GSim 0.27.01

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testtubegames
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GSim 0.27.01

Post by testtubegames »

Yay, an update!

Version 0.27.01

New:
-Menu system *completely* changed, top to bottom
-Menus now slide in from right-hand side (mostly), allowing you to still keep playing
-You can edit planets (or groups of planets) on the fly by clicking them
-*Right click now acts as a cursor. So if you wanna select a planet or drag the screen around, that's a quick way to do it, even if you're holding a planet.
-Text fields are a lot easier to edit/copy/paste/type in
-Center-of-Mass tweaked to work even when there are just asteroids (mass=0)
-Instructions pop up *in your face*. Aimed at newbies, not you all, so fear not, I'll plan to disable them after your first time, or some such thing.
-Log pops up on the screen to tell you when something has happened. (Will be disable-able)

To-Do:
-Still need to fix the bug about crashing with too-many-orbit-lines
-Want to add more visual features next (arrows, vector fields, other representations)
-Would like to add in density, editable, like mass. Would make the sim more realistic.
-Need to populate the "potential energy" text, right now it's just filler. (Note, probably will only work with a small subset of force laws)
-Add in 'circular orbits' around groups of objects
-...and so on

How to get the new version:
a) Try the auto-updater! It may work. It may not. Let me know!
b) If that doesn't work, the new version is up on Humble Bundle, now. So you can download it there, just follow the link in your original email or go to https://www.humblebundle.com/home
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robly18
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by robly18 »

I see you've added a bunch of stuff you can see for objects!
As for what you haven't added yet, gotta love that placeholder text.

Age: Old!
Traveled: Far!

As for the whole energy thing, I'm interested in seeing how that turns out. Though it does look pretty obvious to me that, if I remember my physics right, the overall total energy of a system doesn't change (save for rounding errors) and for an asteroid-star system the total energy of the asteroid should not change.
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testtubegames
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by testtubegames »

robly18 wrote:As for the whole energy thing, I'm interested in seeing how that turns out. Though it does look pretty obvious to me that, if I remember my physics right, the overall total energy of a system doesn't change (save for rounding errors) and for an asteroid-star system the total energy of the asteroid should not change.
Well, for a simple force law, like 1/r^2, the potential energy will be easy. And for similar ones like 1/r^3, it'll be easy, too. The potential just goes as the integral of the force. For some tougher force laws (like tan(cos(r))), I'm not going to go to the trouble to figure out what that integral/potential would be.

And even before you get to such complex laws, even with f(r) = r, you get a strange situation. The potential needs to be set to some constant -- as a benchmark -- which typically is to say that the potential goes to zero as r goes to infinity. For 1/r^2, that makes perfect sense. But for r^2, say, that means your potential (at a finite distance) is just always negative infinity... which *is* mildly instructive (there's no way you'll have enough kinetic energy to escape)... but not terrible specific. So do you define the potential energy to be zero at r=0 instead? Would that be instructive anymore? Or would it feel like we're mixing conventions?

And then what about oscillating potentials? Where would you even set the zero-point?

...

So, yeah. My plan is to add in the Potential Energy for forces like 1/r^2... and just leave them out for most other things.
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robly18
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by robly18 »

So how do you get the potential energy for a certain force and object again?
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A Random Player
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by A Random Player »

About to leave, but figured I'd try it. Clicking on the auto-update download button, it appears to work (bunch of percents and tells me to restart), but upon restart and configuring, it gives me this:
Crash
Crash
GSim Auto-update Error.png (21.24 KiB) Viewed 17019 times
Will try again once I get back
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NealCruco
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by NealCruco »

I couldn't try the auto-updater, because 0.26.03 never worked for me. But I updated manually, and the game looks terrific! Great job!
A Random Player
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by A Random Player »

Ok, downloaded manually. It appears that the display for merging is backwards (when it says merging off, it actually means on and vice versa). Other than that I can't find any bugs yet.
Also how do you change window size after the first load?
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testtubegames
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by testtubegames »

robly18 wrote:So how do you get the potential energy for a certain force and object again?
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pegrav.html
Or, short version, you integrate the force over whatever path you're taking. Compressing a spring 1 cm against a constant force of, say, 5 Newtons, would mean you added 1cm*5N = .05 Joules of (potential) energy to the spring. Not that the force would actually remain constant, mind you.

That just gives you the difference in potential energy. To get a single value for the potential energy at a location, you need to pick a point (like distance=infinity) and set its value (pe = 0). Then you compare every *other* point to there.
NealCruco wrote:I couldn't try the auto-updater, because 0.26.03 never worked for me. But I updated manually, and the game looks terrific! Great job!
Great!
A Random Player wrote:Ok, downloaded manually. It appears that the display for merging is backwards (when it says merging off, it actually means on and vice versa). Other than that I can't find any bugs yet.
Also how do you change window size after the first load?
Ah, I'd believe that merging on/off is backwards. As for the window size, every time you load it right now, you should be prompted to select a screen size. Eventually, I'm going to make the screen-size dynamically change-able (you'll be able to drag the corner and resize it, as you'd expect). Before that, I just need to work out some resizing bugs... to make sure that the windows all resize properly and snap to the right locations one you resize the screen.
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wtg62
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by wtg62 »

Awesome job!

One small suggestion:
When editing settings for objects being spawned, allow us to add a name to the planet before creation (so I could launch something called "kaboom" for example)

Another small suggestion:

For "density", I recommend having a "size" argument.
When "mass", "density", or "size" are edited, one of the other two variables update to match the recently changed var.
Should be like this: density changes when mass is updated, mass changes when density is updated, and density changes when size is updated.

Edit 1:
Make it so that buttons from the menu on the left are grayed-out if their corresponding option is off, and not-grayed-out if their corresponding option is on.

Edit 2:
Make planet editor show the color of the selected planet, not the color of the object you would've spawn by clicking (i.e. I had "Star" selected earlier when making stars, star color was yellow. *Clicks blue planet* *GSim says color is Yellow*).
There could be a few other messages, such as "x number of planets selected", "deleted non-selected planets" (when cropping with planets selected), "deleted x planets", "var of x was changed to y", "created planet", "created asteroid", and so on.
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wtg62
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Re: GSim 0.27.01

Post by wtg62 »

It also appears TAB no longer works.

Edit 1:
Planet names aren't saved either...

You should also make the planet editing GUI display the planet number like the tracking GUI from 0.26 did.

Edit 2:
It appears that if you zoom in/out, the trails display any sudden x/y position changes.
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