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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsPERSONAL SPACE - A story of galactic exploration and interior decorating
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Author Topic: PERSONAL SPACE - A story of galactic exploration and interior decorating  (Read 23676 times)
nkm
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« Reply #40 on: January 04, 2020, 11:52:32 AM »

Very cool, interested, following your project!

I'm actually in the process of creating something similar, called Earth Analog: https://earth-analog.com/

« Last Edit: January 27, 2020, 03:07:40 AM by nkm » Logged

nova++
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« Reply #41 on: January 04, 2020, 12:46:17 PM »

[slowly building existential crisis because of how nice that looks]
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nkm
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« Reply #42 on: January 04, 2020, 10:55:27 PM »

Thanks, but it is all about them gameplay loops Wink I'm still struggling with finding good ones.
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nova++
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« Reply #43 on: January 10, 2020, 11:50:06 AM »

I've been spending the last few days re-implementing the terrain generator into this new world-systems upgrade... Or rather, improving and finally integrating the Mk. 3 (now 3 1/2 I guess) terrain generator into the surrounding systems. I also was shown a new type of noise generation (Worley noise) which I immediately hacked into a crater generator, the results of which I'm pretty pleased with.





I'll talk more about the details of these craters at a later date, though. It's still being prodded around and I'm not 100% sure what it will turn out looking like in the end.

A big problem introduced by this method, though, were what I (and now you) call "butt craters":



Formed simply when two craters end up too close together and the distance function suddenly switches from one to another. I think I've resolved this however (perhaps at the expense of introducing some other problems), and now need to think of ways to optimize it as much as I can. It's running fine right now, but every little bit of optimization I can get out of this is very important as it must be run many many times for proper layering of crater sizes...

Here's a bonus picture of trying something and it not working. I don't remember what...

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nova++
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« Reply #44 on: January 20, 2020, 11:20:48 AM »

Geez, I've been neglectful of this thread. The big achievement among a number of other smaller things (and getting distracted) has been the proper integration of the new atmosphere system, finally, with everything else. There's not much to talk about, really - it's all stuff I've covered before. So here's 1000 words for you:



I did also solve the butt craters problem with some various manipulations of the crater function, perhaps with noticeable side effects, perhaps not. That is a long-winded explanation for another day, though.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2020, 12:19:04 PM by NovaSilisko » Logged

amasinton
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« Reply #45 on: January 23, 2020, 04:20:45 PM »

There's not much to talk about, really - it's all stuff I've covered before. So here's 1000 words for you:

I'm a sucker for atmosphere renderings like this.  Looks lovely!

(Also, I like the new name - I know the discussion was over a long time ago - but I really dig it.)
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nova++
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« Reply #46 on: January 23, 2020, 08:30:04 PM »

Also, something else... a while back I got the atmosphere shader talking to the planetary shadows and, at the cost of ~100 FPS, this was what their relationship turned into:





Though, again, that framerate drop... I do hope I can optimize it heavily over time. It looks so good...
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diegzumillo
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« Reply #47 on: January 24, 2020, 04:33:45 AM »

Ah... shaders. So many possibilities, so jealous of those who can write in the sacred runes.

It does look cool. But how often do you expect the player to experience an eclipse?
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amasinton
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« Reply #48 on: January 24, 2020, 09:00:24 AM »

Though, again, that framerate drop... I do hope I can optimize it heavily over time. It looks so good...

 Shocked

Those are so beautiful!  Cover art - surely they can be used as "cover art" or loading screens or other promotional art.

Damn the fps!  Full steam ahead!
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nova++
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« Reply #49 on: January 24, 2020, 09:13:34 AM »

It does look cool. But how often do you expect the player to experience an eclipse?

Ah... that's the trouble. It adds a permanant overhead to the atmosphere shader when inside it if there are any objects that could conceivably cast a shadow on it, regardless of whether your viewpoint is inside the shadow or not. That's the big thing I need to figure out. That, and making various tests to only add objects to the shadow caster array if they can actually potentially cast a shadow on something else. But the former is probably the more important one...
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nova++
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« Reply #50 on: January 25, 2020, 01:31:31 PM »

At long last re-integrating the game mechanics with the new underlying world systems, and in the process having the opportunity to integrate several revised items that have been waiting in the wings, like the new interior...



(Ignore the stretchy textures, that will be fixed automatically later on when I pack the separate frame part meshes into a single mesh)
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oahda
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« Reply #51 on: January 26, 2020, 05:58:05 AM »

Fantastic progress since I last checked in on this. Looks lovely. Kiss And fun seeing the mistakes as well!
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nkm
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« Reply #52 on: January 26, 2020, 01:03:34 PM »

Looks great! Watching a planet through a window gives a great sense of scale.
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Schrompf
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« Reply #53 on: January 27, 2020, 01:35:10 AM »

Didn't come here for a long time, now I'm impressed. I love to read about your rendering endeavours.
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« Reply #54 on: January 27, 2020, 02:56:23 AM »

Quote
it's about space, tranquility, the wonder of discovery, occasional panic, and interior decoration

This is my kind of jam. Just been through the thread and I love what I see.

Is this still the best place to follow along or do you have YouTube/Twitter/Discord etc you inhabit?
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nova++
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« Reply #55 on: January 27, 2020, 04:17:36 AM »

Thank you for the kind words... it does help keep me kicking.

Is this still the best place to follow along or do you have YouTube/Twitter/Discord etc you inhabit?

The big posts tend to live here, I have twitter but am not super active and much of my posting about the game tends to... link to this thread. I also have a youtube page but don't really post there either, although I definitely want to change this later on once I come up with an actual studio name, then I will end up making a new channel for such things.

I'm still procrastinating on setting up a patreon page. I think that might work to be the main home for development posts (free to access, not requiring you to be a patron), then repost them elsewhere. I'm not sure what would be best though, really.
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nova++
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« Reply #56 on: January 28, 2020, 10:19:40 AM »

Reconnected the stars last night. Thankfully this was a pretty trivial matter, just changing around a few references. I had the foresight to make the star data/rendering system effectively just a standalone thing that can be puppeteered by any other code that needs to, so it was easy.





Meanwhile, I've been thinking once again how best to communicate to the player the flight mechanics of the game. As I've mentioned, the spacecraft operates under newtonian physics and as such it is non-intuitive for most people to fly in that way. So I am going to need some sort of instructional piece...

Hopefully the GUI I've had for a while will help people understand, as well. It's very simple, really, there are a few markers on screen showing the most important bits of information - your current velocity relative to the nearest celestial body, the forward vector of your spacecraft, and the gravity vector, if close enough to a body.



It feels fairly intuitive to me, but that's the key - to me. I have to come up with a good way to help new players understand how flying in space can be like trying to maneuver a formula one car going 200 mph sideways across an ice lake.

I do intend to have an in-game manual, presented in-universe as the spacecraft's operation manual, including a explainer on the various astrodynamics principles you'll encounter and, importantly, diagrams showing a variety of cause-and-effect examples for maneuvering your craft. This ranges from basic things like "if you perform a burn to accelerate, you must perform an opposing burn to slow back down", to more fictional things that arise from my choices of mechanics.

I made the deliberate decision to have the spacecraft's hyperdrive not cancel out relative velocity between planets. This is easier to explain in diagrams than in words.

The spacecraft is moving at the same velocity as the brown planet, which itself is moving around the sun at 30 km/sec, and then travels via hyperdrive to the green planet.





But upon arrival, the spacecraft's "real" (non-hyperspace) velocity vector has not actually changed, relative to the sun, meaning it's now traveling something like 40 km/sec relative to the green planet (near enough - the exact vector math is unimportant here), and must make up that difference with a long burn from its engines.



This is a very deliberate design choice! It adds an additional element to interplanetary travel, requiring you to think about your exit vector relative to your arrival point (this is displayed on the map, and also will display a big red collision warning if your exit vector will smack into something). It would be relatively easy to automatically match velocities upon arrival, and I might make a game option for that for people who don't want to mess with it. It does allow some interesting things, though. For instance, if you put your exit vector to simply skim a planet's atmosphere, you can use the atmosphere to slow down instead. Also, you can turn on the autopilot and let it brake for you while you go in the back and make a space sandwich, albeit while everything is shaking and rattling a bit from the engines going.

One fuzzy point, though, is whether to do this with interstellar travel. All stars around us are traveling at different speeds relative to the sun, sometimes on the order of hundreds of kilometers per second. But hundreds of km/sec is a lot to ask for players to do upon arrival. So at present it just assigns a randomized entry velocity +- 10 km/s or so upon reaching another star.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2020, 05:36:44 AM by NovaSilisko » Logged

nova++
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« Reply #57 on: January 30, 2020, 11:28:12 AM »



I'll get things built back up enough to have some new planets again soon, honest.
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nkm
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« Reply #58 on: January 31, 2020, 12:12:35 AM »

Great rendering, it looks very clean and polished. I also like the blackness of space.

Code:
It adds an additional element to interplanetary travel, requiring you to think about your exit vector relative to your arrival point (this is displayed on the map, and also will display a big red collision warning if your exit vector will smack into something).

That's a great mechanic. Unique concepts like this make a game stand out.
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nova++
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« Reply #59 on: February 05, 2020, 09:29:59 AM »

Haven't been feeling the energy to write up a full dev post on a few things, but I finally have the map screen half-reimplemented, and I added something to it I've been meaning to for a while: latitude-longitude lines for objects, instead of the ugly checkerboard texture I've been using for too long



It's much easier to get an idea of the true shape of a body with something like this.

The actual lines are a separate mesh consisting only of vertices and edges, no triangles, placed over top of the base sphere, rendering fixed-width lines on each line segment. The orbit lines work in a similar way. There's probably some better ways to do it, but this let me reuse large portions of the orbit line shader.



Other than that, I've been refining the atmosphere visuals. There were several cases that would yield discrepancies between the local and distant renderers, leading to an unsightly seam between them. So far I've squashed a few of those, and it's just generally looking better overall.


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