FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → Endless Orbits

Endless Orbits

By wevel

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5133.0034
Fun4872.8434
Innovation1893.5833
Theme1923.8533
Graphics3653.2634
Humor3902.1925
Mood4562.8330

Comments

sinusquell 2020-10-05 16:45

I played around with the web version a bit, it was fun and I think the idea is pretty good :)

quinn-patrick 2020-10-05 16:52

Okay, this was something kind of cool that I wasn't expecting. I'm sure you're aware of how buggy it is, so I won't give you a hard time over that, but I always like seeing orbital dynamics and physics games. I made one a few months back (not an LD game) that you can check out if you want: https://quinn-patrick.itch.io/ecliptic. It has N-Body dynamics programmed in, but only uses 2-body physics for the actual game, for the sake of playability, so I commend you trying to make N-Body work for a real time game.

finalforeach 2020-10-05 16:58

If your planet crashes into another one it says your planet has run out of materials. Is this intentional?

anomay 2020-10-05 17:02

I wonder why some orbits often shake...

Interesting physical game!

cagibi 2020-10-05 17:04

That's a nice simulation, it's always interesting to see projected trajectories of a planet's chunks. No need for music, there's no sound in space :P

wevel 2020-10-05 18:55

@sinusquell Thank you, I would recommend trying a standalone build if you can, as very few background stars render in the WebGL build.

@quinn-patrick Thanks, I had a look at that other game, its pretty neat. I wonder what its like with N-body physics, I guess its gets quite confusing.

@finalforeach Yes, its mostly a result of how I check how much planet mass it remaining, but also I wasn't sure how to deal with some other object colliding with it so I left it as it was.

@anomay The orbits shake due to floating point inaccuracy combined with a poor method of integrating acceleration and velocity. The accuracy is based on the time step, I use 0.005 for the actual update, but only 0.02 for the prediction so its not particularly accurate.

@cagibi Thank you. I hadn't thought of that for the music, but I guess it works.

cliffracerx 2020-10-06 16:59

This is a nifty little toy! I'm glad to see I wasn't alone in playing with orbital physics for this LD, and you went way farther than I did with every planet being part of an active N-body simulation. Prediction felt a little janky sometimes (especially when trying to shoot things), and the gameplay wasn't super clear to me, but had fun nevertheless.

Nice work getting all this set up in just 48 hours, particularly the prediction system!

gonzalol 2020-10-07 12:24

It's an interesting interpretation of the theme. And the designs are great.

judgezedd 2020-10-07 15:45

Interpreted the theme really nicely, the systems work together well and it was a good relaxing time, I thought.

bootak 2020-10-07 22:05

Hats off for making N-body physics game for LD48! Well, that's a thing about orbital mechanics games. The idea sounds cool, but turning that into actual game is whole different story. That's why I naver had enough courage to try to make something similar, well done!

enderr42 2020-10-08 13:39

OK, i see simulations - especially physics, i upvote. Graphics-wise the background is kinda mesmerising. I do not know what to tell you about the "toy" except that we need more stuff like this) I also will be looking at the source for research purposes(if you dont mind), bc i had an itch to do something with n-body physics for a long time.

vrerabek 2020-10-09 13:23

Very nice! It's pretty relaxing to play :)

aligator 2020-10-11 17:56

Pretty nice simulation, fit's well into the theme. I like it :-)

omnes-ludos 2020-10-23 13:56

Nice! It has F=GMm/r² unlike other games

saecl 2020-10-23 19:58

Relaxing to play and a nice concept!