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 🙃

Comments

Knowledge is Power - Society is Weak

Never more true than today, knowledge is power. Or more aptly in today's world the ability to provide & control the flow of knowledge is power. Recently there's been several large course corrections occur, several years too late but hey, better late than never as the saying goes. This highlights one of the biggest and most major flaws with the way we consume information on the internet. Social media, for good and for ill, is now a major source of information and "news" for millions of people across the planet. There are countless examples of the way that misinformation & even disinformation is created, spread and broadcast across the web. None more prevalent & far reaching than social media. Social media disarms in a way that in person discussion & social interaction previously couldn't. If you heard a story in person that even one or two people could corroborate it would be easy to accept as true, or just as easily refuted by the same small number...

The Worker Bee

Do what you're told, follow the rules, don't over step your bounds, stay in your lane. The true cornerstone of modern enslavement to work. "We can't all live our dreams", why is that? Because then we'd have to change, to collectively actually think and enact a way all people could realistically achieve a base standard of living & contentment. Allowing people's mind free reign on real questions rather than worrying where the next meal is coming from & keeping the lights on. Bee animation by Joe le Sale While I have no answers to life's great mysteries, I do know this about the meaning of life - it definitely isn't to toil & labour day in and day out to fill the wallet of our bosses or investors. So how is it that we find ourselves with that holding such a giant sway over our lives? This of course is rhetorical, we all know the answer, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Which brings the problem in to sharp focus, we no longer ...

Genetic Revert & Refresh

The premise is pretty simple, what if we could press the undo button for DNA related aflictions. It's a sound theory but whether it would actually work or not is questionable. The possibilities! This particular train of thought was mostly born from thinking about cancerous cells, which grow out of control due to a minute mutation in the DNA of a cell. The immune system doesn't identify the cancerous cells as something that is dangerous because they're near identical to any other healthy cell. The same could be said with aging, cells slowly mutating & loss of elasticity cause degradation in copying the genetic information to new cells. CRISPR gene editing theoretically allows us to alter DNA in a live organism. With this technique the ability to alter a DNA sequence needs only the desired information payload to be spliced in. This obviously raises rather large ethical concerns of being able to wildly alter people's DNA and fundamentally change the human genome. Whi...

Inkie Beard

Search This Blog