Science of the Spheres - development

[NovaSilisko]

Is there a limit to the size of the fuel tank?

Not at the moment but that's pretty trivial to set up.

[Nemrav]

So I'm guessing you will make as many possible procedural parts possible (3 tanks maybe, 1 solid fuel engine, 1 ion, 1 liquid fuel, 1 wheel, 2 solar panels etc.) in order to reduce physics requirements and allow soft body ?

tell me, On what sort of level is the galaxy generated ? is it like "start by generating galaxy map" then when you visit galaxy it makes star map then when you visit star it generates a planet system.... or will it by "generate it all at once" + will we have seeds ?

We need an open alpha soontm

edit : thanks

Edited April 15, 2014 by Nemrav

[NovaSilisko]

1. So I'm guessing you will make as many possible procedural parts possible (3 tanks maybe, 1 solid fuel engine, 1 ion, 1 liquid fuel, 1 wheel, 2 solar panels etc.) in order to reduce physics requirements and allow soft body ?

2. tell me, On what sort of level is the galaxy generated ? is it like "start by generating galaxy map" then when you visit galaxy it makes star map then when you visit star it generates a planet system.... or will it by "generate it all at once" + will we have seeds ?

3. We need an open alpha soontm

1. There will be a combination. Things like frames, some tanks, and some structural pieces will be constructable in the editor using raw materials, but more complicated things like rocket engines will either need to be bought in, or once you've acquired the necessary equipment, created yourself in the manufacturing wing. I'm still debating the extent to which you'll be able to customize parts. I'd like, for instance, interchangeable lenses for cameras, so you can have narrow-angle, wide-angle, maybe even fisheye lenses. The same rocket nozzle could be affixed to different combustion chambers for different propellants, and so on.

2. Each galaxy can be considered a separate universe, internally. The coordinates you enter into the transport device act as the seed for generating it, so entering the same coordinates will always generate the same galaxy. Solar systems are only loaded up once you actually get near to one, and then unload when you leave.

3. Haven't really planned much on that front. I'd like to avoid using the terms "alpha" and "beta" and all that, however

[Whirligig Girl]

Could you also bring things in from UnivPrime4 to The Microverse to see how they react?

[NovaSilisko]

Could you also bring things in from UnivPrime4 to The Microverse to see how they react?

Thinking of that, yeah. There's definitely some fun to be had in unleashing a horde of chickens onto an unsuspecting planet and seeing how the wildlife takes it.

[The Jedi Master]

OMG MUST PLAY!

Is it in a alpha release, like KSP?

[Nemrav]

nope, they are working on the ship building and microverse generation I presume.

[The Destroyer]

Very interesting. WIll follow.

[NovaSilisko]

OMG MUST PLAY!

Is it in a alpha release, like KSP?

Still thinking of how the early release processes will work. Possibly will first make a ship construction demo that lets you build things then drive/fly them around on a test lot, just as an example of how construction works. Then later a full-up demo, with a single solar system and some parts to build with. For actual testing processes, I don't know. That part is still quite in flux...

[Rus-Evo]

I'm interested, but when the game is more advanced!

[NovaSilisko]

Some new physics joints are in, testing them in the predictable fashion:

[The Destroyer]

When I saw that I immediatley thought:

[Wjolcz]

When I saw that I immediatley thought:

http://i.imgur.com/3Gi4MG6.gif

I'm gonna burn in hell for laughing at this.

[dbmorpher]

Are you going to have like random systems generated for each solar system like minecraft seeds? Or is it going to be a customization thing like space engineers

or even better, get all the different parameters and just do a combination of all of them to create the microverse and rely on the community to find the coolest systems just by sheer force of randomly searching?

[vger]

I'm gonna burn in hell for laughing at this.

I still haven't stopped. LOL, what is that from?

[Whirligig Girl]

The new Cosmos. Incedentally I adore NdGT

[NovaSilisko]

Are you going to have like random systems generated for each solar system like minecraft seeds? Or is it going to be a customization thing like space engineers

or even better, get all the different parameters and just do a combination of all of them to create the microverse and rely on the community to find the coolest systems just by sheer force of randomly searching?

One seed = one galaxy with several thousand stars, each with at least one planet, all procedural. I'd like to have a wiki eventually where people can put down what systems are coolest. There's also the possibility of maybe having a solar system editor, so you can create your own personal systems. Those would be manually assigned a seed string, and to access them you'd just enter that string into the transporter.

[NovaSilisko]

Doing some of the "science" part of the game's name, lately... untextured for now, just focused on producing sensor models en masse for later refinement.

From left to right:

• Environmental monitoring system (Temperature, air pressure, humidity)
  
• Atmospheric sampling system
  
• Magnetometer + boom
  
• Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer
  
• Geiger–Müller tube
  
• Laser Rangefinder
  
• Dust impact detector
  
• Dust collector (via aerogel)
  
• Infrared radiometer (long-range thermometer, effectively)
  
• Solar cell test unit (required research device to determine what sort of solar arrays work under microverse sunlight, more on that research later)
  
• Langmuir probe
  

The intent/hope is to make these instruments function closely to their real-world counterparts. The only unavoidable departure from reality in this case will probably be speeding up some slow processes (the APXS takes hours to scan something in real life, for instance)

The actual scientific part roster will be divided up into three general categories - Observation, Sampling, and Analysis. What I've done so far is a good number of the observation parts (and two samplers), sampling will be things like drills, scoops, siphons (for water samples), and things of that nature. Analysis will be larger pieces of equipment that you feed the samples into to garner information on them, like the Viking biological experiments or the TEGA instrument on Phoenix. However, if you're skilled enough to bring the ship back to the launch platform, Analysis is unnecessary, as the MEA's home labs can be used instead (assuming you've bought the necessary equipment for them...)

[NovaSilisko]

I'm beginning to get a little concerned. While the name "Science of the Spheres" seems unique, the abbreviation "SotS" is not. Sword of the Stars, as one major example that we managed to be totally unaware of.

As such, the current plan is to crowdsource a plan. Does anyone have any ideas for a new abbreviation? It has to be simple and memorable and most importantly, unique.

[Deadpangod3]

ScotS?

(Tenchar)

[DisarmingBaton5]

How about S^TMotS? You know, for SCIENCE^TM.

[NovaSilisko]

Decided to just roll with SotS for the acronym. I mean, look at Space Engine vs Space Engineers. Not only do they share the same acronym, but 80% of the same name

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I have a new twitter account for the development process which will retweet anything of note as well as notify of blog posts: https://twitter.com/SotS_Dev

[AlternNocturn]

I'm truly looking forward to this. I assume you're creating this "microverse" with your own set of physical laws with the intent of letting the player discover how it works themselves, correct? I actually like that idea, to be honest I'm kind of sick of games with 100% Keplerian physics haha.

[NovaSilisko]

I'm truly looking forward to this. I assume you're creating this "microverse" with your own set of physical laws with the intent of letting the player discover how it works themselves, correct? I actually like that idea, to be honest I'm kind of sick of games with 100% Keplerian physics haha.

Well, things like gravity, light, heat, etc, function the same way as in our universe, but almost everything else is alien and up to the player to decipher and understand. As I've mentioned before, your science team will draft up theories based on observations (some of which may not be correct!), organized into a sort of wiki structure, becoming more and more filled out as you perform more observations. You can also write observations of your own.

[Nemrav]

might I suggest have a big label : DO NOT POST THE LATER VERSIONS ONLINE !!!

you know, no spoilers

cmon you know you want to post demo builds on your site !