Science of the Spheres - development

[NovaSilisko]

OOOH! What are those?

Widgets. Generic parts made to test a simple means of placement.

I need to think of a good way to enable free-form construction of frames...

[Kinglet]

Widgets. Generic parts made to test a simple means of placement.

I need to think of a good way to enable free-form construction of frames...

Maybe a 3 view X-Y-Z editor?

[NovaSilisko]

New blog post about asteroids and orbits.

http://www.scienceofthespheres.com/october-21-detritus/

[Nemrav]

Do the asteroids have any gravity of their own (could you have 2 in a scene and get a binary orbit ?)....

And next, use the old shatter script and some detonator explosion framework to create asteroid/planet smashing !

Well, of course that's just hopeful expectations for what already looks like a great proto

[NovaSilisko]

Do the asteroids have any gravity of their own (could you have 2 in a scene and get a binary orbit ?)....

Nah. They're only about 6 meters wide at best, so there's not really enough mass for them to have noticeable gravity.

Apologies for lack of updates. I've been making some stuff that's going to be left for the players to find in the end. A large amount of stuff in the game I simply don't want to reveal, pre-release.

[Dodgey]

Oh you tease. So a quick question about the asteroids, they're going to fixed in space like everthing else,

correct?

[NovaSilisko]

Oh you tease. So a quick question about the asteroids, they're going to fixed in space like everthing else,

correct?

No. I figured the imagery showing the asteroids moving around would provide a bit of a hint that that wasn't the case

[Frozen_Heart]

No. I figured the imagery showing the asteroids moving around would provide a bit of a hint that that wasn't the case

Surely there wouldn't be any asteroids as the orbits would always be unstable with this system?

[NovaSilisko]

Surely there wouldn't be any asteroids as the orbits would always be unstable with this system?

They generally are drifting around in interstellar and intergalactic space, not orbiting stars. They're leftover materials floating around that haven't accreted onto cores to help form planets. The one shown was only orbiting because it bounced off a planet at an opportune angle and was tugged into a temporary orbit by the other planets of the system. Normally, they just zip through the system uneventfully before heading back off into deep space, unless they hit something like your ship.

[Dodgey]

No. I figured the imagery showing the asteroids moving around would provide a bit of a hint that that wasn't the case

Right, now I feel like an idiot.

[Whirligig Girl]

So part of the gameplay is about writing your findings of the multiverse down, yes? The following is compiled from "interviews" with NovaSilisko on the IRC, questions answered in this thread, pictures and comments posted in this thread and on the devblog, and the Game Info section. Oh, and a lot of fictional science. Here goes, it's no TR;DL.

From what I have determined about the laws of gravitation in the Microverse; It seems that although there is an attractive force that behaves along the inverse square law, that attracts all matter constantly, there is no gravitation. Matter does not attract to itself by means of a mass-based gravital force, instead the only source of "gravity" is provided by the Static Gravitational Cores (SGC). These cores seem to produce similar effects to a moving vehicle as would a black hole, and a certain amount of matter will find itself distributed amongst the SGCs in the system. SGCs do not "suck" things in (unlike the aforementioned black holes of our universe), they do seem to have a surface by which matter will fall upon.

An odd incidence has been noted, that gas seems to be attracted to a SGC more than solid or liquid matter. However, unlike what one may expect from following the simple laws of gravitation, the atmospheres of "planets" Do not extend to such large sizes as they ought to. Indeed, a thin atmosphere only 50 meters tall may yield a pressure of around 1 atm at the bottom, and a near-vacuum at the top. This certainly must not be correlated to a lack of natural gaseous materials in the Microverse; as then you would expect to find very low atmospheric pressure at the bottom of an atmosphere. A mathematical law has not yet been named which can describe the attraction of gaseous material to a planet. Perhaps it is not even more attracted to the SGC, and it is the planet itself which is attracting the gas. The only explanation seems to be that the state of matter that we know as gas is replaced by a much more exotic state of matter in the microverse.

Not all matter in a "star system" has been found on an SGC. There are chunks of rocks and ice which hold themselves together by normal atomic forces that can best be described as "Asteroids". These asteroids rarely get larger than 6 meters, presumably because they will find themselves torn apart by gravitational forces if they are too large. Asteroids are almost never in stable orbits, though there has been a recorded incidence of a semi-stable orbit of the asteroid labeled "Greg[roxmun]." This orbit is powered by the static gravitation of all planets, and found itself skipping off of the surface of the planet and back into an orbit several times before finally crashing into the surface. Because there are no permanently stable orbits, the older a system is, the less asteroids you would find. All matter will inevitably either be knocked out of the entire system or fall into and become part of a planet.

At the "center" of every "solar system", there is one (although perhaps more could exist close by) LARGE static gravitational core. It seems that it is a similar object to a SGC, but it is so hot that it will vaporize anything near it's surface into a gas (which will then cool down or become part of an atmosphere), and the radiation pressure from the "star" will push away any gas more than gravity will pull it in. The interesting thing about "Stars" is that they always form near the gravitational center of the other SGCs. This calls into being an explanation of the formation of Star Systems.

As best as can be determined, here is the hypothesis for which the microverse forms. None of which has been entirely proven. It is as follows.

The Microverse started with a non-uniform, but mostly static cloud of elements. These elements behave almost identically to our elements, so they can be given traditional labels that correspond to the elements of our own universe. Most of the cloud is lint and dust, but also gases. The elemental cloud uniformly spans the entire Microverse. The composition is in the same order of the most common known elements of our universe. Over time, "Star-SGCs" spawn (or simply "pop" into existence) around randomly, and they attract the cloud to them (until they get to close and are blown back). Then, around these S-SGCs form normal SGCs. At first it is rapid, then over time it slows down exponentially until the rate at which SGCs spawn is practically 0. Larger SGCs have more "gravity", and attract more materials. Since most of the material is gases like Hydrogen, they are blown by solar radiation out to the outer SGCs and away from the inner SGCs. The inner SGCs attract ices and silicates and metals which would not have been blown away. This continues until all of the mass in the immediate area of the star system is in the system. The S-SGCs seem to spawn in clumps, what we may call "Galaxies." The mass in between stars gradually falls into their systems and the mass in between galaxies gradually falls into them as more SGCs and S-SGCs spawn. After millions of years, the rate at which SGCs spawn is practically 0, and the cloud is now semi-stable in Static Gravitational Cores. SGCs and S-SGCs only ever seem to spawn around eachother.

There is also evidence to believe that there are superdense SGCs that are not static. They have not been directly observed, as they would be naked. These naked gravitational cores (or NGCs) would move randomly with some slight tendency to gravity. They would be dense enough that they would have an event horizon that would rip apart matter to its subatomic particles if they went near enough. No material would adhere to their surface. This could be the answer to the problem of how different elements could form, as the subatomic particles may recombine to heavier elements in certain conditions. It is unknown if fusion could occur with Microverse Matter, but if it can then fusion would likely be common near the event horizon of a NGCs. NGCs could have formed much earlier than SGCs, and perhaps they disappear over time. If so, this could be the explanation for the diversity of elements in the Early-Microverse Cloud.

The Microverse is not expanding over time like the UnivPrime4 is, but there will be an end. Although the amount of SGCs that spawn over time does decrease exponentially, it never QUITE reaches zero. In trillions and trillions and trillions of years, the amount of SGCs in the microverse will have filled it up so that it is uniformly filled with SGCs. At that point, the Microverse is dead.

Edited October 28, 2014 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

Nova, you ought to get on the IRC more.

Edited October 28, 2014 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

I just realized that Hoppers somehow remind me of WALL-E.

[Whirligig Girl]

There are only a few species of animals observed in the microverse. On one planet in the Siliskus System, there exists a planet in the habitable zone of it's star. Liquid Water has pooled on it's surface, and life has developed there.This gives credence to the idea that chemistry of microverse matter is identical or at least similar to UnivPrime4 matter. A very interesting discovery, as one might imagine, that life outside of Earth has been discovered in ANOTHER universe.

The observed life forms can be described in two categories: Plant and Animal. There is only one observed animal species on the planet Smerbin, but there are at least three species of plants. The animals are orange cube-shaped creatures are called "Hoppers". They have been observed to smash up against the spacecraft rather aggressively. There are two possible motives for this behavior. One: They target any object to smash up against and they reproduce in this manner; or Two: There once was more than one species of animal on the planet, and this was a method of killing it's prey. Perhaps the Hoppers even originated outside of the Siliskus System, or from another planet at a time when it could have supported life. The three plant species are remarkably similar to short grasses, tall grasses and weeds, and oak trees, respectively.

Not much is known about the internal structure of these organisms, because the spacecraft sent through the UTC was not equipped with any form of biological instruments. A huge goal to come is certainly going to be retrieving one of these Hoppers and studying them in the laboratory.

[Whirligig Girl]

Nova? Have the orange box-things abducted you? Are you okay?

[NovaSilisko]

Nova? Have the orange box-things abducted you? Are you okay?

I'm still here. Your theories got some things right, some things kinda right, and some things very very wrong. I'm still (for now) keeping much of the physical details semi-secret, but I will say that matter still attracts matter with gravity at the same amount it does in our universe. That's how the asteroids form.

Cores are another type of particle that repels normal matter at extremely close ranges (as in, they're solid), and has large amounts of mass (and thus gravitational attraction).

[Whirligig Girl]

Awww. I kinda wanted matter to be gravitationless. It would make it more exotic, and there are still other ways for asteroids to form. (They're only up to 6 meters!) Static attraction would still exist, and asteroids could be the result of collisions knocking off bits of a planet. You would think that if mass was not unrelated to gravity there would be large planets scattered around, even real stars.

[NovaSilisko]

Doing a bit of shuffling of priorities. Development (by me anyway, r4m0n still will be doing some stuff) is on hold until further notice pending hard drive replacement. My boot drive is on the verge of death. Don't want to Luckily all my important stuff is on the data drive, which I will be moving to an enclosure as soon as I get my replacement gear. All the SotS stuff is backed up on its repositories, so there's no risk of anything going away there.

[Nemrav]

until later, in the mean time, have you got unposted screens ?

[Lithium-7]

Off-topic: I was just messing around in Prototype Zero and when I failed to bring the comet down to the surface of the green Hopper planet, I happened to go to TF2Maps.net and stumble upon Nova's name on the pl_waste page- specifically, for the payload cart model. I didn't know you'd ever played TF2, Nova! (though I would have if I'd taken two more seconds to look over your YouTube page).

On-topic: I do hope things are going well with your hard drive, and that this won't be yet another dead project. I do very much look forward to following this project to completion.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Brixmon
mentioning payment made me sound like an ass

[NovaSilisko]

Making some stuff for a "showcase scene" - a handcrafted solar system showing some of the variety of stuff that's intended to be present in the final game. This will eventually become Prototype One, and even later will become The Demo, which will be pretty much the same thing but with some additional features, and voxel terrain.

Also thinking of a new method that planets can form. Specifically, they sort of collect both boulders and dirt onto their surfaces. Some bodies don't collect as many small dust grains (due to proximity to the sun for instance), and end up being big heaps of rocks:

I need to come up with an algorithm that lets me realistically place boulders in a stable arrangement, though. I can't just run a physics simulation to let boulders settle in the background every time a planet needs to be generated.

[Stratzenblitz75]

Making some stuff for a "showcase scene" - a handcrafted solar system showing some of the variety of stuff that's intended to be present in the final game. This will eventually become Prototype One, and even later will become The Demo, which will be pretty much the same thing but with some additional features, and voxel terrain.

http://i.imgur.com/5Q80pyU.jpg

Also thinking of a new method that planets can form. Specifically, they sort of collect both boulders and dirt onto their surfaces. Some bodies don't collect as many small dust grains (due to proximity to the sun for instance), and end up being big heaps of rocks:

http://i.imgur.com/z70WdFX.jpg

I need to come up with an algorithm that lets me realistically place boulders in a stable arrangement, though. I can't just run a physics simulation to let boulders settle in the background every time a planet needs to be generated.

Looking good! I really like the "boulder pile" planet idea. I think navigating between the gaps of the boulders (provided that they are big enough, I can't tell the scale of the image) could pose an interesting exploration challenge. There could even be some form of life nestled inside the planet where it would be protected from the sun.

[NovaSilisko]

http://gfycat.com/FilthySmugHarrierhawk

Spacecraft will have a pulsed thrust mode. Two pulsed thrust modes, actually. In the first, you would for example hold A, and the ship would begin yawing from a thruster burst. Then release A, and it stops with an opposing burst. In the second, you tap A to get a single burst, then tap D to fire an opposing burst to cancel it out.

Some better nebula textures for the showcase. Unfortunately, this method won't be of much use for the final game where you can travel through the galaxy. That will require some fancy volumetric stuff. This is just three large spheres with triplanar mapped additive textures of varying scales, to give subtle parallax.

Rover annoying a tree. Still need: 1. better atmosphere shader, 2. normal maps on the terrain (grrr), 3. better trees, 4. better water, 5. a better rover

Edited November 23, 2014 by NovaSilisko

[NovaSilisko]

I feel like a lot of games with the ability to carry objects are missing the ability to place them precisely, and/or the ability to get a nice, up-close look at them. So, enter today's work: http://gfycat.com/ConsiderateImportantElectriceel

While currently intended for use in the headquarters, I'd like to eventually utilize this same method of picking up and carrying things for manned exploration outside the gate.

[Dodgey]

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?