[WIP] Galaxy4D - A New Multiplayer Space Sim

We are making a Multiplayer space sim.

We solved the floating point issues, now have a working multiplayer full-scale galaxy with stars and planets.
The key concept is respecting the true physics including General Relativity (for positions and velocities), and real-time orbit simulation using real Gravity maths.

You will have your own character in first person, you have to manage your spaceship's systems, land on planets or asteroids to find resources to fix or to improve your spaceship(s), you will be able at some point to build a spaceship from scratch.

The gameplay will be made so you feel everything as if it was a virtual reality with a perfect immersion.
On the planets you will try to survive in a hostile environment, fight weather, aliens, and other players.

We will launch a Kickstarter in a few months, in the mean time we need a community !

Website : http://Galaxy4D.com/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Galaxy4D
Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Galaxy4D/771663049577074
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/c/Galaxy4d-spacesim
IndieDB : http://www.indiedb.com/games/galaxy4d

Feel free to help if you have suggestions that can improve the project.

Here is a 4 minutes preview of the Pre-Aplha 4 tech demo :

 

This looks epic! Good luck, it's a huge project I'd imagine.

 

Wow, definitely watching this one

 

Just added the project to IndieDB !!!
Awaiting aproval..
http://www.indiedb.com/games/galaxy4d

 

The game has just been approved on IndieDB !
http://www.indiedb.com/games/galaxy4d

Next step is to get a Steam green light !
But there are still a few things to improve before that.
In the mean time, we need to grow our community.
Follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our Youtube channel and our Facebook page.

Also, a forum is coming soon on the official website.

Next step in the development : Vegetation on the planet's surface !

 

I figured we should post a more detailed version of the game's description, here we go.

The game is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac.

The game concept is similar to Kerbal space program as you can build a spacecraft, seamlessly travel from planet to planet then walk on the ground, with some key differences :

* There will be vegetation and aliens on the surface depending on the type of planet
* You can go underwater with your spacecraft if your spacecraft's hull can withstand positive pressure
* There will be many solar systems through the galaxy
* You will have total control over the spacecraft's systems, control panels and switches
* You can walk inside the spaceships and dock smaller spacecrafts inside bigger starships
* The technologies will be more futuristic like a Warp Drive, gravity generator, etc.

Also, it will be like KSP for planets orbiting each-other, except nothing is "on rails", everything is calculated in real-time using Gravity.
Everything is moving freely and independently and is affected by the gravity of everything else's mass.

There are no absolute positions or velocities, everything is relative to something else and always moving.

No "map-view", it will be an instrument in the spacecraft with orbit visualisation according to relative velocity and altitude.

The main challenge is to pick up resources on a planet, (try to) build a spacecraft, takeoff and visit other places in the galaxy, mine asteroids and other planets, harvest energy from stars, improve and manage your spaceship's systems and most importantly: Survive !

All of this you can do alone or in a co-operative way with your friends.
You will be able to fight other players and build/use weapons but this game is not intended to be a combat /dogfight sim.

Some planets are hostile, very cold or very hot, radiation, bad weather, different gravity, etc.
There are nebulae, twin stars and other space goodies.

We are aiming for a kind of gameplay experience that will give you the feeling it's real.
No map view, no on-screen information other than what can be shown realisticly in your helmet's HUD,
no further menus after you connect to a server or you click "Play Solo".
We want the perfect immersion like if it was a second life !

The game is natively and already multiplayer-capable, in a similar way to Minecraft.
Game servers can be a direct connection to other players as well as dedicated windows/linux servers.
Here's how it works :
There is only one application which is the game.
When you start, you have 3 game modes :
* Host a game
* Connect to server
* Play solo.

When starting a Solo game, you can play offline as a single player.
This also starts the integrated server in the background and other users can connect to you if you enable a "Accept remote connections" checkbox.

You can also host a standalone server by simply launching the game via command line (for Linux and Windows).

What has been done so far and is 100% working right now :
* All the most important technical challenges like floating point issues are solved
* Multiplayer and networking with integrated server
* Space physics including general relativity and Gravity (real-time orbits)
* Full scale Galaxy graphics with stars, dust clouds and a black hole at the center
* Planets with procedural terrain
* Seamless transitions between planet surface and space up to outside the Galaxy
* Electrical systems physics (heat dissipation, voltage, energy consumption, etc.)
* Atmosphere composition, pressure and transfer physics (on planets or inside sealed spacecrafts)
* Basic 3D models of spacecrafts that you can fly around

As for the final release, we can't tell an exact date yet.

I am just going to say that we might release an Alpha version before the end of 2015.

We've been working on the concept for 5 years and started to code 2 years ago, but announced it to the public two days ago.
We developed it inside out, instead of outside in like most games, as in we did the difficult technical challenges first and now all we have to do is to add the standard contents and game logics.
Hence from now on it should go very fast.

But we need followers and future supporters before making a Kickstarter page.

Follow our IndieDB page http://www.indiedb.com/games/galaxy4d/

You can also subscribe to our Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/Galaxy4D-SpaceSim

Lots of new videos are coming !!! =D

 

The world look spectacular, good luck with the game, Kzaurchkichz (strange nick you have there, erhm). Do you plan to make your game as standalone game? Perhaps some light "web" version is in you plans?

 

My nick is a long story but has nothing to do with my real name ;-)

I will not make a Web version since Unity Web Player is deprecated, to be replaced with WebGL, which is not yet powerful enough to render it.

The actual game is standalone as in you don't need to connect to a server you can play offline (your own server which starts in the background when you hit Play Solo)

 

Looks impressive.

 

Here's what I've been working on all day...
Improved terrain shaders and playing around with vegetation

 

This looks incredible, I'd love to be able to make something like this.

Can't wait to see some forests and animals on those planets!

 

We've posted 6 new videos on our Youtube channel !
Don't forget to subscribe

https://www.youtube.com/c/Galaxy4D-SpaceSim

Here are 3 of them.

 

Just uploaded two new videos of Pre-Alpha 5

Improvements on Graphics

Fastforward building a voxel spaceship

What do you think ?

 

I always get a kick out of people taking on giant projects such as this, and your tech demos are really impressive. Kudos.

Subscribed. Will be keeping an eye on this one.

Edit: Montreal? AWESOME!

 

The pre-alpha 4 tech demo in the OP looks really nice! I think one thing that would really improve it is to have the rotations smoothed, though, as it does break the immersion some.

Can I ask what soundtrack is playing in the background? I really like it; it reminds me of some of the more lively tracks by Wintergatan.

 

The pre-alpha 4 preview was the first ever video.
The soundtrack is Seeger by John Deley, from the Youtube Audio Library.
The camera rotations have been smoothed in all the following videos.
Did you check out the Pre-Alpha 5 preview ? There are lots of improvements on the visual effects.

 

these videos look amazing, like straight up magic. great job!

 

While working on asteroids, we came up with a little surprise for you
Introducing destructible full-size planets !

While making the voxel system for our asteroids we optimized it so it doesn't have any size limit.

That being said, why not use the same system for planets ?!

This was not planned in the beginning, but now that it's possible, why not ?

It will then be possible to dig underground caves to mine resources.
Hence the gameplay for mining will change and most resources will now be found underground.

Since everyone loves explosions, you'll be able to use explosives to make bigger holes

This will also allow planets to receive asteroid impacts and see persistent craters.

Our system is different from most voxel engines in that instead of having a defined voxel grid that is present from the beginning with all voxels, we have a rather dynamic system that only shows modifications on the terrain.

The terrain keeps the same procedural engine to create the base mesh with LOD, but we add holes from the voxel database before rendering the final mesh.

Maybe we shouldn't call it "voxel", but that's how everyone understands the resulting feature...
Our "voxel" database is an array of voxels, each consisting of a position and a radius.

Basically, size doesn't matter anymore !
If you create a very big explosion, only one "voxel" is created and is added to the mesh as a crater of the specified radius.
This makes the system very light although the planet is huge with lots of craters and caves.

You should be able to dig say a tunnel through a mountain, or dig all the way through the planet !
Some planets will have a magma mantle though...

Now to give you a glimpse the underground, I give you three screenshots !







To get more detail or to ask questions, join our community forums :
English forum : http://forum.galaxy4d.com/
French forum : http://fr.galaxy4d.com/

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel : https://www.youtube.com/c/Galaxy4D-SpaceSim

 

Really nice update, was not expecting this. How much is this going to add to your scope? Now you have to worry about seeding the planet with resources and whatnot, aye?

 

It's going to add a few more weeks of development but we think it's worth it !

 

Damned skippy. I'm a huge voxel fan and tunnel rat. Digging for resources is one of my favorite things.

 

Very impressive!