Science of the Spheres

Just a general purpose progress update on a few things…

In an unprecedented moment of flip-flopping (artist’s impression), development was shifted back to Unity as opposed to using Panda3D. In the end it boiled down to a question of “How well can we do this on engine X vs engine Y, and how easily can it be done on engine X vs Y?”. More specifically: “Should we use this engine we already know inside and out despite its flaws, or attempt to learn an entirely new system, workflow, and potentially slow things down immensely”. In this case, Unity eventually won out, and from that point, development has picked up pace considerably! We are trying to be mindful of Unity’s limitations, however, but hopefully due to the relatively small scope of the game (figuratively and literally) we won’t run into too many of them.

The terrain system is going very well, and I’ve been getting a good flow of textures going on for it as well. It still needs some optimization for speed as it’s somewhat slow to generate right now, but it’s coming along nicely. Screenshots of it will come when it’s further along and nicer looking – namely, when it has multiple terrain types and textures, and some issues with normal maps are worked out.

The construction system is still in its beginnings, but the basic concept and early systems are in place and well functional. Much of it will be GUI work, in the end.

A procedural solar system generator has also been written. It’s not integrated with the terrain system, but it generates planet positions, radii, atmospheres, surface gravity values, and calculates their temperatures, which sets the stage for eventually populating those planets with plant and animal life, assuming the random number generator gods smile upon them.

Not much visual stuff to show off just yet, but keep watch for the first imagery of the terrain system…