P0_A9

I have been working on extensive debugging, and extensive bug fixes recently.

I am going to test every major system before adding any new features.

So far, most of the code seems quite solid.

I have mostly finished the day/night system.

It was quite difficult, and I had to fix some tricky bugs, but I am extremely pleased with how it turned out.

All planets now have a gradual day/night cycle, that varies for each planet.

This day length is synced with the planet surface, so that when the player lands, the sun position and light settings are all consistent.

It is also synced with the server time, so it is consistent between runs as well.

This adds a lot of realism to the project.

I have also made some improvements to the surface to space transition by improving the light transitions from “space” to “surface” as the user passes through the atmosphere.

I have made some more improvements to the project, such as adding other network players to the ship radar systems, so that they can be intercepted, etc.

The next major goal is to add a day/night cycle to the planets in the solar system. I already have a day/night cycle on the planet surface itself, but the sun position and rotation is static in space.

I need to not only add the day/night cycle, but I need to make sure that it syncs with the planetside day/night cycle, so that landing on the day side and night side is consistent at all time.

I have also added realistic longitude and lattitude values for all of the planets, in the future, I intend to use this to add realistic region to be used for weather, climate, etc.

I have made some optimisations to the graphics and performance of the simulation.

I have discovered that the grass system is responsible for a significant performance impact. In some cases, turning off the grass doubled the frame rate.

To solve this, I have added a new graphics options gui which allows users to specify the density and view distance of the grass. In this way, users can adjust the detail of the grass to match their system’s capabilities.

In future, of course, I will need to add far more options for customisation.

I have fixed several bugs and made several improvements to the project.

In particular, I have fixed a long-standing bug with the water system.

There were strange graphical and lighting issue at long range and short range, these were fixed by forcing the shader to run in “forward” mode.

The next goal with the project is to add the ability for network players to intercept each other in the world.

This is quite difficult, since there are, first of all, vast distances and velocities involved, and second of all, there is a complex floating origin system that shifts the world according to player movement.

I want players to be able to move to the location of another player in the world, as well as follow that player even if they are moving at high speed.

The initial testing is going well, but this is a complex issue.

The next part of the project is to add realistic (or at least, semi-realistic) orbital mechanics so that capital ships can not only experience gravity, but also enter orbit around planets, singularities, and other stellar phenomena.

Currently, shuttles and smaller ships (and players) use rigidbody physics to experience gravity, however larger capital ships (Ships with walkable interiors) don’t.

The problem is that the ship needs to remain in position at the origin, so, to orbit a planet, the world needs to move around the ship, not the other way around.

I have come up with a concept for this, and so far, it seems to work well.

With no frame of reference, it is actually impossible to tell that it is the planet that is moving, not the ship.

I have finished the internal messaging system in the project.

It is quite simplistic, but works well.

I have also made several more improvements to the GUI’s and user input, and I have added various tags that the user can user to quickly add their current position and zone to the messages that they are sending, to make it easier to find other players.

The next goal in the project is to add the ability for the players ship to orbit planets in a realisitic manner.