Science of the Spheres - development

[NovaSilisko]

Nice updates, also just noticed the vapor jets in the photo of the showcase system. Will those apply a force to our craft or will they be purely visual?

Geysers will apply a small force, yes. Might be interesting to make the small pebbles and dust grains in them damage solar arrays or other sensitive components, too.

[Nemrav]

For the rovers.... have you thought about the control system, will it have a KSP-ish system or something else...

On that note, have you thought about a tracked rover system (maybe even arrayed wheels but less likely) from observations of others doing it in Unity its basically just a series of wheels with suspension and then using bonnes you get a track mesh to stick to the ground...

Also, have you considered a web demo build ? yet... of prototype 0 ?

[NovaSilisko]

For the rovers.... have you thought about the control system, will it have a KSP-ish system or something else...

On that note, have you thought about a tracked rover system (maybe even arrayed wheels but less likely) from observations of others doing it in Unity its basically just a series of wheels with suspension and then using bonnes you get a track mesh to stick to the ground...

Also, have you considered a web demo build ? yet... of prototype 0 ?

The rover control system will be either automatic or manual. As in, you can let it pick which wheels map to what controls, or if you want, you can go to each wheel and specifically map what wheels to what controls.

Not sure about tracks. It's a lot of extra and unnecessary mechanical complexity for not too much gain.

Dunno about a web build of P0. Are you unable to download or run the standalone versions?

[NovaSilisko]

Better showcase of how the player can play with physics objects:

[hotmailcompany52]

Awesome! Looks pretty good and looks like it works well. Also what would the controls to do all that be?

[NovaSilisko]

Awesome! Looks pretty good and looks like it works well. Also what would the controls to do all that be?

Right now, you just press R to enter manipulation mode, then move the mouse around to move the object around. The scrollwheel moves it toward and away from the camera, and holding the right mouse button lets you rotate the object.

[Whirligig Girl]

This is looking pretty darn cool!

[Duke23]

Been a little while since I checked on this. Looking good, Nova!

[NovaSilisko]

Probably going to make a print-and-fold Ferr-Os box, due to popular demand...

I also updated the design of it, to better fit with the time period of the game:

[Whirligig Girl]

Probably going to make a print-and-fold Ferr-Os box, due to popular demand...

I also updated the design of it, to better fit with the time period of the game:

https://i.imgur.com/O9j6XVr.jpg

Needs to be more wrinkled and less crispy-edged.

[Nemrav]

That's a great control system for manipulation of objects..

But how does it work with 0g or low gravity...?

What about on rovers (claw with limited manipulation)?

Will I get to throw huge cereal boxes filled with tnt into some poor unexpecting inhabited planet?

Will I be able to bring black-holes into the human galaxy to create an apocolypse (game over)?

And above all, will this become a g-mod construction (for astronaut) with spaaaaaaaaace!!!! ???

Ok I'm getting giddy, being serious what's the gameplay for the office going to be (or is it just going to be a hub/menu or sorts?)

[NovaSilisko]

being serious what's the gameplay for the office going to be (or is it just going to be a hub/menu or sorts?)

You could call it an excessively interactive menu. You can wander around it to check up on various things relevant to your missions - operating the portal, ordering rocket parts or fuel, building ships, managing your part inventory, inspecting and refurbishing returned ships, and so on. I also want to make it so you can buy random bits and pieces to decorate the place with if you so desire. It's always fun to be able to make a place your own, as anyone who enjoys the Elder Scrolls games can tell you. If you want to decorate your shelves with core samples from various locations across the microverse, go right ahead. Or you can collect soda bottles. If you want, you could collect soda bottles, then build a small pressurized surface base outside the portal, and store your bottles there.

Addendum: behold, my masterpiece

Edited November 30, 2014 by NovaSilisko

[hotmailcompany52]

Will there be other people in the office we can wack round the head with a carton of milk?

[NovaSilisko]

Will there be other people in the office we can wack round the head with a carton of milk?

Most likely. Probably only resulting in a verbal scold, or a string of curse words, or maybe if something can be made to animate it nicely, they could get fed up and lob whatever you threw back at you.

[NovaSilisko]

I need to think of more places to promote this game. Specifically, more forums I could effectively duplicate this thread in without it being out of place...

[Bill Phil]

The scale of this game is what attracts me... I kind of want to make a 600 meter radius earth and do all the calculations as to G and whatnot. That would be fun to play around with, imagine, a 6 km Radius Jupiter! Tiny, but huge too! It would be a neat little project to fiddle with.

Anyways, if this project does get shelved ( I hope not) can you release all the builds up to that point?

[Nemrav]

I need to think of more places to promote this game. Specifically, more forums I could effectively duplicate this thread in without it being out of place...

You could try the orbiter forums.... like KSP did

maybe some flight sim forums like "mission4today" (il2 sturmovik ish forum, but not actually limited to it...)

So far, to go with object manipulation and rovers (and their deployment) have there been any robotics related things added?

edit: have any staff been added to the project... ? what have the others been doing ?

Edited December 2, 2014 by Nemrav

[Whirligig Girl]

After seeing Interstellar, I can't stand any "portal" that's not a 3D wormhole. Will the Universal Transference Catapult be more like an Aperture Science Portal to another universe, a Beam-Me-Up-Scotty Teleporter to another universe, or (and this is the coolest one) a 3D-hole-in-the-fabric-of-spacetime to another spacetime.

[Bill Phil]

I'm pretty sure it's a box.

[Vaporo]

After seeing Interstellar, I can't stand any "portal" that's not a 3D wormhole. Will the Universal Transference Catapult be more like an Aperture Science Portal to another universe, a Beam-Me-Up-Scotty Teleporter to another universe, or (and this is the coolest one) a 3D-hole-in-the-fabric-of-spacetime to another spacetime.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67691-Science-of-the-Spheres-development/page42

8th post down.

[Whirligig Girl]

There's this idea that I have that in a sci-fi game, the weirder the setup, the more realistic EVERYTHING ELSE has to be.

So you start with a single premise to change about the way the world works, and you then base all of your physics around that, whilst keeping most of the physics as realistic as possible. For instance, you've got to have realistic aerodynamics because maybe someone wants to test how far a paper airplane will fly on a mountain versus a flat ground. And you definitely need to have real gravity in a setup like this.

This rule is, however, broken, when something that might seem to be a clever premise is actually a clever way to preserve playability or accessibility, for instance making Kerbin 1/10 Earth scale, or making gravity patched conics. Then your entire system is based on a rough estimate, everything else can be an approximation too. Aerodynamics in KSP, for instance, doesn't need to be a full-on accurate simulation, it doesn't even need to be based on an accurate simulation. All it needs to do is be playable and feel right.

(Hence the reason why I only use super-realism mods with 1/10 Scale Stock System Config for RSS)

[Mr Shifty]

I need to think of more places to promote this game. Specifically, more forums I could effectively duplicate this thread in without it being out of place...

RockPaperShotgun, Polygon, and the Escapist all have widely read forums that you could start a new thread in.

[Whirligig Girl]

I wonder if a KSP mod could be written to make KSP's science what this SoTS's science is going to be.

[Bill Phil]

Nova: Will there be ringed planets? Like Saturn? Better yet: moon systems.

Oh, and can we name star systems?

Just a few thoughts...

[Whirligig Girl]

Nova: Will there be ringed planets? Like Saturn? Better yet: moon systems.

Oh, and can we name star systems?

Just a few thoughts...

Nova said there might be diffuse ring systems, but really rings (And indeed any orbit) is unstable over any long period of time, so rings will always be only a day old at best