Science of the Spheres - development

[Camacha]

So, what exactly is the plan? Is there a timeline? We have been seeing various planetoid objects rendered in various engines for a while now

Just curious. Is there currently a playable demo?

[NovaSilisko]

8 hours ago, Camacha said:

Just curious. Is there currently a playable demo?

Unfortunately no, not yet. I've mostly just been doing what I can (both SotS-related and otherwise) while waiting for things to be able to regroup. R4m0n's had a lot of work that's been swamping him for the past few months, and there are a lot of things that only he can do/things I don't trust myself to do.

The plan remains unchanged:

Step 1: Public playable demo; single solar system, no money or restrictions to worry about, decent selection of parts.

Step 2: The Quest For More Money (crowdfunding or somesuch).

Step 3 (cocurrent with step 2): Using the demo as a starting point, build the proper game with infinite solar systems and money and all that good stuff.

From there, I guess a private alpha phase and a public beta phase (both handled on steam, due to its ease of rapid iteration and patch deployment [apparently]), followed by multi-source release.

 

ETA: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[WinkAllKerb'']

On 6/3/2016 at 9:33 AM, NovaSilisko said:

ETA: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

: 3: 3 : 3 keep it up ; )

[NovaSilisko]

If there's ever a physical edition of SotS, I had a brainwave for the cover: Parody the cover art of Fragile, by Yes. Tiny planet + right era for the game. It's perfect!

[Andem]

You just earned a sub! It loks beautiful, Nova. Keep up the goodbwork!

[NovaSilisko]

Science of the Spheres has always, at its heart, been about people. So that is why I have spent dozens of minutes crafting finely detailed personas for the player to adopt when playing the game.

Without further ado, I would like to present the first four playable characters:

 

 

 

 

 

I hope they will help you immerse yourself into the game's rich tapestry of characters and creatures.

 

Incidentally, I hope you're enjoying the first day of this fine month.

[FleshJeb]

I'm out of "likes" for the day, dammit!

[NovaSilisko]

Well, since this got bumped agian, I'll give a few small updates.

Lately I've been playing with the terrain generator some more, optimizing and refining. It can operate in two modes, now - normal mode, or caching mode. Normal regenerates the mesh for a given terrain chunk every time a new level of detail is requested. That saves on memory, since the old mesh is destroyed, but uses more CPU. Caching mode does the opposite - it generates the mesh and then holds onto it until told to stop, and then the next time that detail level is needed, it's loaded instantly. This uses more memory (about ~100 megabytes of RAM for a 300 meter diameter planet with every single chunk loaded to the maximum level) but saves considerably on CPU resources. Proper shadows remain elusive (everything thus far has been clever placement of directional lights to make single scenes look okay, but don't tell anyone), although Solutions Are Being Pursued.

And I added a few effects to its shader, such as a simple and subtle opposition surge (or Heiligenschein) opposite the sun.

Speaking of shaders, there are also new and improved thruster effects for engines and RCS: http://i.imgur.com/6v7shkF.gifv

Also, I invented an in-universe parallel to Betamax tapes, because why not?

Possible use: an in-game video recorder that takes output from the control monitor and puts it on tape (aka an mp4 file in a special folder in the game data, which, if a method exists, could even be used to insert arbitrary video files for playback as in-game tapes... like the vinyl record soundtrack system, but even worse)

The website is so outdated now, and really should be redone at some point. But putting a "pending renovation" or somesuch page in its place gives the impression that such an update is imminent, which it really isn't.

Edited May 6, 2016 by NovaSilisko

[Daeridanii]

I suppose I'm bumping this, but I am quite impressed. I downloaded the "Prototype Zero", and it seems solid. I look forward to a full release (at whatever time in the future, quality is more important than rushing!)

[olekopyto]

Ay Vey!

[klesh]

Has this project stopped?  Sorry to necro.  It looks plenty interesting!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 2/15/2019 at 8:46 AM, klesh said:

Has this project stopped?  Sorry to necro.  It looks plenty interesting!

I think NovaSilisko is working on this now:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=66163.0

https://twitter.com/NovaSilisko

And this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE_n5R-_2MU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX73zG1Ri9c

[NovaSilisko]

On 2/15/2019 at 11:46 AM, klesh said:

Has this project stopped?  Sorry to necro.  It looks plenty interesting!

Hey hi it's not dead but not active. As Mad Rocket Scientist pointed out I'm working on a different space game right now, although I definitely want to get back to SotS someday. I've learned so very much working on other things since I last touched SotS, and have had a long time to think about what I want it to be, and I think I will be able to make it a far better game that it could ever have been before.

[halleyyy]

Hi. Another necro sorry.

I really wanna see a full version of this and hope to play it when it releases.

It sounds really cool and really fun.