Ideas For US2

[PixelMunchies]

US2. One of the best games I've ever played. But it could be better. So here is a quick list of ideas I have for the game and I would love to get some feedback on what people think about them.


First off, one of the best thing I like about the game are black holes. But I would be really cool if there was an animation of a black hole eating a star like this:




That would be an absolutely awesome experience and it would definitely add more realism to the game.


2:) I know this is probably requested a lot but better collisions and explosions would be great as well

Example:





Notice chunks of the Earth flying off to space.


3: A first person view of the sky from selected object from the north, south, and equator.

4: More nebulae and supernovae. All of the star deaths look the same.

5: When a star is about to die, such as the sun, it turns into a red giant then explodes.

6: In the debris there is a white dwarf, black hole, neutron star, etc.

7: And as a final request, it would be cool is Earth's continents moved just like they do in real life.


So before I end this, I would like to say I only had the game for a while and somethings I have requested may already be in the game. And if it is, its fine if you tell me so. Also, be sure to write your ideas down below and maybe add on to mine.

[Gordon Freeman]

1. is a planned feature called Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics. Basically solid objects will act like fluids when entering a steep gravity gradient.

2. That's not very realistic. Fragmentation will be covered by SPH as well.

3. Hover over a planet and press "C." You get to land on the planet anywhere you want.

4.5.6. I remember a quote from one of the devs saying these will be worked on but I can't promise anything myself.

7. Probably not on the list of practical features since continental drift only creates noticeable changes over millions of years, which can't be simulated effectively due to high timesteps causing imperfections in calculations.

[PixelMunchies]

Thanks for the feedback! Like I said, I didn't get to mess around with the game much. But thanks for telling me about the sky view of a planet thing. 

[mage49]

(1 and 4+6) Yeah, this would be great. I've been trying to create some accretion disks. The main 2 types I've been after are black holes/massive bodies siphoning mass from another star, which I cant really recreate very well, and protoplanetary disks.

SPH would definitely be needed for the mass transfer. Proto stars/planetary disks are technically possible right now, though you have to jerry rig them into existence. I've tried working with two methods so far. The first shooting gallery style, basically leaving the earth + 5000 moon simulation open, adding a star and waiting until something useful comes out. The 2nd is a star, a handfull of colliding moons to create a fragment shower, and 10 minutes of holding the Material launcher down. This is pretty good for creating various planets (could use a few more materials like nitrogen, helium, maybe even methane (seperate from organics) or pure oxygen.

What would make it better is if the dust/particles could act like clouds. Not nessecarily full fluid dynamics, just something to give them larger contiguous volumes and take up less CPU when you use massive amounts of them. When an object hits the dust cloud it could take a similar % of the mass to the area it swiped through. When the cloud is affected by gravity/various forces, it could either distort or just fragment into clusters/puffs.

With better dust clouds we could have much better supernovae too. When they go off they could eject usable material instead of just an obstructive decal (or a combo of the current effect + clusters of material). And if we get multiple types of supernovae we could have different materials come from different sequence stars (mostly hydrogen, or various elements up to iron, elements heavier than iron, etc). Then you could actually get into creating stellar nurseries, or at least set up a system with a few supernovae going off around it to help seed it.