I've been working on a project I've called "Space Colonies" for the past few weeks that attempts to create believable star systems with wide varieties of hopefully realistic planets. Although the name is quite deceiving, this not a game at all; it's the backbone of what COULD be a 4X space strategy game.
You can download it here.
To cut to the chase; when you create either a "Wild" or "Life" star system you will see a blip appear in the black void you're presented with. The "Life" button creates a star system that is slightly artificially "modified" so that at least one planet in that star system can sustain life. These are typically the most interesting star systems to visit. On the other hand, when you press the "Wild" button, a star system will be generated at complete random with no external intervention. Environments here can either be extremely inhospitable or otherwise stable.
Once you've grown bored of watching these blips appear on the map, you can click on one to be transported to the exact center of the star system. This is where most of the grueling science and where most of my headaches went to.
You may press - on the numpad to zoom out, and + to zoom in. There's also a fluid movement system in which you can hold two keys together to move diagonal.
Try clicking on planets and stars to pull up information on them. As of right now, however, there's not much to display for stars so they don't get a fancy window popup! The View Orbits button allows you to see what would be a planet's orbital ring, and Starmap bring you back to the star map where you can go to other star systems (clicking Star map while IN the star map brings you back to where you where)
Most of the science used in the planets and stars I had no idea about, so I had to do some intense researching. Stars are based off of the Morgan Keenan spectral stellar classification system. By no grounds whatsoever do I claim that 100% of the time the statistics displayed are accurate. In fact, I don't expect them to be accurate, but it would be great if they were at least believable!
So I ask BYOND; would you be interested in seeing a game based off of this little engine?
note: gas planets do exist, but they seem unrealistically rare possibly due to my fault!
ID:101493
 Sep 5 2010, 11:21 am (Edited on Sep 5 2010, 11:27 am)
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DarkCampainger wrote:
It's pretty neat, but I think to realize its full potential, it has to be pixel-based. I was thinking of making it pixel-based, but it I found it really unnecessary. And yes, I do have a game design in mind that utilizes all of the little bits of details. | |
Some things that a lot of people neglect when doing this sort of thing:
- Most orbits are elliptical and are not static (before counting for interference between planets). Earth's orbit is elliptical and the overall path itself rotates as well. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/ Newton_revolving_orbit_e0.6_precession.ogg - Surface temperatures have a very very large range in the absence of an atmosphere. - Overestimation of atmosphere-less bodies. | |
It's just not the same when the planets and orbit markers are positioned so blockily :P
Also, if you could implement all of that data so that it's a part of the gameplay, it could make for a pretty interesting game.