There’s not much to be seen actually, but I wanted to share it with you guys (and the world! ;))
Anyway. There’s a LOT to be done still, but it’s slowly getting there.
Enjoy!
Normen: Added a line below the link to make the video work
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seems there’s something wrong with the youtube link 
watch?v=HBY3nLWXx3E&hd=1
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Cool, whats happening when you hit the borders? A new “galaxy quadrant” is created and added at that location? Or do you move the whole world to get an “infinite” galaxy?
It’s really nice
The galaxy’s size and stars’s placement are determined at galaxy creation. Every time it’s a new galaxy. There are 3 kinds. Elliptical, Spiral and barred.
Those quadrants are the octree’s leafs that gets filled at start up. For now each leaf has up to 2000 stars but will be adjustable depending on the machine it’ll run on.
As it is, every sun you see is already filled with information like planets (if any), moons, asteroid belts, oort cloud, etc. Their orbits, the goldilock zone. Whatever you can think of, it’s probably either there or planned. Each sun belongs to a particular class of star. I’ve even gathered the information on if and what kind, of life could be possible for each system. It’s not really in there, but eventually it will be.
For those that remember Star Control, this will be something similar.
So, although things are “static” once the world has been generated, it will be possible to jump to another galaxy if the player wishes to. But I don’t plan on letting them before they have gathered or constructed (crafted) the technology to do so.
I have to admit it’s quite an ambitious project. 
But behind it all, there’s a story. That’s what has triggered it all.
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nehon said:
It's really nice
Thanks. :)
But it's a little bland for now. ;) Fluff will come later.
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madjack said:
But it's a little bland for now. ;) Fluff will come later.
Good approach. Many people try to implement the fluff first when they dont know much about the engine yet ;)
Edit: btw, I just *loved* star control. Played it forever on my Amiga500.. Good ol' days ^^
normen said:
Good approach. Many people try to implement the fluff first when they dont know much about the engine yet ;)
Edit: btw, I just *loved* star control. Played it forever on my Amiga500.. Good ol' days ^^
Then you'll probably be happy to know that I intend to make a sort of mini-game like the one you could play in the original Star Control where you had several stars and your goal was to "conquer" them all. I don't quite remember it all, but I do recall you had a rotating tree of sort... I'll have to find that old game and do something similar.
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Here’s a second preview showcasing solar systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4dyYoukvP0
Since last posting, over 2 months ago :o, there has been a LOT of code cleanup (still need a ton!). I’m getting better with the engine, so that’s good. 
I hope you like.
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I like the smoothness of the camera movement and the camera transitions; they’re very professional feeling. I like the spinning planet on the interface too, it just feels right.
Keep up the great work!
~FlaH
Well, I can’t be take credit for the camera. Nehon is the camera man. 
As for the rotating sun, that’s me, but some changes will be made to it down the line. I have a steep learning curve to climb with GL shaders (.vert/.frag) to have things the way I want them to really look. But that’s just fluff, and for now, fluff is out of question. I’ve got more important stuff to work on.
But again, I digress.
So, thanks for the kind words.
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That’s cool to see how this is shaping up
good work madjack !
Thanks nehon.
BTW, would be it possible to modify the camera that when smooth camera is on it’s possible to have a flag to disable the automatic forward/backward camera movement? I find it extremely annoying when my ship is moving that the camera wants to pull back.
Oh and while I’m thinking about it, there seem to be a bug when the camera is facing the direction that the object is going forward to. What it does is bring the camera closer than it should be allowed to (setMinDistance).
Ex: Camera is in front of ship as it is moving forward. Camera pulls toward ship and gets so close that the ship disappears. Make sense to you?
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madjack said:
BTW, would be it possible to modify the camera that when smooth camera is on it's possible to have a flag to disable the automatic forward/backward camera movement? I find it extremely annoying when my ship is moving that the camera wants to pull back.
It's already in use setTrailingEnabled(false);
madjack said:
Oh and while I'm thinking about it, there seem to be a bug when the camera is facing the direction that the object is going forward to. What it does is bring the camera closer than it should be allowed to (setMinDistance).
Yeah that's because of the smoohing. The camera's movement is late compared to the target's movement so if the camera face the target, the target may catch it up...
maybe I should prevent the cam to be closer than the mid distance whatever append.
nehon said:
It's already in use setTrailingEnabled(false);
setTrailingEnabled is already set to false. :|
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…so I don’t get what you mean with
“BTW, would be it possible to modify the camera that when smooth camera is on it’s possible to have a flag to disable the automatic forward/backward camera movement? I find it extremely annoying when my ship is moving that the camera wants to pull back.”
Maybe my assumptions were wrong, but I was under the impression that smooth camera would only smooth movements that are user-triggered.
Meaning that, if zoom-in or out or rotate, it would do so smoothly. But what I’m experiencing is the camera moving off or in when my ship goes forward.
If I turn smoothing completely off, then zoom-in/out, it does so in steps. Rotation is fine, but it goes as fast as the mouse move. With smoothing on, it’s smoother, zooming is gradual. But it also moves the camera if there is forward momentum. The camera will move away from where it is attached.
I hope this is clearer.
Here’s the code I use to set the camera:
[java]
private void setCamera() throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException {
setMenuProgress(-1f);
getAppCamera().setFrustumFar(10000.0f);
getAppCamera().setLocation(pShipModel.getLocalTranslation());
ChaseCamera shipCam = new ChaseCamera(getAppCamera(), pShipModel, getAppInputManager());
shipCam.setSmoothMotion(true);
shipCam.setTrailingEnabled(false);
setMenuProgress(0.5f);
shipCam.setMaxDistance(250f);
shipCam.setMinDistance(1.3f);
if (!shipCam.isEnabled())
shipCam.setEnabled(true);
setShipCam(shipCam);
setMenuProgress(1f);
}
[/java]
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Yeah that’s intended, smoothing smooth the movement of the camera in a whole, but, I get it now.
You can tweak the Zooming, Rotation, Trailing and Chasing sensitivity of the camera.
Try to play with setChasingSensitivity(), the default is 5 try to set it to a higher value until the movement suits your needs.
Btw the javadoc on this method is wrong, i’m gonna fix it.
I’ll take a look and test.
Thanks.
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I thought I’d give a little update on this. Not that people are demanding to see or are sitting at the edge of their seat to have updates, but I took a screenie of a pretty scene and thought it would be nice to share it.
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Anyway, the game is coming along nicely although one might argue that there hasn’t been many new things. The reasons are many-fold, but I had to do a lot, and I mean A LOT, of cleaning up, fixing, proper way of doing things, rearranging, etc. That’s mostly done. There are still many things left to be tweaked so it’s the proper way to do them but I’m getting there.
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Then there has been really learning Nifty and other stuff…
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Anyway. The game is slowly getting there. Considering the long number of years since I haven’t had touched programming and that this is my first time programming in Java (ok, it’s been over 9 months now, so it’s not “new”, but still). I think things are progressing along just fine. Not at the speed I wish it would go forward to, but… Well, I’m happy with the result.
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Yes, yes, here is the screenshot so you can finally get to something interesting.
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Full resolution here.
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