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[nova++]

After something boring and tedious like the save/load guts, I always need to do something pretty and (relatively) easy to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Now when you switch between the exterior cameras, there is a short glitch effect and sound to accompany it - based on this https://github.com/keijiro/KinoGlitch

This effect also kicks on when you suffer a sharp impact, which is fun.

(I've extended it ever so slightly after recording this gif, but it still gets the impression across)



And a still frame of it:

[nova++]

[nova++]

Yet another quick secret video in advance of making the actual big tour. The object manipulation finally got some attention and is MUCH better now and feels far more precise to use:

[Schrompf]

Very subtle sound, but I like it. Might get boring quickly if every hyperspace travel consists of staring at a starfield for >1 minute, but maybe you intend the player to spend this time putting up the alien vase she found at the last system.

[nova++]

Very subtle sound, but I like it. Might get boring quickly if every hyperspace travel consists of staring at a starfield for >1 minute, but maybe you intend the player to spend this time putting up the alien vase she found at the last system.

Yeah, it's one of the big sources of downtime. But it depends entirely on how long you decide to make the trip - a star few light years away will only take a few seconds (and there's never a shortage of stars), but if you want to just spend 30 minutes chilling out and redecorating the whole space, you can target a bright star far across the galaxy and take a bit of a road trip. (You'll be able to abort the trajectory if you decide you don't want to wait that long)

[nova++]

welcome to my office



Finally got pushable objects working. Really hard to explain just how difficult it was to get them both feeling right and behaving right.

They are still kind of herky-jerky and need a lot of polishing but I finally have something that at least is starting to feel alright, and isn't doing... this:

[nova++]

Finally things are getting into the realm I can say the player can carry out the latter of the two features in my signature image... I suppose the main thing left for it, aside from cleaning up some of the oddness, is... making a few hundred props to keep things fresh. 



Featuring 100% reycled organic dolphin-safe props, from a bunch of old models I had lying around. Except for the tall shelf. And the stool. Those are not dolphin safe

[Schrompf]

Nice work. I demand rugs! And a key to pee on them.

[nova++]

Nice work. I demand rugs! And a key to pee on them.

Oh yes, I would definitely like various "decal" objects like rugs, posters/paintings, etc. Maybe you can frame photos you take and put them on the wall.

I will have to look into the latter idea. However, given the player's partially cybernetic nature, it may not be canon

[nova++]

I finally brought back binary planets. I've actually had some of the systems in place for months, but other details of implementation remained elusive.

A very important one is how to actually communicate them to the player in the navigation screen and databank, because upon arriving in the system you won't necessarily know that a given object orbiting the sun is a binary object. As I've detailed before, the spacecraft's sensors can only discern so much, and at a distance the mass signature of a binary planet would look like that of a single one.

So, in addition to routines to properly reveal a binary object to the player/databank at the right times, there also was the very real problem that you might have inadvertently put your hyperdrive target onto one of the objects in question. This is more likely with a binary pair than a typical planet and moon arrangement because of the relative proximity of large objects to the center. So I also took this point to add a safety system that automatically aborts the hyperdrive in the event your trajectory is found to be intersecting something after you've set off.

[nova++]

Finally - finally - I've got an improved atmosphere shader nearly done. I've been working on it for a few days now, but have held off posting about it because I wasn't sure if it was going to work.

Originally I wasn't sure if I wanted to go with real(tm) atmospheric scattering, or some extremely simplified option... the old atmosphere shader was the latter, and I've always found it really ugly. But in the end it was more effective to take real(tm) scattering and adjust it.

To that end, a stroke of luck brought me in contact with Carl Davidson, the creator of Tectonics.js (which you should really check out) and his atmospheric scattering implementation: https://davidson16807.github.io/tectonics.js//2019/03/24/fast-atmospheric-scattering.html

He was very helpful with getting me to understand how the code works, and before long I had a working implementation of his systems. And from there, I've been adding onto it - changing how it blends, adding support for non-spherical objects, multiple objects, etc...

Now all that's left to do is to get it talking to the game. Gulp.

For now though, here's how it looks in my test setup:

[diegzumillo]

I don't know how I didn't see this devlog before. This is very niche and I am absolutely 100% your target audience!

[nova++]

I don't know how I didn't see this devlog before. This is very niche and I am absolutely 100% your target audience!

Yay! Us niche devs gotta stick together.

[nova++]

Some more improvements to atmospheres. They now properly extinct light coming in from behind them, so they have more of a fuzzy silhouette, and scatter away light viewed through them.

[nova++]

And now it's in-game! But I'm still not done. Currently all the atmospheres just use the same earth-like rayleigh/mie scattering parameters, and I still need to incorporate it with the nearby renderer. But it's so much better than before.

[nova++]

I think we might just be getting somewhere.

[Schrompf]

I love it. Those coefficients are probably a bitch to randomize, though - when I last tried to meddle with athmosphere shaders, small changes to it already broke a lot. Or maybe I did something wrong.

[nova++]

Oh yes, I forgot to add. I finally worked out the problem I was having with the lighting on the customizable walls... I just hadn't put the right things into my shader 

Anyway, now that that works, the early interior customization is back in.



I need to make it perhaps a bit more granular, though. More individual segments to pick from and customize to more control the layout to how you like.

Beyond that, I've also been thinking about how to let the player change the material and color of the walls and floors and such... canonically, I imagine them all being coated with some sort of highly advanced e-ink sort of thing that can change its color and texture on the fly. To interact with that, you could either use the same customization console that you use to set up the walls, or, and likely more intuitively, use some sort of handheld device to select the surface you want to change. Sort of a texture gun.

[nova++]

And now for another wanton act of premature polish...

[Deckhead]

I've got a couple questions:

• What system requirements are you targetting?
• For those sweet-looking bump-mapped planets, can you give a bit of info on exactly what's happening? Two spheres, one for ground one for atmosphere?