Planetverse: A Sandbox Space-Exploration Game

[carlpilot]

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Planetverse is a space exploration game I have been working on for about two months.

It currently features a spaceship, a basic UI, and planets to fly to.

Planned:

-Infinite, procedurally-generated universe (Done!)

-Procedurally-generated planet meshes (Done!)

-Spaceship construction (Partially Done!)

-A Career mode, where you can unlock new technology and build spaceships using parts from resources mined/discovered on other worlds

-A research system, which works not like KSP (any science point can unlock any technology), but that specific things are needed to research specific technologies

-Life forms on some worlds

A brand new procedural planet (25/03/2015)

Here is a video that I have made, showcasing some of the old features (all footage/images are in-game screenshots, except the logo):

Some screenshots:

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The game is still in development, the first few versions will be free, then a small fee.

Icy Geysers

Dirty Snowball

Procedural Problem Generator

First Look at Construction (Video)

Interstellar Travel, It's Almost Here!

Video: A Quick Tour of the Galaxy

Procedural Planets: They're Here, Better than Ever

-Carlpilot

Edited March 25, 2015 by carlpilot
Added new blog post

[thederper121]

Looks neat. Good luck on your game.

(By the way, don't forget to add in plenty of easter eggs.)

[Javster]

Looks neat. Good luck on your game.

(By the way, don't forget to add in plenty of easter eggs.)

KSP easter eggs...

[carlpilot]

New blog post: Icy Geysers

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, say HELLO! to Magna and Mana, the two newest additions to Planetverse!

Magna is the yellowish thing with rings, Mana is its tiny moon visible at the top. The rock at the bottom is an asteroid, they've been around for a bit.

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You may notice Magna's geyser, we haven't been able to identify exactly what it spews, but we think it is water ice from Magna's infinite, quantum supply of garbage being stored in an alternate dimension. Mana is a rock. That's it (for now, expect more on Mana in the future). I am planning Magna to have a few more geysers, some faster, slower, erupting more often (currently, that geyser is constantly spewing ice)

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That's it for now, stay tuned for more!

[Newt]

Interesting....

How are you making the procedural textures, all, may I ask? I have dabbled in that with Blender, but more with manual assembly, not procedural, although I also have more emphasized cratered planets like the Moon or Mercury.

[carlpilot]

The textures aren't procedural yet... I'll have to figure out how. I'm not very good with the procedural stuff yet

-Carlpilot

[Waterlimon]

I see your home planet has about 512 air.

[AcidSludge]

Sounds very interesting, a bit like Noctis.

I'll keep an eye on your progress!

[Exclipse]

I see your home planet has about 512 air.

I lol'd

[carlpilot]

Actually, the main planet has 458192.2metres³ of atmosphere

The planet is 50 metres in diameter, the atmosphere is 100 metres

-Carlpilot

[Exclipse]

Actually, the main planet has 458192.2metres³ of atmosphere

The planet is 50 metres in diameter, the atmosphere is 100 metres

-Carlpilot

I think we were referring to how you are representing your atmosphere graphically with particles.

[carlpilot]

New blog post: Dirty Snowball

Lots of cold things have been added to Planetverse recently, sadly not including ice cream. First, I added a new planet, Aela, and its smaller moon Aila.

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Also, comets! These ice-filled rocks traverse the solar system, leaving ice and snow everywhere.

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That's it for now!

Stay tuned for more!

-Carlpilot

[Exclipse]

So you say you are planning on doing an infinite generated universe. My question is why are you handcrafting these planets then? Why not go directly to working on a process for creating them with code?

[carlpilot]

I am planning to have a handcrafted solar system, and the procedurally generated ones far away. I would like the player to always have a place to explore that they know about, and a place to explore they know nothing about.

-Carlpilot

[carlpilot]

New blog post: Procedural Problem Generator

In an attempt to create wonderful procedural planets, this happened.

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This is the first implementation of any sort of mesh generator, and so far, it works on the spherical model, and modifies it into a random shape by adding a random variation to each vertex. This causes problems, as one vertex may be assigned a positive value, and its neighbour a negative one, creating large spikes. Luckily, I do have a collider working, and it assigns the procedurally generated mesh to a Mesh Collider, and the collisions work, even when the procedural mesh is being modified.

That's about it for now, stay tuned for more!

-Carlpilot

[Deadpangod3]

New blog post: Procedural Problem Generator

-Carlpilot

ive learned from making planet factory planets this can also be caused by making the planet too small. just so you know.

*i am not a programmer in any way, i merely modify values to make different planets*

[Exclipse]

ive learned from making planet factory planets this can also be caused by making the planet too small. just so you know.

*i am not a programmer in any way, i merely modify values to make different planets*

Since Carl is on the programming side, the issue flips to what value he uses as a min and a max.

It really is not an issue though, he just has to learn how to control the generated noise.

@Carl I am impressed you appear to be attempting to figure out how to generate procedural planets from scratch.

[carlpilot]

The min/max vertex offset are OK, it's the distribution of the noise that's the problem.

-Carlpilot

[problemecium]

I tried this once but got hopelessly bogged down trying to make procedural spheres :\

So good luck! Do it for me!

[carlpilot]

(Also a blog post)

-Carlpilot

[Guest]

Ooh! Very shiny! I want to have it!

[carlpilot]

It will be available soonâ„¢. For now, I'm just fixing bugs caused by Unity 5, namely Mesh Colliders not working AKA extreme-scale clipping. Nice to know that you're excited for the game though.

-Carlpilot

[carlpilot]

Odd things happen when you exceed 100K m/s. Odd.

GfyCat link

The floating origin is moving stuff back so fast (10x per second) that the GUI is moved before it works, and weird things start happening, like colliders getting smashed off their objects and clickboxes not working. Problems exist with floating-point and distance, and Planetverse Floating Origin and speed.

-Carlpilot

Edited March 5, 2015 by carlpilot
Shocked image into working

[Nemrav]

I think you might want to (since the universe is smallish) just move the universe completely around the ship (velocities etc.) to stop the camera problem...

Also dont go 100km/s, you have tiny planets, you can scale down the speed units (no need for interstellar yet...)

[Newt]

Its the Kraken!

Could you get past (but hardly fix) the issue with hotkeys?