Stellar Explorer, multiplayer space rpg

I’m working on a multiplayer space rpg and want to show an early demo.
The client uses Babylon and the server runs on node.

Left mouse click to move, hold and drag to rotate the camera and mouse wheel to zoom.
Enable sound if you want to hear the music.

https://jferret.com/client/

9 Likes

Really cool project! Now I get why you needed the sky textures :wink:

Just a note: As it is an eary demo you might already be aware of it but you should consider packing your textures differently. It transferred nearly 175MB on loading the page. :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

I wasn’t aware, thx for bringing that to mi attention.

I’m used to cache everything and clone/instance what i need, i guess that’s no good for a web app.

Maybe i should load what i need on the fly, or find another way?

I guess using jpeg for everything but normals would be enough to make it better. Or you could use .basis maybe?

Normals need to be high quality so I always stick to png for them. But I don’t know if you need the full resoltion. Smaller size textures can make a big difference but you have to see yourself if you can live with that. :slight_smile:

.basis lowers the quality allot but might be useful for some files.
I don’t see a problem with using jpeg.

Converted textures to jpeg, music to ogg and lowered resolution of the ship skins.
Added a big ass star :grin:

2 Likes

LIKE!

It took a couple of attempts to figure out “move to click”.

Was expecting wasd. Also, BABYLON.TOUCHUI would be cool.

You probably already have plans for those things.


Are you planning to land on planets or moon?

For that, a solution to GRAVITY was found using an internal ‘truncated cuboid’.

Giving 6 flat planes to be detected with a downRay, when a different plane is detected, the core rotates up.

Ico-sphere gravity solution would be ideal. I couldn’t get multi-directional gravity to work (for all objects AND the camera)[tricky] So I just pull the whole planet into “top” position. Surely, better solutions await. Astr0neer appears to use a “conversion” from sphere to flat plane, once the sphere is close enough (to land).

If I get another chance, I might solve gravity more like that (illusion of a round planet, switch to plane). But that implies a whole different trickiness!

Maybe this is helpful, or just amusing. : )


Anyway,

LIKE the atmosphere around planet and sun - is that atmosphere shader?

gr8 realism.

:eagle:

2 Likes

I’m happy you like it :smile:

I’m aiming at desktops but might add touch controls at a later stage.
I don’t have plans to land on planets, just docking on stations for now.

Next is stations, generating a galaxy and jumping to other star systems.

The sun is a sphere and a particle system.
The planet is 3 spheres, one for the surface, one a little bigger for the clouds and one for the atmosphere. The atmosphere needs work, its just a sphere with a blend mode.

2 Likes

Yep, that is really cool!

Smart, to limit to desktops… and space stations.

Also Cool that you can do anything with space warps!

No limit to the different types of planet systems and space warps possible.

Creating planets from Blend Modes seems brilliant to me!

Last month, I made a nebula by stacking 10 BILLBOARD ALPHA_ONEONE planes (a galaxy too).

Its a cartoon space at 60FPS! : )

Your system is nicely realistic.


If I ever try icosphere gravity again, happy to share back.

Gravity, (it turns out) is a really tricky problem, maybe a good feature request? Idk. Lol. : )

Nice to meet you @JFerret

Gr8 work.

:eagle:

1 Like

Got basic galaxy generation working.
Generates star systems with planets, moons, stations and asteroid fields.
The result is saved to a json file and loaded by the server.

Added a basic mini map, system map and galaxy map.
You can jump to another system, just click on one of the dots on the galaxy map.

Menus are now shown, you can create an account or just click trough to use the test account.

Added a progress indicator to the loading screen.

1 Like

Separated the client from the server.
Client runs on a regular web host.
Server no longer sends assets, only handles logic.

Updated the link in the initial post.

1 Like

Added:
Remote player loading
Position updates
Music cycle
12 music tracks
Stations
Station docking and launch
Galaxy map system selection and jump button
System map selecting and icon
Left mouse selecting and selection icon
Right click menus

Fixed:
System loading bug

1 Like

Check this out you might find some use out of it.

I dug through my old files and found my old Celest generator. It will let you generate the data for a pseudo-scientific solar system. Never got to the moons, but it will handle the star type, and the major bodies around it. Just change the seed that you feed the system to get a whole new star system. Don’t expect to see a “Sun” like star though as they are rare rare rare rare rare.

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#CDIK3X#1

If you look in the console you will see the output. It will tell you the Star, its gravitational sphere of influence, the light data, its mass, its rarity, the strength of its hydrogen lines etc. Then the zones around the star and its features. Everything is randomly generated from as many real world values as I could find at the time and creates mathematically probable star systems.

You could use this data in your game. It is missing some of the rarer and theoretical planet types as well like Binary planets, Circumbinary, Coreless etc.

Hope its useful for you and if you need any help with it let me know.

2 Likes

Very useful, i don’t know that much about planet types yet, saved the link to my space tools.

Was nice to see you ingame!
Going to add other control schemes so people can use what they are used to.

This looks fun! Reminds me of my old “playground” Space Demo … good old times :blush:

5 Likes

Cool space demo!

Another update.

Added:
Star lens flare
4 star types
Glow layer
Jumping between planets
Loading screen title
Random music track at start

Updated:
System and galaxy map graphics
Planet loading, all planets are loaded, 15 types
planet and star scale

Fixed:
Galaxy generation and loading bugs
Same music track repeating
Rewrote most of the star system loading to fix z-buffer issues

1 Like

@iiceman your posts were gr8 a few years ago. Good 2cu back. : )

Working hard on the space station gui and logic, when finished i can finally start on game-play.

Added:
7 space stations
6 space station skins
Space station icon to mini map
Space station gui
Asteroid field icon to system map
Jumping to asteroid fields
Ship editor
Ship stats
Player stats
Server account updating and saving
Name generator for planets and stars

3 Likes