Procedural Space

[planetX]

Hi there,

I had some fun with multidimensional arrays and managed to spawn a bunch of stars, plus a bunch of planets orbiting the stars, plus a bunch of moons orbiting the planets.

Space is so big that I have to figure out a way to quickly move between locations. I'm trying to make a stellar map as part of the interface. No idea about the gameplay yet, but it's coming along nicely.



BTW solved the labelling issue with the code above, getting screen_size worked like a charm.

Cheers

[SolarPortal]

certainly looks like that project is moving on well Great job and keep it up! Your work is consistently high quality

Edit: It does look like your having fun!

[TattieBoJangle]

Your work is consistently high quality

I agree its good to see updates like this and leaves you asking what is he going to do next

[StarFire]

Awesome as usual
It is exciting to see what he will do next.

[planetX]

Thanks guys, glad you like my stuff. I just have good tools.

Setting up the hierarchy in the array was a lil bit of a pain but finally I could manage. Now the challenge is to make a database of planets and moons and populate the systems randomly. I said procedural.

The idea is to show only the orbits of the planets around the selected star, then select a planet, zoom in and show the moons. Selecting a moon will jump to the level itself. Maybe one can select the planet too... I don't know. I'm still deciding about the gameplay.

[lordalmighty1]

i love this 1 a lot .. oh how I love space stuff... keep it coming I'm sure you will work wonders on this 1 like you have elsewhere m8 .

[planetX]

Thanks m8, I love space stuff too

Some progress on this... mostly been stuck trying to manage the code, but finally could implement a zoomer to jump between levels. Still a lil bit buggy but I'm getting there.

[SolarPortal]

i think i would struggle making that Great job!
Love the fact that the planets are moving in orbit and the lerping... just wow!

We will be putting an update together tomorrow so that means you can use the PU files again

[planetX]

We will be putting an update together tomorrow so that means you can use the PU files again

That's great, I have good plans for particles.

Q) How can I get rid of the automatic lowpoly LOD model? I think you already told me but I can't remember...
Q) Can I spawn point lights directly or do I have to make a preset?

Thanks!

[SolarPortal]

Q1) You can increase the lod distance from the Scene Settings Panel > Camera section > Camera Lod Bias.
Try setting that to 100 or higher or remove the lods from your models in the mesh editor.

Q2) Yes, you should be able to spawn lights without presets. There is a demo on the start screen showing it:
Here is a code snippet from that demo:

Code: Select all

 -- |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- | .: S K Y L I N E :.    Add a light to the parent      
-- |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

obj = 0 -- | Define a variable for our object ID

function onInit(objID)
--   sky.lprint("\nLUA: Hello World!");
    obj = objID;
   x,y,z = entity.getPosition(obj);
   Lid = light.spawnLight(1, x,y,z)
   entity.setPosition(Lid, x, y, z);
   light.setRange( Lid, 0.5 );
   v = math.random(1,3);
   if(v==1)then r=100; g=0; b=0; end
   if(v==2)then r=0; g=100; b=0; end
   if(v==3)then r=0; g=0; b=100; end
   light.setDiffuseColor( Lid, r, g, b );
   light.setSpecularColor(Lid, r, g, b );
end

function onUpdate(timeDelta)
   x,y,z = entity.getPosition(obj);
   entity.setPosition(Lid, x, y, z);
end


Clipboard Image (1).jpg (52.25 KiB) Viewed 25310 times

Hope this helps

[epsilonion]

This is looking impressive very impressive, even games like mass effect andromeda doesnt have a galaxy/local system screen as good as this..

I can not wait to see what else you come up with and/or more on this its very fascinating.

[planetX]

@epsilonion: thanks m8, let's see what we get here.

@Solar: Thanks for the info.

What are the units in the LOD Bias? I can't set a value more than 999, as it only allows a 3 digits number. The camera is like 30.000 m away from the target.

FYI, the LOD section in the Mesh Editor has a bug: after deleteing the LOD 4, the dropdown shows automatically the previous one (LOD 3) but if you delete it without reselecting it again, it will crash.

I'm having problems with this level after updating Skyline. Now I can't see the lines. I was wondering if you guys touched something related to that... I've been testing the drawing demos and they are working, so I guess it's probably my fault, but I have no idea where to start to find the bug. Any suggestion?

EDIT: ok, I found that some models are not showing either, so maybe is something related to the resources.

EDIT 2: I've recreated the project (thankfully I'm not working with a million of assets in the editor LOL ) and the problem persists, so it's not about the resources. Definitely there's something wrong in the code, I'll have a look and tell you something in a month or so, when I find the bug.

[SolarPortal]

oh no, not bugs..

We haven't changed anything to do with the debug lines, but things can be influenced by other changes. The only thing we have changed is the render order... if you turn the skybox off, do the lines appear and the other materials which have depth write off, as we did make the skybox render last to have better performance as early z kicks in better.

Thanks for the info about the mesh editor > lod stuff, i will try to replicate that.
As for the lod bias, at 999, you should not be seeing any lods at all for a thousand units+ lol
However, if you are using a different camera to the main editor camera, then you will need to set the lod bias in script using the camera.setLodBias(bias) function after the camera is set active.

Happy to work through this with you

[planetX]

The only thing we have changed is the render order... if you turn the skybox off, do the lines appear and the other materials which have depth write off, as we did make the skybox render last to have better performance as early z kicks in better.

You're right, if I deactivate the skybox, everything works as expected. Thanks for pointing that, I'd never find it myself. So what should I do then?

As for the lod bias, at 999, you should not be seeing any lods at all for a thousand units+ lol
However, if you are using a different camera to the main editor camera, then you will need to set the lod bias in script using the camera.setLodBias(bias) function after the camera is set active.

999 unit is not that much, the whole constellation is 10.000 units with/height. Yeah, I'll have to set it up by script as I'm spawning the camera preset. But still not clear about the LOD bias concept, what does it mean?

[SolarPortal]

The skybox issue is something i will have to fix and put it in the next update.

As for the lod bias, what does it do?
The lod bias offsets the scales at which point a lod would kick in.
For example, a lod bias of 1 and a lod distance of 5 on the mesh means that the lod will show after 5 units.
Increasing the lod bias will make that lod distance greater to improve quality and reducing it wil bring the lods closer increasing performance as loss of quality.
This exists so 2 different machines with different specs can make a game run by reducing or increasing polygons to get performance over quality or quality over performance.

I believe if i lod bias of 2 is used, then the lod distance set to 5 would change after 10 units.
0.5 would be the other way and reduce it to 2.5 units before lod change

[planetX]

Thanks for the info, now it's clear.

[SolarPortal]

Skybox issue is fixed.. will be in the next update

[planetX]

Great, thanks!

BTW I've also added the scripted car issue to the tickets.