Orbit Master Devlog #1

Today was the first real development session for Orbit Master and I am honestly happy with the progress we made.

The game started as a simple spaceship on a blank screen. By the end of the session, it had transformed into the foundation of an actual gravity based space game.

Spaceship Controls

The first thing I worked on was getting the spaceship movement right.

The ship can now:

Rotate using A and D

Thrust forward using W

Reverse using S

Use retro brakes to slow down

Getting the controls to feel natural took longer than expected because the ship was initially moving in weird directions whenever it rotated. After a lot of testing, the movement now follows the direction of the ship’s nose properly.

Planetary Gravity

This was the biggest feature added today.

Planets now exert gravity on the spaceship and pull it toward them. Instead of simply flying in straight lines, the ship now curves around planets and can perform orbital style maneuvers.

This completely changed the feel of the game.

Before gravity, it felt like a basic spaceship controller.

After gravity, it actually started feeling like a space game.

Orbit Protection

One issue I ran into was that the ship would often crash directly into planets.

To solve this, I implemented an orbit protection system that prevents the ship from colliding with planets and encourages smooth orbital movement around them.

The result feels much more fun and forgiving while still keeping the gravity mechanics intact.

Fuel System

A fuel mechanic was also added.

Every time the player uses the thrusters, fuel is consumed.

This creates a new layer of strategy because players can no longer hold down the thrust button forever.

They now have to think carefully about when to accelerate and when to let gravity do the work.

🌌 Visual Improvements

The game world also got its first proper space background.

The empty gray screen has now been replaced with a space themed backdrop which instantly makes everything feel more immersive.

Even though it is still an early version, seeing the planets floating in space makes the project feel much closer to a real game.

Current Status

Current features include:

Spaceship movement

Rotational controls

Planetary gravity

Orbit protection

Fuel system

Multiple planets

Space background

🔭 What’s Next

The next major features I plan to work on are:

Mission objectives

Trajectory prediction

Black holes

Asteroid fields

Goal portals

Time based challenges

The goal is to evolve Orbit Master from a physics sandbox into a challenging gravity based puzzle game where players must use planets, fuel management, and orbital mechanics to complete missions.

Overall, a very productive first development session and a solid foundation for the project.