Posted by Strauji on Jul 7th, 2019

07/07 - 06/04...hmmm...

3rd day of the 1st Month:

So, i've been coding this project for 1 month straight(well almost, i do procastinate sometimes), and so far i've already done 3 core systems:

Blocks, structural pieces: Well there's a few screeshot of them, they are just pieces that you'll use to build your ship, they can be used to design how you ship will structuraly look

Weapons: I've posted some GIFs of them too, they are the pieces you'll use to break other player's pieces, you aim and shot, pew, the enemy piece took some damage. There are no melee weapons yet.

AND THRUSTERS: I haven't showed they yet, i've finished that system yesterday, and they are so far the most complex i've coded until now. The thruster itself is divided in a few minor systems, which are the focus of this devlog.

So let's begin:

Mass

Well until now, nothing had mass, and the force applied to move were just 8*cos(angle) in X and 8*sen(angle) in Y a pretty functional concept to test, but it don't behave any close to reality, you could have a fu** ton of piece pĺaced on your right and nothing on your left, and you would move straight foward with no trouble. Now i've created a system that will move your center of mass based on the weight distribuition of your ship, and then compute how you ship will behave when your press 'W'(will it rotate? will it even move?). The system right now isn't perfect, there's some flaws and inconsistencies, but overall it works well.

I forgot to take some screenshots middle development, but the red dot shows where the center of mass is(the game itself is in debug mode)

With that system done, i've wrote the thruster system(yes, thruster is a subsystem of thruster.)

Thruster's thruster

Why the speed is 8? Well, 8 don't even makes sense at all, that was just a random number i've put to test.

Until now, the speed was linear, you'd move eight for each direction you try, this also don't behaves as i want, i mean, what the point of building ships if you can't go any faster? That's why i've wrote a piece that increases your speed, and it works together with the center of mass. You have to balance well these pieces, 'cuz if you don't, you ship will start to build torque, and as in reality, torque will make you ship spin. Also, your ship have a discrete number for mass, which also will be accounted in how much speed you'll gain, so, you need thrusters if you want to go fast, and more thrusters if you want to go faster and be strong.

The torque shenanigan made this ship perfect balanced, as all things should be.

Meet the Warp Driver, the ship which was gone so fast that warped the barriers of the arena.(*This was fixed... i think )

Woah! This ship can go at 70+, a huge improvement from the 8 thing, don't ya think?

Well, i had a lot of fun testing how fast can i go and how assymetric can i make the ships, this system is also not perfect yet, but it's working nice, it's playble afterall =)

and the last but not the least:

LLamas!

Ok, you know why its 8, but it's 8 what?

Well, the game have a sci-fi touch, as you can build a spaceship to fight in the stars, for reasons i have yet to think reveal, and having said that we can see that the units of measurement from real life right now have little to do with it. So i went to think how can i measure how fast you are going...

And then i have a eureka moment...

WHAT IS MORE SCI-FI THAN LLAMAS?

Look at that:

Look at how fast this spitting little fluffy bastard can run

If you live in a enough scientifically advanced society that's able to upkeep star fights, you'd probably use llamas as units to measure speed and power, that's the only logically path, and those who don't agree with me are wrong, you can't change my mind.

Having said that, Void Strike's official unit of power is Llamathrust, speed is Llamas/hour and torque is Angular Llama.

Check out these three systems working together:

Holy f***k i've forgot about adding mass to the core, there's too many llamas now

But things get better when you try to balance your ship, using mass and more thrusters:

Llamaster than you.

And now at the end of the day, it's very nice seeing the result of this barely working well written system.

Hope you, the reader, enjoy. See ya beyond the stars =)