[RELEASED] SPACE UNITY - Space Scene Construction Kit

Looks awesome!

 

Captains log earthdate 26.10.2015

Nothing on the radar.

 

Given that the asset does not work with the Oculus by default, how does one instead generate a cubemap of their chosen planet/nebula/star set-up for use as a Skybox using Space for Unity?

 

discontinued?

 

It would seem the developer is working on his other assets and not updating this one.

 

I had some correspondence with the developer in October about some issues with SPACE. It seemed like he had a lot on his plate, including developing his own game, web development, and assets on the Asset Store and the Unreal marketplace.

At that time he said he'd drop in on this thread to give an update on some new things he was developing, but not sure what happened with that.

He did give a link to a WIP:

, but that was posted in July.

I'll email him again.

 

so keen to try the planets thing - happy with current state for purpose - any chance of beta?

 

Hey guys, I'm just checking in here to confirm that the project, development and support is not abandoned even though I am not very active in this forum. A big thanks to Korindian for checking in for me

Terrestrial-looking planets are more or less done now, as posted in the video above, those planets take up < 100 KB on disk and textures are generated at runtime which should allow full flexibility and infinite number of planets and biomes. I'll be moving onto gas planets next which should be simpler than the terrestrial.

My "Achilles Heel" for this project has been trying to implement the free space flight. It's like trying to fit the universe in the size of a large city and making it all work intuitively without generating heaps of support issues (something I definitely can't fit into my schedule as it is now.) Sound and graphical work is my stronger side and "professional level" code and iterative release cycles of code is not my strong side which has hindered my planned updates for this asset.

For those of you who are interested in early beta access to the planets and stars, please contact me by e-mail (please include your purchase order number as confirmation in your mail =)

 

Hey everyone! Just put together video yesterday with an overview of what I'm up to:

Warning... it's a long video

 

Can you support the Deferred rendering path in Unity 5? Can you support Linear color space?

 

I will have a look at Deferred and Linear color space. The new planets use lookup textures for liquid levels on the planets which operate differently in linear space so I'll have to create separate shaders for linear color space.

 

Hi. I'm trying to work out how to update SU_SpaceParticles with the last Unity update. I get this alert:

`UnityEngine.ParticleSystem.Particle.color' is obsolete: `color property is deprecated. Use startColor or GetCurrentColor() instead.'

The complaint is about this:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. //Fade alpha value of particle between fading distance and spawn distance
3. _particles[i].color=newColor(_col.r,_col.g,_col.b,Mathf.Clamp01(1.0f-((_distance-_distanceToFade)/(_distanceToSpawn-_distanceToFade))));
4.  

I don't think I understand how to go about setting a particle's color anymore. It seems like startColor is not the right solution when you're trying to set the exact color at a particular moment. Any thoughts?

BTW, I was able to fix all the other alerts using the script by Razieln64 found here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wh...f-the-old-particlesystem-emissionrate.373106/

 

Hi, thanks for posting. I am currently on a trip to New Zealand with my family and my internet connection from campsites are extremely limited. I will have a look at the particles issue and make an update to the asset when I return later on in April.

Once again, thanks for the heads up and apologies for not being able to look at it right away.

 

This is awesome man. I think my one request that I wanted before this video even is to be able to not have those planets in the background. I would love to be able to have the planet approachable and then use a trigger at a certain distance to launch a transition video and land load a different scene basically. So the core idea is just let planets be in the scene rather than only rendered in the background. I think what you have done here makes that even more viable since the planets can still look fantastic as long as you start this transition / tirgger at a certain distance.

Great work and thanks for that update!

 

New Zealand?! How cool! My exotic vacation this year was Seattle and Vancouver, but then I live in backwoods southern USA so they felt pretty exotic to me. Have a good trip, imphy!

 

Thanks! Yes, I am doing this update with the layered floating origin approach so you can travel around planets and to/around stars. This is to allow faster than light travels although roaming space freely you have little chance of finding a planet so I think tagging them as waypoints with jumpdrive to orbital locations are the way to go. But also simply rendering planets without floating origin will work too, if you want to treat them as any game object and if scaling is not an issue in a game.

 

Thanks! We've been traveling for some time now, first GDC in San Francisco, then a week in Australia (where our 3 children had the flue the entire stay, so most of what we saw was a hotel room), and now 4 weeks in NZ which we are enjoying a lot. But saying that, being away for such a long time with limited internet connection and only a laptop makes me really excited to get back home into my "normal" development environment so I can get back to do the things I do. Haven't been to Seattle or Vancouver, but would love to go. Been a bit in other parts of the, including some backwoods in southern USA =)

 

Yeah, regardless the final product is looking amazing. I am really excited. =D

 

keep it up!

 

Do you know what might cause this? I just reimported the asset into my project. Note that it's in a Assets/Packages subfolder, not the root Assets folder.

 

Hopefully procedural panels still in development!

 

I still haven't gotten a reply to my question. Is support for this asset dead?

 

@Exeneva - When Unity switched temporarily to the new forums it messed up forum notifications, so they are more unreliable than before. Try giving @imphy a PM or send an email to his support email address.

 

Greetings. I just picked this up earlier today and had a chance to tinker with the demos and creators. I didn't run into any problems to speak of, and was flying within 5 minutes. I'm impressed with the depth of detail, even being a n00b developer. I did have a few questions though. I noticed when I ran it, the ship flew out of sight in the Scene window, but didn't appear to move in the game window. That being said, I was able to maneuver, thrust, and bust asteroids and all that, but it seemed static. Is one able to actually fly BY planets? I was not able to fly past 1 planet and go to the next one. My second question is, what is the max 'space' Scale size? I'm trying to create a fully accessible solar system. I tried x50 and it didn't seem to affect anything. Third question is how to vary thrust, can I use a thrust power setting like a hotkey set for engine thrust up and engine thrust down? And can it be set to a key to stay on without holding down a key for the duration? Like 'T' for Thrust on, then 'T' again for thrust off.

Edit to add. I'm kinda looking for a mashup between Space Engine and Evochron Mercenary, but not all the bells and whistles as of yet. I'm just looking for a workable, but acceptable compromise.

 

While I'm not a coder yet, there is something worth noting in Evochron Mercenary. It has a choice of flight modes, with the 2 main options of Inertial flight, and Inertial Damping Mode. The Inertial is basically a gunshot into space. No friction, drag, gravity, or anything to slow or stop it, only your skills to swim in a blender. I haven't mastered that part and have eaten lots of planets and docking stations, but its' VERY handy over long distance lines.The other setting is Inertial Damping, which is pretty similar to what you have already implemented. And all that is used to switch between the two is a tap on the spacebar.

 

still hopeful

 

Has the developer stopped supporting this asset?

 

Forum threads don't always ping their owners, so if you have a question of importance, send an email to the support address, or at least tag the dev - @imphy - as that gives a slightly greater chance of getting attention.

 

Hi everyone. I am terribly behind on my mail but I am fighting through a couple of thousand of spam mails and between them there are most likely some support mails that are hiding. I apologize for the radio silence lately. I'll be releasing a Unity 5.5 version of SPACE to remove any deprecated code.

 

Pleaseeeeee let me touch your planet shaders!!! =) . Welcome back @imphy

 

Haha, I will reload the project in 5.5 to now and see how the shaders behave push towards a release. Maybe I have to accept a beta release.

Thanks. I managed to fight my way through 934 mails yesterday and 4 of those were missed SPACE mails. I have another 600 mails to go tonight with some additional people I owe an apology to.

I've submitted 1.06 now which is tested with 5.5.0 and deprecated code has been removed. No new features though, only fixes for compatibility.

 

Just received a support mail from someone wanting to use HTC Vive headset so I thought I'd post here if anyone else is facing the same problem.

If you use SteamVR (from the asset store) here's a video how to fix the "blue camera" that the camera rig originally displays.

I haven't been able to test this with the headset myself since I don't have one. The same config should apply in similar situation with other types of cameras.

 

Hey Imphy, just checking in to see how things are going?

 

Hoping that we may see some of these features this year. Any word on progress?

 

Hello everyone! I haven't found much time to spend on the forum but I'm excited to come here now and give everyone some updates on what's going on. A couple of months ago I *finally* stepped down from my day job and I'm taking a year to focus on Imphenzia, assets, and my own games. I am so excited about that and I'm finally able to dedicate the time that I've wanted to for so long to do these things!

SPACE for Unity version 1.5
First up, today I released an update for SPACE for Unity, version 1.5. I've had prototyping code laying around for what feels like forever now and last week I decided that it can't be sitting around for the "next big" update that I've been wanting to make for SPACE for Unity. I took some of the stuff and packaged into version 1.5 and even though it's not a new major release - it's a fairly decent update considering nothing has really happened to SPACE for the past few years other than maintaining compatibility with new versions of Unity.

Maybe the most exciting and fun thing to play with in Version 1.5 is a new warp speed effect. Here it is in action:

YouTube really beats up the quality with compression at such volatile movement and distortion so here are a couple of screenshots as well of what it actually looks like quality-wise:




Features/changes in version 1.5:

• Requires Unity 2017.2 or newer (the 5.5.0 package is without these features but included for legacy purposes)
• Added SU_TravelWarp script and shader (see Manual for details) Fast warping with visual effect and object relative movement.
• "Static Stars" replaces "Stars" (see Manual for details) Saves 185 MB in size, reduces draw calls from 6 to 1 (or 2) and allows more color customization. Note: Old scenes will be missing stars since the textures have been removed. You will need to recreate them using Static Stars (via the Space Scene Construction Kit editor extension window) or you need to import the old textures and materials from a previous version of your project or SPACE for Unity.
• New asteroid fading method Handled by GPU for much better performance. Better visually since asteroids are scaled instead of transparency faded which looked odd against light backgrounds. The performance is greatly increased so it should be possible to have more asteroids than before. The upper limit of AsteroidFields was increased from 3000 to 10000.
• Added 211 new nebula textures (now a total of 339 textures)
• Added subfolder support to Nebulas, Planets, and Galaxies
• New asteroid materials - more specular reflections and added support in the shader for the scaling effect.
• Demo scenes updated Old stars were replaced with Static Stars in demo scenes. Spaceship now has warp speed effect (press Space and Right Shift).
• Added Orbit alternative to CameraFollow script.
• New atmospheres for the planets
• Fixed inverted green channel on spaceship normal map texture

Here's a link to the manual so you can read about the TravelWarp in particular.

The update is already published and free for existing customers:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...e-for-unity-space-scene-construction-kit-7095

I will create a new thread for my upcoming procedural planet asset mentioned above and put details there.

Edit: Now I have created the new thread for procedural planets: https://forum.unity.com/threads/procedural-planets.503854/

 

Awesome gratz on being able to work on you Game Dev full time now!

 

Given the improvements would probably work just as well on Unity 5.6, any chance of submitting it as a Unity 5.6 package too?

 

Yes, I think it would - I have download 5.6 and import it to see if anything needs tweaking.

 

There are a few things in 5.6 that don't work as expected - particle issues, asteroid vertex shader scaling. I may submit a 2017.0.x if there are no issues there. Are you in specific need of 5.6?

 

I am indeed, as I only have a Pro licence for the Unity 4 and 5 cycle, and wanting to use the Pro licence features on 5 which I would lose in an Upgrade to 2017, and I am sure I am not the only person who may be in these circumstances

I'm surprised that the vertex shader scaling would not work on 5.6 (given that I could not see any changes to that on the documentation for 2017.0), however the graphical instancing would surely still work on 5.6 if the old-style fade were used for the Asteroids (if vertex shader scaling could not be fixed on that version), which would boost performance massively.

Plus also here is a video I found earlier in the thread from 2013:

At 0:45 we see the warp effect working on a build before 5.6, would you be able to add this script (and shader) to a 5.6 submitted version of the asset please (if the 2017.2 version does not work on 5.6 due to particle issues)?

Either way, from what I have seen on the video it is an impressive looking update!

 

Hi, I see - I can understand there are some people in the same seat with the Unity 5 - 2017 pro license difference. I was surprised to see the oddities when I imported it into 5.6 as well. I don't think it's an issue of it not working, but rather that it just works differently. The red rocket flames on the ship during warp, for example, moved in the wrong direction =) I will see if I can fix issues for a 5.6 release although I have to prioritize the release of the procedural planets as I really need to have them out now in November.

I make a 5.6 export of the package if you want to have a look at it earlier though?

 

I do not mind helping you test it on 5.6, but bear in mind that I am not always available due to work commitments.

 

Has there been any progress on a 5.6 version?

 

I have not yet been able to prioritize it due to running into problems with my delayed procedural planets that were scheduled for release.

 

Hi there,

I am seeing artifacts in a SpaceScene I created and I am not sure how to fix it. I figured you'd probably know what I am doing wrong.
Here is a screenshot of what's happening:

 

Ugh, okay I figured it out. I was missing the particle texture files.
Following the recommended workflow of exporting from a Space for Unity dedicated project has been difficult, with lots and lots of files to include. For some reason the include dependency option doesn't seem to include dependencies for me.
Do you have any suggestions on how to make it easier? Right now exporting a space scene is exhaustive. Building one is a pleasure though.

 

Hi, OK - that makes sense that it would be lacking a texture for the dust "clouds".

Are you creating space scenes in scenes or as prefabs? Is it during the build it's not getting included and what platform are you developing for? Also, do you need many space scenes - what sort of numbers are we talking about?

 

So, right now I am only creating one Space Scene, but I'd like to create another for other purposes later as well.
I am not doing a space game per se, but a fantasy role playing game with some space scenes. Right now, my main use is for the "World Map Creator" scene. It has a floating menu system and a hexasphere where the map gets created. In the background I have the Space Scene. The Main Camera revolves around the hexasphere (showing off the space scene background). The menu exists in Screen Space - Camera above both of the other cameras (including the space scene camera).
When exporting I am exporting the Main Camera and the Space Scene from a duplicate of the Template scene. I create the space scene, then export the unity scene using Assets->Export Package... The in the export dialogue that pops up, everything is selected. So, it is up to me to unselect everything that isn't used (which is the hard part). Having include dependencies selected doesn't include anything but what I select in the list.
Should I make prefabs of everything in the Unity Scene first to have include dependencies work?

 

Ah I see. Yes, if you make a prefab of the Space Scene and then right click on that in the Project window and select "Export Package" it should only include the dependent textures, scripts, and shaders.

 

I would be eternally grateful if you could add a script that allows a first/third person controller (standard unity asset) to walk up to a ship, press 'E' to enter, and then you can control the ship. ^_^

Do you have any scripts that allow the ship to look as if it's idle (small wavering, floating, or moving back and forth slightly to simulate flying) while the camera is fixed on it?

For example:

Looks like you'd have a center position, with maybe 3-4 surrounding positions. Then use random to lerp to one position.transform, and if it's going (to right position) you could slightly rotate it on the z/x axis slightly to simulate wavering.