Solar-Sim Devlog

As requested by John in a comment post, a new command has been added today: /list

Typing /list all by itself will display a list of different categories of objects that you can /warp to, such as planets, asteroids, and moons (satellites).

Typing /list category will display a list of all Solar-Sim objects within that category. To see an example of how this works, type this:
/list saturn satellite

You can instantly travel to any of the listed objects with the /warp command!

The /warp command was improved today so multiple ships warping to the same object have a much smaller chance of ending up directly on top of each other. Your ship’s position will be determined by calculating a random point along an orbit 100,000km from the center of the object you want to warp to.

This orbital distance is larger for certain objects:

• Neptune and Uranus: 125,000km

• Jupiter and Saturn: 150,000km
• Sol (the Sun): 2.5 million kilometers

Your ship will automatically re-orient itself to face the object you just warped to. The only caveat with this is /warp won’t adjust your ship’s pitch. This means if you held down your right mouse button and moved your ship’s nose to face the North Star, and then you typed “/warp saturn”, your ship’s nose will still be pointed upwards at the North Star, as in the screenshot below.

Finally, the /zoom command gives you a little more help if you type “/zoom” all by itself. It’ll tell you that 2 options are available.

1. A simpler version, where you can type “/zoom in” or “/zoom out”. The “/zoom in” option will narrow your field of view and also slow down your ship. This allows you to see smaller objects better.
2. For experts, you can specify your own field of view by typing “/zoom #”, where # is a number between 5 and 45. Typing 45 is the same as typing “/zoom out”, and 20 is the same as “/zoom in”. Unlike the simpler mode, this option doesn’t automatically alter your flight speed… and you can narrow your field of view further than with the simpler “/zoom in” option.

The screenshot below shows what a field of view of 5 degrees looks like when orbiting Jupiter. In this view, you can see the Sun rather easily (if your ship is pointed at it). The Sun is very difficult to find from Jupiter when in the default 45 degree field of view; it is easy to miss among the starfield background.

Most of the updates made over the past few days to Solar-Sim were “behind the scenes” types of changes. Here’s a highlight of them:

• Fixed the /group command so if you’re grouped and you type /group with nothing after it, it doesn’t send a blank line to the group chat window anymore.

• Added /groupinfo command, which brings up the Group Information screen. A future update will bind this command to a hotkey (such as F2).
• Renamed “Combat” chat window to “TBD” (to be determined). I want to make this chat window go away, but Multiverse hard-coded the number of chat windows in several places, so this task will take more time than its worth right now. I’ll come back to it later.
• Started to investigate voice chat. I updated the server’s firewall so the voice chat server actually works, but I’ve disabled the default voice chat channel for now. The intended direction for this is group members will get their own voice chat channel (which is why I messed around with the group code).
• Added /help command. I’m not happy with the current format, and this may eventually change to pop up a window.
• Character names are now checked for uniqueness and profanity. This change consumed the bulk of the last few days, as Multiverse doesn’t ship with any code to accomplish this. 10+ years of running a M.U.D. has taught me this is a necessary feature!
• New player ships don’t spawn on top of each other anymore. New players are randomly distributed in an area very close to the Sun. A future change will likely expand this area so ships aren’t packed so closely together.
• 4 spacecraft are now tracked by Solar-Sim. These are:
  1. Deep Impact

  2. Stardust
  3. STEREO-A
  4. STEREO-B

  All 4 of these spacecraft currently share the same 3D model. Each spacecraft is shown larger than Solar-Sim’s 1mm:25km scale… otherwise they would be too tiny to see.

Much more work is needed in the area of groups and voice chat. I was hoping Multiverse’s code in this area would be OK as-is, but I’d say these 2 features aren’t production-ready yet. Chat channels could also use some TLC… the “Local” and “System” tabs you see in the chat window aren’t used for anything (again, this is how Multiverse currently ships).

If you’re having difficulty spotting the Sun from Jupiter and beyond, you can type this new command to remove the starfield background:

/starfield off

The background stars can be turned back on again by typing:

/starfield on

The /warp command has been updated today to allow spaces within object names. This means it is now possible to “/warp Tempel 1″ or “/warp 90377 Sedna”.

All major planets and natural satellites are identified in Solar-Sim by their proper names, which consist of 1 word (so no spaces needed in the /warp command).

Dwarf planets and asteroids are named according to their official designation, such as “90377 Sedna” or “99942 Apophis”. The /warp command now lets you warp to them with either the full official name (e.g.: “/warp 99942 Apophis”), or a simpler alias which has the number omitted (e.g.: “/warp apophis”). Pluto is the sole exception to this, as it is the only dwarf planet in Solar-Sim that doesn’t have a numeric designation.

Here’s the list of dwarf planets and asteroids currently in Solar-Sim, as of today:

• 5535 Annefrank (alias “Annefrank”)

• 99942 Apophis (alias “Apophis”)
• 1 Ceres (alias “Ceres”)
• 136199 Eris (alias “Eris”)
• Pluto
• 90377 Sedna (alias “Sedna”)

Warping to comets is a bit more complicated, as comets are typically named after the person(s) who discovered them, and each discoverer may have found multiple comets. To reach these solar objects, you’ll need to specify the comet’s number. Each comet will have an alias that doesn’t require a slash.

Comets currently in Solar-Sim:

• 1P/Halley (alias “Halley”)

• 9PTempel 1 (alias “Tempel 1″)
• 103P/Hartley 2 (alias “Hartley 2″)
• 81P/Wild 2 (alias “Wild 2″)

All of the above, except for Pluto, currently appear in Solar-Sim as a plain white sphere. These will be replaced by more realistic-looking models in the months ahead.

Many more asteroids and comets will be added to Solar-Sim. Requests are welcomed, with preferential treatment given to objects that will be visited by space probes over the coming years. The comet Hartley 2 is a good example, as it will be visited by the EPOXI mission next year (October 2010).

I made some improvements today which allowed me to increase Solar-Sim’s scale by a magnitude of 4. This means all models now appear 4 times larger than before. Solar-Sim’s new scale is 1mm:25km.

At Solar-Sim’s new scale, it is still very easy to see our Sun from Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The Sun can be seen from Jupiter and Saturn, but it is difficult to find from Jupiter and extremely difficult to spot from Saturn. (The Sun is just 1 or 2 pixels wide when you’re at Saturn).

I was able to reduce your ship’s “in-flight turbulence” (for lack of a better term). In plain English: the further away from the Sun you get, the more your ship will appear to vibrate up and down as you move around. This effect is not intentional. I was able to reduce it by half, but it won’t be eliminated completely until Multiverse releases a server update to address this.

Last, but not least, I introduced a new command: /speed

You can adjust your ship’s flight speed at any time by typing /speed number, where the number you specify is between 100 and 30000. 1000 is your ship’s default speed. I “capped” this command at 30000 because at higher values your ship will start “rubber-banding”.

I timed how long it took me to go from the Earth to the Moon at a /speed of 150. It took a little over 2 minutes. Your assignment of the day: how long did it take the crew of Apollo 11 to travel from the Earth to the surface of the Moon?

Extra credit: if your Solar-Sim flight speed is millimeters per second, and 4 millimeters in Solar-Sim equals 10 real-life kilometers, what value would the new /speed command need to accept in order to simulate Apollo 11’s flight to the Moon?

Note: Due to today’s patch, your Multiverse client will automatically download some updated files the next time you connect to Solar-Sim.

As requested by John in the comments, here’s what you can currently /warp to. As this list will grow over time, I’ll add an in-game command or a web page where an up-to-date list may be retrieved:

Amalthea
Ananke
Apophis
Callisto
Carme
Ceres
Charon
Deimos
Dione
Earth
Elara
Enceladus
Epimetheus
Europa
Ganymede
Halley
Helene
Himalia
Hyperion
Iapetus
Io
Janus
Jupiter
Lysithea
Mars
Mercury
Mimas
Moon
Neptune
Pasiphae
Phobos
Phoebe
Pluto
Rhea
Saturn
Sinope
Sol
Tethys
Titan
Uranus
Venus

Happy /warp’ing!

As there are only 2 hours left in the month, this’ll be my last blog post for April (imagine that!).

I’m quite pleased with the progress made since my last major blog update, so I thought I’d share a few highlights with you:

• Significantly reduced the distance between moons and their “floaty names” (the text hovering above it that tells you which moon it is). Floaty names were previously too high above the object; in some cases a moon that was in the center of the screen had its name appear on the very top of the screen, or not at all.
• Solved the problem where the Sun could not be seen from Jupiter.
• The Sun/Jupiter fix allowed me to increase the scale of Solar-Sim by a factor of 5.  (Meaning all models now appear 5 times bigger than before).  Asteroids and comets are still too small to see, but moons are much easier to see now.
• Added the /zoom command, which enables you to narrow your field of view so smaller objects are easier to see.  This command also slows down your character’s movement speed, so that you move closer to smaller objects without racing past them by mistake.
• Most objects in the Solar System are now textured with realistic images.  Improvements need to be made in this area, and I need to do a thorough review of the image catalog to ensure Solar-Sim isn’t violating any copyrights.
• As noted in my previous post, Solar-Sim’s battery backup system has been upgraded.  We should be able to keep running for up to 2 hours if local power gets knocked out due to thunderstorms.
• Solved the problem where newly-created characters would enter Solar-Sim significantly below the ecliptic plane.   (By “significant” I mean “hundreds of millions of kilometers”).  New characters now enter Solar-Sim close to the Sun… well inside Mercury’s orbit.  Toasty!

The focus for May will be to replace the default fantasy-based character avatars with something more appropriate for space travel.  The new avatars should also get rid of the constant “flickering avatar” problem.

In May I also plan on replacing the sample mini-map that appears in the top-right corner of the screen.  The new map will show an orbital diagram plot for the major planets.   I would like to have it update in real-time to show in “radar” fashion if you’re approaching a planet, but that will require some more research… so I’m not making any promises on that item right now.

Finally, more moons and asteroids will be added as time permits.

See you in May!

Much has happened since my last post!  Here’s a recap:

• Patcher / online asset repository is online.
• Succesfully tested connecting to Solar-Sim (and grabbing updates from the patcher) from a client PC.
• Replaced 8,000+ star models with a skybox texture, which improved framerates tremendously.  This took a lot of work as I built the skybox texture myself.  Do some Google searches for a realistic starfield skybox texture and you’ll definitely come up short!  (At least I did).  I got around this by writing a Perl script which reads a star catalog and generates textures for all 6 faces of the skybox.  Stars are sized according to their apparent magnitude as observed from Earth.  Especially bright stars are colored according to their spectral type.
• Added the /warp named solar body command (for example: “/warp earth”).  This allows you to instantly travel to any planet, moon, asteroid or comet currently in Solar-Sim.
• Compared screenshots in Solar-Sim against other sites on the Internet that generate 2-D images of solar bodies against a starfield backdrop.  I wanted to check, for example, that if NASA says Mercury is currently supposed to be near the Orion constellation if you’re looking at Mercury from the Sun, that Solar-Sim isn’t showing it someplace else.  One embarassing problem that I corrected with this check was the Big Dipper (and everything else for that matter) needed to be horizontally flipped because I had made a fundamental mistake when converting the star catalog’s coordinate system to Multiverse’s.
• Added Solar-Sim’s first minor planet (“Ceres”), first near-Earth asteroid (“Apophis”), and 14 moons.  (Much more will be coming soon now that I have the basics out of the way!)
• Increased Solar-Sim’s accuracy from 1 hour to 10 minutes.
• The name of each solar body floats above it as you move within range.  More distant bodies can be clicked on to display the name.

Now that all of these changes are in, I’m feeling much more comfortable about opening up Solar-Sim for “demo” purposes.  I’m not ready to call it Alpha testing yet, as there’s still some important changes and features yet to be added.

Chief among the changes needed before moving to “Alpha”:  I need to replace the player avatars from humans wearing leather armor to something a little more survivable in space (I’m thinking spaceships here, folks!).  The mini-map that appears in the top-right corner needs to be replaced as well.