Geiodo

Space is an online multiplayer, space exploration and dogfight game. Lately, my programming has become sloppy, and pointless, resulting in some bad gameplay. Likewise, I’ve decided to redo all of the code, aside from some networking code, and mainmenu things.

My main focus was to use the built in Unity physics engine. A physics engine is just something that takes in gravity, momentum variables, colliders, torque (And other physics-relevant data), and moves objects accordingly. There are many types of components for objects, but to explain this, I will cover just two. Unity works in a system of objects, all with special components that effect the object they are on. There are two mandatory components for an object. These two are the GameObject component, and the Transform component. The GameObject component just registers that the object exists, whereas the Transform component registers where in 3D space the object is, along with it’s rotation, and scale.

The Rigidbody component is just what tells the physics engine to apply to the object at hand.

Before I did the redo, the system worked off of the transform component – basically changing the value of position based upon script values that scale up, and down, as the player presses keys.

However, to permit the ship to collide, a rigidbody was required… This rigidbody caused the objects to spin out of control whenever hitting something like a planet – which turned out to be a pretty big hit!

I eventually got sloppy, and had to redo everything, as stated above.

Today the system moves based upon the rigidbody, and simply applies directional force at “Thruster points”. Sadly, this system removes the chaotic spin outs when colliding with things like the sun, and planets. This feature loss has caused the ratings of big fans to go kind of sour, and disappointed.

However, I have a plan. I can program the ship to do essentially the same thing!

Space’s ratings have gone down, but there is still hope!

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