Vector styled graphics

Its been a while since I last posted a blog post, but I have still been working on this project. To give the game a much better feel I decided to work on the graphics.

Since I am good at modeling 3d objects, but rather terrible at texturing them, I decided to write a script to generate a texture map. The script generates an edge highlight map, it essentially darkens any areas close to a sharp edge, based on the distance to the edge. Its also possible to change how sensitive it is to edges. ie: at 10, it will only count an edge as sharp if the angle between the normal's of its faces is greater then 10 degrees. Below you can see an example:

I also wrote a shader. The shader takes the information in the edge and draws a solid color, depending on the distance to the edge. This allows it to produce a "thick" edge highlight affect, such as the image below:

Below, an image of a simple spaceship using the script and shader:

As you can see, there are some artifacts, this is due to some defects in the script, and aliasing. After fixing the script and adding antiailiasing+bloom for the glow, we get a much cleaner look:

Its still a bit tricky with depth perception at this point, so I made the shader a surface shader, by combining unity5's new lighting model, and the previous edge highlight shader. This makes it affected by lights and produces a nice affect:

Whats really cool about the script though, is that it works for any 3d model, so that means the only bottleneck for adding new modules is how fast I can model one and import it into unity. This is really exciting because It gives the project a unique look, and it makes it possible to have lots of modules.

Video Demo

Finally found some time to make a short demo video, by comparison to that last one I think its coming out very well!

Basically the video shows a few things:

• The new graphics/art all that good stuff
• Camera tracking
• Camera rotation tracking
• The current input system
• Engine functionality
• Laser effects
• Toggling in and out of edit mode
• Selecting different assemblies
• How hard it is to fly

The camera rotation tracking basically rotates the camera as if it was parented to the selected assembly, the location tracking does the same except minus the rotating part. The cool thing about the rotation tracking part is that you can still orbit the assembly normally with the mouse while it is rotating.

It is currently very difficult to control a built ship, part of this is because the only way to rotate the ship is by using engines, which are too powerful except for large assemblies/ships. The other reason is because of the physics, once you start rotating or increasing the speed, rotational and directional inertia takes over and you continue spinning/moving until there is a counter force or torque.

To solve the first issue with rotation, I will likely add some RCS thrusters (basically thrusters for small changes in momentum or rotation) and a reaction wheel (magic science devise used to exert a rotational force on an object, for the science behind it, here)
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The second issue is a little more difficult, but the basic principle behind it is to have a flight computer that tells the engines to slow the ship down after you accelerate, or slows the rotation down after you rotate. The computer would use available engines, and would be able to increase or decrease the thrust on each one as needed. In this way non symmetrical ships would be flyable. Using the flight computer, the ship would move more like people are used too regarding simpler games, while still using physics. The computer of course would be optional for those who want direct control. I plan to make it so both the flight computer and direct control can be used at the same time.

Update

 I have been working on the multiplayer aspect of the game for quite a bit, as a result, most of the infrastructure for  it is now in place. As it is right now it is playable, however there are a few things missing, mainly client side prediction. So if you go too fast, the client receives positional update information that is to old, this causes your ship to jump backwards and jitter a lot when you are going fast.

The camera control has been much improved, now the camera will track to the center of mass of your assembly, and in addition there is a key that will toggle rotation tracking. Rotation tracking just causes the camera to rotate with the assembly if the assembly rotates. 

Below are some screen shots showing some significant graphics updates, a bit of the logic system, and the laser module: