Science of the Spheres - development

[Vaporo]

 I know that there will be some kind of "planetary formation" for the player to figure out, but how deep will it go? Will each planet have some kind of limited formation simulation, or will they be more random than that?

Edited December 16, 2015 by Vaporo

[NovaSilisko]

42 minutes ago, Vaporo said:

 I know that there will be some kind of "planetary formation" for the player to figure out, but how deep will it go? Will each planet have some kind of limited formation simulation, or will they be more random than that?

It's going to be "normal" generation rather than actually simulating anything, but it will be informed by deductions made through simulations. I'm going to, perhaps against my better judgement, show a few of my 2d sims... these will be spoiler tagged though, as they may reveal a few secrets of how things work, physically:

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/a/a9WUG

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[NovaSilisko]

I made a new rock texture, which now actually resembles rock.

[daniel l.]

Daaaaaamn thats beautiful! Any intentions on making procedural nebula backgrounds for specific places? And how about planet to planet collisions? Do they clip through each other like most games or do they break apart and splat together making a new world? and is it possible to move planets manually?

[NovaSilisko]

Planets don't move, full stop. The simulations shown are only simulations of how planets behave dynamically under conditions that won't exist during the game (major impacts etc)

Edited December 18, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[Noname117]

To be honest it would be really cool to see a planet undergoing a major impact or to see one which had recently been through one.

On the other hand, are there going to be minor impacts with planets?

[NovaSilisko]

The main part is the number of objects that remain to impact. Most are either drifting in intergalactic space, or have settled on planets, and there aren't many major things left. (as in: this is an ad-hoc excuse for what is primarily a technical limitation, I would love to do fluid dynamic simulations of entire bodies but I imagine you also like your computer not become a very hot liquid)

Depictions of planets that have had recent impacts might be possible though. They'd be absolutely screwed up, with no real geography, just a complete mess of rocks and dirt in a jumble, like a tiny Miranda.

It would be nice, though, to eventually have some terrain deformation and big plumes in the event a small impact -does- happen (or if you cause one to happen yourself...). Given the voxel system has been shelved, this will require a different technique than it would have before, but remains perfectly possible.

Edited December 18, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[daniel l.]

Any thoughts of making all this work with the oculus rift and the virtuix omni? it would be cool to physically traverse the microverse, and maybe someday someone will make a set of gloves that let you feel that beautiful rock texture.

[NovaSilisko]

5 hours ago, daniel l. said:

Any thoughts of making all this work with the oculus rift and the virtuix omni? it would be cool to physically traverse the microverse, and maybe someday someone will make a set of gloves that let you feel that beautiful rock texture.

A future goal is to let the player don a space suit (very carefully homebuilt) and explore in person, with the caveat that if you die out in space you've got to re-load your last save. Also, the probe control panel will be a physical panel with 3d buttons and switches, which should play very well with oculus rift someday.

[ostrich]

Nice landed in the sun and got shot off at 1 km/s. 

[NovaSilisko]

Playing with the generation of "rubble pile" planets (they all are, really, but some are more obviously so than others)

[NovaSilisko]

Oh, for a bit of comparison, here's a very old planet from the ooollldd terrain generator:

[daniel l.]

13 hours ago, NovaSilisko said:

Playing with the generation of "rubble pile" planets (they all are, really, but some are more obviously so than others)

 

9 hours ago, NovaSilisko said:

Oh, for a bit of comparison, here's a very old planet from the ooollldd terrain generator:

Thats pretty darn epic! cant wait!!

[Vaporo]

On 12/18/2015 at 3:34 PM, NovaSilisko said:

Given the voxel system has been shelved, this will require a different technique than it would have before, but remains perfectly possible.

Why did you shelve the voxel terrain? I was looking forward to seeing it.

[Guest]

Why's the site gone?

[NovaSilisko]

22 hours ago, Vaporo said:

Why did you shelve the voxel terrain? I was looking forward to seeing it.

Not worth the insane amount of work required to make it happen, the payoff is decidedly minor all things considered. And it would come with its own host of issues. Maybe it will come back someday, I don't know.

 

18 hours ago, CliftonM said:

Why's the site gone?

Is it? Loads okay for me.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, NovaSilisko said:

Not worth the insane amount of work required to make it happen, the payoff is decidedly minor all things considered. And it would come with its own host of issues. Maybe it will come back someday, I don't know.

 

Is it? Loads okay for me.

Oh.  Maybe there was a glitch when I looked last.

[Findthepin1]

Will there be a Mac version?

[Windspren]

Will this cost money?

[Kozak]

Let me pay you money in return for this amazing game.

[Whirligig Girl]

The spacecraft in the demo has 400 m/s of Delta-V. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Edited January 12, 2016 by GregroxMun

[NovaSilisko]

Pssst.

Hey.

 

[Delfinus]

What... Was that?

[Bill Phil]

It's like a prog rock album cover.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Bill Phil

[NovaSilisko]

Can't believe I forgot to post these here:

 

 

 

Sharp edges aren't doing so good unfortunately, but the terrain generator works good with up to 128 subdivisions (beyond that you're dealing with more vertices than the engine can handle in a single mesh) without much lag.

The generator's multithreaded properly, kinda. It takes a long time to actually make the chunks when they first spawn, seemingly capped to one per frame. Need to figure out how to coerce it into doing more than one so it doesn't take so long. Of course, there's no actual stutter from it doing so, which is nice. Lower chunk counts and smaller planets help, too.

Among many other niceties, I also need to apply some Math Stuff™ and puff out the "corners" of the basic cubesphere shape, so the vertices don't get as dense there.

Edited March 5, 2016 by NovaSilisko