NovaSilisko

I've come to the conclusion that none of the media presented so far has actually been from the game's engine. Case in point: These are both stock unity lens flares. None of the stuff is actually rendered in their own engine... The FAQ gives more evidence: So, all of the media, with no direct indications to the contrary other than observation and the small snippets in the FAQ, is effectively faked, and that's what they're going to run their kickstarter off of... I am deeply worried.

Sweet lord. They had better not screw this up. A massively ambitious project with relatively niche gameplay might prove to be a fatal combination... Edit: I have now become incredibly pessimistic about this game: So they've done most of the art first, haven't finished the engine... and, er, haven't actually done any of the game mechanics?

I am going to attempt to write up a document detailing more or less the whole of the cosmology that surrounds the microverse... I would like to make the game follow this document as closely as possible, with all scientific information in the game being based off of it. From there, you will be presented with theories and speculations from your science team as to how the unusual physics there function. More observations and experiments means more information, and piece by piece a full picture of the workings of the microverse can be constructed... I certainly don't want to spoil any details, however! I want there to be a real, deep, learning experience from the observations and studies you make in the game. As part of that experience, there may be dead end theories as well. And most definitely some unanswered questions for people to debate til the end of time

SpaceX would like a word with you! ;p They've got interesting things planned, but it's unlikely they'll fly before SLS.

It probably would require some new system for on-rails movement. Unless there's a gravitational center to the galaxy, Keplerian orbits wouldn't apply... even then, they don't, really. Everything orbits at roughly the same speed, it seems, no matter where in the milky way you are. As well as that, stars sort of bob in and out of the plane of the galaxy multiple times per orbit. However, all of those things are on such long timescales that they're not even worth simulating. It would just need a system to keep the ship traveling in basically a straight line til it encounters a star's SOI. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to fix a lot of the inherent accuracy issues though, unless you somehow found a way to make PhysX use double precision (good luck with that). 0.23.5 has cut down on them somewhat though, I've noticed. So it perhaps wouldn't be too big of an issue.

No need for FTL at all. Just assume the speed of light is the same as in our universe, then you can travel at speeds far slower than light using plausible technology (such as fusion rockets, perhaps, or laser propulsion. I'm partial to nuclear pulse propulsion myself though, it just seems like the sort of thing kerbals would embrace without really questioning), and still arrive in other solar systems in a reasonable timeframe. If we shrink down interstellar distances by 10x, then Proxima Centauri would be 0.4 ly distant. At that distance, going a relatively modest 0.1c means a trip time of 4 real-world years... the interstellar distances could be reduced even further without much issue, as the solar systems are quite small anyway. You could do it on the existing timewarp levels, even (and to help the time go faster, go back home and do some other missions while your starship is in transit) As for populating the universe, the same principle as generating planet terrain can be used - do it procedurally, keeping the seed the same for everyone so everyone can explore the same world.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/multimedia/zuber4.html

Not sure where you're getting your numbers... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_%28astronomy%29 "The average distance from Earth to the Moon is 384,400 km (238,900 mi)"

Ack, if I still had the texture source, I could tell you! It was some instruction for how to place the propellant line, I think... I'll do some digging and see if I can't find a copy of it laying around somewhere.

Well, "moon" is a rough approximation. In the context of the game it just means "small body near a larger body". I would like to have the terrain of objects "droop" toward nearby strong gravity sources, like it would if it were simply clinging to a tiny ball in the center of the planet. Edit: Ah, I see what you're saying. It depends on how nearby the moon is, really. There are (and will be some more) sanity checks to make sure they don't come up too close to one another. Landing might get a bit hairy if the planet's gravity is strong enough, but generally you should be able to sit on the surface, even if it's slightly precarious. There's going to be a good amount of size and color/coat variation for creatures. Perhaps ones marked as camouflaged would automatically pick colors similar to the terrain colors of the planet. Don't worry... we'd never hear the end of it. The main roadblock at the moment is that I don't actually have a mac (or linux for that matter) machine available, so it becomes a bit difficult to test. I harbor doubts. You should have the moon affected by the star as well. Your solution also works acceptably, but it's probably best to have it affected by everything. You just have to give it a proper kick to inherit the velocity of the planet, THEN give it another kick to put it into orbit around the planet. Windows and Mac aren't forced to be done at the same time. Windows, Mac, and Linux all occupy the same section in the build setup, but have to be done individually.

In between. Originally the idea was closer to KSP, with a number of pre-set frames to pick from, on which you then place engines, fuel tanks, instruments, cameras, computers, etc. Currently though we're working at devising a system to allow you to make frames 100% from scratch, in whatever shape you like (within reason). From there, it proceeds the same as before, with the engines/tanks/instruments/cameras/computers/etc.

On the subject of non-keplerian orbits... Static planets mean the perturbation sources never move. This yields some interesting and highly chaotic orbits. Ignore the green line, that's just the signal line-of-sight debug line. The whole system in context:

1. Game systems are being assembled independently of one another, relatively soon will come the time of integrating them with one another. 2. Unknown. 3. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67691-Science-of-the-Spheres-development?p=1054565&viewfull=1#post1054565 and onward. 4. The basic principle of gravitation holds true but given planets are fixed in space, I'm not sure if keplerian orbits are really applicable. 5. Eventually. Not Soonâ„¢

Perhaps an homage to BARIS is in order - Megabucks. 1 megabuck = 1 million regular bucks or credits or whatever, but presented in a fun way so you can have the fun of a part costing only 2 of something but then realizing you've spent 200 billion actual-bucks in total.

The canyon on Dres is a beautiful and precarious place to visit.

1. Unknown. It has to be a lot though, so you don't run into the same ones too often. 2. Sure. A net gun would work better than a robotic arm, though. 3. Evidence that there used to be intelligent life, but not an appearance by it. 4. No, planets are immobile and even at their small size much too big for that. 5. You might not be able to bring planets home but you can carve into them and load up your ship with whatever bounty they may hold. 6. Anything you like. Spacecraft are built from scratch. Hopefully, yes. Linux too. The windows version would come first, though.

Nah, you just need a system to load and unload the planet textures during play. Don't keep them in RAM, just grab stuff for what you can see. If you want to go a step farther, you can split the surface textures into 512x512 tiles and then only load what tiles you need at any given time. If you multithread the loading process for the textures, it could be accomplished in the background without much performance overhead. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... if not, I'll go tell a large chunk of the KSP playerbase that their flights to other planets were performed on a soundstage. Well, the same could be said about anything that not all players use; the solar system beyond Kerbin, career mode, sandbox mode, multiplayer, etc..

wut Far from it. The solar systems are just generating one at a time, no galaxy/star generation to tie it together. Terrain is also separate from the planet generation right now, and still has to be done manually at the moment, it's not been set up to generate procedurally based on a provided seed.

I need to add an "enable trails" cheat or debug setting to the final game. They're too pretty not to.

7/10 can't see anything anymore

An interesting thing is happening. It would appear that gravity is affecting light objects more strongly than heavy objects. Either Galileo was wrong, or the equation's been done incorrectly. Despite gravity being a bit screwed at the moment, it's effective enough to demonstrate why approaching a naked gravity core is an extraordinarily bad idea:

I think everyone who has looked up what a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is has seen that same reference image

Asset! An Apollo SNAP-27 RTG. A number of pieces of hardware in sots will be "NASA Surplus", and will be extremely close to if not identical to real NASA hardware of the 60s-70s.

Possibly create a hidden rigidbody at the point the claw grabs, mark it as kinematic or create a joint constraining it to the world, then attach the claw to that object. Depending on how the claw connects to other parts, that might work.

Going to have to agree with the balance issues... though, I will concede that it works better in career than in sandbox. It would be nice to have a three or more "tiers" of parts to use, with progressively better statistics and nicer appearances. The normal stock parts would be tier 2, these new parts would be tier 3. I think a better way to balance the ion engine might've been to shrink it, keep its thrust the same, make it weigh only 0.25x as much, then mount it on a 0.625m metal plane to make it still attach better (or even don't - and make it radially attachable for more fun). That way the old thrust works much better, and its smaller size helps communicate that it's NOT intended for anything but the smallest spacecraft.