LONG POST INCOMING
Oh dear, thank you for all of your kind comments and your feedback! I've been preparing for Hell week
(midtermssss) so couldn't answer you all right away. I'm sorry!
- The mouse "steering" is a bit uncomfortable. Why did you not chose a traditional keyboard layout (WASD, cursor keys)?
- The thrusters are a bit overpowered, very hard to use it to make fine course corrections. I did not try a modifier key (Shift, Control) to the mouse clicks, so perhaps you have that already in. If not, maybe you can use that scheme to implement a coarse/fine mode switching.
- Do you use n-body gravity calculation? It seems like the various gravity objects heavily influence orbital trajectories of the vessel due to the close vicinity. It is not so easy to establish a stable orbit in this environment.
- If the multi-player assumption is valid, I'd like to see a simple docking mechanism with other players. Dock them together nose on nose and let each main thruster move both vessels. Should make for some fun moments.
Ok, after studying your code a bit, I think my assumption of it being server-based and multi-player was way off. I guess the grey ship I've seen is the "lolship", presumably just in for the "lulz"? :lol:
- I thought the mouse allowed for more fine-grained control over where the rocket was going; keys felt too clunky in a fast moving game.
Does it take a lot to get used to the mouse?
- Agree with thrusters being overpowered. Thing is, it's almost at the limit of power needed just to lift off that blue planet, last time I checked.
Would something like thrust levers (like in Orbiter) be a good idea?
- The ship is attracted by every body here, so stable orbits are in fact hard. I'm guessing once I get planets orbiting stars, with the centrifuge acceleration orbits should be more stable.
- lolship was in fact thrown in during the last 10 minutes of the jam. He's slightly dumb, doesn't know how to fly very well but always manages to land pretty smoothly :thumbup:
- Multiplayer would be good, and doing servers with javascript sounds like a fun challenge I might need help with! I'm thinking nodejs.
It reminds me of
Space Agency, but with better physics.
Argh, this is addicting! Came back from Oktoberfest at 3am, this kept me playing until 9
midtermssss!
That is really cool.
Ive been working on a similar idea for a while now, but Im not quite as far along as this just yet:
https://github.com/BruceJohnJennerLawso/Ignition_Engine
This is really well done. Definitely would be cool as some sort of online multiplayer game to run from a server.
Two quick questions:
-Are the orbit prediction traces conic sections, or some other type of projection?
(if so, do you mind if I study your code and adapt it for mine?)
- How does the collision detection work? does the game just reflect the velocity vector component thats normal to the surface when a collision is detected?
Thanks! Try doing a 48-hour sprint and force yourself to finish some part of it
The path prediction works by just brute-forcing the physics engine 600 steps forward (I think?) and drawing the path of the rocket. It does that every frame, so if you fire thrusters the prediction updates instantly. Physics is just sum of forces (gravity + friction + collision), then [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_method"]Euler[/ame]. Collisions with the surface is reflection of velocity vector
times a restitution constant, so some energy is lost.
The code is completely open, feel free to do things with it!
Hmm... I can't connect to the zhaop.me website to play it, is it just down temporarily for everyone, or is it just me?
Are you at a school or workplace with some kind of Internet filter? zhaop.me is actually on a free host, and I heard these filters love to block 'em.
Nice little app ! I've been trying to find that big star. Is it the red one ? I've been drifting for a long time now, and I can't find any other... :lol:
I see that you use PixiJS has a Library. I'm currently exploring the different technologies for canvas rendering. EaselJS was my favourite library, but I never saw PixiJS. What do you think about it ? It seems to handle WebGL much better than EaselJS. However, the compatibility isn't as effective. It runs very well in IE11 but not on IE10 or 9, even if the support the canvas.
The pink-red star is in fact the "big star". Much underwhelming and not deserving of its title? :lol:
Pixi.js was mostly a personal choice, I'm sure other libs would be just as appropriate. Pixi.js sells itself as the fastest rendering engine (and I bought into that, haha), and the API is similar to Flash (which I'm familiar with). I haven't thought of compatibility issues though,
Pixi claims to support IE9+?
I love how the gravity works. The center of gravity seems to be somewhere between the yellow and red stars. To find it, I stopped to see where the ship would fall. It fell towards it. So opposite of the yellow star had to be another body
The L1 point between yellow star and blue planet was fun to find too
1) Whenever I zoom out, fps drop to a slideshow (in firefox).
2) Maybe a (togglable) minimap in a corner could be useful.
Ah, more compatibility issues. I can't seem to even zoom on Firefox; also, it seems a lot slower. I'll be working on this.
Does your laptop fan also go on steroids?
Sorry for the long post, I'll be working on this as soon as I'm back on track! In the meantime always feel free to
hack this thing here.