Bussard: programming spaceflight sim

[technomancy]

Just released beta-2 of the game with all the new editor features and a few new missions:

https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/ ... 2016-08-13

Latest downloads are at https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard

Please play and let me know what you think!

[PetrGasparik]

Hi,
I've just found out this game and I like it.

As a newbie, it is unclear to me how to log in to station.
I got to Kenapa Station, have bought account there but it is unclear to me how to log in.
I think I have to call ssh() with parameters, but how? ssh.lua does not helped me, as I am not lua programmer

[technomancy]

Hi Petr. Sorry this is unclear; the functionality for buying accounts is very rudimentary. I have added it thinking that some point down the line there would be some challenges that require it, but right now it has no purpose in the game yet.

That said, you should be able to go into the console and run ssh("username", "password") giving it the username/password that you chose when you created the account. But it's been a while since I tried this, and I may have broken it; I should take a closer look. Anyway, you can play around with the game and just ignore the account part for now. Have fun.

[PetrGasparik]

That's what I tried. And yes, it is broken

[Germanunkol]

Hey, this is really cool. Love the idea, and I like what I see so far. Sadly I couldn't get very far (because of the first point in the list below).
Here's a bit of feedback to what I saw so far:

• After pressing Ctrl+m once to get to the mail, Ctrl+Enter also opens the mail, instead of the command line as before. How do I get back to the command line? ESC closes mail... I must be missing something obvious?
• Ctrl+Tab seems to cycle the list, just like Tab does (if I press it more than once).
• When zooming in, I expect the ship to get bigger
• The controls are great fun, I just sped right past the asteroid I was trying to reach, then had no fuel left - cool mechanic!
• Same goes for trying to get a somewhat stable orbit around an object - with the current trajectory being visualized, that's quite fun!
• I feel like the trajectory is too bright/thick. I'd make it transparent. Even though it's important, it shouldn't be the only thing I see. I'd also leave a small gap between the start of the trajectory and the ship, which would look better I think.
• The current velocity could also be displayed at the ship's position instead of the top corner. That would be more intuitive, I believe.
• Where the velocity vector is right now, I expect an image of the currently targeted object.
• Are you going to replace the ship graphic? I like the simplistic look of the UI, but I'd make the environment much richer, more effects (subtle, but cool?), more colors etc. Maybe an Engine trail? If you want, I can also give a planet-shader I once wrote.

I look forward to trying this again!

Edit: Why does the furthest part of the trajectory jiggle so much when near a planet? The part of the trajectory closest to the ship seems to be correct, but the hind part is never correct, it seems. If there's a calculation error there, maybe just show less of the trajectory? Example:

[raidho36]

What's up with the trajectory HUD though?

[PetrGasparik]

raidho36 - the first one is really a bug. pressing Ctrl-M and then Ctrl-Enter is not tested, as we can see
you should press Ctrl-M to get to mail and back and then Ctrl-Enter to get to console.

As for visualizing of things - I believe it is purpose of the game, to modify the HUD

[raidho36]

No I mean the way the estimated trajectory just goes apeshit.

[technomancy]

Thanks for trying it out; glad you like it!

[*] After pressing Ctrl+m once to get to the mail, Ctrl+Enter also opens the mail, instead of the command line as before. How do I get back to the command line? ESC closes mail... I must be missing something obvious?

You can use ctrl-alt-b or ctrl-pageup/pagedown to switch through open buffers. I changed ctrl-enter to toggle the whole editor itself instead of just toggling the console, but I forgot to update the documentation before the beta.

I need to find a way to make buffer switching clearer; my bad. There's a cheat-sheet type thing in flight mode, but I am having a hard time coming up with a way to display commonly-used key bindings unobtrusively once the editor is open.

[*] Ctrl+Tab seems to cycle the list, just like Tab does (if I press it more than once).

Yes; it cycles by distance to the player, whereas tab cycles by distance to the star.

[*] Are you going to replace the ship graphic?

Probably at some point, but the current graphic is designed to reference the Turtle graphics from Logo, (because Bussard is largely inspired by Logo's philosophy of learning) so it is intentionally simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28p ... anguage%29

Edit: Why does the furthest part of the trajectory jiggle so much when near a planet? The part of the trajectory closest to the ship seems to be correct, but the hind part is never correct, it seems. If there's a calculation error there, maybe just show less of the trajectory?

Part of this is due to the fact that getting close to a gravity well causes nondeterministic gravitation due to having an unpredictable amount of time between ticks. But I don't think that is the sole cause; there is also a bug where the projection fails to account for the class of the object being gravitated. It's being tracked here: https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/issues/124

If you want, I can also give a planet-shader I once wrote.

Wow, that is really cool. I haven't really done much with shaders yet. My only worry is that it might be difficult to make it look consistent since I have graphics for real planets in the Sol system which aren't animated, and having programmatically-generated ones in other systems might be odd. But maybe it could be adapted to render simple static images or something.

[Germanunkol]

My only worry is that it might be difficult to make it look consistent since I have graphics for real planets in the Sol system which aren't animated, and having programmatically-generated ones in other systems might be odd. But maybe it could be adapted to render simple static images or something.

That's no problem. The program does two things:
1. It autogenerates a 2d-planet texture (sort of like a map)
2. It renders this map as a 3d Planet by distorting it using something like a fish-eye distortion.

I don't think it would be too much work disabling the first part and using your own images instead. But I'd have to look into it, it's been a few years since I wrote that shader...
But yeah, I agree, consistent graphics are much more important than using fancy effects.