IronDuke’s Space Game

Argh, I was hoping no one would ask that! I’m working on very preliminary thruster stuff right now, and that can’t be shown with screenshots. I’d take video, but the PC I’m using keeps dropping way too many frames for the video to be coherent.
I am also working on the encyclopedia, because I want all the scientific stuff down before I start building ships on it. I get the funny feeling Particle Systems may have done the same thing. All I know is that their encyclopedia really helps with the immersion, knowing what all the stuff in your ship does.
(Copy paste good idea)
As soon as I have anything that might qualify for a screenshot, BANG – it’s here!

–IronDuke

I used MSI Afterburner. It’s technically a free GPU overclocking program I use to boost GPU speeds as much as thirty percent, but to my surprise, I found it could do screen capture videos. Not well though, they drop lotsa frames, but I blame the computer. It’s south bridge is dead, and the hard drive is flaky, and some of the data on it is corrupted because of that. 🙁
I’ve been searching for an alternative, but there aren’t many good free ones.

–IronDuke

Here they are: screenshots from in Unity, and a Notepad file with an un-short ship description I whipped up. I basically sat down, typed for an hour and a half, and didn’t even bother doing a spell check, so apologies in advance if I misspelled something.
This ship model is very preliminary: the wings are likely to change, becoming tapered toward the ends, the poly count is way too low, and there is a startling absence of little details, probably because it’s untextured. That will of course change after the modelling is done.
I have already gotten a Newtonian flight model working, with full control of all six degrees of freedom, and also a halt autopilot, because manually bringing the ship to a perfect halt is darn near impossible.
The comsec is currently merely a model, with no special effects, and I didn’t even finish preliminary modelling of its rear. (Which is fine, because you can’t see it anyway if it’s docked. 😛 Silly me, I went and undocked it anyway so you can see how very flat the rear is. )
Enjoy!

–IronDuke

P.S. New computer parts purchased from Newegg, so now I just have to put them together and get them working. May take a while.

(Edited to add cheerfulness)

The maneuvering thrusters are the jet engine afterburner that comes with the Unity standard assets, but the bigger thrusters – the drive – that’s a somewhat modified version. They are indeed particle systems, which is one of my favorite things to play with. I was over the roof ecstatic when I first got Unity and took one look at Shuriken. 😆
My physics use the Rigidbody.AddForceAtPosition function, allowing for forces to be applied at the actual thruster locations. This means that if you lose a thruster, your flight model will go goofy. In EoC, they simply set velocity values, so thruster system damage was not nearly so cool. My autopilot simply feeds input values to the thruster the same exact way the player does, so lovely physics all around. :cheer:
Because it’s in space, there is no drag at all. If you turn the ship a little, it’ll continue turning until you fire the thruster in the opposite direction. But that will be with flight assist off. Flight assist is actually next on my list for coding, and orbital mechanics are right after that.
Incidentally, the completely physical flight model means that you will experience forces on your ship when firing weapons. Example: you’ve got twin heavy plasma cannons on the right side. Fire them, and your ship will start to turn to the right. I’m planning on programming a very sophisticated flight assist that will counteract weapons recoil, give the controls a little help to make stopping with the target in the dead center of the reticle easier, automatically weaken certain thrusters to compensate for damaged ones to ensure smooth control, and – this is my favorite – with the option turned on, it will direct the lateral thruster to help with maneuvering, and vice-versa, provided those thrusters aren’t doing anything in the first place. Boy, will that give one an unexpected maneuverability and acceleration boost!

–IronDuke

P.S. Wait until you see a real gunship! 👿

-I’ve improved the lighting, shadows, and extended the camera range by 100 times.
-Created a custom script for localized gravity. (The only gravity Unity has by default affects the whole scene.)
-Orbital mechanics are next on the list!
-I’m also working on a very preliminary cockpit/bridge for the Phoenix.
-I’ve also been tinkering with concepts and trying to figure out how the heck the mesh of a model can be modified at runtime. I know you can simply set the vertex positions, but I can’t figure out which vertices belong to which tris. The tris are just an array of ints… Once I figure it out you’ll be able to carve your name on another ship’s hull, and if you use a strong enough beam, you can look at the other side and see it backwards ’cause the beam went through… 😛

I just wish I knew of a good way to reduce shadow z-fighting. It’s chronic.

Development is not going very quickly, because I’m a crazy multi-tasker, so I’ve got three other projects in Unity that are seeing the same level of progress. I’ve also got school, The Expanse book series to work through, Babylon5, and latest, Elite: Dangerous. Just got it Sunday. But, I promise that this game, if any, will reach a playable state. When I look at what I’ve envisioned for it, I like it way too much to let up.

–IronDuke

Considering the startling activity here over the last week, I though it best to put my oar in as well an give everyone an update.

I mentioned Elite: Dangerous, right? Good. Because I think what we will have to do is assume that the last two months of accumulating 300 hours of E:D was me “gathering ideas,” and therefore part of development. :blush:

Seriously though, I have gotten some really good ideas from that game, and even while playing it, have been planning and scheming about things to have in my space game. I have a surprisingly cool plot line for one thing, which also allows for a prequel and a sequel.

About that: I have decided that, to make testing stuff easier, I am going to make a much smaller space game first. I was actually already working on it, and in fact the screenshots are from it. It’s working title was “The Flying Bedstead,” after a rocket-powered frame used to test VTOL aircraft. It is going to be in the same universe ( prequel in the best sense of the word), the main ship the player flies is the Phoenix (brand new at that time) and I already whipped up a story line. (No, I’m not saying what it is. Rest assured, much fighting against tyranny. :cheer: )

And I finally thought of an embarrassingly excellent name for the whole shebang.
Prequel: The Interstellar War for Colonial Independence
Main Game: The Galactic War for Colonial Independence
Sequel: The Intergalactic War for Colonial Independence
Figured the “Colonial Independence” part would really be cool, and attract old I-War players. In fact, part of the game lore will be that the wars are called the “Independence Wars.” Unofficially, of course. Just soldier nicknames. :whistle:

As regards the damage model, I will not use PhysX Flex in the prequel, since it is not fully developed, but it will be used in the main game if I have to integrate it into Unity myself. What I will use in the prequel is an idea I’ve been thinking about for over a year.
Accessing the UVs of a mesh, textures can be used for more than color. I was thinking of a grayscale texture, completely invisible, to hold damage data. 255 is top health, 0 is minimum health. This way, the hull can be damaged all over by different amounts. Using the same system, textures could be used to indicate hull thickness, affecting the damage received there, or even hull temperature. If any area of the hull exceed a certain temperature, it could start taking damage there, so you can melt you ship on one side only. This would also make lasers very realistic, since they melt stuff. Another advantage is that you can have localized damage effects. As the damage texture gradually goes from 255 to 0 in one spot, the actual ship color texture/material there can lose shinyness, start to turn black, even be made transparent when health reaches 0 to show a beautiful hole with nice ragged, black edges. Or even make the hull area glow when it’s hot.
I don’t know for sure if this whole idea can be done, but it seems like it can, and it’s on the list for right after flight mechanics are completed.

Unfortunately, with the return of the school year, my time for developing has gone down, and parental control has limited my computer time to two days a week. 🙁 :angry: Plus, E:D has a funny habit of punishing the player for not playing at least once a week, so… The good news is, I finished watching B5, so that’s off the table now. Great show though.
I will work on The game as much as I can though. Many’s the time I’ve been sitting, doing school or eating or failing to go to sleep while simultaneously thinking about what my space game will be like finished and moaning to myself, “I want my space game!!!” It’s coming… very slowly, but with the inevitability of a [insert inevitable action here].

I’m probably kind of vague on some of the stuff here, so any questions you have, fire at will. I’ve got a battery of guns to answer with… 😉

–IronDuke