Stellar Prospector, formerly Solarex GL

Varkas

Old thread can be found here,
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6278

So, out of convoluted reasons, I lately had the feeling that I should try to complete some of my old projects. Many seem to have been abandoned a bit too early. I've become rusty at 3D math and coding though, so this was a pretty rough restart.

First, the project got a new working title "Stellar Prospector", because being a prospector (maybe also miner) is supposed to be the core activity of the player in the game.

Second, the project got a new home,
https://github.com/Varkalandar/stellar_prospector

Third, it saw some updates. Finally there is some code to import 3d geometry from OBJ files, so I can use Blender (or any 3D software that exports to wavefront OBJ files) to make space ships and station models. Kinda basic, but really important to get somewhere with this project.

And some basic work has been done to create a panel for scanning a planet for resources, possibly in combination with mining. Sadly, there is an onslaught of real life currently, but I hope that I can keep some motivation to continue work on this and put the parts together. Much is there already, but in a kinda fractured state.

Varkas

The mining operations take shape. Behind the scenes, the game now keeps track of all ongoing mining operations. Mining is done from orbit, the ship just has to be close enough to planet and the drones will land and do the actual mining. Planets in reach are now listen in the cockpit HUD.

Upon selection of a planet or moon, the mining panel will open, where the play can scan the planet for resources (better scanners will show more results, but right now there is only one type of scanner), and one can launch drones to actually do the mining.

There is still some work left to do. The list selection is missing, so right now always the first drone is sent to mine the first metal found. And the mining operations are not saved yet with the game ... furthermore the drone recall is not working yet. I hope to get that done during the next days. Real life keeps me busy.

Edit: I think it's all done, except for bugs that I didn't notice yet. Resource and drone selection works, drone launch and recall works too.

Varkas

So, after noticing that LWJGL 2, OpenJDK 11 and Linux Mint are a mix that won't run (LWJGL 2 not being maintained anymore since 2016) I started to port the code to LWJGL 3

Sadly that broke a lot of things and required fairly large changes to the code. I think I have it running again, but I feel uncertain, so development happens on the porting branch right now.

Plus the new set of libraries is 25 MB, looks rather big to me, must see if there is a smaller "cut" of LWJGL 3 that still provides everything I need.

During the repairs of all the broken code, I noticed that most of the quests code had been defunct since 2015. Newspapers likely aren't the most important feature but the first thing I repaired.

Next was to fix delivery/travel quests. The success message is a bit boring, but at least they work again and don't crash the game upon arrival.

So plans for the next weeks are to check all the features and repair what I find broken. It's hard because I forgot like all the details of the code and have to do a lot of research before each attempt to fix something.