Hello all,
I am a bit nervous because this is the first time that I bring this site http://www.simulated-universe.net to a larger audiance.
At the moment there is nothing, and this is really what I mean, more to see than a bit of the web pages.
The web server software that delivers these pages are written on my own, because I needed some special extensions for the communication with the simulation core. The simulation core is the part that makes the simulated universe work.
As we began the work, back in 2006, a group of 6 had the idea of creating an own browser game. It should be something special and we wanted to make the stars move even while you are not online and to give the player a 3 dimensional room to play in. I had the idea to create a kind of simulation that would make that possible and to connect the web browser through a special web server to the simulation. With this construct we could use a more efficient programming language than php. C/C++ was the choice.
But the project died because I am the only software engineer in the group and it is a huge work todo. So there is only me and the initiator of this project left.
We never gave up and I continued the work on the simulation. From all the ideas in the past years for the simulation, a core functionality has grown. This simulation core is very flexible and can be used for many different types of simulation.
We decided not to allow objects being smaller than 1mm. With this limitation we are able to create a room to play with about 3*10^18 light years in each direction. I think I never will use this much space for any kind of game. 
I am now working on this simulation core and giving my best to make it online as fast as possible. The first things to simulate are simple star systems, our own of course as the very first. While we first use the web browser interface to interact with the simulation core, later on a windows and a linux client is planned that allows a more complex interaction with the simulation core.
With the native clients the user is not restricted to a flat view as it is with the web browser.
How the game play for the browser game will be and what we really can create with the simulation core, no body knows.
I hope I do not need another four years to get it ready to use.
Nice concept simbad. Are your initial plans to let players just explorer, kinda like Noctis IV? And then add features as requested.
The first time it will be without any specials so you can only explore the universe. Even for only exploring you need a huge mass of different stars with there planets and all this will need a kind of outfit.
But we think of some kind of quests.
The system has a design that demands no restart of the server software to add features or change the behaviour of objects within the simulation, as long as the changes are not to heavy.
So you can prepare a quest, creating the objects with there behavior and then send a note to the players.
That is a great feature to be able to push small features out while not requiring restart of the server and maybe not even a browser update/download. Just exploration would be a nice time waster while you work on enhancing the engine/game. You could create some sort of webpage where maybe you could log planets/moons and other things found by players.
One possibility to fill the universe for a bigger test is to use existing data of the stars.
There are a lot of catalogs existing with position and color information. By the way: SIMBAD is such a database with star data. 🙂
With a bit of guessing and a bit of fantasy we can create star systems at the real position or at least nearby.
I did some discussion with myself about what kind of game we should implement and how the interaction should be done.
The very first version will get a browser frontend. If things are going good we add 3D native clients to communicate with the simulated-universe.
Now I am bit in trouble because I can give the game any style of game-play (i believe in my capabilities) but what would be essential for you the potential players. What would you expect for a good Space-Simulation (MMO)?
I guess it comes down on what you are offering to do at first and then seeing if that is what people want or are at least interested in. Right now your game will least have the exploration of galaxies worth of planets/stars. It's what can we do with that? Whether it is people colonizing new systems, harvesting resources, scientific research and other activities.
Ok.
I thought that gamers have a dedicated feeling of what they want to see in a space simulation game? My idea was to make it in a way that it fits into that. But it seems that it isn't so easy to do.
So we have different genre.
Trading (Elite)
Exploration
Fighting
Quests
Construction
Anything else ?
Definitely covers the basics and that should keep you well engaged and the fine touch up things can come later, I have always like a well done trade and exploration game, yeah fighting is in there too 😉
Because the simulated-universe gets a browser-game style interface in the beginning we are afraid to be seen only as another browser based game, that we are not.
So we need something that make it special. My idea is to give the player the ability to have a look outside the spaceship. Probably if it is landed on a planet. I am additionaly think about a point and click style ability to leave the ship and walk a bit around. Because of the limitations of a browser it will not be possible to navigate around.
Because of the simulation style characteristic of the game the ship cannot launch from planet if the captain is not on board. So if a player forgot to navigate him back to the ship cannot launch. 🙂
Is there any browser game outside that gives you such a possibility of viewing?
Checkout Battlestar Galactica Online. I have been in the beta and I am actually surprised at what they are doing with a browser game Simbad. Because you have combat (in cockpit) and you have interaction on basestars as well.
I try register for the Beta as well. But have to wait.
One thing we dont want to have in the simulated-universe is some kind of helper application, like the unitiy web player. The only thing we want to use is java script for some parts. But everything else should work with any standard browser. This makes it easier to play on the simulated-universe from cellphones and other platforms.
Besides: I am thinking of making a module and lines of code count for the project. Helps keep up the motivation.
If I remember correctly Simbad BGO is using a Unity web plugin to run their game. I see your motivation on having it work in only the browser/java because then you are almost guaranteed cross platform browser support.
So I added some english pages to the web-site with an informational text and on the status page I will report the module and line count for the revisions. I think about the last 10 or 15 revisions are getting listed there. If I can not see the table in whole on my notebook it will be to large and the oldest entries are going to be removed.
First simple info page : http://www.simulated-universe.com/info.html
And the status : http://www.simulated-universe.com/status/overview.html
More to follow.
Reached 10700 lines of code. All OS dependent code has been encapsulated. So the whole system should run on windows and linux as well.
I tried to compile the code on my linux server and found that the only errors I get for now is about functions not implemented yet for linux. It looks very well and I am very happy that I met my very own goal to have a software that will run on both OS without tricky code.
Congrats on the milestone Simbad.
Was reading over your 'Universe' description and had a question on "The resolution within the simulation is 1 millimeter. Object of a size below 1 millimeter can not be part of the simulation." Is that much granularity really needed? And in using that type of scaling are you increasing overhead on the running of the program?
Most systems get designed with lower requirements and have problems to get upgraded to meet higher ones. It is easier to strip down the resolution than to increase it. This is why I have requirements that maybe sound a bit strange and oversized.
The resolution defines the data types used for presentation of the position data. And so, of course does it have an impact on the speed of the program. But on the other hand I have some ideas in mind, that will outweigh the overhead.
For now I see no problem with the resolution.
As I expected all applications run on windows and linux. The abstraction layer for the OS is working good. For now I need no special trick within the OS independent part of the system, which is the important part.
Only the selection of the right header files is done with conditional compilation.
The WEb-Server is nearly to the state the V3 is now.
The Simulation has not seen any further improvements. I wait until the web-server is ready for usage. Maybe end of march 2011.
Within the native client I added a audio thread and changed the initialization sequence a bit. But even the native client is running the same on windows and linux.
The Web-Server, the software that got the main development for a while, is now online. It replaces the old software version. It is capable of loading shared-libraries where the construction of a web-page is done in native code. So one of the main features is working. Static content is no problem to deliver at all. The caching mechanism is work great.
The Software behaves the same on Windows and Linux. It is possible to even compile the software on a 32-Bit Linux system without any warnings and it behaves the same as on a 64-Bit Linux box. The same is valid for 32-Windows XP. The development is done on a Windows box and the first test are done there too.
But it runs on a 64-Bit Linux.
Anyway we have made great progress we made some decisions about the further development of the core technology and the game development.
The two things we develop are split into the Simulated-Universe and the PR-Browsergame.
The Simulated-Universe only stands for the core technology, Web-Server/Simulation/Native-Client, and PR-Browsergame is a application that uses this core technology.
Because of this splitting "Simulated-Universe" is more a development environment, someday, and has no longer todo with independent game development. PR-Browsergame is, guess, a browser game.
So I think it would be a good thing to start new threads in the appropriate categories if there are any news about the development.
The web-pages are heavily under construction for the next days.
Latest Post: Alliance Space Guard (a 3D spacesim with orbits and ship avionics!) Our newest member: Griewly Recent Posts Unread Posts
