StarMade Preview: Introducing Planets!

[schema]

Hello and welcome to StarMade,

This preview introduces a very special new feature into StarMade: fully landable & editable Planets!


Planets
The reason for the long wait until the next update was, because I was working on a very special feature: Planets. It is very hard to do, but I definitely wanted to include this into StarMade.

Problems

• 
  Size: The first problem is pretty obvious. Planets have to be huge. I worked day and night to optimize the StarMade engine to generate, load and draw segments (chunks) a lot faster.
  
• 
  Shape: This might not be a question since everyone's first intention would be: 'Round'. But round problems have a lot of serious disadvantages, both technical and in gameplay. One technical problem for example is, that most of a planets mass is under the surface, leading to a lot of data generated that won't be used at all. Another problem is gravity: A central force would only work on planets the size of actual planets. Though this might be possible to do theoretically, I thought that it's already difficult to find players in one world. On a smaller planet, central gravity would end up letting the player stand diagonally on surfaces, which one hand would confuse the player, and on the other blur the lines dimensions. You can't squarify a cycle.

Solution
I thought long and hard and finally came up with a solution both unique, and practical to use: Disk Worlds
Making planets disks would give me an efficient way to use surfaces, and also keep the gameplay simple by having only one up!


Teaser
We are working hard one a lot of other stuff, including a new trailer for StarMade (finally).
The planet update will probably done within the next week, so I hope I can shorten the time with some development screenshots:
First Tests:


Taking its shape:


More shaping:


Adding some color & action:


New feature: Mixed colored lighting:


Adding atmosphere


View from far away:


The end of the world:


View on mars like planet:


View on earth like planet (dummy textures)


thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema

 

[canadianchuck]

the sky effects look really nice.

 

[VulpesCursor]

Have you ever read the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett? This made me instantly think of them.

 

[schema]

one of my favorite authors

 

[Ikaruga]

The earth-like planet really looks great !
How do you plan to integrate planets to the gameplay ? Will they be places to get some loot, for example ?

 

[schema]

They will be places to mine, loot, build bases, destroy, basically, you can do anything you like there.
Different planet types will have different types of materials & minerals, so exploration is encouraged. They will also be they only structure (for now), that will be visible from sectors away.

There will be of course an infinite amount of planets.

 

[beetlebear]

And not all planets will be the same either, expect something new around every corner of the universe.

 

[Kanuut]

yes

yes

yes

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES