anyway, yeah - that's something I've been grappling with. As I mentioned in my post a while back, I am definitely leaning toward stylization over realism in visuals. There's plenty of realism in other places too; planet formation, spacecraft physics, etc.

I haven't heard of Kairo. But yes, I guess you could describe the approach as minimalist. Nice clean textures is what I have in mind.

It actually used to be even more minimalist. Way back in 2016 when the first sparks of this project emerged, there was a very deliberate effort to emulate the style of Elite II, in all its flat-shaded, solid-colored glory:




I don't think I've actually shown Old ZSpace before, come to think of it. I need to go to my desktop and see if I can find any pictures of it hanging around, there should be some... I'll post them when I get them.

Edit: Found them -

TIME FOR A HISTORY LESSON







Not gonna lie, I do still have a fondness for this look. But I understand it would have been VERY difficult to make work comprehensively - I never really got far enough to run into that, though.

I never figured out a bunch of important stuff that this second go at the idea has. Never figured out a good way to do local terrain, or navigation, or atmospheres, etc...

[nova++]

And apparently I just hit 10,000 views on this thread, which is... more than any of my youtube videos on anything I've done in like 5 years?   

[nova++]

I've been thinking about potential alternate ship designs.

Technically there's nothing wrong with the current ship, and I quite like its design. I've just been having some other ideas that might work too, but I'm also filled with uncertainty.

The theme I keep coming back to is a large, round living area divided into quarters, with some sort of pivot/gimbal to allow the cabin to both level as well as swivel to a horizontal orientation (that is to say, decks parallel to the direction of thrust), or a vertical orientation (decks perpendicular to thrust). Perhaps something like the Von Braun lunar lander design, but not quite so tall, and with some sort of swivel mechanism for the ball on the top to align the decks as desired.



Why would we need to do this? I guess there's no particularly good reason. It's all just for the aesthetics and the viewpoints. The most actually useful thing is cabin auto-leveling (as depicted in the image above), because finding a perfectly flat plain to land on is basically never going to happen. And because your spacecraft uses artificial gravity inside, that means your indoor "down" vector is going to slightly differ from the outdoor gravity vector, and let me tell you, that can get a bit dizzying in some cases. It bears mentioning however that the same auto-leveling could easily be achieved with some sort of adjustable landing legs rather than moving the cabin around.

And I still like the current ship.

I feel torn between its classic science fiction design (laid out more like an airplane, with a cabin floor aligned to the gravity vector when landed), and the more exotic and unique nature of the other ideas. There's three specific things that I can think of that the airplane layout does well, and are the chief reason I had thought of being able to switch the whole cabin from horizontal to vertical:

• Entering an atmosphere feels much more natural when you fly in belly-first like the space shuttle, ground below, sky above
• Being in hyperspace and having the stars fly past the windows ala Star Trek, rather than appearing to rain from above (admittedly, that might be neat?)
• Actually using it like an airplane, and cruising through an atmosphere or above a planet's surface - I intended to have some sort of autopilot mode to fly the ship for you in such a way so you can go in the back and replicate a sandwich or something

All of these are pretty minor though, bordering on petty, and hardly requirements for the core mechanics of the game.

I do like the design in the first image, if I can figure out where to put some hyperdrive engines on it. It of course doesn't have the pivot mechanism, only the auto-leveling, but it has a nice feel to it, I think. Perhaps the two sections could fold together and extend for leveling as the player wishes. Or the cabin could tilt through some other mechanism while the legs level it.

I dunno. I guess I don't have to worry about this yet. But it's still bothering me. I'd like to put the option of multiple spacecraft on the table, which would make the indecision a bit better.

[Schrompf]

Flying by sight over the features of a newly discovered planet beats anything, I'd say. That sphere with transparent ceiling might be fine in hyperspace - I don't mind raining stars from above - but the core gameplay, which to my understanding is exploring planets, would suffer from auto-piloting to planet surfaces.

Apart from that, feel free to design the ship as you prefer. Maybe make up a rails system by which components like engine, hyperdrive, living room, cockpit and such can be rearranged on the fly. Interact with the ship control HUD, click "plane design" on that HUD, much clonk, many metallic screech, so crank, ship's components now losely resemble a plane.

[nova++]

Maybe make up a rails system by which components like engine, hyperdrive, living room, cockpit and such can be rearranged on the fly. Interact with the ship control HUD, click "plane design" on that HUD, much clonk, many metallic screech, so crank, ship's components now losely resemble a plane.

Hooo boy don't give me any dangerous ideas 

But yeah, you've brought up stuff that's been floating around my head as well. I think I've gotten the "alternate ship designs" bug out of my system for now. I did a bit of work on the higher-res spacecraft model again, as well. The more work I put into that, the more I can sunk-cost-fallacy myself into avoiding replacing it

[nova++]

Meanwhile I finally got back to Mk. 3 of the terrain system, and it's to the point where it can actually... yknow... generate terrain. The generation logic is much more structured now, with distinct subdivide and processing steps to avoid any conflicts or sequencing errors. It's also more flexible, and can generate between 1 and 4 chunk meshes per frame (probably an option for more soon, too), which allows it to be tailored for all sorts of performance levels. In my case, I've taken the speed down a little bit, and increased the resolution. I can get twice the mesh resolution of the Mk. 2 generator with better performance.



Also important is that I've worked out larger scale textures than before, and also added normal maps, which add so much to the look of it. It's not the final normal right now - just a rock wall normal map I had lying around - but even that does a bunch of good to the look. Compare it with the following two, the first with no overlay textures; the second with only the color, no normal:



(It does need some more real detail on the smaller scale, but this is just a thrown-together terrain stack for testing so shush)

[nova++]

I've been having trouble getting into the headspace for working on this, mainly because my current task is extremely dull.

Basically, it's the creation of a new boot function for the game (which handles either the first-time startup of a new game, or loading a saved game), which means a lot of tedium connecting a bunch of things together. There are a ton of things that need setting up, and a ton of variables that need saving.

True to character, I'm starting with the more interesting part - the first-time setup. What needs to happen, basically, is the boot function needs to create a new save, select a random position in the galaxy (with weighting), find the nearest suitable star to that position (what constitutes "suitable" is up for debate right now, although I will probably make it stick to main sequence stars), load that star system, then it repeats this selection process for a planet or moon within the system. From there, it calculates an orbital vector to place the player on (which needs to be clever enough not to spawn the player on a collision course), places them on it, and finally kicks off the introductory sequence.

The introductory sequence will come later, but all the rest I can work out right now. I already have a fair bit of work I can re-use, as I already have to do a fair bit of initialization. So that's something, at least.

After that I'll have to force myself to keep hooking things up for saving/loading, and god is it going to be a slot. First off, I need to consider the different states the game can be in:

• Local (landed or near a planet or other object)
• Interplanetary (which includes free-flying as well as hyperdrive states)
• Interstellar

Local and interplanetary both need to pre-load a star system. Local is the worst, as it also needs to pre-load the terrain beneath the player, which is going to need some hooks in the terrain system, and position the player in a completely different coordinate system. For hyperdrive, I'll need to store the destination and position, and the progress between them. Interstellar hyperdrive is similar.

Then comes the spacecraft itself, which obviously has all manner of statuses and flags that need keeping track of. Control state, motion state, autopilot state, eventually the whole mess of internal systems will have to get tossed in this pot as well. And then the interior: Player position, loaded props, prop positions.

Guh. I'm going to do it piecemeal. I can live with the interior nuking itself each time something's loaded for instance; I only have 5 props right now anyway.

And I don't even have any screenshots to show on screenshot saturday 6 hours after screenshot saturday ended.


Here's something different. I would like to hear some opinions on how saving and loading should be handled.

I have a few ideas. The most basic is allowing the player to save and load the game at any time for any reason, for better or for worse. I suppose there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it kind of feels almost... out-of-place, for this sort of game? I don't know.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the fully automated approach - the game regularly autosaves, and if the player dies, they are either automatically sent back to a previous save, or the game relocates them some distance away (that is to say, when you die, your brainstream gets upjacked to a backup server in a pocket universe where it can be re-injected into an alternate timeline where you didn't crash into that star. Or something) and allows gameplay to continue. That being said, both methods would probably have regular autosaves, because not everyone is a compulsive quicksaver like myself.

And of course, autosaves need to have some modicum of intelligence. No autosaving when the player is heading downwards at 16 km/s at 1 km altitude. I remember kerbal space program had a lovely variable named "aboutToCrash" in there somewhere.

Oh, and one last aside - I plan on making a demo video showing the current state of the game's features soon(tm). So look forward to that, eventually.

[Schrompf]

Just anectdotal support: since I got my child, playtime has both been sparse and often interrupted. If you can manage it, I'd very much prefer a nice fluent save function anywhere which also does not simply set one back to the last autosave in safe orbit half an hour ago. Not saving when the situation is about to get dire is not an issue if you simply cycle through 5 autosave slots.

Not you, but I occasionally read some blurp by a Game Design Freshperson about how saving everywhere is "cheating" and they come up with elaborate measures to punish saving or something like this. And I always get the urge to hang them from their intestines until some sense returns into their little privileged design world.

[nova++]

Just anectdotal support: since I got my child, playtime has both been sparse and often interrupted. If you can manage it, I'd very much prefer a nice fluent save function anywhere which also does not simply set one back to the last autosave in safe orbit half an hour ago. Not saving when the situation is about to get dire is not an issue if you simply cycle through 5 autosave slots.

Not you, but I occasionally read some blurp by a Game Design Freshperson about how saving everywhere is "cheating" and they come up with elaborate measures to punish saving or something like this. And I always get the urge to hang them from their intestines until some sense returns into their little privileged design world.

Yeah, given a choice, I think I'll always lean toward more freedom in saving/loading. That is easier from a design standpoint too - the autosaves don't need to be as "smart", for one thing. I was thinking about doing stuff like player profiles and all that, but honestly, I think I will do the "classic" way - a single save folder, wherein you can save individual quick saves, manually name custom saves, and also access a few autosaves.

The only real argument I'd put in favor of making it "silent" and out of the player's hands is to keep it seamless. Like, auto-revert if the player crashes to a sensible point (not neccessarily a save, just a safe spot nearby, and preserving their interior layout), and auto-save on exiting the game. Still though, I think free saving feels better.

[nova++]

I implemented the galaxy sector thingy while procrastinating some more from finishing the save/load system. It's fairly straightforward. The galaxy is defined as a number of sectors, and each star in a sector is named as "[Sector name] [star number]" as you arrive at it. That is to say, the first star in sector A would be named A 1, the second would be named A 2, and upon arriving in sector B, B starts counting as well, to B 1, B 2, etc...

At present - although this might change - the standardized layout is a central cylindrical core region, a ring of six sectors around that, then another ring of 12 outside of that. Being away from all of these is considered its own sector as well, presently named "Varion" for no reason other than I came up with that name on the spot and it sounds neat.

[nova++]

Finally got all the core parts of saving and loading working. Hopefully. This is one of those features that is kind of impossible to present in an exciting way. It's not very photogenic, and it's kind of messy, but it's working. It can handle all three primary world states (interplanetary, local, interstellar), the player being in the cockpit or in the interior, the interior arrangement of props, control states, etc.

Still a number of relatively minor things left to worry about saving...exterior camera status, interplanetary hyperdrive, navigation marker state, to name a few. Eventually I'll need to save the state of the player when they're out of the ship and walking around or driving the rover.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about the functionality from a gameplay standpoint as well, and two things came to mind.

1. I believe a good way to provide a nice set of backups would be to simply keep a set of three autosaves, and a set of three quicksaves, which are rotated as you work through them. Hitting quicksave bumps what's in Quick1 down to Quick2, Quick2 down to Qucik3, and deletes the old Quick3. Or however many. Perhaps that could be a game option.

w. For those that desire the experience, I should add a "hardcore mode" or "iron[alien cyborg] mode", which disables quicksaves and evicts you back to the menu if you die, and the only way to save your game manually is to save and quit to the menu (as in other games with similar modes).

[dray]

Just discovered your Devlog and i have to say that this is all very inspiring.
I really like the way you explain everything and how you think your game.

Following

[filbs111]

I may have commented to this effect already, but this looks good. RE picking a spaceship, http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php is a fantastic resource. Pages of particular interest:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/artificialgrav.php
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/antigravity.php

You might also consider having portals, for "tardis", save points.

[nova++]

I may have commented to this effect already, but this looks good. RE picking a spaceship, http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php is a fantastic resource. Pages of particular interest:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/artificialgrav.php
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/antigravity.php

You might also consider having portals, for "tardis", save points.

Yeah, I'm familiar with Atomic Rockets. I will confess I'm deliberately dancing around how this small ship could possibly store all the propellant it does, no matter how efficient and powerful it is, for the sake of making a game that doesn't get tedious 

What do you mean by TARDIS save points?

[filbs111]

What do you mean by TARDIS save points?

I mean, a Tardis is basically a police box on the outside, and the door is like a portal to a "pocket universe" - the inside of the Tardis. Suppose the inside of the Tardis has many doors, each paired with the outside of a different police box. You can pilot one box, from the comfort of the inside, or with some ability to eject/inject in an emergency, and if it gets destroyed on the outside, the inside remains (with you in it), and you can then pilot another. Suppose the Tardis also has some method of generating flat-packed police boxes that can fit through the doors. You can use this to drop off save points.

[fluffrabbit]

I would like to add that any propulsion concept that can traverse the galaxy in a human lifetime must be some kind of magic warp drive exploiting unknown physics or use wormholes. I'm not a physicist, but I think there is no way any kind of rocket with physical propellant could do this unless it rocketed into folded space or something. It's not the hardest science, and that's okay.

[nova++]

It's not the hardest science, and that's okay.

Yeah. The spaceship is your plot generator. The harder science will come with the solar systems you explore. As I've said, I would like to attempt to make procedural generation that takes into account present-day understanding of planet formation (with some extra excitement sprinkled on top)

I mean, a Tardis is basically a police box on the outside, and the door is like a portal to a "pocket universe" - the inside of the Tardis. Suppose the inside of the Tardis has many doors, each paired with the outside of a different police box. You can pilot one box, from the comfort of the inside, or with some ability to eject/inject in an emergency, and if it gets destroyed on the outside, the inside remains (with you in it), and you can then pilot another. Suppose the Tardis also has some method of generating flat-packed police boxes that can fit through the doors. You can use this to drop off save points.

Oh, I see what you meant now. Actually... come to think of it, that's almost exactly describing the method of exploration I had in mind for a different game Sending probes and yourself through a portal device into another universe, and the portal appears more like a box with space inside than a stargate-type portal.

[filbs111]

that's almost exactly describing the method of exploration I had in mind for a different game

Ha. Great minds!