Ilu Project Status Report 0

Okay, for the very first time, I’m going to show what I’ve got.

At this point I am working on the core simulation systems. I’m building the capabilities of the world, and not specific entities yet. Some time has been spent on the display engine; its a weird one to be sure but should be distinct from other games; unique in a hopefully good way. Some time has been spent on tooling; being able to build efficiently, once the simulation core is working, and iterate quickly on the content, will be paramount.

Let’s dive in.

A Quick Video:

1 - A simple vessel to control, some random rocks. Some impact damage. Some projectiles. Mostly its kind of the basic stuff, but it gives an idea of how the world and all entities are built from pieces, and how the pieces can be fractured and destroyed. It shows how fields, like heat and charge, will be incorporated into the simulation and visuals. This is all testing stuff, of course. Gotta build up the systems before building up the game on top of them!

2 - A view of some of the editing tools I’ve built to work with the novel rendering system. I’ll talk about that more but just as a tease for those graphics programmers out there; each of the shapes being rendered, the noisy smoky flowy shape, the goo, the simple box, etc, these are all rendering in the same draw call, with the same parameterization, each with a single quad. Pretty much the entire world can be consolidated down to one main shader. It doesn’t have the capabilities of major engines; in fact it is quite limited, but I think its expressive and unique and hopefully just feels a little bit different than what people have seen before.

So where we at?

Well, Core systems are in good shape and I’m happy with them. What does that mean? It means that I’m built the basic rendering methods, the engine code surrounding them, and that I can iterate relatively painlessly. That last one is pretty important, so I spend a good while making sure that game database updates can be applied instantly to most aspects of the game simulation. Rendering data is likewise reactive. In short, I’ve got a nice architecture to work from.

I’ve been over it once and will surely do it again, but I like the graphics concept I’ve got here. I must make it quite clear that I know there aren’t many graphical elements in the ‘gameplay’ scenes, but the components are there to layer in all of the game behaviors into game visuals. The complexity of the game should shine through its visuals; the visuals show the game, and not much more. That’s the goal in any case. Show everything about the simulation that needs to be shown, and avoid having too much extra texture. It’ll be complex enough when the systems are all in place and viewable.

Gameplay elements are of course lacking. There isn’t a game yet. There’s a collection of systems and tools to work with them.

Sound is an obvious gap as well. I’ve integrated fmod, and have spent a little time there, and the bindings to invoke audio are present. But, well, its the same as with the visuals; I’ve built the system, but not the content.

There are two important simulation systems to do next. The game sim needs the fields to interact with; think clouds of matter and energy that the vessels interact with as they move. Gasses and energies. And second, perhaps more importantly, is resource flows within a ship. As it stands, each component does what it does, but require no inputs to drive them. Inputs require, often, outputs from other components. This network of behaviors and connected systems is what will drive the heart of the game; your ship, how it works, and how you can change it.

With those in hand, it’ll be time to fully spec out the player ship, make sure it can be fully implemented, then build it. Then build more and more environments, other ships and entities, etc.

On top of essentials like an actual menu, saving and loading. Oh, gotta make some Steam achievements; that’ll be fun.

Okay, one step at a time.

Next post I think I’ll go into planned gameplay elements and the flow of the game. Thanks for listening!