Embracing the Procedural

It's been a hot minute since I've had a chance to update regarding Galliventurer. After playing around a fair bit with backends and trying a number of different nosql databases, one of which has been running pretty solidly with the existing discovered universe of a few hundred (470+ presently) stars and their 24k+ satellite bodies. Things are humming along quite nicely and there is even the beginning implementations of some actual game functionality, such as flying the (placeholder) ship through the universe in a soon to be released build! However there are several things that I hope to address in the very near future:

1. Procedural Universe

Whilst the universe is cool and all at the moment, it's very rudimentary and no where near close to the level of detail I'm after. From researching a bit, I've found everything that currently takes up space in the database can actually reside solely in an algorithm and follow the whole procedural generation a lot more faithfully. This will free up the database and server for actual game state data, with the added benefit of adding a layer of protection against misuse of the generator. The main pain point for this transition is going fully procedural but still having a universe that will be faithfully replicated the same across every player session no matter where in the universe they end up 🤔🤔

2. UI & Controls

This will probably have a very quick and dirty initial solution, followed then by a super long process to get the controls fully polished and usable on most (if not all) devices; starting with mobile, as this is mostly where I want to play the game 😅 - then moving to a standalone desktop launcher!

3. Graphical Styling

While everything is very placeholder at the moment, I will (probably much sooner than I'd like) need to start looking at a graphical style for the game. Not just the game rendering but the typeface, logo, general aesthetic, etc. Mostly the end result of this will boil down to: how much I can come up with on my own, and how much I need to bite the bullet and outsource to 3rd parties. I'm hoping to have an early prototype of planets, ship & main player avatar(s) soon, done solely by me, so have those expectations bars set to ultra low 🙃