Dev Diary 9 – Deep Space Exploration in Starflight: The Remaking of a Legend

For discussions about the new Unity SF1 remake by Marvin Herbold
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Blake00
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Dev Diary 9 – Deep Space Exploration in Starflight: The Remaking of a Legend

Post by Blake00 »

New dev diary time! This time Marvin takes us out of the Arth solar system into deep space and shows us WIP hyperspace, fluxes and nebula in his Starflight: The Remaking of a Legend project. Next article will cover where the remake is at, improvements to existing content and the new save game manager!

Hyperspace!
(Originally posted by Marvin 30/08/2018 HERE)

The past few days I worked to refactor the code I have done thus far, to simplify stuff and make it easier to build on. Then I decided that the next logical step would be to implement hyperspace. After all, we already have all of the star data, and the UI is basically the same.

Prepare to have your collective minds blown.

Note that the surface of planets for which we have not yet taken screenshots will appear as a random color/gray noise pattern.





Danger – Continuum Fluxes!

(Originally posted by Marvin 30/08/2018 HERE)

Continuum Fluxes are in!

I made them stealthy and a little bit hard to see when just flying around and not paying attention… just like in the original SF1 game. And when you do travel through one, perhaps by accident… you will freak out a bit.
I hope you all like my interpretation of the fluxes in SF1.

I created a new space warp shader just for this effect.





Territories! (Blended Skyboxes)

(Originally posted by Marvin 04/09/2018 HERE)

I’m back from our holiday trip to Durango, Colorado… and am ready to get back into it!

First up… mighty morphing skyboxes! I have implemented a custom skybox shader that draws from and blends multiple sources. I also created different skyboxes for each of the major races that appear in the game. Their territories are marked on the original Starflight map and I follow it pretty closely.

It works very nicely! Especially while warping through the continuum fluxes, you can see the colors change due to the territories you pass through.

ALSO: The original game texture maps for all 811 planets are in the remake now! Huge thanks to Michael Gams for getting us over the finish line on this mini-project.

Check the changing skyboxes out in the video below. I fly up into Spemin territory, then down into Gazurtoid territory. Then I warp through a continuum flux into Elowan territory, and then back.




Nebula (Work In Progress)

(Originally posted by Marvin 04/09/2018 HERE)

Hello Arthlings,

I just wanted to give you guys a quick update. Today I started working on implementing nebulas. You know, the green magical interstellar stuff that somehow prevents shields from working. That thing.

So, I have created a Perlin noise shader (billowed style) that will generate and animate the nebula texture map in real time. Then I imported the nebula outlines that I created last year in Adobe Illustrator for my SF1 map into 3DS Max. In 3DS Max I am doing the work of turning those outlines into 3D models, and vertex painting the edges so they fade out. This process will take me a couple of days – there are around 40 or so separate nebulas in the game. But, here’s a preview of what has been done so far!

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Blake's Sanctum - Starflight Series: fan page containing pics, vids, info, walkthroughs, & fan games!
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