Strata Nova

Started by iWasAdam, April 08, 2019, 07:52:20

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Derron

@ lighting
Maybe decrease "glossiness" a bit - they look shiny as new plastic balls :)


@ alpha
if it was faster you could render the balls twice: once with alpha 0.5 and a radius of "radius-1" and on top with the normal radius. The "alpha one" does not necessarily need lights or so.

But I am not sure if it is faster or not.



As said ... back to gameplay.

ideas for you:

Rebellism and satisfaction:
Satisfaction depends on hunger and other needs (maybe doing too much war in a "peaceful race" decreases satisfaction).  Once satisfaction goes below a critical value rebellism starts to grow. It cannot be stopped except for increasing satisfaction again. Once rebellism value reaches a certain value rebellism is turning into a putsch - leading to you loosing access to this planet (it belongs to a new computer player).


Rebellism and unions:
These new computer players receive a flag stating their origin: "rebels" or so. Rebel controlled planets might form a union (two computer players become one then!).


Trading and Pirates:
You have ressources on your planets. Maybe introduce pirate traders (some ships you can click on) to buy ressources? Of course pirates tend to fly around, land on planets ... and "harvest" (aka steal) small amount of ressources before they continue flying to the next planet. Either make pirates invulnerable (they pay the people at the planetary defense to "not see" them) or make them hard to hit for your defense systems (only X percent chance to hit them). Hit ships means "your ressources". Hit ships also means that they need to respawn a little later ("now + randomTime(10000ms, 25000ms)").


Techtree:
Maybe invent some tech tree which requires knowledge of multiple races. You can access knowledge by:
- diplomacy (diplomacy needs some dropdowns of what you request and what you offer ... or vice versa)
- capturing planets (X percent chance to "learn something from them")
- pirates (trading for huge amount of ressources)
- spies (belongs to diplomacy too)

That way a single race could not tech to the top without interferencing with other races.


bye
Ron

iWasAdam

Quote@ lighting
Maybe decrease "glossiness" a bit - they look shiny as new plastic balls :)
sorted. 'gloss' now modified with the cloud layer, so it breaks things up a bit

Quote@ alpha
if it was faster you could render the balls twice: once with alpha 0.5 and a radius of "radius-1" and on top with the normal radius. The "alpha one" does not necessarily need lights or so.
Nah, just all handled with the single pass shader

Next up will be travel from one planet to another - just the ship, no modifiers, etc

iWasAdam

planet information and UI

iWasAdam

how about some rock?  :o

Derron

Thought about little decorative asteroids or asteroid belts too.


if you plan to have some "NPC ships" then you could have ships flying from planet to planet - and some harvesters flying to asteroids to "mine there".

BUT ... I think it might introduce way too much distraction for a "planet centric" game play. It depends on how "fast paced" stuff is. If it is a slow-paced real-time-strategy thing then it should work - if it is a fast-paced one then every additional "moving object" might get misinterpreted as attacking ship in the first glance.


bye
Ron

iWasAdam

new planet code:

and rock code:


These are both using the same shader with different input settings!
The main thing that wasn't working was the rotation of planets - this is now fixed :)
rock can also rotate in 3d with specular and highlighting fully operational.
Remember. No 3d was hurt in this process!

It also means that with a few different input, your smooth planets can be properly displacement mapped!

Derron

While it is for sure cool - remember your glossiness - except you want to melt the planets into gold, silver or bronze medals :p


Do not forget to NOT use the displacement for the clouds (but some kind of "radius + x" for its mapping).


bye
Ron

iWasAdam

shine is configurable. here is the last image without shine:

Derron

Make it brownish - and add some dark brown "splashes" on it - done is your space cookie ;-)


As much as you enjoy GFX stuff: continue with the game play  8)


bye
Ron

Steve Elliott

Quote
shine is configurable. here is the last image without shine:

Much more realistic than your metal cannon balls.
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iWasAdam

I told you before: "Don't mention my shiny balls"  :P

ok. I'm now starting to add all the shaders code back into the main system and rewrite as needed to correct:


thing to look out for.
1. the lighting on the planets is now completely correct - nothing is being faked, planets in front of the sun will appear backlit, etc
2. all the planets correctly rotate along with cloud formations - each has a different rotation
3. when the angle of view is changed, the planets will properly rotate on their axis along with lighting and rotation!
4. view zoom can be completely adjusted, the background star system will also scale as it moves

So what we have is a nice solar system demonstration in 2d, but looks and behaves like 3d!

Derron

#101
There is nothing "completely unlit" if there are emissive or reflective elements around it.

I know: when in space there should be no "gray areas", things are either black or fully lit.


Not directly for planets:
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question52.html


Edit: Yet you need to keep something in mind: playability.
It does not help if the space looks realistic but you cannot distinguish the planets from the background (too many distracting stars or nearly unlit planets). Planets can become brighter in our "gamified world" because of all the light pollution of the population living on the planet.

The background with the nebulaes might look cool - nonetheless I would think it needs more "black" so the planets pop out better - else the purplish nebulae is distracting. Again to note: this might look so colorful in "real world" (never been there ;-)) but for gaming aspects we should focus on "readability".
This is a minor thing (easy to adjust) and can wait until the hud and flying object setup has settled and we know how it would look "in game".



bye
Ron

iWasAdam

yep - all good points. I had been thinking about the definition of planets vs backgrounds, etc.
Here's a first attempt with the background darkened and the planets with more color, so they stand out more :)

iWasAdam

Still minor tinkering - I've added a slight halo effect to the planets now which sort of simulate an atmosphere:


it's sorta subtle, but now makes the planets 'pop' a bit on dark backgrounds to help playablity

Derron

I was on my way to propose "halo" too - for the exact same reason: atmosphere (if it has one) and to ease distinguishing them from the background / popping out


Looks sweet.


bye
Ron