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Play with it Here.

Added in a new feature, and was so excited to share it, I couldn't wait until version 0.3!

Version 0.25
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?"

New in this Version:
-Tracking! Follow planets around, keeping them centered on the screen.
-Advanced tracking! The orbital lines can be drawn *as an astronomer on that planet would see them*... really weird retrograde orbits and all that
-Click an object to open up a menu, where you can track it or delete it.
-Press 'space' to pause/play (helpful when you want to click on quick-moving objects)
-Press 'tab' to make all the buttons invisible - to really enjoy your images.
-UI re-arrangement, buttons and options are in different places (with some works-in-progress... the eyeball will open up a whole visual-style editor eventually)

Next to Do:
-Circular orbits, for one thing. That'll make solar systems +moons a real cinch.
-Add in more of the things from this list

So, yeah, tracking. It's awesome. And confusing. To go to a planet's reference frame, click on it (with the cursor active). In the menu that pops up, click 'view world from it' (didn't have time to come up with a catchier button name, there). Click the button again to get back to the normal world. There are almost certainly some bugs that will crop up, but I had so much fun playing with this today, I wanted to get it in your hands and see what you all would do with it!

Oh man! I must try this! This opens up so many new possibilities!

EDIT: Found a bug.
Things are loaded absolutely. So if you're in some frame of view when things are loaded, they'll be loaded the same on your screen as if they had been loaded with no frame of reference, messing up some things.

EDIT2: Another one: the camera is a bit funky when loading something while in a frame of view.

robly18 wrote:Things are loaded absolutely.

EDIT2: Another one: the camera is a bit funky when loading something while in a frame of view.

The first one was an easy "oh yeah, forgot to add a line of code so loading works" fix. So, yeah, that's fixed now.

I haven't encountered the second bug yet. What funky thing happens?

This is the best version yet!
It's really funny to create a solar system and track an object (in 'view world from it' mode) with a highly eccentric orbit, because of how jerky everything looks from it.
I really think you should've kept drag and delete, because sometimes you need to delete multiple objects at once.

wtg62 wrote:This is the best version yet!
I really think you should've kept drag and delete, because sometimes you need to delete multiple objects at once.

Rad! And don't worry, drag and delete will be coming back -- my plan is to have 'shift + mouse drag' let you select multiple things, in the standard computer way... then you can delete all of them at once. Fewer buttons on the screen, easier & more intuitive interactions is my goal with that.

These jerky motions, though, were too cool -- I couldn't wait until I'd added in drag & delete to upload it

I found another issue:
At some (seemingly) random point in time after playing for a while, the arrows under the planet/star/asteroid buttons (which let you configure color and whatnot) disappear.
The only way to fix this is to reload the game.

And yes, the jerky motions are awesome

wtg62 wrote:At some (seemingly) random point in time after playing for a while, the arrows under the planet/star/asteroid buttons disappear.

Fixed!

Also this is something I've experienced in previous versions, but sometimes when I try to load code...
Either it doesn't load all of the planets, some are loaded with delay, or I have to spawn more planets to make it load the missing planets.

Example:
This is a planet with 4 moons orbiting a star (code is long because I created this system without editing the code).
For me, upon loading the save, either the moons will be gone, or the entire planetary system with the planet (which means only the star is loaded).

Edit 1:

testtubegames wrote:To go to a planet's reference frame, click on it (with the cursor active). In the menu that pops up, click 'view world from it' (didn't have time to come up with a catchier button name, there)

Just noticed this, you could call it "Surface view" or "Planet view".

Edit 2:

I've experimented with that system once more to see if I could get it working:
The planetary systems entities loaded, but they went everywhere and didn't follow any of their trajectories.
This is some really weird stuff!

Edit 3:

Found another minor bug, which is that the ghost of the planet/star/asteroid (which represents where the planet you're creating is going to be placed) also disappears after a while (or it could be because I'm placing a planet while/right after zooming). This makes it a little frustrating to precisely place objects. Again, only way to fix is to reload the game.

Downloaded Unity. "How bad can it be?" It wasn't, took less than 2 minutes to install. Took a bit to get the sim working, but now I can finally see that it's awesome
Clearing and saving are still a bit buggy, will need some time to get used to the sim to figure out exactly what it is. (I think reference frames are not reset upon clearing once, or something?)
A quick (?) suggestion: Add tooltips to the buttons.

A Random Player wrote:A quick (?) suggestion: Add tooltips to the buttons.

I second this, as much as I and a few others would already know what everything does pretty well, new users might not.
(Honestly I never got the point of what currently is the eye button )