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[Rogod]

The planets are drawn with a for-loop from 0 to 360 degrees at a specified radius.

Previously, I'd simply been giving that draw-a-circle method an angle for the light to fall on it and colouring +/-90 degrees to that angle bright, while the rest of the circle remained dark. (Resulting in a circle which was always 50% light & 50% dark.)

Now with the pseudo-sphere rendering, it's first flipped so I'm drawing shadow on a lit circle (easy enough), but it's then attenuating between 0 and the radius then back to 0 while inside the the shadow's angles (the incoming light's angle +180 degrees).

This basically results in a croissant shape being drawn at the back of the circle which works as a fairly convincing 3D shadow on an otherwise flat disk.

Representation of planets over time:


(No actual 3D calculations are taking place; Startron is an entire case-study of hacks, tricks and heuristic approaches )


In other news, I just got my new Raspberry Pi working and have realised I need to build for ARM architecture to support this. So starting from v0.82, Startron will be being released for Windowsx64, Linuxx86-64 and LinuxARMx64. (Woo)

[JobLeonard]

Nice, thanks for explaining!

(so game dev business as usual then )

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

(Startron is an entire case-study of hacks, tricks and heuristic approaches )

I approve.

[Rogod]

Update v0.82
Armed and ready

• Now available for Linux on ARM processors! (Yay Startron on Raspberry Pi)

• You will now incur a fine when mining or damaging space stations which must be paid upon exiting any civilised space station (pirate ports don't care). Also when violating the prime directive by destroying a titopop hive, this will come down as a payable fine instead of being taken off you straight away.

• Revamped the shop interfaces aboard space stations so they're a little clearer to use

• You can now take care of various work orders from faction delegates at the bars in space stations too. The rewards from these are significantly higher than the sell prices of the merchandise involved (faction rating will also improve upon completing jobs but this is not in use just yet, it just looks pretty on a bar chart in the system overview perspective)

• The Grog α and Grog ß homeworlds get generated in new games now (destroying their planets does not further the story yet, but they will at least reveal themselves now if you find their system)

• A player's winnings now show when they win a hand of Spacejack

• Some more tech debt was also addressed

[JobLeonard]

> Now available for Linux on ARM processors! (Yay Startron on Raspberry Pi)

But can I play it on Steam Deck?

More seriously: awesome! 

[Rogod]

Unfortunately for a game which entirely requires keyboard input, I don't see as how I could port Startron to any devices which do not have keyboards.

Trust me, I want Startron on Android as much as the next device, but without a significant engine rewrite (input and output), that ain't gonna happen any time soon

[JobLeonard]

Surely there is always the "virtual keyboard" option for people who truly hate themselves

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

Surely there is always the "virtual keyboard" option for people who truly hate themselves

Why do I feel like you're targeting me .

Though to be honest this kind of game won't really work well on an Android phone bit definitely on a tablet. I'll just feel sad if in the end you only make it available on the Appstore for iPhones through some wicked sorcery (*coughDarkestDungeoncoughFTLcough*)

[Rogod]

Update v0.83
For your comfort and convenience

• Tidied up the bridge readout panel

• Added shading to space stations when viewed from the bridge

• Enhanced the appearance of planets, rocks and moons with some static shading when viewed from the bridge (not relative to the sun for now)

• Doubled the width of the lines in the big red cross across the main view-screen when self-destructing (it just looked half finished before)

• Moved the space station name on the promenade to the top left so it doesn't clash with the transmissions prompt in the middle

• Added a box to see your chits and any fine in the top right of the promenade view of space stations (saves having to go into a shop to see the contents of your wallet)

• Updated some resource images which I didn't like (namely the conductor, sunlight cup, glass and transparent plating)

• Tidied up the transmissions panel

• Added the name "Space Bar" to the list of possible bar names (how did I not think of that one before )

• Increased the turn speed in Maze Base, so you're less likely to get attacked while turning around next to a fuzzy red alien

• Tidied up a few pages and updated some things from recent versions in the cosmos database

• Removed the ability to mine stations (all it did was incur a fine; you didn't get any resources)

• Swapped the blue arrows for red ones in the system overview's entity list if you're using a blue interface colour

• Made it so destroying every tile in a space station actually removes the entity from the system too

• Made the cost for petroop refueling and petroop storage upgrading visible in engineering

• Fixed the readout of parts required for repair spilling into the petroop bar and tidied up the engineering panel

• Fixed the prompt to repair things in engineering if nothing is damaged

• Fixed showing the controls to navigate away from the bridge while self-destructing

• Fixed being able to fly off endlessly in any direction when in the entity overview perspective

• Fixed an accidental Doggo appearing on the bridge (only for games generated in v0.82)

• Fixed Maze Base not fitting in the screen properly when playing Startron in squished mode

• Fixed not receiving transmissions for attacking the space station used in the first story transmission

• Fixed buttons on the main menu not showing once an action has taken place (they'd still be slowly moving up from the bottom of the screen since v0.81)

• Fixed a couple of headlines on the TV not specifying that they're talking about an entity within a system

• Fixed being fined for destroying empty space near a station

• Fixed not being able to acquire free life forms from bars

[JobLeonard]

Wow, that's quite the update.

Also "Space Bar"

[Rogod]

Aye I sat down to do a thorough test of Startron on Raspbian and ended up just making a huge list of little niggles I wanted to clean up so dedicated the update to this kind of thing.

Should be back to features in v0.84 hopefully

Space Bar

[Rogod]

Update v0.84
Yes, I do indeed concur wholeheartedly

• Updated the appearance of Rock Blaster to use spheres instead of weird spinning asterisks

• Changed the arrow colour in engineering and on shops to be more visible and in keeping with the other selection arrows around Startron

• Made the Spacejack UI more consistent with the rest of the space station

• Corrected a key clash when seeking work in bars

• Fines are now taken from your bank account as well (this avoids an exploit where you could just hide all your assets in the bank and get away with offenses)

• Bridge messages now clear after a while so they're not just cluttering the place up

• Made it possible to peruse the ship while the self-destruct sequence counts down

• Fixed some spacing issues in the database from v0.83

• Fixed the auto-save prompt hiding behind the cinematic doors when changing perspective

• Fixed some inventory-delta problems for storage yards on unattended entities

[JobLeonard]

Hmmmm... spheres...

[Rogod]

Speaking of spheres...

Hi all, I'm still here, I've just been rather busy and needed some time away from Startron. (Also I'm moving flat next week so that kinda got in the way too.)

I've been tinkering in the background with a potential sequel to Startron, while also testing possible ideas that may just be better going into Startron sans sequel.

I find myself a bit deflated after my latest test (because it looks terrible to my eyes) and I wonder what the opinions of the following tech would be given the context:



Does this even vaguely look like something worth pursuing, or are 3D planets just a no-go for ASCII territory xD?

I'm afraid I've become accustomed to what I'm looking at now (ASCII voxels) so I find it difficult to determine if this could actually be used in gameplay.

What's it missing, what could it do with, or is it just dead on arrival?

[JobLeonard]

I think it looks pretty sweet, but only when in motion. And it doesn't look like real-world planets do, but that can be a stylistic choice.

Like, if the setting was one where we travel through a field of asteroids the shapes fit perfectly. Or where every planet is basically Cybertron

[Rogod]

Update v0.85
Mmm, that new carpet smell

• Updated space stations to have varying carpet colours to help differentiate them (eventually I plan on adding slightly different layouts too)

• Pirate port interiors are now distinguished from normal space stations too (as seen in the above screenshot)

• Added a toggle to hide the UI with F3 (just for technical reasons, perusing, etc.)

• Slightly tweaked the options menu so it's a little friendlier to read

• Added story based transmissions depending on your actions regarding pirate ports and planet killing (more of this sort of thing to come)

• Fixed being able to be in build mode when flying near a space station

• Fixed the game crashing when in a red-giant or blue-giant system (they were simply too big for my poor old character arrays to cope with )

Hopefully some more exciting updates to come soon; I'm just getting back into Startron after an experimental-coding break

[JobLeonard]

Yay, an update! How has life been Rogod?

Fixed the game crashing when in a red-giant or blue-giant system (they were simply too big for my poor old character arrays to cope with )

Lol, when low-tech gets too low I guess?

[Rogod]

  Hi - I was dealing with a substantial flat move and various social...ness for the better part of the year, but I'm still here

Along the way I investigated the potential for a sequel/successor to Startron but the verdict stands, for now, as "Maybe some day, but not today", so Startron has my (relatively) full attention again and I hope I can get closer to some of the pipe-dream stuff I still have planned in my 106-item-long to-do list for the project. (Don't worry, 539 items have thankfully already been checked off that list by v0.85.)

And silly old me, the issue with the giant stars was as simple as upping the space permitted to render them in a 2D array - I'd just miscalculated previously

Good to be back in the zone, as they say; I missed pushing buttons and checking out what other crazy things were going on in the TIG devlogs

EDIT:
Sidenote: I have been seriously considering putting Startron into Unity with a bespoke console. Not gone ahead with anything yet as I can't quite bring myself to sacrifice traditional terminal output, but you can imagine there'd definitely be some huge benefits to doing this. (Performance/portability/Android/etc.) - This one's still on the backburner for now.

[JobLeonard]

I'm still here :gentleman

Good to hear!

It's kind of ironic that it's probably easier to be cross-platform if you port it to a non-terminal context, yeah.

[Rogod]

Update v0.86
Lovely weather we're having

• Finally planets have proper clouds with more interesting effects (soon to be introduced to moons & gas giants in an upcoming version)The clouds don't actually move this fast, the first gif was taken as I was developing things.
  I've essentially converted a big list of cloud objects (a stopgap solution I unwillingly used for way too long here) into a 2D array so I can actually do cloud interactions, physics, rendering techniques & other things way more easily now (this was always the plan, it just took me a while to get round to it).

• Also now you can't fly miles away from a planet/moon/station etc. either (that just felt messy and dumb)

• Tackled a large chunk of tech debt after agreeing with myself how to organise things (thanks to my time off for this one)

• Fixed the sun appearing at the wrong position on the menu after having been in game

• Added some debug variables (accessible with F1) in case people need to show me things (or I need to debug something myself )

Just a small update this time, more coming soon!