Update#82 : Current Seas

This little post is about ... currencies! (See what I did there? If not, too bad)

First of all, I'll share an idea which is NOT new to my plans for the game. Tokens. There will be tokens that you can purchase to upgrade your 'playing experience' or whatever, but really they will make things more convenient. This can include things like extending the span of galactic space that you can request to download at once, renaming** a star or planet or increasing the depth of your construction/research queues.

**You can rename your homeworld and any moons that it may have at least once for free. I realize that renaming planets is usually a freely available option in most games like this, but in UNIVERSE it will be a big deal as it can affect gameplay.

Originally I was thinking that tokens would have a simple price of 1$ or 2$ but with various conversion rates it still seemed like it could get a bit complicated. So, to simplify things, I've decided that I'll just go with the idea that I resisted for reasons I can no longer remember! I'm going to make an additional in-game currency. Instead of just buying tokens directly, you would buy some amount of that currency and with that you could buy the tokens. Both tokens and this new currency could be traded in the market, or exchanged between players.

By implementing this additional currency, it will keep token prices more simple and easier for me to add new tokens and other such features.

I don't have a name for this currency at the moment, but I'll be working on it.

Update#81 : Orbital Inclusion

While doing a bit of cleaning the other day, I thought a bit about orbital bodies again... and it just clicked, how I could implement objects - both fleets and planetoids - having tilted orbits, and also ellipsoidal orbits!

However, I won't implement these fancy orbit functions until some time after there's a bit of game to play, which is still a little further away than I'd like it to be.

That's all for now. Still working!

Update#80 : Somewhere, In the Distant Near Future

The weeks just keep slipping by...

I'm really getting to be more decisive on some of these annoying-to-decide plans and things, so hopefully I'll actually get back to regular reportable progress soon. I'm not going to make any claims or promises like before though since the time keeps getting sucked out of me and new indecisions are always popping up.

That said, I do actually have a new idea or two to report. In my head I've been toying with this idea of contracts in player bases. The idea is, for your factories and mines to keep producing resources and items, you (the player) need to issue 'work contracts' to the relavent things in your cities, which might last 50 or some such number of hours.

For example, you might assign for some of your Industrial Zones to produce some bunches of tanks, so you make contracts to your facilities to make it happen. Factories not in contract will instead 'work' for civilian purposes, increasing economy... which was already going to happen, but in the case of mines, they won't produce resources unless you issue the 50-hour-or-whatever contracts. You could queue one 'level'? of contract on top of another so that when one ends the next begins immediately.

The idea is to have 'that thing' which tries to be your reason for logging in with some regular frequency.

Update#79 : Busy As Ever

Welcome to August!  The 9th is my birthday, which really doesn't matter here but I still like to mention and celebrate it.

Yes, I did just barely but truly miss making posts through all of July. I don't have much excuse or explanation for that except that I've been busy. Busy busy busy! Busy and indecisive; the visual and interactive layout of various areas has been annoying for me to make final decisions about.

Again, I'll be trying more to update here more actively starting in the near future.

Update#78 : Debate unto Fate

Yeah sorry the title doesn't make any sense, it's just a rhyming of 'ate'

MORE SORRY for the fact that my only June post is this one, at the very end of the month. I have been quite distracted by many things in this past month: helping people move things, looking for a job, playing EVE Online and League of Legends, trying to help friends with various things, dabbling into other project ideas (only in the role of support or contributor) soooo busy! Thus I haven't been very mindful of the devlog.

For game updates, the only major thing that I can think of is about the coordinate validator pop-up tool that I mentioned in the last post will not be happening. I eventually realized that making it as convenient as I wanted would add a lot of data to each pageload which wouldn't be used often enough to justify it, so the validator tool will be a separate page in the maps area.

Update#77 : Playing With Coordinates and Mapping

Today I came to a decision, to do something which was contrary to what I wanted to do for a long time.

With regards to in-game messaging... My hope was to let the mail formatting system automatically handle the detection and linking of spatial coordinates. As I approached this task, I realized that there was a flaw in my strategy, due to the fact that I would allow proper names to be used in coordinates, to make things nice and easy for users. The problem showed itself when I realized that names could contain spaces, which would be problematic for efficient detection methods...

So, the solution for which I was hesitant but have now embraced, is to use 'tags' in the messages - like BBCode - that players can put around the coordinate that they are trying to share. While this does take a bit of manual work (for which I will try to make a shortcut/action link) it will allow you to link your friends to exactly the position and view level that you want to link them. This is significant because a single point coordinate could be valid for several map views. For example, a basic planet address could be used to view the planet's overview page OR view the planet's surface map. The overall solution carries one further advantage: by using tagging instead of scanning, it helps to avoid some of the processing effort that would otherwise be required to [do all of that stuff].

This brings me to another bit of news regarding mapping and coordinates, with relation to players. I realized that I could make a small expandable icon/link/popup/app-thing... it would be a coordinate validation tool. It would normally be just a small button/icon in teh corner that isn't much, but clicking on it would load a mini-page containing the validator, which you would use to make sure that the coordinate that you're looking to use (or share) is allowable and will work; and also provide various links and transformations for the location.

The validator doodad will also help me a lot with testing and development.


Revealed: A location might have several methods by which to address it. For example, you could refer to a star or planet by either its coordinate OR its given name. It might sound complicated, but you'll enjoy it when you can address your planet by name instead of a collection of letters and numbers!

Update#76.5 : Well Then..!

The last few pieces of cleanup that I had to do were relatively quick to finish. So, that's done!

Now I get to go and enjoy some sleep, before a nice busy day tomorrow. I'm not sure yet what I will be busy with, but I'm sure that it won't be anything of my own planning... unless I'm lucky, in which case I get to do some more awesome things in my project, and will get to claim this progress or that... I don't expect it, but I hope.

Prepare for the worst, expect the best! Yay optimism!

Update#76 : Full Return

Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish all of the cleanup that I was hoping to do before the weekend. Fortunately, now that that weekend (AnimeNorth convention!) is passed and all sorts of other stuff is behind me, I'm excited again to work... maybe I keep saying that but it's even more true now!

It's pretty annoying for me, too, that I keep rapidly alternating between these up and down periods of work on the project, but at least it keeps going. Aside from the entireity of my school careers, I've never had such a massive and large and long project; it's difficult some times, and I can admit that. As long as I don't have a real deadline, or anybody to have to answer to, then I can just keep going and make it as great as I want it to be... as great as we all want it to be.

Update#75 : Late Spring Cleaning

Lately I realized that my code-writing style has really evolved and somewhat matured since I started, leaving a lot of my older code looking undeveloped and rushed by comparison. I'm taking a little more time out of forward development to clean up the old code and bring it 'up to par' with my modern programming style.

This is all part of my effort towards ensuring that this project doesn't collapse like the last time, where 'immature' code was one of the factors that plagued my last attempt and eventually brought it to a halt. I won't have that happen again.

Update#74 : Decisions & Delays

Just a week late; not too bad, right? Sorry. Needed the extra time for myself to get other things taken care of.

I felt like announcing a minor but-major-in-the-long-run decision that I made today. I almost feel bad about it because it counters a decision that I made a few months ago that I even announced here. I've decided that - due to the nature of the resource and the abundance of it - volatiles will be an upkeep resource for some things; maintaining large populations (cities) at least will cost an upkeep for volatiles, to represent the production & consumption of food and and other chemical substances.

As mentioned, this resource will be highly abundant throughout the UNIVERSE, so it shouldn't be a big deal. It just seems appropriate that these resources should be actively and constantly consumed at least a little, since that's just a fact of life.

It will also make sure that there is actually a practical value for the resource (especially for market trading) instead of an over-abundance everywhere; which could still happen. We won't really find out until the game starts!  Yeah yeah I'm working on it..

Update#73 : Break Time

Lately I've been finding it hard to stay focussed on the project, which is partly why I haven't posted any updates since the birthday. Because of this I'm taking a full and total break for the rest of the week, and I'll try picking it up on the weekend. A few days of not stressing over it and getting distracted, some time to clear my head, I think that's what I need.

I'll try to post an update on the weekend when I start to really get stuff done.

Update#72 : HAPPY BIRTHDAY >1<

It's a little late but here I'm going to wish

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 

to

THE UNIVERSE PROJECT

(Build3)

Yes it is now 1 year old today, and what a year! Less productive than I hoped (wanted to have it playable by this day) but still very productive. The foundations of a great game have been laid down and the rest is sure to follow in good order. I can't promise that it will be quick at all... I know that I have a hectic year ahead of me outside of game development but progress will definitely continue, however slow it might become. Update will remain fairly regular - if you can call this regular - and my devotion to the project will not waver. Never again. I know I have a good design approach and I'm keeping it tidy and well-organized.

In the last few days I faced a bit of CSS code trouble, where an attempt to make standardized buttons was not working ... turns out that CSS files are very specific and sensitive about their commenting rules! Urgh..

Well I guess that was a bit of a gift that the Project and I gave to each other? Figuring out this problem that I was having for a few days, and glad to know that I wasn't majorly screwing up! I also got a big bag of Jujubes.


Revealed : The birth day of (Build3) The UNIVERSE Project is April 20, 2012

Update#71 : Decorating

As is usually the case, in the process of trying to get one thing done, I find that I'm in need of something else...

This more recent event happens to be that I found myself deviating from - rather, not having - a standard appearance for common web page elements, such as text areas and buttons. Some text areas would have a black background, while others would have a well-lit pale blue, or something... so now I've been deciding and designing and coordinating all these colours for various things.

This isn't what I had in mind for getting back to 'real' work on the website, but it needed to be done anyway.


Revealed : The official 'birth date' of build3 of The UNIVERSE Project is ... April 20, 2012 ... Marking this Saturday, 2 days from now, as being the first birthday!

Update#70 : Awesomeness Restored

Alright. Database issue is fixed, and won't happen again. I now know with not only confidence but also experience that I can restore the database wherever and whenever I need to; and thus, the whole game can be recovered from a seemingly 'fatal' loss.

It's late now, so, real game progress resumes tomorrow.

Update#69 : Antiawesome Discoveries

Sooo among other things, I decided that it was time to really test my database backup/restore system and make sure that I can actually recover from corrupted and/or lost data.

I'm not going to go into detail, but suffice to say it did not turn out well. Now I am experiencing the joys of repairing(?) a severely damaged(?) database. I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do, and I'm not looking forward to it, but I guess it's an important lesson that's best learned sooner than later.

Ironically, this happens right in the middle of me developing my 'Armageddon Engine' which is the system I'll be using as developer/administrator to safely destroy objects such as stars, planets, and players ... and yet it had nothing to do with this database situation.

Update#68 : Unawesome Discoveries

Sorry it's been a while since my last update. In the efforts of trying to build the new maps, I keep discovering new little things that I need to do to support the maps. Things that I never really thought of before, either as prerequisite necessities or just not at all, as well as various other details that I didn't really think needed more than a moment's thought, which end up being integral to the whole product. I'm still plugging away, I just need to do a lot more work than I expected, as usual!

Maybe I'll share some more details later if I feel I need a break and just want to babble in more detail about what I'm doing, but for now, I'm off to satisfy some scheduled appointments.

Update#67 : *flip*

While things are fine and continuing now, some more little personal issues came up that cost me a few days on development. Something on a higher level doesn't want me to get this project finished at all......

That aside, I'm still working on designing and building the map system. Even though the final product never really looks like the concept drawings, some of the details and constraints and concepts make it in and really help in the overall finished product... I guess by the merit of simply having more thought put into it? I don't know, I'm not a design theory specialist!

Anyway, back to work!

Update#66 : Keeping It Up

Since the last post I've done a bit of relaxing and resting, and a bunch of little improvements and additions on various things.  Mainly, getting ready for the meat of the work do be done in implementing the awesome new map. Oh, and ... *checking paypal* ... nope still not resolved, oh well.

So, about those mapping pages. There will be one link that takes you to the 'Mapping Center' which then has a link to each of the main map types: Regional Star Map, Solar System, Planetary System, Planet Surface.

For each link there will be a field for coordinates; if left blank, then you will be linked to your default or saved location of the relavent type. So, for example, when you sign up your account will be pre-loaded with default settings like...
Star Map: shows nearby stars, centered at your home star
Solar System: viewing 'your' solar system
Planetary System: viewing details of your home world
Planet Surface: viewing the surface and details of your home world, showing your capital

I'll probably also add a 5th coordinate option which - based on the coordinates you input - will make a best-guess assumption about which kind of map to use.

As I've mentioned before, the coordinate system will probably be somewhat overwhelming when you're just getting started, and so I'm also going to add nice little buttons and functions so that you can play the game without ever really having to figure out what the letters and numbers mean.

Alright, gotta get back on this roll and keep making things. The very next thing I'm going to do is... get a drink, and then delete all of the current stars to make a whole new batch of full star systems, ready and waiting to be seen with the glorious new maps to be...

Update#65 : Square + 1

Well that was fun. I got into a nice little roll for coding after the last update... it continued until now, about 14 hours later I think, with me having fully implemented the site's main News system. It's 07:57 now, so I'm going to bed.

Update#64 : Square

While I really want to get the map and economics done, I feel the need also to have a proper news page/panel so I'm making up a simple news article system for me to create and edit news items in the game. Not everybody will be eagerly following the babbling of the devlog when things get going (I probably wouldn't if I was just a player!) so I think it's only right. Also it would be more concise and focussed on the game itself, while here I feel free to babble, as I so often mention.

Also, I'd like to do this news thing as a break from the 'complicated' and full-of-mathematical things of the main game issues. When I get back to those things I'll probably feel a bit more refreshed and eager, which I could use... not that I'm not eager to get it all done, but sometimes there's a monotonous feeling to constantly doing research and tweaking numbers and equations and mulling things over in the mind; things that I otherwise really enjoy, just not for 12 hours a day every day!

Update#63 : Deeper into Reality

As always, I've been a fair bit busy lately with several tasks in addition to living life.


First of all, working on a rough outline of the economic system and values for the game. Build times will be related to pricing and a few other factors, so I need to get those figured out, along with the works of population.


Next, I'm assembling on paper all the details that I want for all of the maps and their interface details. The 3D mapping of stars and planets is intended to be a major new feature of this game compared to others of this sort, so the maps really should work nicely I think.

Finally, I've been looking in to setting up a donation page, in case anybody wants to help me out with a bit of money... what would it do? It would mostly go towards buying precious time for me to keep working full-time on the game. I might have to stop doing that soon and replace some of the time with getting a job. I was hoping to get the game into a playable open-beta phase before that happened, but it has this way of taking longer to do everything than I want it to. If I have to get a job, then hopefully it will be a part-time job and I can still devote most of my time on game development... but that's something I won't worry about for another 2 months, for now I'll be more focussed on development. People who send donations will have their donation recorded (duh) and later their name will be shown on a "special thanks" page or something like that, to mark an appreciation for what they've done for me and thus for everyone in the UNIVERSE.

So anyway, economy, maps, donations; these three things are my focus these days, pretty much which ever I feel like working on at the time is the one I work on.

Tomorrow, probably, I'll add a new page... the big UNIVERSE title link will no longer redirect users to the front page. Instead, it will lead to a new 'nexus' page which will have news posts, devlog links, links to miscellaneous pages (like the store!) and other information; it will also be the page that players will be brought to by default when they log in.

Well that's enough babbling for now!  o/

Update#62 : GENESIS

I am now finished the core of the Genesis project. That is, all of the world-building stuff that needed to be done before I could move on, is finished. Thus, I can finally move on to other things... I can start whole new code files and web pages... and I can create a basic playing universe within which we can frolic and make war!


Maybe I'm just tired (it's almost 6am) but it doesn't even feel real to be finished this stage after working on it for so many months. I just don't know what to think of it!

I'm probably going to take a day or two off, to get done a couple little things that I promised myself to do once I finish with Genesis... another heap of laundry, a good dusting&cleaning of my desk, a bit of room-cleaning... all that good boring life stuff that most of us either hate to do, or just regularly do.

Next order of business: A new and complete mapping system (we currently only have an obsolete star-map, though it's still revolutionary, hehe!) and creating player asset objects (cities, outposts, fleets)


Continuing from the idea proposed in the last update, I came up with another little possibility; 'normal' difficulty allows players to pick an area from which their homeworld will be chosen so they could start closer with friends, while the nice-world 'easy' difficulty skips that option and is placed on any nice planet in the universe. Remember galaxies will be large and vast in this game; while other games might need only hours or minutes to cross a galaxy, crossing a galaxy in this game will likely take days. Therefore, while players who pick normal difficulty won't have as-nice of a homeworld, they will benefit from immediately having local friends to help them, while the 'easy' player would start out relatively alone. Thoughts?


Revealed : There are probably billions or even trillions of possible solar system formations in this game... And yet the real universe is far more diverse and interesting!


Good Night!

Update#61 : Moon Rise

Wow! I can't believe it's already been a week since I started on moons, it feels like only 3 days!

Well, it's done now, and that's what counts. I think Asteroid belts will be easier and faster to make, but only time will tell.

Overall I'm happy with moon formation, though I've recently gotten an idea for something to add to the game that I can add that I think might be good or bad, which would affect the early game for any player. The issue stems from the fact that 'Earth-like' habitable planets are rare (not by design; just the result of natural planetary formation ends up making them rare!) so if these alone are supposed to be the starting homeworlds for all players, there might be very few start locations. If so, even a very large galaxy might not have many potential homeworlds.


Idea : There would be two 'difficulty' modes: Easy and Normal.

Easy
> Starts on an Earth-like world, having moderate-good starting resources and lower building costs.
> Starts with basic research levels.
> Starts with a civilization just starting to join the galactic community...


Normal
> Starts on a random colonizable world, having decent starting resources.
> Starts with moderate research levels and a few free levels that can be custom-selected.
> Starts with a civilization just recovering from a past cataclysm which reduced it to one colony...

I think (and hope) that most people would choose 'normal' because they want to start with better technologies... Did I mention that research can be expensive? Well I am now, and I will during signup.


Input/criticism wanted!

Update#60 : Yeah NEXT STEP

I'm almost ready to toss those mud-caked shoes, but not quite yet. I'm finally satisfied with the generation of primary planets. The value ranges are acceptable, the density ranges are according to design, the resources are designated according to design... it's just all finally fine. What's next is finishing with the whole of the GENESIS Project* by adding moons and asteroids. I could move on since some usable planets are created, but most planets in my universe - just as the real universe - are what we would consider giants... and giants are exciting because of their many moons! Asteroid belts too! With their various asteroids and sneaky little dwarf planets pretending to be asteroids.

I've been hard at this for a few days, as you may have noticed it's taken a bit longer to finish than what I projected in my last post. Hopefully it won't be the same for moons&asteroids; again, projecting 1 week to finish, but can't make any promises. On the bright side, a lot of the work for those was already finished along with the main planets (like density and resources, which were surprizingly complicated!) so all I have to do is quickly figure out how the moons and asteroids will be scaled and placed; and unlike planet formation I will not be picky AT ALL about how big they are. Considering how big Earth's moon is compared to Earth, while most of the moons of the giants are small asteroids... moon size can be practically anything!


The night is close enough to over, so I'm going to relax for the rest of it. Good night!


*All of this world-building tool-making is a whole sub-project of the greater UNIVERSE Project, because it's taken about 3-4 times longer than expected to complete. Some of that time was my own fault and ineffectiveness, but the rest is just the usual things-aren't-going-as-expected project progress. Ultimately, I think it will end up being between 1/4 and 1/2 of the total project time taken, once it comes time for Open Beta. Thus, it is the GENESIS Project.

Update#59.8 : Out of the Muck (ALMOST)

Just as I finished muddling with equations and getting sample solar systems, making the backup of that and then heading here to make an excited update about it... it suddenly hits me that my planet formation scheme - while giving nearly perfect results for a star which is approximately like our sun - will not scale properly, and will actually produce exponentially larger/smaller planets as the stars change in size mass when actually they should have a linear relation to the star's mass.

I almost made my friday deadline for this, but I forgot a detail. Also, I had some RL stuff to do away from the computer.

I'll probably be busy tomorrow, but the day after will be dedicated to fixing this one last little thing. All of the hard stuff is finished, and I know already a couple ways to fix this little processing oversight; it's just a matter of figuring out which will be best/easiest and applying it. Once it's done, I'll probably get away with 1 day fixing resource allocation scheme (because planets should never have negaive values for resources, oops!), and then I'll need up to a week to finally make moons and asteroids.


I'm looking into getting some things done to improve my design center/web server machine here (mainly a reformat) to improve machine efficiency and therefore my working efficiency, since I need to reload browser pages often and it's a bit slow on that task. Also, I may or may not acquire a spare computer from a nice friend of mine, which would then allow me to have a dedicated web server machine.

I think I can see, realistically, a bit of test-level gameplay starting in about 1 month.

Update#59.7 : Detour? Detour.

Last night I was quite determined to at least finish refining the equations for Protoplanetary Disk #2 ... I have done that, and am pretty well satisfied. I did not unfortunately get to investigate the Disk#1 equations because all the rechecking and editing took hours longer than I expected for #2 .. but now, I at least have a comparatively simple equation to work with, and I fully trust its values and behaviour. The greatest value in this right now is, I have a frame of reference with which to compare and refine the more complex equation. I hope and expect to have it fully taken care of over the next 3 days. Then, moons and asteroid fields, another (hopefully) 3 days or so.

I don't remember if I've said it recently, but after all this creationism I'll be making the new map-viewer systems so that all the new stuff can be seen and manipulated. Also, I'll need to have the map workings clear in my mind for when I start adding players assets, as they'll have to show up on the map as well.

Update#59.6 : Oh Bother..

I found the center of my main issue is in the one place that I didn't want to have any issues ever again... the Type1 (aka original) mass band equations. Now that I'm looking at them more closely, they seem to be producing strange values that don't make much sense to me.... and yet I've been able to use them to make planets as they were designed for so it seemed like they were working perfectly fine... ?!

Figures... The day that I planned to have fully finished all of planet formation, I have to take a trip back to where it began... At least it's not going to be a total rebuild; the logic is all fine, I just need to fix some magnitudes and re-tweak some things accordingly.


Revealed : The mass of planets and stars in UNIVERSE is actually directly related to real masses in the universe. Resources will probably be in units of metric tonnes. Planetoids are all measured in PMU (Planetary Mass Units) which is approximately 1PMU = 3x10^18 kg. The unit of mass for stars is Jupiters, which doesn't sound very scientific but it's actally a very practical unit.

The lowest theoretical mass for a hydrogen-fusing star (and a dim red dwarf) is around 75 Jupiters. Our Sun's mass is approximately 1000 Jupiters. Large stars which are measured in 'solar masses' for convenience can then easily be converted to 1000's of Jupiters.

Update#59.5 : Challenge Failure

I did not complete the whole genesis process by the end of this weekend as planned. There was the density redesign, and now I've found a massively horrid bug in my main planet mass calculations... I'm seeing the old equation was actually producing values grossly larger than it should be, and the new one is making similarly under-sized mass values... neither one is working quite the way it's supposed to!

Strangest parts about it are... the new equation is so simple that I can't understand how there's anything wrong at all, and the old one showed to be working according to the right 'pattern' which is one of the reasons why I never questioned it. WEIRDNESS.

I will keep working hard tonight and tomorrow to get to the bottom of this and fix it.

Update#59.4 : Clawing My Way...

In order to 'properly' implement multiple possible planetary formation equations, I need to rearrange a chunk of the code.

Also, the planet density method I was using before was very forced and arbitrary just to make a Sol-like solar system form; I want something a little more 'natural' and variable and automated, so I'll waste some more time making that happen.

Do or don't, I'm not sure that I'll get everything I want done in the next 50 hours; but I'll certainly be trying.

Update#59.3 : Digging Deeper

After doing a little research to remind me of a few things, along with a lot more experimentation, I've made a good lot of progress, but there's still a bit more to do that I wasn't expecting.

The main primary-planet formation process that I've been working on, I'm pretty much calling it done ... but then I found/realized/remembered that I need to make a secondary but simple planet formation pattern. It will not take nearly as long to develop, probably just a day or two, really.

Basically, the two patterns:
1) similar to our solar system, small rocky inner planets and larger outer giants
2) giant inner planets...

#2 is a common planet system formation that's been discovered; there may be smaller rocky outer planets in such systems, but current instrumentation and measurments have not been able to detect them. Will UNIVERSE have them? I don't know yet but probably not. Don't worry about resulting planet populations, this 'loss of planets' should be offset by the fact that most or all giant planets will have a population of moons which are just about as good.

Update#59.2 : Partial Satisfaction

I finally have a satisfactory formation of the inner planets. Now working on outer planets.

Note: The website is currently inaccessible from the internet, but since there's nothing to play yet then that doesn't really matter anyway.

Update#59 : The Foot Goes Down

I'm setting a stiff goal that I'll be working pretty hard toward, after having the last few days 'off' with an out-of-town friend visiting, and more time lost due to illness.

By the end of this upcoming weekend I want to have all of the basic system creation fixed and finished.

It seems like it's going to involve a lot of experimentation, lots of time sitting, and ... well just lots of time, really. But I'm so determined right now, because this is taking too long! Just like all of you, I want this game.

Update#58 : Thinking.. Time.. Thinking Time..

The last few days (but not all of the days since my last update) I've been busy with an out-of-town visitor and friend, delaying the final development and refinement of planetary genesis... it's not all bad though; getting out is good, stories made and shared, and also the afk time is good for figuring out things that I might not have otherwise considered.

What I ultimately mean by that is... my main 'current' challenge about forming planets the way I want them, I had a mildly unfavourable way to fix it that I was considering when my friend got in town, but I have since come up with a few 'better' possible solutions, which I will likely be testing tonight and/or tomorrow.

Update#57 : Coordinated Perfection

First of all, still sick.

As I was finishing up that previously mentioned bit of planet formation, I ran into a little issue of... the planets weren't forming at all as I expected they would. The idea was, for a sun-like star, there should be a few small inner planets and then a few gas giants... what I got was one or two small planets (usually one) followed by a massive super-jupiter planet, followed by a bunch of dwarf planets.

While thinking on this problem, I had a moment's distraction that made me realize that I was missing an important consideration with my coordinate validation system; I was missing a piece required to support both 'relative stationary' and 'geo-stationary' orbit positions. So, I had to go back and look at it again to add this little detail. I realized then that I could improve the code in several ways, while also incorporating the new little extra... so I did. It's done now. Not only did I fill in the gaps, but the total validator code size was reduced by about 1/2, and that half is also purely a more efficient and capable; that will make a big difference on a busy server.

I still need to do a bit of final testing, but it's pretty much finished; I have faith in my work! Then I can go back to fixing planet formation, which I don't expect will take long. I have an idea how to fix the planet formation; once that is out of the way then I'll add on moons and asteroid fields.

Revealed : Fleets will be able to choose whether they hold a relatve orbit around a planet, or keep geo-synchronous orbit over a point of the planet.

Update#56 : Getting Better

I just thought I'd note that I'm feeling better; well enough at least to get back to work here.

Currently collecting planet info stats into a tidy 'package' to prepare it for database insertion. This will be followed by moons, and then a general test of the system; if it seems to work well, then I'll expand it to be able to make asteroid fields and 'large' moons.

Update#55 : Coughing, Sneezing, Everything

I WAS going to have all the coding done for the generation of whole solar systems. Enough to move on to start designing players assets... but it seems that the greater powers are really set to stress my resolve and budget. I have been stricken with a powerful cold these past few days, and don't know when it will let up. Basically, I'm being set back by another week. Why do I seem to get set back by whole weeks?

Also, I've currently decided that there will not be any upkeep cost for the 'volatiles' resource for cities or anything else... if I change my mind on that, it's because I'll have changed my mind on whether ships have limited or unlimited ammunition, food, fuel... and basically logistics would become a huge factor.

IF my mind ever changed on that, it would be after watching the beta play for a while and seeing the big forces steamroll too easily and often over the smaller empires, and needing something to keep them in check. I'm currently hoping that the upkeep system I have planned will do well enough of that.

Update#54 : Concepts, Completion

To the extent of my imagination thus far, I've now completely planned out the design of planets, moons and asteroids. Next up is the implementation, but that will be relatively easy.

With the real universe as a base model, I've set orbiting bodies in my UNIVERSE to move 4x faster than their equivalent would in reality; just so we can appreciate the motion of slower-moving bodies. I might slow this down to 'real' speeds if some objects seem to be orbiting too quickly... it's an interesting universe out there that I've modeled after, and some things orbit really really fast! I haven't gotten to simulate yet what I'll end up with...

An extra little hope that I have with this game, will be to induce some new interest in astronomy with people who play the game. The other games tend to ignore how varied and interesting the universe out there can be... even with this I'm limiting how much variation I have, just for the sake of getting the game assembled and viewable within a 'reasonable' timeframe; if I went for any more detail, I would have to drop the game idea for a while and just make an astrophysics simulator!

I might start implementation tonight or tomorrow, I'm not sure which. I had a big buffet lunch with my grandpa for his 85th birthday, and I'm just... it's mid-afternoon and it's bed time, and I don't know if it will sto being bedtime at all today XD

Update#53 : Volatility

Just a quick addition and ammendment to the last post. There will be FOUR (4) material resources.

The main three are light metals, heavy metals, and precious minerals. The fourth and new material resource will be 'Volatile Compounds' which is basically all of the ices, water, acids, and other such stuff that makes chemistry possible and interesting. More importantly, it's also the main stuff that enables life to happen. I've been wanting to add a 4th harvestable/tradeable resource for a long time, but until now I couldn't think of anything that I liked.

'Volatile Compounds' will mainly be required for the construction of the population centers in settlements, which are assumed to be self-sufficient regarding food production and water purification and all that. Industrual Zones and ships will also require this resource to represent various chemicals, fuels, and the large quantity of food that would be taken from the 'farms' for long-term ship rations. Also, certain weapons (like a 'particle beam' or whatever) might have a high cost of this material which it might use for ammunition.

Update#52 : Planets, on a roll!

It's a bit more chilly than I'd like to be for programming, but it's fine. I'll just throw on a little blanket or sweater and light a candle!

First I want to mention that I'm not 100% decided yet whether I want asteroids to host a base like other planets/moons, or, not have anything built upon them and instead having them mined by ships. It's annoying because I like both ideas but probably won't feel like implementing both! I'm probably just silly...

Moving on to the main topic, I do believe that I'm on schedule for having planetary formation finished by the end of the week! Here's a few things of what planets will have,
- definite mass and size and shape (sphere!)
- orbit distance and speed around the star
- 3 material resources, 1-2 energy resources
- rotation period
- habitability level

Habitability level will be 3 categories:
Habitable - Can support life and thus colonies relatively easily.
Semihabitable - Hardened settlements can be built that will survive the environment.
Uninhabitable - Impossible to build a settlement that will be safe to inhabit.

Habitability may change, however, such that planetary qualities are taken into account, and technological advancement may permit you to colonize worlds that were previously uninhabitable.

Revealed: That stuff I just mentioned.

Update#51 : Update#51

Yeah, I was feeling particularly uncreative about this update's title.

Quick update it is, too: Making steady and good progress in planetary formation. I'm certain to have basic planet formation finished by the end of the week. Asteroid and moon formation the week after.

When the new code can create that much of a full system, then I'll wipe away all of the old stars and make a blob of new stars. As long as there isn't something terribly wrong, they will probably be fairly permanent as I shift out of the god phase of world-building and get to the player phase, introducing resources and construction and all those good things that we look forward to in these games.

Revealed: There is a lot of variety in the stars of UNIVERSE. Unlike most games in which stars have little or no effect, the stars of UNIVERSE are the heart of everything, as the planets are born from them and their properties rather than randomly generated next to them. Of course, even for two seemingly identical stars, the planets won't end up the same either. No two star systems will be the same; and possibly not even similar! Opportunity will lie in the diversity.

Update#50 : A New Dawn

It's official update#50 and it's a whole new year!

I have a renewed sense of determination and duty to this project, and it wasn't bad at the end of the year but now I have a more concrete sense of what I need to do.

I did finish that whole thing with stars and planets planning, and so now I've been editing some of the foundation code and removing obsolete code... tidying up for the new year and the next steps forward.

So now I'm just taking a little break, just after a backup and while having supper, doing a bit of everyday life stuff... and then I'll be getting to building the whole new solar-system-design process, which will all-at-once generate a star, its planets, and their moons.

I'm sure there's a few kinks I'll have to work out along the way, but I don't think I'll have too many difficulties.

I know I'll get the game running some time this year... It's going to be a good year!

!*~2013~*!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

!*~2013~*!