This is milestone moment, after changing engines. This is now a fully unified-network, 64bit precision solar system with full planetary scales (with a narrative nod to roche limits, I won't let a roche limit spoil our fun). Anyway, I was testing the calendar, running the sim, a real sim (unlike nms, sc, etc) at a week a second and I made some conjunction that looked so wrong it looks right. anyway, this is all early-redev, I finished the NODE SYSTEM, this is the main main system, this is everything in the game, geospatial nodes that run complex systems, it's insane, it works, it branches... it's beautiful.

anyway, it's not very visual though. but things are coming together.

interesting (see posts on numismatics in Final)

Santa is real in final, and belief is universal, and practical. Questioning this may cause coldness or worse.

There may be different terms used for Santa in the verse (system) depending in the region

I am thinking to make this game VR first. I believe this is the real way to bring yourself into the game. It won't be mandatory, but if the controls are set / metered so that VR first is a benefit, this could work.

It's important that a key/mouse combo would not be advantageous if we go this route.

A whole slew of small manufactures making their own variations on standardized designs, wheel bases, wheel supports, even access cards -

Battery operated small form trucks, trolleys and carts that transport people for special purposes

yellow, diamond plate, rough to good manufacturing - perhaps procedurally modified.

apply this thought to all utility vehicles - variations of style across planets and moons.

I spoke on here about lights that are generated, and using the id in procedural to add some broken lights

likewise, in some areas, the lights that are intermittent (warning lights) fall in and out of sync randomly

but in other areas, every light is perfectly ordered and in sync

small details like that underscore the differences between areas

Generally silent, the sounds of the environment, filters, solar radiation unevenly heating the hull, creaking as you roll/yaw.

The sounds of the game are broken into score, music and sfx

The score uses context engine - middle of the inky black? a few stray strums, traveling score... approaching civilization? is it your home sector? returning music, is it a lawless area far from your home? is it a lawless area that was marked as your destination, or just somewhere you're crossing?

The game should recognize proximity, final destination, distance from your home sector, and score it. approaching stations, or waypoints. end of line, or just passing through?

Music is a tough one, I'd like to include some idea of radio stations of you can pickup the signal - listen to exclusive tracks around new areas, and have them fizzle out as you get father away, or have your own collection, play your own music as you play. The latter, own music, will be supported first, but I'd like to get the idea of scoring a game, like a movie, as it recognizes actions.

Frontier did this first by playing The Blue Danube when you docked at a station, I want to extend this to map to all occluding objects, approaching areas (context based on if you've been there before, if you're returning from a mission, if this is a mission), or even topographical - if you are approaching a steep drop off and are at a local maximum, approaching a view...

here's some mix of ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZwPEM6NI9w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7tIqEgRwJY The Spaghetti Westerns Music - Greatest Western Themes of all Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv_Fihrt4z8 Dark western / country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHdc72QRFHo Dark country (check Jet Black Hearse)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k7jSBxMmfs More dark country

https://youtu.be/5hAZEajYzvU?t=1897 event driven ideas - generally thinking of more sparse music, no lyrics, with pieces that can build and set pieces for the context engine (it checks if certain objects are starting to un/occlude - if a sunset / moon rise / planet rise is happening)

One aspect that turns this universe from a barren wasteland to a colorful living world is the variety of plate mechanics.

volcanoes in various stages, over the system always something happening. thermals. rivers - one of the hardest, will be fixed, but useable.

power, conduits, wires, pipes and conveyers will be a prominent aspect - but I've also been looking at canals and via/aqueducts - for the right environment this could be key.

Initially it will all be pipes, but there's room to explore infrastructure to support more self sustaining settlements.

the same logic that runs these pipes, controllers, power grids and systems on a new build on a surface will run them on a station or a ship.

Already covered will be deep sea mining - all abiotic sources.

I finished the new "fake lighting" for objects moving around your hull, I added a test over this last week for doppler sound - then tried to create a reflection map based on your active terrain tile (on planet) to make the sound flow around your current environment.

Limited success but it's something!

I've gone back to using dev art and allow the feel and identity of the game to come through this as it slowly develops, for now I am making things low poly, primitive and placeholder - speeding up the process of testing new things.

Big progress over a long long weekend, I feel like I can say the codebase is "moved".

I want to add some building and UV work I've done, as well as some Z-buffer calcs I've done, look at audio and get inventory and causality set up right.

Then add the subether (the virtual layer that allows you to beam anywhere, but doesn't break causality)

about 9000 todo items to go...

Final is a frontiers game - set in a very specific industrialized sci-real space setting - a world building game with a deep lore. join here and discord invites posted sometimes.

Well I've been very busy the last three months - but FINAL is getting near

The new Unreal Engine is amazing. I have been working on clouds. clouds. timelapsing clouds from my home office, reading, and doing fluid dynamic simulations of gravity waves.

WHY! THEY'RE JUST CLOUDS!

Well, clouds are integral to the game - hide in them, lose power from them, harvest them, so seeing a hurricane eye from GEO and waving, if you're in the eye you should be able to wave back.

That's the goal.

The way I've decided to look at the clouds is make a very low resolution fluid dynamic sim over land and water, using Coriolis and some roughly decided cells.

It'll probably never work well so this will just create an engine to drive the events and move fading bands of seeded clouds

This should give a real, world scale lifecycle for cloud cells. You should be able to track a hurricane across 1/8th of the planet surface and maybe it'll even roughly follow water/land power / direction rules.

I hope you have flood insurance.

what will it do re the game

FINAL has a different sort of scoring system.

MOMENTS

It takes all values from the environment, game, session, and each is given a threshold. If your pressure / temp / clothing / dash nicknacks / food storage / consumables / weapon / angles of alignment between planets / surface time of days / occlusions line up you gain "life" points - exploring and capturing a double sunset.. a double sunset with a moon eclipse, while in a hurricane eye, while using a rare weapon - all this have an exponential rarity and moment value to them - creating these moments is a key part of the game - the game can reward your ingenuity.

It's not just a case of saying "wow that looks great" but the game will say 'occlusion between these bodies at this pressure and altitude / relvol / with these configurations is this rare - plus a multiplier for your gear.

That's clouds, that's why they are important.

This will also tie in with a wave engine - water, methane...

That's the small update... I'll be less busy around Oct and will have another update

As we're all confined at home, figuring out what to do, I figured I'd write some more of the lore, I have written a full book backstory to this game, it's what sparked the game - as well as the two main virtual environments (FATE:Revenge and FATE:Arena (accompli)).

The first point - there's no coronavirus in this world - a least not within 1000 lightyears.

There's no virus of any sort in the game (RNA speaking) - nor are there any bacteria. Or parasites. Or spores, pollens... or any seeds at all. This is a pretty big component of the lore. The whole verse is pretty abiotic. Or is it?

Instead the world is powered by solar synths that generate a lot of what is needed in solar factories.

But this tech is hard fought and not shares, so there is spatial disparities in both solar power and availability of tech.

There's a lot more to this story that unfolds, but worlds move around and life is predicated on the ability to ship these components and materials around.

There's a culture around this whole existence that permeates the world.

The game is played as an MMO, but there are plenty of NPCs that provide backstory and color to an area

Communication is limited, everything is in character

Another thing I wanted to share while writing these thoughts down is the AR and VR components I was testing - they are working and are (i think) quite new ideas - AR and VR inside a game - not unique in itself, but how it is used.

If you are outside a structure you own, you can walk through the door, turn around and unlock it - using your telepresence and control of devices.

you can fly faster than the speed of light using this - but you are not getting live information - but you can have communications with outposts that could be several lightseconds or farther from you, up to one light day. (and could be more)

most happens within 6 light hours - 42 AU, but there's several hubs and much more to explore.

18,446,744,073,709,551,574 fewer planets than no man's sky...

OK I shared a lot, I can't wait to put more art and actual dev content on here as I'm focussed on this - by the end of the year I think we'll be in alpha.

Stay Tuned!

Since I've not released any info on final (outside of the discord) this is a stealth update- just want a record for myself

Last night I finished converting the code for the scale and LOD systems. I launched off from an asteroid and saw the entire asteroid belt/field fade out behind me and become and indistinct feature

I pointed at a dot in space and hit a dev mod to scale myself towards it - I was able to travel 60AU (from just outside a pluto-like far orbit) to a central star, the dot becoming a star. I can do this to arbitrary scales now, like 271KAU (Proxima Centauri) could resolve from a subpixel to twin stars, if you had the time and power. might take 90,000 years, but that's value for money!

anyway, also tested the asteroid generation, looks pretty cool, a little sharp and rugged, but it's devart level.

that's all, real devblog for the conversion will start in spring I guess