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Work in Progress / [DBC] Space Simulator

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 4th Dec 2012 20:32 Edited at: 10th Jan 2013 01:08

My second official WIP on this forum, the yet un-named space flight and exploration simulator is slightly less ambitious than Dark Survival 2. The goal of the project is to eventually have a game with a storyline in which the player can visit and explore planets, as well as fly through space and engage in combat.

Currently, there is a storyline in which you can fly through space and explore planets, but there is no combat yet.

Quote: "You stole a space ship from the US government in the future, but then it turns out Jupiter is in trouble and needs your help!
What is going on, and what will happen next?"

The game features realistic small spacecraft physics, the start of a dynamic loading system, two ships, a sun, some planets, awesome voiceover by a guy called Donut, and lots of light bloom.

TODO (short term):

- Collisions (done)
- Display of planetary info (done)
- The rest of the planetoids in the solar system (mostly done)
- More ships (done)

TODO (long term):

- A title (I am considering "Space Sim 3D" and "Trouble on Jupiter")
- A cinematic storyline suitable for the genre (partially complete)
- Landing on and exploration of planets & space stations (mostly complete, except there are no space stations)
- Space combat

The current project, including binary and source code, is attached. (Updated Jan. 9 2013)

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 4th Dec 2012 20:36 Edited at: 9th Dec 2012 09:50

Attached to this post is a screenshot. The object on the left is our moon, the object in the center is the USS Viper Alpha (currently just an F-14), and the object on the right is an ugly sun that doesn't glow.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 19th Dec 2012 00:15

I attached another screenshot. The object on the left is Mercury, and the object in the center is the USS Viper Beta (a couple of hours in Blender). Both are new to the December 18 release.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 21st Dec 2012 10:49

Here's a screenshot showing the new glowing sun.

Other features in this release:
Custom HUD strings
Limited fuel
Spawn near a planet

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 12:15

You can now land on planets!

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The Nerevar

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Joined: 19th May 2010

Location: Vvardenfell

Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 20:08

This seems to be coming along smoothly! A space simulator sounds fun!

Fulfilling the Nerevarine Prophecy, one trial at a time, because I... Am... The Nerevar!

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 21:10

Quote: "This seems to be coming along smoothly! A space simulator sounds fun!"

Thank you.

Rest assured, though. It won't come along quite as smooth now that all of the main features are implemented.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 4th Jan 2013 18:08

In this screenshot, you can see how light bloom makes any game 100x better.

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The Nerevar

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Posted: 5th Jan 2013 05:25

Indubitably...
What other smaller, but still important, features were you planning? Now that you got the main bulk done.

Fulfilling the Nerevarine Prophecy, one trial at a time, because I... Am... The Nerevar!

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 5th Jan 2013 07:05 Edited at: 7th Jan 2013 18:56

Quote: "What other smaller, but still important, features were you planning?"

- Saturn and its rings + space stations (will require the ability to put arbitrary objects in space)
- Some kind of pause/restart option ingame
- Missions that actually take place on a planet's surface
- Other ships to shoot at + lasers to shoot them with

Most of these features may not get implemented unless other people help out on the project.

EDIT: The newest update adds Uranus and Neptune, a half-assed LoD (level of detail) system, and music (press M). The features in the list above will take a lot of serious coding, so it would really be nice if other people could help out.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 5th Jan 2013 16:36

Here we see Neptune with the new high-res sphere mesh and subtle bloom effects. Now, planets are not drawn when out of the visible range, allowing for better quality without too much lag.

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 6th Jan 2013 08:33

What kind of coordinate system are you using? Is the solar systems vast expanses of space, or do you have "areas" of space?

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 7th Jan 2013 10:00

@Hawkblood-

Currently, the engine only supports one solar system. In the future, I hope to expand it to support a form of warp drive/jump gate/wormhole system that allows you to travel from one solar system to another.

The only "areas" to speak of right now are the areas of the surface of each planet and space itself. There is only one "space" in the game, so due to floating point imprecision, its physical scale is very limited.

In a better designed system, it may be divided up as follows:

-An indoor facility
-A planet's surface and its atmosphere
-A planet and its moons
-A star cluster and its planets
-A section of a galaxy
-A large-scale galaxy or universe

In this game, it is only divided up into a solar system and the surfaces of each rounded object within it.

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 7th Jan 2013 16:57

These two posts discuss my solution to "one space" having a floating point precision issue:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=199677&b=22
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=199820&b=19

I am currently working on a game that uses this system. It's not done with GDK, but you can use this with yours. I'm not using GDK because I want to control the render order....

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 7th Jan 2013 18:53

@Hawkblood-

Placing the camera at the origin will fix the jittery graphics, but DarkBASIC doesn't have __int64 or anything like that. DarkBASIC has INT, FLOAT, and STRING. How do I use your system in DarkBASIC?

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 8th Jan 2013 17:14

Oh, sorry. I wrote it for GDK.

You could do something similar using "types" (I think that's what they are called in dbp).

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 8th Jan 2013 17:18

@Hawkblood-

Nope, I'm not using DBP. Good old-fashioned DarkBASIC © 1999. I don't have access to types.

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 8th Jan 2013 19:37

That's unfortunate..... Your game looks good anyway. I'm impressed you are able to do as well as you do with db. It's a good language for programming, but you don't have the flexibility that comes with using c++ based programming. I personally am using straight c++/DirectX because I want more control over how the engine works. For instance, I am using actual scales for "space". All the planets in the solar system are to-scale and are placed around the star at accurate distances. When you have objects that are that large you need to do some voodoo trickery with the graphics to show them properly. I wish I could use something like GDK or DB to do what I want, but they just don't give you enough control.

Looks good! Keep up the hard work. I like your sun, by the way....

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 8th Jan 2013 23:07

@Hawkblood-

Actually, most of the planets in my game are to scale. That's part of the problem. If I were to just ignore scale completely, it might not have so many mathematical problems, but honestly, where do you draw the line? Nobody knows how big a planet is, how far apart they are, or how long it takes to travel from one to another at 30 m/s^2 constant acceleration. However, it only *seems* realistic if they are really, really big. That's why it's a real pain in the a$$ whenever a computer just can't handle one thing or another because some number is out of range or some other technical problem comes up. It is easy for a human being to fathom things of large scale, and everything from films to our very dreams seems to handle such scale fairly well because it's all just images flickering before your eyes. But a computer has to constantly do tons and tons of math, and for some reason adding really big things makes more math, so corners have to be cut. At the end of the day, you've spent hours working on a project that represents a much grander idea in your head, but the computer just can't handle it, or your programming skills aren't up to it. I don't know about you, but I am down for the count. I fold. This game can suck it. Next time I want to make a space game, I'll try to remember to keep it simple, as in dots, lines, and maybe even a few beeps if I'm lucky, but I'll try not to get my hopes up.

/rant

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 15:33

NO!!!!! Don't give up! Start over if you have to, but don't give up. The issue with "really big" stuff is that you run into overlaping objects when you have those "really big" things on the screen near each other (in the view). Here is my first "space" game:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=194660&b=5
It has 3D objects but is done as a top-down view. I didn't have to worry about objects overlaping or large objects (planets) popping in and out of view as they cross the far-clipping plane. Granted, it's done in GDK, but it *could* be done in DBP.

Don't give up!

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 18:12

@Hawkblood-

Once again, I am using DBC. The game you linked to could probably be done in DBC, or even in QBASIC for that matter. The reason I made this game how I did is because I wanted to capture the feeling of being in space and not make you think too much. Your game is very complex. The complexity is lost on dummies like me.

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Hawkblood

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Posted: 9th Jan 2013 19:54

I hope you weren't serious about quitting.... The game looks good so far.

Best of luck to you anyway.

The fastest code is the code never written.

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Fluffy Rabbit

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Posted: 10th Jan 2013 01:17

I added a mission selection menu and fixed a couple bugs.

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